2011 has been a horrid year: Not for music, but for myself. I can with a fair amount of confidence call it the worst of my life, surpassing even the school year of 1989-1990, when I was in first grade. My teacher that year was rubbish. She could not even spell dinosaur names properly. Also, she confiscated my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures, with which I was amusing myself after having finished my work much earlier than the other students, as I did usually. I’m positive she did this to spite me for correcting her spelling of triceratops in front of the class. However, I faked a temper tantrum until she gave them back. Needless to say, I had the last laugh.
But, I digress. My reason for declaring the wretchedness of 2011 in a post ostensibly about my favorite music released this year is, when reviewing my selections in sum, I am struck (slightly) by the overall melancholic mood. Additionally, there are very few unmodulated human voices to be found below, or even traditional instruments, as most of my choices come from the realm of abstract electronic music. For some reason, I have found great solace in sounds produced from artificial and synthetic sources. This could perhaps be due to the cirrhosis of my synapses to the neurotransmitters released as a result of human interaction. In a world in which social interfacing, whether in person or via computing devices, is becoming increasingly formulaic, even Pavlovian, why not surrender completely to automated emotional stimulation? Push button one for happiness. Hold button one for exaltation. And so on. (Please be sure to "like" this post on Facebook, by the way.)
I have again fallen victim to my narcissistic ruminations. I must declare unequivocally that the music below does not deserve to be characterized in such a way. In fact, the reason it has supplied such succor is quite the opposite and can be stated thusly: Through primarily electronic mediums, each of the proceeding artists has managed to evoke some sort of profound, unpredictable, and genuinely human moments of feeling and reflection from my desiccated soul. In doing so, I not only feel – a small miracle in itself – but I am provided with the hope that other mechanistic social phenomena do not result simply in the restriction of sensation and meditation, but may even spur it.
And so, like numerous websites that I disdain, I offer a list of my favorite music of the past year. However, I have tried to describe simply, concisely, and specifically how each album affects me, rather than citing myriad obscure references in order to explain why it is derivative of something else. Speaking of music websites, I am indebted to the blog Altered Zones, which turned me on to much of this music (and, as I link this, I'm just finding out will not be posting more new material, which is sad). But if you like what I have included here you should definitely browse AZ's archives. In any case, below you will find links to sites where the albums, or at least a selection or two, may be streamed, so you may judge for yourself, if you wish. Enjoy.
A wonderfully gritty, menacing take on electronic dance music. This EP lurches and rumbles along powerfully, enveloping the listener in a dark, pulsing, rough sonic space. It's like locking yourself in a basement and taking a power sander to your skull, in a good way.
The cover art is an apt representation of what one finds upon listening. It is at once smeared and hazy, but interspersed throughout are vividly colored passages that are surprisingly evocative of the natural spaces after which the EP and the individual songs are named.
An encapsulation of contemporary sensory bombardment by high-definition stimulation so complete and impeccably produced that it becomes almost ominous. Everything is so poppy, punchy, clear, and slickly packaged that you want to dance and cry simultaneously.
The only album here that is constituted simply by the human voice and traditional instruments, specifically a chamber orchestra. HTDW's work is so unabashedly open, beautiful, and intense that it draws a powerful response from even someone as emotionally bankrupt as myself.
Though it is hard to name a favorite, this may very well be it due simply to how starkly it stands apart from anything I've ever heard. This album is one of those wonderful works of art that seems perfectly natural in its utter uniqueness. Holter's record, based loosely on Euripides' Hippolytus, captures beautifully the simultaneous strangeness and familiarity of Attic tragedy, in addition to simulating effectively the course of the play, with its moments of ruthlessness, tenderness, and despair. I intend to write a longer meditation on this album in conjunction with Euripides' text at some point in the future, since I believe it deserves such attention, in addition to the simple fact that I would love to spend as much time with it as possible.
This album makes you feel as if you are on another planet, or in a futuristic past, and something dramatic is happening. A desirable sensation, in my opinion.
This record is pleasurably propulsive. When listening, you feel as if you are moving constantly forward, though at variable speeds over unpredictably fluctuating terrain, sometimes launching into the air or plunging through water.
This EP marked my introduction into Russian electronic music. It is at once punishing and melodic, a contradiction represented in the album art's inspired combination of sinuous, flowing lines with sharp, rigid edges.
Delicate, subtle, nocturnal, and wistful. Simultaneously deliberate and amorphous.
I feel as if I could listen to this record perpetually because I have been doing just that, only I didn't realize it. Hauschildt brings to light a glittering, crystalline sonic structure hidden beneath the grating noise of the everyday world, a revelation both unnerving and comforting.
Two sides of the same coin. Ravedeath evokes vast, empty spaces with droning, reverberating organ tones, which give the impression they were produced by powerful, deliberate pressure from Hecker on the instrument's keys and pedals. On the other hand, Dropped Pianos is more intimate and less assertive, while paradoxically providing increased room to breathe. Both are hauntingly beautiful in their own ways.
An addendum (added 12/5/11):
This album was recently brought to my attention by FACT's year-end top albums list, which has some other good selections on it as well. Spare, cold, and savagely beautiful; this record provides what I imagine would be a perfect soundtrack to the nature of existence after the hypothetical Big Crunch, in which all the dimensions of spacetime (whether there be 4, 9, or 11) are compressed in a reversal of the Big Bang.
(Published originally on November 30th, 2011.)
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