Listen: 10 Best Albums of 2014

1. Aphex Twin Syro LP (Warp Records):

Best Album of 2014 goes to Aphex Twin for Syro, out now on Warp Records. Richard D. James‘ musical persona has long loomed large over the electronic scene, but since his 2001 LP Drukqs, the artist has been more of a topic of speculation and rumor, than a public entity. All that changed this year when Aphex Twin’s long awaited ambient masterpiece Caustic Window finally saw the light of day thru a crowd-funded Kickstarter campaign, and a rare test press of the album sold for $46,300 to Minecraft video game creator Markus Notch Persson. Soon afterwards, news that James was getting set to release a new record began to reach a fevered pitch when a green blimp bearing the Aphex Twin logo, and the year “2014,” was spotted in London over the Oval Space. Meanwhile, the logo was being seen on sidewalks outside New York’s Radio City Music Hall, as well as other locations around town. Later that week, James tweeted more news of Syro via a URL that could only be accessed on the deep web using the TOR browser, with an address that included a track list for the upcoming LP.

In a candid and forthcoming interview with Philip Sherburne via Pitchfork, James informs us that the music on Syro was made using electro-mechanical instruments including MIDI pipe organs, a Disklavier controlled piano, and computer-controlled percussion; and that the various strange and unintelligible voices that can be heard throughout are his own, as well as the voices of his children, wife, and parents. A real family affair you might say, and while Syro might not quite forge new directions for Aphex Twin, it reveals an ever puckish, but matured artist, reveling in domestic bliss and cottage industry.

2. White Lung Deep Fantasy LP (Domino):

Last year, in the Punk Dept., our Best Of list was dominated by a slew of excellent European bands like Savages, Holograms, and Iceage. While not overtly political in their messaging, the music was undeniably engaged with current social realities of the day. We speculated that austerity measures throughout Europe, as well as simmering racial, religious, and class differences were again creating the kind of tense political climate that demanded a creative response.

Likewise, we wondered when the time would arrive for their artistic compatriots Stateside to become similarly re-engaged. 2014 seems to be that year, and, leave it to the ladies to lead the charge! White Lung‘s Mish Way has become an increasingly vocal proponent of women’s issues, as a critic and essayist for publications like The Talkhouse and VICE, and her article this year in which she discusses the origin of her powerful scream, as well as the female scream in music more generally, is a must read! On Deep Fantasy (Domino), White Lung articulates these issues with a music that, while powerful and confrontational, is still accessible for all its vitriolic and dark content. Meanwhile, Mish Way muses on power dynamics and gender with the kind of commanding voice that demands a physical and intellectual response!

3. Shabazz Palaces Lese Majesty LP Sub Pop:

The Seattle-based hip-hop duo Shabazz Palaces returned this year with the phenomenal LP offering Lese Majesty, out now on Sub Pop. Seems that Ishmael Butler and Tendai Maraire must have spent the intervening years since 2011’s Black Up on a secret outer space mission. These transmissions from Neptune were delivered as an 18-track, 7-suite tour de force that foregrounded Maraire’s extensive and peripatetic production skills, while Butler’s nimble language reverberated around his partner’s astral ambiance. Discussing the impetus for the album’s arrangement with Laura Snoad of The Quietus earlier this year, Ishmael explained:

“The structure was something that developed, it’s not something that we blueprinted out and then filled with content like pouring cement. The titles and suites came about because certain sonic patterns pronounced themselves, and we started to see that certain tracks went with each other.”

Indeed, while the album utilizes a style that embraces drift, Lese Majesty is still rooted around the pairs’ deeply burnished bass sounds and sparse, razor sharp beats; and while sonically and lyrically it meanders with playful agility, it still somehow finds Lazaro and Maraire to be “purveyors of the tight song.”

4. Iceage Plowing into the Field of Love LP (Matador):

Just like in 2013, Iceage have delivered one of the best records of the year. Plowing into the Field of Love (Matador) marks another chapter in the young Danish band’s continued musical evolution. Recorded at a remote studio in northern Sweden, the group’s vocalist Elias Bender Rønnenfelt told Stereogum‘s T. Cole Rachel earlier this year that the band purposefully booked too little time at the studio so as to create a very real sense of creative urgency.

A potentially risky proposition considering the record found them branching out to include new instrumentation like horn, mandolin, and viola. The gambit paid off however, and Iceage have delivered an album that brims with the kind of brooding intensity that we’ve come to expect from the quartet. But, if previous LP’s were distinguished by a kind of chaos that made each song feel like it could fall apart at any moment, on Plowing into the Field of Love they add nuanced song-writing abilities and a more focused lyrical approach to their growing arsenal of tools.

5. Xiu Xiu Angel Guts: Red Classroom LP Polyvinyl:

Few musicians are capable of plumbing the depths of existential terror quite like Jamie Stewart of Xiu Xiu, so when his 2014 LP Angel Guts: Red Classroom, out now on Polyvinyl, was billed as the artist’s “descent from grayness into the deepest blackness endurable,” it was quite the terrifying proposition. The album is undeniably marked and scarred by the musicians move from North Carolina to a crime ridden area of LA’s Echo Park neighborhood, where Stewart found himself living next to a “park divided among four gangs, a lake routinely dragged for bodies, [and] a building wherein two infant skeletons were recently uncovered.”

Recorded at the musician’s home studio in LA, as well as in Texas with longtime Xiu Xiu producer John Congleton, the new album also found Stewart stripping back his usual instrumentation to only include analogue synthesizers and drum machines. The result is one of the year’s more harrowing albums, but one that rewards with Stewart’s brave, fearless pursuit of life’s most difficult emotional terrain.

6. Lee Gamble KOCH LP (PAN):

Lee Gamble returned this year with his most definitive album yet. On KOCH (pronounced “Cotch”, UK slang for relax), the 76-minute 16-track 2xLP out now on PAN, the UK-based producer continued to craft his singular take on contemporary electronic music. Foregrounding sonic texture and acoustic space over rhythmic imperative, and the typical song structures found in club music, Gamble continued to forge new paths into minimal ambiance.

The musician’s early work making music from programming languages like SuperCollider and Max/MSP often involved experiments that would require hours of processing time, yet often yielding only a small snippet of sound similar to pressing a key on a keyboard. This exacting take on process and singular sonic focus can still be heard throughout KOCH; and coupled with Gamble’s longstanding interest in UK electronic forms like jungle and rave, he has created a rarefied listen haunted by Britain’s extensive history in such styles.

7. HTRK Psychic 9-5 Club (Ghostly International):

While HTRK weathered the storm of losing bandmate Sean Stewart to suicide with a whole lot of Work, Work Work back in 2011, it was great to see the band enjoying the more salubrious effects of “Blue Sunshine” on their 2014 LP, Psychic 9-5 Club (Ghostly International). Imagining their music for a telepathic dance space “that exists from the hours of 9- 5, Monday to Friday,” Nigel Yang and Jonnine Standish would go on to say: “It’s like flipping the idea of an 80’s nightclub. P9-5C promotes connections made through a higher sense of awareness and focus.”

Psychic 9-5 Club was recorded over the course of three summers in New York, Santa Fe, and the duo’s hometown, Sydney Australia; though the bulk of the work seems to have been done with Excepter’s Nathan Corbin at a desert studio in New Mexico. Yang says that Corbin, as producer, played a huge part in the shaping of the album by helping to give it a “sense of depth and spaciousness.” The result is that HTRK’s dubbed-out, deep bass sonics and minimalist aesthetic are given plenty of room here to reverberate in their chill(ed) and focused vibes.

8. Lorelle Meets the Obsolete Chambers (Captcha Records):

Like most years recently, you can count on the label Captcha Records to really deliver the goods when it comes to psych and post-punk, and 2014 was no exception. With so many excellent releases out on the label, it was difficult to choose a favorite. But, much like last year, we found ourselves returning most often to the Mexican duo Lorelle Meets the Obsolete.

For their new record, Chambers, Lorena Quintanilla and Alberto González recorded in Chicago with Cave’s Cooper Crain, and later had the album mastered by Spacemen 3’s Pete “Sonic Boom” Kember. González explains:

“Most of the songs came out of jams, while the tunes on the first two albums were structured either by Lorena or me. It’s a really straightforward record. To me, it doesn’t sound as hazy as the first two, and, as it’s the first time we worked with someone else behind the board, it’s Cooper’s interpretation of Lorelle Meets The Obsolete. Then Sonic Boom cranked the volume up!“

9. clipping. CLPPNG LP (Sub Pop):

Not sure I saw this one coming but 2014 was Sub Pop‘s big year in rap! The Seattle indie label has already scored a Best Album spot this year for Shabazz Palaces Lese Majesty, and now they’re back on the board with clipping.‘s outstanding long-player, CLPNNG. This LA trio fronted by vocalist Daveed Diggs, and joined by the producers Jonathan Snipes and William Hutson, first came on the label’s radar with their self-released LP debut Midcity. Snipes and Hutson began the project back in 2009, amusing themselves by remixing rap acappellas with elements of noise and power electronics, but things really took off when the pair added MC Diggs into their volatile mix.

After the success of Midcity, the group was quickly signed by Sub Pop, and the trio began work on CLPPNG between February and October of last year. On the album, Snipes and Hutson continue to cull their sound from wide swaths of challenging electronic music, creating noisy and claustrophobic atmospheres for Diggs athletic and lurid storytelling. While the band claims they just wanna make rap music, on outstanding tracks like “Work Work,” “Body & Blood,” and “Story 2?,” they demonstrate they’re really here to play the game at a meta level!

10. Roladex Anthems For the Micro-Age LP (Medical Records):

Seattle label Medical Records, those “purveyors of classic synth, cosmic disco, wave (cold/new), and future music,” turned out a number of stellar releases this year, and the label should definitely be lauded for bringing to light formerly unreleased or out-of-print music from artists like Alexander Robotnick, Null And Void, or Severed Heads–to name just a few from 2014! However, it’s Roladex‘s Anthems for the Micro-Age that found it’s way to our music players most often!

Employing a host of vintage synthesizers and analogue gear, on the album Tyler Jacobsen and Elyssa Dianne located their sound in the frozen future of a by-gone era, so as to better examine our contemporary, post-everything condition. Utilizing a creative process that Jacobsen describes as a combination of “experimentation and happy accidents,” and with instruments like the Roland SH101 and Korg MS20, as well as guitar and drum machine, the pair crafted tight, expressive retro-pop that used a nostalgic sonic sense to remember what we once though the future would sound like.