The Distrans Continuum Top 10 Albums of 2015

There are only moments of 2015 left now, so it's time to reveal my top 10 of the year. No doubt I'll discover more excellent music from the year in the future, and change my mind about the order and contents of this list - but right now, in the last moments of the year, this was my 2015 in music...

A few more thoughts before getting down to the list. I doubt there will be few surprises, since most of the records have already featured countless times in more well-read lists than this one. There is no pretense about picking the more obscure releases (although see my Honourable Mentions). However, I will try to justify my selections, and I hope that this will provide an interesting slant for some readers. Enjoy at your leisure!

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10. Low - Ones And Sixes

First up in my top ten is what seems like the 20th record by Low. I've followed Low for a long time, and it's a real testament to the band that they've been able to produce such a strong album after so many years and so many solid records without changing anything major. Don't get me wrong, for all the plaudits I've never considered Low amongst the upper echelons of my favourite artists - their mid-2000s output didn't click with me much, and while I liked the odd song from 2011's C'mon and thought 2013's The Invisible Way was a return to form, they haven't pulled up any trees for quite some time. Ones And Sixes takes all the classic Low ingredients but brings with it a renewed directness and urgency that is utterly invigorating. For this reason I think it comes close to surpassing both their debut record, I Could Live In Hope (1994), and the more accessible Things We Lost In The Fire (2001). What's more it gets better, track by track, from the building power of opener 'Gentle' to its closing moments.

9. Dungen - Allas Sak

Like Low, Dungen have been around for some time, and it feels like almost as long since they produced a truly great record - with 2004's Ta Det Lugnt still regarded as the defining moment by many. I'm ashamed to say that I came close to leaving their previous two releases in a charity bin on the eve of this release - two records that had disappointed because I wanted another Ta Det Lugnt and was unable to appreciate them on their own merits - that is until I heard this. Allas Sak is a real breath of fresh air. While its charms aren't obvious unless you're a died in the wool fan of late 60s and early 70s psychedelia (I'm not), I found there to be real substance here - also keeping in mind that I don't understand a word of the band's native Swedish. The first track to hook me was the instrumental 'Flickor Och Pojkar', before I came to appreciate the gorgeous 'En Gang Om Aret', by which time the entire record had me under its spell.

8. Julia Holter - Have You In My Wilderness

I had high hopes of this album, and despite initial disappointment, here it is sitting pretty in eighth place. Let's get the negatives out of the way first - I found the pacing of the album to be awkward at first, with the longer and slower tracks dissipating the record's momentum, and I also thought a couple of tracks were needlessly irritating, notably the 'uh-oh' ridden 'Betsy On The Roof'. However, these discomforts quickly faded after repeated listens, with every track sounding better and better. While I still prefer 2012's Ekstasis, the sheer quality and subtlety of this record are too great to for it to be excluded from my top ten, and 'Night Song' must be one of the best tracks I've heard all year.

7. Jessica Pratt - On Your Own Love Again

I had not heard of Jessica Pratt at the beginning of the year, but the discovery of On Your Own Love Again forced me to track down her debut album very shortly afterwards. Listening to her latest release, it is hard to come to terms with the fact that the album came out in 2015 and not 1975 - the record would almost make more sense as a long lost masterpiece that's only just come to light. At slightly over 31 minutes, this album is a tightly packed and carefully-crafted gem. While Pratt's lyrics and voice paint her as a kind of gentle and fey outsider, the tracks are far more confident and self-assured than on her 2013 self-titled debut. Songs like 'Game That I Play', and the closing pair, 'Back, Baby' and 'On Your Own Love Again' ooze class, and suggest much to look forward to in the future.

6. Oneohtrix Point Never - Garden Of Delete

As a long-time fan of OPN, aside from the excellent Replica (2011), I've always been most disposed towards his first trio of albums reissued on the Rifts compilation (2007-09), which are essentially essays in Tangerine Dream-esque synthesizer music. Since then he's reinvented his sound on each successive release, and GOD is no exception. This time there is a kind of distorted pop music mentality at the heart of the album, subject to the usual OPN barrage of weird electronic effects and juxtapositions. This all works surprisingly well - the result is at once a record that is OPN's most accessible as well as his most bizarre. While some of his albums have left me cold (2010's Returnal) or mostly lukewarm (2013's R Plus Seven), this one is oddly alluring from start to finish.

5. Holly Herndon - Platform

Staying with electronic music, Holly Herndon's Platform manages to edge into my final five of 2015. There are many stylistic similarities between this album and the last three or so by Oneohtrix Point Never, but I prefer this one for its sonic clarity, its use of vocals and vocal effects, and its underlying message - all exemplified on one of my favourite songs, 'Unequal'. While thoroughly innovative and enjoyable, in different places this record also inspires contemplation and evokes sadness, which for me raise it above most of the other releases I've heard this year. Although many will find the music simply too weird and disjointed to give this record a proper chance, Platform is easily more accessible than Herndon's debut Movement (2012), and deserves serious attention.

4. Beach House - Depression Cherry / Thank Your Lucky Stars

No doubt cynics will see this as a ruse to include an extra album in my top ten... So let me first make something of a defence. In the first place, I genuinely feel that both records deserved top ten status on their individual merits. Secondly, I'm mindful of other bands who have managed to release two albums simultaneously and have them lumped together in end-of-year lists. Lastly, and most importantly, I'm intrigued by the idea of re-writing history and wondering how these albums would have been received if they had been released together, and not a few weeks apart. Obvious parallels would then include Deerhunter's Microcastle/Weird Era Cont., M83's Hurry Up We're Dreaming, and even Joanna Newsom's Have One On Me. Putting the boot on the other foot, while these are all excellent double (or triple) albums, had they been released on single discs I can't help wonder if their fanfare would have been a lot more muted - all three of them have weaker moments that tend to be dwarfed by their sheer size as artistic statements. Likewise, I also wonder that if Beach House had put these two out as a double album, the collected content would have been far better received... Anyway, in my eyes 2015 was a great year for Beach House. They have managed to follow-up two stellar albums in Teen Dream and Bloom with another two in the space of a year that more than adequately complement their repertoire. Good music does not have to be innovating all the time.

3. Tame Impala - Currents

Unlike the apparent majority for whom Lonerism represents Tame Impala at their peak, I can confidently state that Currents is my preferred album by the Antipodean rockers band. As this list makes plain, it bothers me little whether a band uses guitars or electronics - and in this case the issue is largely irrelevant given the quality of the tracks and depth of emotion that Currents manages to conjure. This is a break-up record, and one that sensitively deals with a familiar narrative that accompanies the end of a long-term relationship - seemingly from the perspective of the partner seeking to move to pastures new. There are many highs here, not least the opener 'Let It Happen' and closer 'New Person, Same Old Mistakes', but it was the less heralded tracks that really sucked me in - 'Love/Paranoia', which confronts the injured party's need to make sense of the end of the relationship, and even 'Past Life', despite its slightly cringeworthy documentary quality. All this has a depth and cohesiveness that elevates Currents above both Lonerism and Innerspeaker.

2. Björk - Vulnicura

Second place in my top ten goes to another break-up record, this time documenting a divorce, and one seemingly from the perspective of someone witnessing their world and family fall apart around them. As one might expect, such an album is harrowing at times, and in this case the songs are presented in order of events as they took place. If Tame Impala's Currents is a celebration of breaking out of the cage of an unhappy relationship, Vulnicura deals with the anger, deep loss, and mourning of a once-cherished partnership. This is without doubt the best Björk album since Medúlla and possibly even Vespertine, which was my personal favourite. As a bonus, Björk also released Vulnicura Strings, which is effectively the same album re-ordered and stripped down to vocals and the string-section. While this second release lacks the same impact as the original, for a handful of tracks their rawness is enhanced by this simpler treatment, so it is well worth checking out if you liked the main release.

1. Sufjan Stevens - Carrie & Lowell

As I write this I'm conscious of a recent article that humorously predicted what kinds of things a person's number one album of 2015 said about them. Since Carrie & Lowell deals with the death of Sufjan Steven's less than ideal mother (at least in some key areas of parenting, like not abandoning your child in a shop), surely this record can only be held in such esteem if someone else had the same feelings and experiences relating to their own (dead) mother?! Not at all. Carrie & Lowell is the number one record of 2015 for me, not in this case through some kind of shared experience, but rather because of Sufjan's innate ability to communicate the depth of his own feelings in a highly affective manner. Listening to Carrie & Lowell is a positively cathartic experience, ultimately evoking an overwhelming optimism in the face of confronting inherently personal human frailties and weaknesses. While 'Fourth Of July' reminds us repeatedly that 'we're all gonna die', in the context of the album this comes as a call to make the most of the time that we have, rather than give in to despair.

I hope you enjoyed the music of 2015 as much as me. Wishing everyone a Happy New Year, and see you soon with more posts in 2016!

Albums of 2015: honourable mentions

The end-of-year list is dead! Long live the end-of-year list!

Earlier this year I wrote about my dissatisfaction with end-of-year album lists. Looking back on 2014, I admit that this negativity largely stemmed from my inability to find more than a handful of records I liked that year - even after I had scoured the lists from several usually reputable music critics. Thankfully, 2015 proved to be somewhat different. In fact, I've found and loved more new music this year than any other for a long time.

With the site U-turn on making lists out of the way, time to get down to business... Not only have I made a list for 2015, but I've invested a lot of time into getting it just right. Accepting that this is very much a personal list, I think I've done a good job in distilling the music that has impacted on me the most in 2015.

The honourable mention list: for critics who fear numbers not ending in zero?

Before I get to the music, it's worth reflecting on why so many music critics use this idea of the honourable mention. Is it to build anticipation of the REAL list? Is it because they are unable to stick to whatever the set limit of albums is? In my case, the albums on my honourable mention list are not simply the records that wouldn't fit into my top 10. If that was the case, I'd be writing here about Father John Misty, Joanna Newsom and Grimes. No, the releases on my honourable mention list are different - the records I loved in spite of their more obvious flaws, and often the records that were often unheralded (generally speaking) by the music press I'd come across...

Fitting with the SF leanings of this site, my first honourable mention goes to Y Dydd Olaf  [apparently Welsh for The Last Day], the debut album by Gwenno. Gwenno is the monicker for Gwenno Saunders, formerly of indie-pop group the Pipettes. The title of this Welsh language album refers to the SF book of the same name by the novelist Owain Owain... All in all, perhaps not the most obvious release to be set for world-wide commercial success.

Y Dydd Olaf was originally released in 2014 before re-release this year, but can legitimately be included here given the extremely limited circulation of its original pressing. What made it essential listening for me in 2015 was not so much its SF content, since after all, I don't understand a great deal of Welsh, but rather its cool retro-futuristic style, which evokes late 90s Stereolab. Indeed, obvious musical lineage with the Pipettes is almost completely lacking, excepting a basic pop-sensibility that is albeit shrouded in much darker overtones. Y Dydd Olaf came the closest of my honourable mentions to making the overall top 10, and while it's a highly competent record, it just lacks that extra oomph to properly compete with 2015's big hitters.

Next up comes a release I only discovered in the latter weeks of the year, Death And Vanilla's To Where The Wild Things Are. This is another record dripping with retro cool, this time in the vein of Broadcast on some of their darker and icier tracks - as perfectly evoked by the album cover:

For me, this is a record driven by several stand-out tracks - the Nico-like innocence of 'California Owls', the shimmering 'Arcana', and the brooding mystery of 'The Hidden Reverse'. The rest of the album fills in an appropriately moody soundscape, but lacks enough equivalent highs - and indeed emotional engagement - to make a credible contender for the top 10. I await their follow-up with much anticipation.

My last honourable mention for 2015 comes from an artist I've been a fan of for some time - folk singer-songwriter Meg Baird, and her album Don't Weigh Down The Light. This is Baird's third solo record (she's also a member of the folk-rock band, Espers), following a lengthy gap from 2011's Season On Earth. Don't Weigh Down The Light represents a significant departure on two levels - it is Baird's first to be composed wholly of her own songs, and it sees a subtle stylistic shift towards a new sound - more subdued, contemplative, and even mournful.

Although its charms aren't immediately obvious, at least not compared to the immediate appeal of Baird's 2007 debut, Dear Companion, Don't Weigh Down The Light is surely her strongest and most distinctive release to date. More than most of the records I've listened to, this is an album that needs to be cherished for its strengths to be revealed - precious hours of late night solitude reap infinitely greater rewards than a casual listen, when the subtleties of the musics and lyrics may all too easily fade into the background. My favourite track on the album is the beautiful and mournful 'Back To You', but there are plenty of other highlights to be revealed to the patient listener.

If you liked this, check back in the coming days for the full top 10...

2014 in music: a retrospective

The pointlessness of end-of-year music lists

It's pretty common these days for music journalists and bloggers to be post their lists of 'best' music long before the year is out. I don't have a problem with this, but sometimes I get the feeling that lists are often rushed out before their authors have time to properly digest the music released in a given year. A related issue relates to the value of these lists in the first place. Since most people acknowledge that music appreciation is a strictly subjective phenomenon, varying not only from person to person, but also from moment to moment, why should we even try to rank music, an exercise that seems to presuppose some kind of objective or scientific process? For these reasons, I'm going to dispense with list-making, and discuss some favourite and otherwise interesting releases and re-releases from 2014...


Re-releases > new releases

Subjectively speaking, 2014 wasn't a good year in music for me. A lot of the best new music I encountered wasn't new at all. Take Bernard Szajner's wonderful Visions Of Dune discussed in my previous blog post - originally released in 1979, even if few people appeared to notice at the time. Another pair of re-released gems came from the mysterious figure going by the moniker of Lewis Baloue, also known as Randall A. Wulff. Despite some ridiculously 80s kitsch cover art, L'Amour (1983) and Romantic Times (1985) play like true lost masterpieces - as if Nick Drake was resurrected in the 80s and got into synth sounds in a big (minimalist) way. A lot has been written about Lewis in the music media, who seemingly surfaced somewhere in Canada without any interest in benefiting from the proceeds of his new found cult success. Anyway, back to the point: L'Amour and Romantic Times were as good as anything else new I heard in 2014.

New releases: subjective > 'objective' rankings

So what of the proper new releases? Despite a smaller pool of albums to listen to, around December time I tried to rank my favourites in a rather convoluted fashion. I listened to them all carefully on decent equipment, giving a score out of 5 to each track on each record, and creating other categories to which numerical ratings could be attached, averaged and ranked in a spreadsheet. It was only after this admittedly rather anal exercise that I realised how pointless it all had been. Yes, it was interesting to see what the result was, but I soon started to come up with ways to create different results - this or that rank wasn't quite right and so on. I was making it too complex, and not allowing for the possibility that the same album could affect me differently on different occasions. At the same time, the albums I was comparing were so different that objectively ranking them according to consistent criteria proved to be impossible. As a new convert to BestEverAlbums.com, I'm still not against the idea of listing my favourite records - just the tradition of end-of-year music lists that comes with the implication of objectivity.

Some albums I liked from 2014

Ditching the lists then, and having enough time to properly digest the music I purchased from last year, I'm going to discuss some records that I liked from 2014 - as simple as that. First up, and blending nicely with the reissue theme, is Linda Perhacs' The Soul Of All Natural Things.

Until 2014, Linda Perhacs was a singer-songwriter known largely for her one and only (but excellent) 1970 album, Parallelograms. While it is fair to say that Parallelograms fits the mould of classic records not truly appreciated by wider audiences until long after their original releases, The Soul Of All Natural Things attempts to translate the hippy vibe of her debut for a contemporary audience. The end result - aided by collaborations with the likes of Julia Holter - is a beautiful record that sits well alongside its predecessor despite the 44 year gap. This release is appropriately titled, having a magical and spiritual quality, perhaps being most apparent on tracks like 'River Of God' and 'When Things Are True Again'.

Next up, and something rather different, is Bécs by Fennesz. Christian Fennesz has been making gauzy ambient electronica since the 1990s, and Bécs in particular drew a lot of comparisons to his definitive and most accessible 2001 release, Endless Summer.

Bécs fully lives up to challenge of its 2001 spiritual predecessor. Although the summer vibe is missing here, Bécs retains the emotional warmth of Endless Summer, while ditching the more detached soundscapes of Fennesz's previous full release, Black Sea. The result is a more contemplative feeling record, with tracks like 'Static Kings' and 'Liminality' building nicely to the title track's jagged crescendo.

Sticking with the loose electronic theme, another record that's stuck with me well into 2015 is Flying Lotus's You're Dead!, a record that came with a lot more critical fanfare than the others that I've discussed so far.

The fusion of jazz, electronica, hip-hop, post-rock, and star collaborators (including Snoop Dogg, Thundercat and Kendrick Lamar) might sound like an impossible mix if you've never heard Flying Lotus before. What's more astounding is that this album is one of a long line of successive innovative and strangely coherent records from the artist. What makes this one stand-out from his previous records is the overarching theme. This is a concept album about death, complete with thoughtful street philosophy and plenty of humour to boot. Looking for a stand-out track, many people have rightly singled out 'Never Catch Me' (featuring Kendrick Lamar), but as a long-standing fan of Chicago post-rockers Tortoise, my favourite is the understated and perhaps aptly titled 'Turtles', one of the shorter bridge numbers on this record.


In conclusion...

Well, that's it. I didn't anticipate writing about only three new albums when I started this post, but it's nice to do something outside the tried and tested formula of regular end-of-year lists. This isn't to say I only liked three albums, far from it - just that these three were the only ones that truly clicked with me, perhaps in a more subjective way than my attempt to produce a proper ranked list. It would be an interesting experiment if other media outlets adopted a similar approach come December...

(Non-canonical) Visions of Dune

Frank Herbert's Dune is a wonderful book. Each repeated read brings new rewards as one is immersed in the utterly strange yet strangely plausible universe of the Bene Gesserit sisterhood, twisted mentats, spice worms, and kwisatz haderachs. Such excellence is continued in the five succeeding books, despite their increasing weirdness (the fourth in the series, God Emperor of Dune, is perhaps the biggest challenge for general readers). Fans of the books, however, have much to gripe about: the series is unfinished; it has been developed into a later iteration of largely disappointing novels co-written by Frank's son Brian and Kevin J. Anderson that complete the cycle and provide 'new' explorations in the Dune universe; and it has been subject to an inconsistent list of conversions to more popular media, which have done much to harm the reputation of the books (unlike, say the Lord of the Rings).

Let's consider the gripes one by one. The lack of a true follow-up to Chapterhouse Dune leaves the series on the brink of a major, Twin Peaks-esque, cliffhanger. Chapterhouse is a great book, but picking it up brings bittersweet feelings. Not simply because the ending is not revealed, but also because the new ending by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson doesn't quite carry the same engrossing qualities of the novels by Frank - even if aspects of the story are reliant on Herbert Snr's notes.

Are the newer prequels and sequels by Brian and Kevin really that bad? The answer will undoubtedly vary from reader to reader. I enjoyed the 'House' cycle of preludes dating to immediately before the Dune novel, if they were over-long and disappointing when compared to the originals. The 'Butlerian Jihad' cycle delved even deeper into the history of Dune. Despite its interesting premise, these books were much more of an ordeal to get through. Annoyingly, both cycles developed storylines that would re-surface in Brian and Kevin's attempt to complete the original series, requiring the hard-core fan to read six chunky volumes to make sense of the long-awaited Dune 7. Released as two novels, Hunters of Dune and Sandworms of Dune brought closure to the Dune sequence, while leaving a lingering sense of dissatisfaction. Was it really worth it?

If you don't like the books written by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, the various screen adaptations might offer an alternative indulgence in the Dune universe. Most famous is David Lynch's 1984 film, produced with big budget and featuring an an impressive cast. Despite allegedly not being cut to the liking of Lynch, this is a good film, perhaps even a flawed masterpiece. The sets, costume, and soundtrack are excellent, with several stand-out acting performances. What's the problem then? Firstly, to audiences weaned on the original Star Wars trilogy, Dune is a disappointing space adventure. This is in large part because the book is much more complex than Star Wars, requiring the reader to engage with concepts from ecology, philosophy, theology, and anthropology, not to mention SF ideas. And it is not really a true space adventure story. The ethics and morality of Dune are much more ambivalent than those seen in equivalent films. The special effects are impressive for the 1980s, but they are not essential for the story. Related to this is the film's second major flaw - its depiction of the sand worms of Arrakis. These iconic creatures are made to look like a ridiculous cross between a big rubber hose pipe and a school boy's phallic doodle. Enough said. As for the mini-series, I haven't seen them. Stills from the internet suggest a budget similar to 1970s Dr Who, and reviews are largely unfavourable. Steer clear.

So, where does this leave us, other than to re-read the originals by Frank Herbert? Well, there are a couple of jewels for those who are prepared look hard enough, as well as maybe expanding their horizons. Read on.

Last year (2014) saw the re-release of Z's (aka Bernard Szajner's) 1979 Visions of Dune, an album of 70s synthesizers and electronica inspired by the books in the vein of artists like Tangerine Dream, and more recently, Oneohtrix Point Never. Compared to the soundtrack of Lynch's film by Toto (and featuring Brian Eno), Visions of Dune is much more in keeping with the spirit (and weirdness) of the novels. Not only has the music stood the test of time (Pitchfork gave it a respectable 7.7), it also makes excellent background music to reading the books. All the track names come from the novels, with stand-outs like 'Bene Gesserit' and Kwizatz Haderach' often conjuring appropriate images of the names represented.  Highly recommended.

Inspired by Szajner's alternative Dune soundtrack, a little research brought Dr Willis E. McNelly's Dune Encyclopedia to my attention. Sounds pretty boring - right? One of those compendiums of terms for the forgetful and uninitiated. Actually, wrong. Not only is the encyclopedia a work of fiction that is set in the Dune universe after the events of God Emperor of Dune (in the hand of a certain Hadi Benotto in 15540), it was also written with the consent of Frank Herbert, drawing upon some of his unpublished ideas. While this might sound worryingly similar to the preludes and sequels of Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, the fleshed out back-stories here are considerably different from the newer novels. Perhaps for this reason, the Encyclopedia is allegedly now seen as non-canon by the Herbert estate. Nevertheless, it offers some genuinely well-written, well-illustrated and substantial (at over 500 pages) fleshing out of the original books that is well worth tracking down for those craving more Dune. Sadly, it is no longer in print, but it is still possible to track down second-hand copies at relatively low prices on the internet (I found one for around £20 in good condition).

As this post comes to a close, someone is bound to mention that I've not included the recent documentary film, Jodorowsky's Dune. This is for the simple reason I've not seen it yet! Rest assured a future companion post on this site will discuss it, along with other non-canonical visions, such as the Geidi Primes album by Canadian musician Grimes. Stay tuned.