Hmm.. Yeezus and The Life of Pablo. Also I My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and Watch the Throne.

Specific songs:
"Hold My Liquor"
"Fade"
"Guilt Trip"
"Gotta Have it"
"Runaway"
"Gorgeous"
"All Day"
"On Sight"
"Feedback"
"Blood on the Leaves"
"Send it up"
"FML"
"Freestyle 4"
"Wolves"
"Father Stretch My Hands pt.1"
"No More Parties in LA"

these are all brilliant, everything mark harwood's put out on penultimate this year has been absolutely stunning. so nice to see carla getting a lot of love as well, have seen her and the bum creek guys play in a bunch of really great bands over the years back home so it's really sweet to see tarquin et al really making it big via BEB, much deserved.

re: kanye west, wait until they release his last couple of records without his voice on them and they'll be pretty cool.

BABYFATHER "bbf hosted by dj escrow" / "419" / "platinum tears"
AUTECHRE "elseq 1-5"
GRAHAM LAMBKIN "community"
COUNTER INTUITS "monosylabilly"
DEAD C "trouble"
HAINO/O'ROURKE/AMBARCHI "I wonder if you noticed "I'm sorry"..."
FRANCESCO CAVALIERE "gancio cielo" 1 & 2
LOLINA "live in paris" / "sisters of control" (inga copeland x gast)
TYPHONIAN HIGHLIFE "the world of shells"
D/P/I "composer
POSSET "double jupiter"
TERRY "terry hq"
DJWWW "arigato"
M.E.S.H. "damaged merc"
YVES TUMOR "serpent music"
THE PHEROMOANS "i'm on nights"
VALERIO TRICOLI "clonic earth"
RENICK BELL "empty lake"
PITA "get in"
GATE "saturday night fever"
MARK VERNON "lend an ear leave a hand"
JACQUES BRODIER "xhos de villemahu"
BIBS "from the fish markets"
FOODMAN "ez minzoku"
IDEA FIRE COMPANY "the synthetic elements"
JESSY LANZA "oh no"
ECTOPLASM GIRLS "new feeling come"
CARLA DAL FORNO "you know what it's like"
JESSE OSBORN LANTHIER x GRISCHA LICHTENBERGER "conversations sur lettres mortes"
LANARK ARTEFAX "glasz"
BILLY BAO "lagos sessions"
HIELE "ritmische bezinning"
JOHN T. GAST "inna babalon"
THE HECKS "s/t"
0COMEUPS "one deep"
KLEIN "only"
TOMORROW THE RAIN WILL FALL UPWARDS "wreck his days"
N1L "wrong headspace"
ROY MONTGOMERY "rmhq"
FIS "from patterns to details"
RASHAD BECKER "traditional music of notional species ii"
CASS MCCOMBS "mangy love"
SHACKLETON "devotional songs"
BASIC RHYTHM "raw trax"
ELYSIA CRAMPTON "presents demon city"

in addition to most of the other stuff I posted about on here/some stuff that greenlight already mentioned. track of the year is undoubtedly the b2 on the new oren ambarchi lp.






*edit* think I might just keep adding to this as they pop back up

Where's Oh No? I thought you were into Lanza. What about DJ Earl? No love?

I will try to give it another go. it just that I have not like two things from their new album on youtube I saw and was not bothered to listen further. there is few more things I was not bother to listen to and probably u would go like whaaaat? like new autechre f.e.!

nice list. haven't hear Autechre, haven't heard Dead C, haven't heard new Pita (is new Pita good?) and I HAVE to listen to Haino O'Rourke Ambarchi, therefore no mention of these on my list.

Alright, I'll do mine. It won't be the obscure stuff, but it's good stuff all the same.

IN NO ORDER, well, except for number 1

1)Between Waves by The Album Leaf
A real great album from a band I decided to listen to on whim.

2)Moon Shaped Pool by Radiohead
Problem was that this album came out just I'd broken up with my girlfriend and it pretty much ruined me after listening to it consistently. It's an amazing album, but it's gonna be a while before I can listen to it all again.

3)Barbara Barbara, we face a shining future by Underworld
Underworld are one of this bands I knew Born Slippy and that's it. However, I'd heard great stuff about this album so gave it a whirl. It's worth being on the list for the first track alone.

4)Blackstar by David Bowie
What is there to say that hasn't already been said about it this year?

5)The Hope Six Demolition Project by PJ Harvey
It's not a perfect album, but the tracks that hit the spot REALLY hit the spot. A Line In The Sand, Community Of Hope and The Wheel being notable highlights

6)Arrival Soundtrack by Johann Johannsson
I'm a big fan of movie soundtracks and this one was just something else. I loved the film, but the music was just something else. Sci-fi has been going through a resurgence the last few years and their soundtracks have always been first rate to match. Which brings us to our next one.

7)Third Law by Roly Porter
This is a sci fi soundtrack to a film that doesn't exist. I've no idea how he managed to make the sounds he has on this album, and tbh, I don't wanna know. Real good stuff on here

8)You Want It Darker by Leonard Cohen
Like Blackstar it's impossible to not have your listening affected post death. His voice never sounded sexier than it did on this album either.

9)The Life Of Pablo by Kanye West
I've had a bit of a love/hate relationship with this album. When it's good, it's really good, however one too many filler tracks spoil the listening of the album. However for me, the ups and downs of the album sum up Kanye's state of mind atm.

10)Stranger To Stranger by Paul Simon
His last couple of albums have ranked right up there with his absolute best stuff. Still pulling out great albums and long may it continue.

There's been a distinct lack of hip hop listening by me this year, and I've no idea why. I've not even been bothered about checking Danny Brown's new album and I loved his last one. Usually I go through phases of genres so I suspect I'll hit a rap phase soon enough.
I did listen to 6Lack's debut album, the new Tribe album and I thought they were fine enough. It's just nothing was grabbing me whilst listening to them.

soundracks are worth of mention too! definitely! I liked Arrival Sto. The Hateful 8, The Revenant were good from what I can remeber. I loved Approaching The Unknown Sto., shite movie tho.

Yeah. Agree. That first track is just amazing. Not groundbreaking (it's Underworld, y'know... we've been there) but just really goddamn good. Something about this album appealed to the starved, atrophied, little space-rock fan in me, who's had precious little to feed on in the past few years.


Hey, have you heard Mica Levi's phenomenal dark ambient soundtrack to Jonathan Glazer's film Under the Skin? Great film, great sci-fi, great soundtrack. I highly recommend it if you're into scores, especially bleepy/scratchy/bloopy ones.


Yeah, I think this is my favorite by Cohen. It didn't come out early enough in the year for me to really soak it in, but he kills it on this album.


It's all over the place. It took me a while to be able to listen to it straight through, even though I really did listen to it every day for months. I skipped over the "filler" tracks early on (at the time, I thought of "Freestyle 4," "I Love Kanye" and "Facts" as filler) but now I love it all, and listening to it from start to finish is never anything short of amazing. William Toldeo nailed it when he said the album was built on its transitions. One song necessesitates the next. I even love "Freestyle 4" since seeing it live. Real banger that. And emotionally it's just so rich, filled with the contradictions and conflicting feelings of real life. Powerful stuff. Heaven and hell shit.

It's Kanye's White Album. Said it before, will say it again.

Oh yes. I totally loved that film and she did a great job on it. Gonna be interesting to see how she goes from that to a biopic about Jackie Kennedy.

Shit, I totally forgot about that one!

I'm totally a sucker for Thomas Newman too and he did a great job on Finding Dory (I know, I know).

it's on there...?? the earl record was really good but it just slipped my mind, obviously not a lot of floor-focused stuff on there which isn't to say I didn't enjoy any but it's just not at the forefront of my mind like all that stuff is. obviously forgetting a lot on there.

these records are all pretty similar in that they're veterans all working within singular niches they've carved out:
- the æ doesn't necessarily doing anything radically different, it's the same reverbed-out sound they've been working with for the last couple releases but they stretch out far further than they ever have, finally establish themselves firmly in the traditions they directly spawned;

- the dead c record is essentially an expansion of their 2013 live set with themes from their last lp and some gate releases from a couple of years back but sounds exactly as they should;

- the pita record is similar to æ in that it's rehberg returning to show up the 'rave abstractionists' with a far more coherent version of that concept, slots in very comfortably with his earlier stuff but updates the template for the post-rave paradigm;

- and the haino/o'rourke/ambarchi record isn't necessarily as fresh as what they were doing on other recent sets but slots it all together so beautifully and expands their palette a fair bit in the process, remarkably composed for free improv.

like if you'd have told me all these acts would be putting out records in a certain timeframe I would always comfortably say that it'd be on high rotation for me because there's a commonality in them refining a certain approach over time, furrowing into some set of ideas behind music which I can really get behind.

Oh, that Cass Mccombs record is really good too. dammit.

yeah really enjoy it, tuned out after whatever came after wit's end but my brother played me this one, otherwise wouldn't have bothered but such a great sound, could listen to it all day.

You know what was disappointing this year? Preoccupations (FKA Viet Cong). Their new album under the new name is just really generic poppy post-punk type stuff. Their album as Viet Cong had some teeth, and I really loved it. But I can't seem to enjoy the new one. I listen to it and I just think, "Why am I not listening to Joy Division or Wire? What's the point of this thing?" And that's not something you want to think when you're listening to music. :(

Bummer. I LOVED Women. Goddamn, Women was such a great band. Viet Cong seemed to carry the torch. But very publicly changing your name for political correctness reasons is extremely unpunk. It's like they were castrated when they did that. Lame.

1. A Tribe Called Quest - We Got It From Here...
2. Chance The Rapper - Coloring Book
3. Kanye West - The Life Of Pablo
4. Weezer - (White Album)
5. Anderson Paak - Malibu
6. Sonic Youth - Spinhead Sessions
7. Ariana Grande - Dangerous Woman
8. Heliocentrics - From The Deep
9. v/a - Suicide Squad soundtrack
10. Deftones - Gore

Totally agree. I totally lost respect for them for doing that. They knew it would get some people in a flurry, so not standing by the name when it did is just lame.

Unexpected.

I'd be able to overlook it if the album had some punch. But it just sounds like a bunch of vacuous imitations of cherished artists, from Berlin-era Bowie to Joy Division to the Cure. It's probably not really all that bad of a record, but I had high hopes because their Viet Cong album sounded energized and feral. This one (Preoccupations) just made my heart sink. Where did the skronk go?

Women and Viet Cong used to sound like a knife fight in a phone booth. "Preoccupations" sounds like goth night at a skating rink.

:(