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What a fucking year.
My favorites have changed every month, but I think that Black Bug has released the single most immediate, listenable, no-bullshit, ass-kicking noise punk album of the year, and it has been the one album I go back to whenever I need a break from the kaleidoscopic, cross-genre deluge of new releases that have required my attention over the past year.
It's like a referential constant for a mind-weary time traveler... or a really good diner that a road-weary trucker can always pull into when the meth, hookers, and hitchhiker kidnappings just get to be too much.
It's like... Ok- maybe DJ Koze (for example) actually released the best album of the year. Or Maybe Yeezus is the best. That's great news (they're great albums), but for someone who was born and raised on variations on post-punk, hardcore, noise, and fuzzy, Husker Du-esque guitar rock, it's kind of a bitch that the best albums of the year are being made by these ultra-modern artists from genres that I love, but have never identified with.
I guess it's just comforting to know that Black Bug's "Reflecting The Light"-- screaming, seething, occasionally demented, madly intense 30-minute masterpiece built on a sonic foundation that marries noise, speed, and sinister synths-- is out there. That's why, for me at least, it's probably the front runner. It's my most frequently (and most regularly) played album; it's the album I've listened to from start-to-finish the most (because, really, how can you not?), and it's the most consistently satisfying listen of 2013 thus far.
So while the Flaming Lips (though still producing unbelievably powerful and beautiful music that sets them far above their mostly petered out peers) are gazing at their navels through DMT-dilated pupils, trading in fuzzy feedback for sweeping, cinematic soundscapes, and lyrics that actually make suicide seem like a rather sunny alternative to experiencing life in this bleak, loveless universe..... which is fine and all, but not exactly a representation of the punk rockers still taking acid 20 plus years later... Black Bug is out there rocking the shit out of dingy clubs and making the basement scene, pounding away and getting their hands bloody in 2013 with no consideration for how many Twitter followers they have, or for their itunes sales position.
Thank god for that. Thank god that there are still a few DIY fundamentalists flying below the radar, whose music is relevant to both the current musical climate, and the spirit of the bygone "get in the van" era they're working to preserve.
...
I lost time again.
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