20
14 Sauna Youth D r e a m l a n d s
13
Goat World Music
1 2 K e n d r i ck L a m a r G o o d K i d , m . A . A . d C i t y
(Sony)
( R o ck e t R e c o r d s )
(Polydor)
R e l e a s e d : A p r i l 2 3
R e l e a s e d : S e p t e m b e r 3
R e l e a s e d : A u g u s t 2 0
R e l e a s e d : Oc t o b e r 2 1
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In an era of uniformity, it’s no faint praise to say that, as the final chopped up vocal of ‘The Money Store’ rings in your ears, you feel that you’ve had a brush with something truly unique. ‘Hacker’, the jittery, stuttering closer to the first of Death Grips’ two albums this year sums up the Sacramento trio’s distinctive ethic beautifully. As almost every critic has stated, this is a collection that’s brimming with claustrophobia, confrontation and paranoia, but it’s also so much more. MC Ride, Zach Hill and Flatlander have a flair for a pop hook that sees ‘The Money Store’ take its rightful place as one of 2012’s most infectious records and every single song here is firmly anchored by a pop sensibility that carries the album, like ‘Nevermind’ and ‘Never Mind The Bollocks’ before it, beyond mere aggression and into the realm of measured, relevant popular music, while Ride’s wry sense of humour gives it a slick self-awareness that will keep ‘The Money Store’ feeling fresh for years. DZ
This London quartet are probably tired of having the word ‘art’ wedged into any description of their sound, but the truth is that Sauna Youth, with their combination of Californian lo-fi garage rock, krautrock, postpunk, social disconnect and short fiction, brought this prefix on themselves. To splice these components together into something so cohesive and concise as the songs on ‘Dreamlands’, you have to be a bit, well, arty. Anyone who has seen the band live, however, will know that these guys are no mumbling wallflowers but, along with their mates Cold Pumas and Fair Ohs, one of Britain’s most fun live bands. ‘Dreamlands’ is inevitably a slightly more sedate affair than their performances, but the fat-free production nicely highlights the subtle changes in sound: with singer/drummer Rich Phoenix keeping everything ticking over and guitarist Lindsay Corstorphine continuing to craft by turns relentless and intricate patterns, there is ample breathing space for the ‘art’ in ‘art punk’ to inspire us. MS
A supposed set of voodoo-practising musicians from the tiny village of Korpilombolo in Sweden almost sounds too good to be true. Thankfully Goat’s debut album is even better than their backstory. Bursting forth from what felt like nowhere, ‘World Music’ was a glorious smorgasbord of genres, succeeding in melding styles and melting minds. Ensconced deep in rhythm, it charges and pounds with tribal stomp intensity; guitars buckle, crashing thick and heavy and all tinged with psychedelic clout. ‘World Music’, as a title, really is perfect, although stemming from somewhere so specific, it shrugs off geographical restriction and sets sail across a world of music, from afro-beat to Nigerian and Turkish psych via Bhangra. It’s deeply layered and exuded with glorious and occasionally brutal precision, breathing a life and intensity that throbs like a racing heart. You’ll be hard pushed to find a more encompassing, odd-yet-beautifully-original piece of work all year. DDW
Dr Dre loves any distraction that takes him away from actually finishing his muchdelayed ‘Detox’ album. Luxury headphone ranges, a hologram of 2Pac and, most recently, his musical guardianship Kendrick Lamar’s major label debut. That last one was worth side-lining everything for, though, as ‘good kid…’ is the best mainstream hip hop record since Kanye’s ‘My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’. Yes, it harks back to some of the great ‘90s Californian gangster rap albums, like Ice T’s ‘O.G Original Gangster’ or ‘The Doggfather’, but the stories are harsh modern tales, the beats murky and swirling. It’s built around 26-year-old Lamar’s teenage efforts to avoid getting swallowed up by a world of gang violence and its foundations are concrete solid. ‘The Art Of Peer Pressure’, ‘Swimming Pools (Drank)’ and ‘Money Trees’ are collectively three of the best songs of the year. Lamar says he wants kids to go back and study this album in 15 years time; ‘good kid…’ has earned its chance to be part of the hip hop curriculum. OT
(Faux Discx/Gringo)
G r i m e s Visions
10 Flying Lotus U n t i l T h e Q u i e t C o m e s
( 4 AD )
(Warp)
R e l e a s e d : M a r c h 1 2
R e l e a s e d : Oc t o b e r 1
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Of all emerging artists in 2012, it was perhaps Grimes – Claire Boucher to her intimates – that climbed highest fastest, and then suffered the inevitable turbulence for her efforts. Around the release of third album ‘Visions’ (not her first or even her second as some reactories liked to point out as they damned the ‘new’), Montreal’s queen of disused warehouse parties was everywhere, and before too long people didn’t like that. The fact that Grimes’ live show remains to this day dangerously underwhelming didn’t help matters, but it would be callous if ‘Visions’ missed out altogether on End of Year lists that she would have topped in April. After all, initial fever created by music is a powerful thing that shouldn’t be undervalued, more and more so in our instantaneously bored digi worlds. Even if you haven’t had ‘Visions’ on rotation since spring, revisit the album now and there’s plenty of that initial excitement in there still – a skewed look at cyborg RnB, as inventive as ever from a human sponge who told us in March that “if Mariah Carey and Aphex Twin came together, that would be the greatest band ever”. It’s a pretty astute sound-bite for ‘Visions’, which has Boucher cherubbing a girlish falsetto over distinctly non-human instrumentations that feel like they couldn’t have been made before 2012. SS
Celestial interludes, gloomy atmospherics and hijacked frequencies helped establish 2010’s ‘Cosmogramma’ as the ubiquitous FlyLo benchmark, but where his second LP bounced between extremes, third album ‘Until the Quiet Comes’’s lozengesmooth production comprehensively raised the bar. A set designed to be enjoyed as one indulgent long-play, it moved away from the busy three-minute bumpers of its predecessor and let the spectral melodies seep, revelling in Brainfeeder protégé Thundercat’s chunky, cosmic bass, and Steven Ellison’s perfectly disjointed beats. Free from the emotional weight of the last album, ‘Until the Quiet Comes’ was refreshed by a permeating sense of optimism where, instead of compressing and conflicting, Ellison let his shape-shifting production play out. It let the fusion of jazz, hip-hop and astral ambience develop and envelop, and bleed into one joyously opulent journey. FlyLo’s determination to craft an album guided by the future made this year’s album a beautiful, defining reality. RY
www.loudandquiet.com
ALBUMS
of the year continued on page 29
Photography by Phil Sharp
1 5 D e a t h G r i p s T h e M o n e y S t o r e