#13: Voices From Deep Below - 'This Place Will Raise Up'
Download the free album at this link! Voices From Deep Below is one guy named Dale Humphries (originally from London, England now in NYC) who is influenced possibly by Justin K Broadrick's Jesu project, creating psychedelic, metallic shoegazer music. The best part about this album is that if you let a couple tracks play it will sweep you away with its slow yet poppy alt-metal with some psychedelic overtones and pop sensibilities, as well as some prog moments. It's that variety underlying the surface of this aesthetic that makes it work so well. Even though it has a very specific stylistic stamp in its sound, there are so many ideas explored that it keeps you wondering, even though it is basically predictable. There are some nice transitions and unexpected moments that pull you into the album's dynamics and keeps you hooked on its, well, hooks. What else makes it strong is that it is basically a perfect album, the whole thing keeps moving forward and makes very logical progressions between the songs, as if there is a story being told. Going back to the metallic shoegaze idea, this song "Halfway There" is exceptionally Jesu-like, sounding like the first self titled album. But all in all this project is more on the pop side, even though it has its heavy moments. In addition to the Jesu comparison, the project also bears a striking resemblance in overall sonic aesthetics and guitar pedal usage to west coast shoegaze rockers Whirr. Perhaps the most memorable part of the band is the highly unique pitch-shifted vocals that blend into the psychedelic haze. This album could also be thrown into the post-rock genre by some, given its approach and production values. Everything sounds conscientious and yet really spaced out and even blissful if bittersweet in tone. This is a gorgeous album that keeps developing as it goes, pulling you in more and more. It has a classic familiarity to it as it references the past but doing so with a sound all its own. Everything here sounds a bit familiar and something new is brought to the table, making this a genre classic. I would recommend this album to just about any shoegaze fan, and to fans of rock music in general. The vocals are so weird yet very accessible I am not sure how people are going to evaluate it, so it may have a bit less of a widespread appeal than I think. With excellent songwriting, production, ideas, and execution this was a great random find from a facebook shoegaze group. It has a calming effect even at its most intense moments, and it keeps getting better as it goes. Even though they are not reinventing the wheel here, the vocals sound very original and recognizable despite the effects going on with the voice production and effects... which make the voice quite androgynous and another aspect rooting it in the genre of shoegaze, despite it being a bit heavier than most shoegazer music. This is due to a mammoth bass sound that is more subtle than overpowering, yet ever present. This mountain of smooth bass allows the guitars, vocals and keys to cascade down its surface while the drums march on, until transcendental moments drop down out of the heavens as heard on "Shake Me" as the album winds down beautifully.
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#16: Bloody Knives - 'I Will Cut Your Heart Out For This'
Groove to it here! Let's just get this off our chests... this is shoegaze music of the more noisey variety, moved about as far away from dream pop while still retaining that pop essence. Because shoegaze works best with memorable yet simple melodies. Besides the obvious My Bloody Valentine and other noise pop comparisons, Bloody Knives actually have a pretty unique sound going on. Their sound is where everything is fighting to surface, and it keeps getting louder... and louder. Everything comes across as strong, even the vocals, which makes it a bit different than traditional shoegazer 90's music, making it more in the "nugaze" movement, I suppose (that and they are a pretty new band). Not only are its elements powerful, the band exemplifies strong songwriting and melodies while laying down some serious noise rock. It is that more sizzly distortion that alt rock can be known for, less chunky and metallic. Sure, it's pretty metal when it needs to be, but there are multiple genres going on here. Most of it is what I would call simply "ambient noise rock". More expansive than psychedelic. That everything is exploding outward methodically. Beamed straight into outer space. There are some transcendental moments on track 2, "Blood Turns Cold", as ice cold shards cut into the night sky causing an opening into a wormhole. "Reflection Lies" then bursts out of thin air and opens into a field of strange lights. The bass is not quite as fuzzy as some bands, but still rather dirty and distorted, anchoring all of the rather out there guitars and noise-ridden keyboards. "Black Hole" continues a rather stellar first half of an album on track 4. Feels almost like a trilogy of songs (tracks 2-4). The end of this song tears your head up as you meet the event horizon. "Static" is presumably the start of Side 2 where it feels a bit more like the aftermath and the beginning of something new. It is at this point where the album kind of gets stuck in the mud a bit and a little bit overdone. Then there is a trippy interlude track which throws things off again, but it's a good one of those types of tracks. Interesting things happening in the headphones. After that brief lull the album cranks back up and takes things to even noisier heights on "Poison Halo". The album closes with scorcher "Buried Alive", leaving little doubt about rocking out with the drums most intense performances blasting ever outward. Despite a few drawbacks like a too-scooped production sound and some of the song parts being drawn out a bit too long, the songs and sounds heard on 'I Will Cut Your Heart Out For This' are so brazenly rock and roll over-the-top, that you feel like you are being blasted into outer space and beyond. #17: Oren Ambarchi - 'Hubris'
Hear "Hubris Part 3" After a whole bunch of heavy metal, we are finally finding another genre on my top 25 at #17! Wait, what? There are non-rock forms of music?? Well, yes, yes there are. And they are more meditative and neutral usually. Like an abstract painting, drones and experimentation do not yield obvious results. There is no mythology or heroic characters involved usually, just cool sounds a bit unhinged from reality. A futuristic sound beyond rocking out sometimes. While Oren Ambarchi uses the rock music cliched instrument of electric guitar, he makes it sound... different. The pitch bends are either more subtle or more extreme; the feedback and noises allowed to ring out even more; more and more affectations layered upon the sound. This is not virtuosic playing, it is more like unleashing the instrument and allowing it to be more itself. I have been following Ambarchi for a few years now. Prior, my favorite thing was his collaboration with Stephen O'Malley: 'Shade Themes from Kairos'. This is how I found out about Oren Ambarchi. His attention to tone and detail is hard to match. That and the wide variety of sounds and distortions he produces from his guitar and table full of effects and dials makes him a more expansive musician than most. While 'Shade Themes' was more focused on tones and drones, Ambarchi's newer work is very rhythmic, adding another dimension to what was more of an ambient music paradigm. Harmonics are allowed to be free and frolic. Even at its most distorted the guitars are impeccably clear. And the rhythms on top of all of this are top notch. Track one enters the stage as a 20 minute plus table setter. I am reminded of Phillip Glass in an obvious way, in that there is a study in repetition going on here. And also clarity. On this lengthy opener the listener becomes very acquainted with the most straightforward beat on the album and the track lulls the listener into a state of near-captivity (if it weren't just so long to let the mind wander I suppose). Then the 2nd movement arrives and is gone in a few blinks of the eyelashes. Its main purpose is to introduce something totally different rhythmically, and to sound more like a digestible song format... accept that it is not even as long as a pop song. This in effect resets the whole thing so that you can hear "Hubris Part 3" (linked to above). The ending track is somewhere in between the first two, mimicking the lengthy repetition of Part 1, but absorbing the more complex rhythmics of Part 2. The closing track is my favorite part of the album, and makes the whole thing, whole I guess. The other part beyond the interesting goings on with the musics, this thing is produced to sound fantastic. It is absolute ear candy and highly recommended. #18: Blut Aus Nord/Ævangelist split - 'Codex Obscura Nomina'
hear the track "the parallel echoes" Blut Aus Nord is from France and the French love to reinvent black metal. And they do it well. Ævangelist is from America, a duo that is listed as being from both Illinois and Oregon. Which is also pretty black metal. Normally I would not present a split as a serious contender for a year end list, but the body of work both these bands are creating is singular in vision and highly creative. On 'Codex Obscura Nomina' both bands converge towards the same sound: a swirling black mass of sounds with a unique but loopy electronic drum beat tying it all together. Blut Aus Nord is more loopy and hypnotic though, where Ævangelist tend to throw more curveballs at you from a rhythm perspective. While the overall sonic palette the bands are using is pretty similar here, they do sound a bit different. Most obviously, composition wise. Where Blut Aus Nord uses more conventional rock song structures, Ævangelist contribute only one track to B.A.N.'s 4 tracks. That being said, the two bands contributions are about the same total playing length: about one side of an LP. So I suppose this is as true a split album as any. Aesthetically the two bands complement each other, but the production value is a bit lacking, especially for side B, Ævangelist. Oh well, the work is interesting enough to overlook the shortcomings on the production end of things, in my opinion. What we here on this is primarily an atmospheric voyage into dark sounds. Blut Aus Nord sound more ambient than ever, and the vocals are very creepy. The first 3 songs are unique sonic excursions while track 4 is a bit more catchy in nature due to almost a dance beat happening. Both bands conjure industrial elements into the extreme metal sound, which is pretty black metal of course. This nod toward whole other genres makes the music especially interesting, that and its over the top immensity. It is as if you are in a giant canyon on another planet that dwarfs ours. It is that creative spirit of striving to push the envelope or even invent something new that has landed this on a year end list or two. It is not easily digestible on many levels (the tinny production, the scary vibes, the disturbing voices, the utter darkness will drives many away from its universe). But 'Codex' succeeds in introducing one band's fanbase to another while continuing a new creative vision that both bands are pioneering in slightly different ways. Now if they can just spin off into some better studios and production situations, their next releases may be the best of this style yet heard but us human beings. Although there are some albums on this list that rock very hard, or for some, could be called Heavy (or even Metal), there were so many quality albums that were released in 2013 that I am making two year end lists to kick off the blog version of Questionable Taste (what once was a facebook page for my internet radio station called Through The Cracks, which morphed into some other manifestation of posting some music through the magic of youtube). "Like" the Facebook version of this blog on your Facebook please, if you are into that, so you can get any updates..
The purpose of this inaugural post is to get a list out there as quickly as possible, since this page is not really done yet, and 2014 is now well under way. I cannot even explain how excited I am about music right now, both as a listener and as a musician... it is truly a wonder to be into and follow the routes music is taking currently. Production keeps getting better, the musicians more imaginative and more connected to information than ever, and the cross referencing of ideas is phenomenal. Music is everywhere, and it has never been so easy to get the word out about it. Which is another problem unto itself, to get noticed or even recognition; but I digress. What makes this year different from my tumblr blog about 2012's music is that I am going to just list my favorite albums of 2013, and not worry about a cutoff (the blog format was a top 40). Since I know that I loved more than 40 albums from 2013, I am moving on from that format. Also, I will not do a countdown to #1 album style of blog, as I felt that was too arbitrary a way of doing things, and made me look at music rating too linearly, or whatever... maybe hierarchically is a better way to describe what I was doing. And tier-ing is lame and played out, isn't it? So I suppose I will still rate the albums, as I go through and review them all (albeit more succinctly than last year) alphabetically this time, according to 6 categories. Just like everyone, my taste is difficult to attribute to anything or to sum up, predict, etc. Music is just super subjective like that (which is part of what makes it so great). The things that I have been liking more and more over time are jazz and experimental music, and pop less and less. And I will always love heavy music, innovative and/or adventurous rock and roll, as well as electronic music of the progressive variety (well, prog probably applies to all those other genres too, but sometimes I can find prog to be exceedingly boring or cheesy). So all I can offer here is my expert, completely subjective as ever and convoluted opinion; and hope to turn people on to some music they would not have heard otherwise. Ok, so, the list, is what this is all about... the non-metal list:
And now, for the Honorable Mentions...
Well, that's that, and that was there. 2013 was an incredibly great year for music, and I encourage you to get every one of those albums I just listed, even the Honorable's. Next up, will be my picks for best Heavy Metal albums of 2013! |
AuthorG.M. Bowles Archives
February 2017
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