10 merope – “Namopi”
Bandcamp’s writeup of merope’s new album Vejula claims that it “roots itself in Lithuanian folk forms,” which was surprising to me, since at first, this music sounded like drone ambient electronic. Indeed, the instrumentation list is enough to edify in itself, here, with the band taking a precocious knack to ebb and flow, keeping this stuff fresh and invigorating.
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9 Why Bother? – “Chasing the Skull”
I was kind of surprised, in this day and age, to learn that Iowa’s Why Bother? is actually a band, and not just one dude playing punk guitar and singing over a drum machine, which is more the albeit generally passable trend these days. Actually the guitar solo on this track is wildly cool, issuing this sort of psychedelic sound for this warbly, indistinct notes and a strange and multifarious, rocking good time, implying auspicious work down the road, as well.
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8 Dingo Junction – “Everything’s Coming up Milhouse”
“Everything’s Coming up Milhouse” culls from the joint EP Dingo Junction did this year with fellow British DJ Sempra, finding the drum sounds crisp, the synth runs trippy and gorgeous and the samples ephemeral and groovy. Dingo Junction’s jungle roots come across in full force about a minute into “Everything’s Coming up Milhouse”; marrying this stuff sturdily to a stalwart movement in contemporary dance, but allowing for ample artistic playfulness in the upper registers, as well.
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7 Sempra – “Stars”
I just kept it on CLOUDS001 EP for this one — actually the race for seventh was extra-close and I really had to think about which track to put ahead of the other one. Sempra comes with a more ethereal vibe, crafting light, lilting dance music for the more mellow raves or clubs, or, better yet, stoned drives down to Southhampton and lazy evenings on the beach.
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6 1-800-MIKEY – “Rental Girlfriend”
Our favorite Australian bedroom punk-rocker 1-800-MIKEY is back this year with a succinctly masterful LP DIGITAL PET, and the energetic, tight opener “Rental Girlfriend.” The track’s tragic title guarantees it some punk credibility right off the bat, and then Mikey’s blurred vocals, along with the track’s tense chord progression and indefatigable energy, make it a reliable rocker for work, get-togethers or solitude, whatever may be your folly.
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5 Svaneborg Kardyb – “Cycles”
Svaneborg Kardyb are a jazz duo, which seems paradoxical and ill-fated enough, from the start, hailing from Denmark and summoning up this incredibly light, beautiful and rhythmic music that seems more jazzy in spirit and in lithe songwriting style than it does in instrumentation, which is a very fresh and welcome motif, what with all the stuffy, academic “jazz” saturating the industry these days.
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4 .Vril – “Batumi Stranding”
In a kind of tragic story, this album Saturn is a Supercomputer, which would have extended my “honorable mention” to its usual 20 albums, was kicked off of contention for my year-end list by this bizarre, stagnant spoken-word bit in the middle, about our anthropological origins (the kind of thing artists can sometimes obsess about but should use sparingly, in my opinion). Still, this is deep, psychedelic IDM for thinkers, like if Actress went to dance school instead of acting school, sort of.
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3 Blue Zero – “fortress”
Part of the phalanx of wicked rock devilry springing from the Bay Area these days, Blue Zero take a sort of grunge approach to twee pop, with “fortress” a steady, unassuming and midtempo rocker anchoring the album with some cool, detached and sneering vocals and some angular guitar riffs calling to mind a crisper, more expedited incarnation of Pavement, perhaps.
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2 Svaneborg Kardyb – “Vakler”
Svaneborg Kardyb is back here with the slightly more expansive “Vakler”; which opens with some piano work that’s so light and undulating that it almost seems spliced electronically, grooving along on some poignant, almost mournful intervals and some drum sound so intimate you feel like you’re sharing a closet with the band.
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1 The Circulators – “Catalytic Converter”
I couldn’t believe this wasn’t a re-release from the ’80s when I encountered it — Insufficient Fun is definitely the least pretentious thing I’ve heard in a while, and one of the freshest, from a sonic standpoint, delivering some crunchy, exciting punk songs that seem to affirm what Steve Fisk said in Hype! about the guaranteed prevalence of punk and metal in the coming decades: “There will be no shortage of disaffected youth!”
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