Thursday 13 December 2018

My 10 favourite albums of 2018

1. Loma – Loma (Sub Pop)
This collaboration between Shearwater's Jonathan Meiburg and Cross Record's Emily Cross and Dan Duszynski is one of those perfect albums that seems to come along once in a blue moon. Even though it was released all the way back in February, it's cast an imposing shadow over my whole year. I've measured everything released since against this restrained, atmospheric, utterly beautiful collection of songs. I can't wait for their next one.


2. Ned Collette – Old Chestnut (It)
Melbourne ex-pat Ned Collette has really hit his stride on Old Chestnut, exercising his muse over four sides of vinyl yet deserving every groove. Collette's nimble nylon-string guitar playing traces out fragile structures, around which his collaborators (including The Necks' Chris Abrahams on piano) construct warm, flowing arrangements that are as welcoming as a roomful of friends and family. An endlessly replayable suite of story-songs. 
3. Moonface – This One's for the Dancer & This One's for the Dancer's Bouquet (Jagjaguwar)
Spencer Krug is such an oddball that the release of a double album interspersing marimba-and-vocoder songs about the myth of the minotaur with more conventional drums-and-sax songs should come as no surprise. What is surprising is just how immersive this collection is, featuring some stunning moments like 'Dreamsong', one of my favourite songs of the year. I'll be exploring this one well into 2019.

4. Kilchhofer – The Book Room (Marionette)
The best way I can describe this album is to imagine what Boards of Canada might sound like if they lived in a tropical rainforest rather than the wilds of Scotland. Teeming with percussive details and awash in synth drones, it's a glorious, meandering soundworld – and, weirdly, the third double album on this list.
5. Rosali – Trouble Anyway (Scissor Tail)
Rosali Middleman is a great songwriter, but on Trouble Anyway her songs truly come alive thanks to the band she's assembled around her, including Nathan Bowles, Mary Lattimore and Mike Polizze. There's an aching country-rock intimacy to every word she sings, and there are moments where the music is carried into the realms of questing psych-rock. Impeccable.
6. Ian William Craig – Thresholder (130701)
A comparatively minor release in Ian William Craig's stellar discography – bringing together songs recorded between 2014's A Turn of Breath and 2016's masterpiece, Centres – Thresholder is still absolutely beautiful and could only have come from IWC's heavenly voice and beaten-up tape decks. There's a sublime ebb and flow to this album, plus it features 'Some Absolute Means', one of his finest songs to date.   
7. epic45 – Through Broken Summer (Wayside & Woodland Recordings)
Steeped in northern England's sense of place, there's a gravity to epic45's music that's astutely counterbalanced by their fleet-footed instrumentation, ensuring Through Broken Summer runs the full gamut of emotions, from melancholy to elation, tempered, of course, by an English sense of reservation. This album makes me miss home. 


8. Sleep Decade – Collapse (Dusky Tracks)
While I can identify plenty of beloved precedents for Sleep Decade’s new album Collapse – Bark Psychosis, Low and Slint come to mind – there’s a dark magic at work here that makes it unique, rather than a studied retread of atmospheric guitar music of years gone by. Everything about Collapse feels carefully considered to extract maximum resonance from minimum instrumental ingredients – and the effects are devastating.
9. Eiko Ishibashi – The Dreams My Bones Dream (Drag City)
Everything Jim O'Rourke touches is worthy of investigation, and the work of Eiko Ishibashi is no exception. The Dreams My Bones Dream is probably the darkest, knottiest album she's released on Drag City thus far, which immediately won me over thanks to its first track being eerily reminiscent of Talk Talk's 'Taphead'. 

10. r beny – Eistla (A Place to Bloom)
Each year, there's always one new ambient/drone record I keep coming back to. This year it's Eistla. I stumbled upon this release thanks to a random online recommendation and have listened to it devotedly since. It sounds like its cover looks: a beautiful natural scene, churning with undercurrents. 





Another 10 that are also awesome (in alphabetical order):
Elephant Micah – Genericana (Western Vinyl)
Foxwarren – Foxwarren (Anti-)
The Green Child – The Green Child (Upset the Rhythm)
Jesse Marchant – Illusion of Love (No Other)
My Autumn Empire – Oh, Leaking Universe (Wayside & Woodland Recordings) 
Ovlov – TRU (Exploding in Sound)
Rival Consoles – Persona (Erased Tapes)
Liam Singer – Finish Him (Birdwatcher)
Wye Oak – The Louder I Call, The Faster It Runs (Merge)
Olden Yolk – Olden Yolk (Trouble in Mind)

Wednesday 21 March 2018

Loma – Loma

The fact that Shearwater’s Jonathan Meiburg has chosen this musical path following 2016’s Jet Plane and Oxbow is heartening. For me, Cross Record’s Wabi-Sabi, released the same year, succeeded in all the ways JPAO stumbled – by paying heed to nuance, texture, atmosphere. JPAO felt like it was over-reaching, striving in vain for universality. Loma is intimacy incarnate.

The backstory goes some way towards explaining how this album ended up sounding the way it does. Shearwater and Cross Record (Emily Cross and Dan Duszynski) toured together, then Meiburg invited the duo to collaborate with him – but it's not quite the simple overlap between Shearwater and Cross Record one might expect. Meiburg's presence is subtle rather than overt. It's only really on mesmerising closer 'Black Willow' that Meiburg's voice is clearly heard, his backing vocals blending with Cross to create something both eerie and reassuring. In writing songs for Cross to sing, Meiburg has retreated to a more affecting songwriting style that brings out the best in everyone involved. The result is an album on which every moment feels lovingly crafted and deeply felt.

Whether tracing out delicate spider webs of sound ('I Don't Want Children'), digging deep into nightmarish ambient-rock ('White Glass') or channelling the beauty of late-era Talk Talk ('Sundogs'), Loma perpetually shifts across its 10 songs, while each piece feels drawn from the same well of inspiration. Learning that Cross and Duszynski's marriage came to an end during the album's creation only lends it further resonance.

I am extremely here for these songs, this sound. I hear vulnerability, sadness, defiance and tenderness. I feel it deeply. Over and over again. I doubt I'll hear a better record this year – and it's only March.


Sunday 25 February 2018

Tor Lundvall – A Dark Place

Discovering the work of Tor Lundvall has been something of a revelation. The prolific ambient musician and painter has released nearly 20 albums in the last 20 years, both independently and via Dais Records, yet I only heard of him last month when the single 'Quiet Room' was released from his new vocal-led album A Dark Place. Luke Turner of The Quietus described it as "the sweet spot between Talk Talk and Slowdive's underrated Pygmalion" – my interest was immediately piqued.

Digging back through Lundvall's discography unearths a very deliberate, consistent aesthetic. Each release tends to be themed around a sense of place, our relationship to nature, the weather or a time of day (e.g., Rain Studies, The Park, Night Studies, The Shipyard). A Dark Place, though notably nocturnal in feel, is more of a metaphorical place – the space one enters alone while reflecting upon our mortality. It's no surprise to learn that the album was influenced by the recent loss of Lundvall's father.

While his ambient albums create a lovingly rendered instrumental space for exploration on headphones, A Dark Place features Lundvall's vocal musings front and centre. He emotes in a mesmerisingly neutral tone, which creates a curious effect. His vocal presence is the focus on each of these eight tracks, yet his delivery and lyrics seem to do everything they can to slip into the shadows so the music can do the talking.

The music itself is typically beautiful for a Lundvall album, with plenty of focus on weighty, looped figures that exhale eerie reverb trails. Befitting a vinyl release it works well as a two-sided experience. Side openers 'Quiet Room' and 'Negative Moon' feel like companion tracks with their insistent bass pulse. At its conclusion, side A feels like it's fading away with 'The Invisible Man', while side B ends on a more hopeful note with the beautiful, lilting 'The Next World'.

Listening to several of Lundvall's previous instrumental albums while waiting for this release felt like stumbling upon a treasure trove, each release fully realised and deeply emotive. My expectations for A Dark Place were high. While there's an undeniably compelling atmosphere to this release, the vocal focus means there's less space for Lundvall's immersive environments to work their magic. As a result, the listener is left in a state of suspension, pulled between the worlds of ambient and downtempo pop. Nonetheless, this release is a grower – and a worthwhile introduction to Lundvall's immense discography.

[A Dark Place is available as a digital download via Bandcamp, and on vinyl from Dais Records.] 

   

Tuesday 20 February 2018

The Amazing – 'Pull'

Sweden's The Amazing are, predictably, amazing. They've been releasing albums since 2009, crafting music akin to Nick Drake reimagined by early Verve. (Plus it doesn't hinder matters to have Dungen's masterful Reine Fiske on electric guitar.)

In-keeping with their apposite band name, new song 'Pull' really pulls you in with its density and gravitas. It's an exquisite bummer of a track, fading gently into existence and lolling around in gorgeous melancholy for the majority of its 7.5-minute run-time. But there are at least two alchemical moments when the song shifts into another dimension and makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. The first point of take-off is 2:13, when fresh waves of heavily effected guitars loom into view, carrying the song into similar territory to My Bloody Valentine. Then, at 4:56, the dreamy guitars get sucked through a flanger (a classic Slowdive trick), making the song soar even more majestically.

While there's currently no mention of a new album, fingers crossed that 'Pull' is taken from a forthcoming record that will no doubt prove to be another essential addition to The Amazing's stellar discography.

Thursday 15 February 2018

Sleep Decade – Collapse

While I can identify plenty of beloved precedents for Sleep Decade’s new album Collapse – Bark Psychosis, Low and Slint come to mind – there’s a dark magic at work here that makes it unique, rather than a studied retread of atmospheric guitar music of years gone by. Everything about Collapse feels carefully considered to extract maximum resonance from minimum instrumental ingredients – and the effects are devastating.

Upon first listen there’s an immediate sense of weight to the sound, thanks to meticulous production work from Casey Hartnett, Nick Huggins and Lawrence Greenwood, and mastering by the legendary Rashad Becker. However, Collapse is no one-dimensional doom-fest. The poised performances and enveloping low end are counterbalanced beautifully by the vulnerability of Hartnett’s vocals, especially when he is joined by Laura Baxter on ‘Bind Particles’ and ‘Hologram’ to trace out the lyrics’ faintly hopeful refrains. Quicksilver bursts of brass, woodwinds and synthesizer shine aching light on these emotive soundscapes.

Bookended by instrumentals, the songwriting on Collapse constantly feels threatened by entropy, with both ‘Transparent’ and ‘Bind Particles’ bleeding out in gaseous swells of tone. On the climactic ‘Exploding Suns’, a more destructive force leans in to clear a path, but rather than erupt into a cathartic storm of fuzz and noise, the restraint is unbelievable, reminiscent of how Earth sustain such churningly slow, gouging tempos. On the concluding title track, there’s no sense of resolution, just dissolution as billowing clouds of synth and brass lay waste to the sonic field.

A deeply immersive listen, and occasionally overwhelming, Collapse is definitely worth investing time in. It’s far from a summery experience, but as the Australian autumn approaches, I foresee spending plenty of fruitful headphone hours exploring its shadowy depths.

[Collapse is available in digital and vinyl formats from Sleep Decade’s Bandcamp page.]

Thursday 1 February 2018

Auburn Lull – Hypha

Back when I used to buy CDs, I ended up with two copies of Auburn Lull’s 1999 debut, Alone I Admire, which is a majestic slice of dreamy guitar surge. Comparing that cloud-scaling opus with new album Hypha, their first album in nine years, is like comparing a cathedral to a meticulously maintained garden. I stand in awed witness to Alone I Admire, amen; I live inside Hypha’s minutely detailed ecosystem and feel the profound loneliness of nature.

Thanks to being on emailing terms with Auburn Lull’s Jason Kolb, I’ve learned that the sound of Hypha evolved from the band taking battery-powered music gear on camping trips. Kolb describes these trips as “electronic/pulse-heavy sessions in the middle of nowhere, with the sound of wind, crickets, birds, etc. in the background and the natural reverb of the surroundings”. Knowing this makes perfect sense when listening to these 36 minutes of carefully crafted sound.  

While the band’s Hiber EP (released on cassette in 2014 by Geographic North), plus two albums by Billow Observatory (Kolb’s collaboration with Jonas Munk), partly prepared me for Hypha’s minimalism, I’m still coming to terms with exactly how minimal it is. At times, listening to Hypha feels like walking into a stark white room, turning around and not being able to find the door.

Despite spending several months with this record, I still feel as though it’s evading my efforts to apprehend its secrets. To step inside its intimidating, glacial spaces means being rendered paralysingly lonely by the music, while being simultaneously reassured by Sean Heenan’s comforting vocal presence and koan-esque lyrical fragments. It’s a work of art that makes me feel all-too human – and for that I feel thankful.