10. f(x) – 4 Walls (2015)
I’m not into K-pop, but I have enough friends that are into it, whose lessons I’ve absorbed through osmosis, that when I woke up one day and said, “I think this is the day I give K-pop a seventh chance,” I knew what I wanted to download. 4 Walls isn’t as cluttered as a lot of K-pop productions. You get one or two neat musical ideas every verse or chorus, doled out sparingly enough so that they all have time to sink in before the next one comes along (I especially love the wavering static sound in the verses of “Glitter” that smears the beat into 5/4 at the end of every measure). Instead of the members getting a featured spot, every song features a unified vocal approach. And the best three songs are also the last three on the album, so it’s a pleasure to listen to all the ay through. I can’t say I’m ~into~ K-pop still, but 4 Walls has ensured there will be an eighth chance.
Listen: f(x) – “Rude Love”
9. Ash Ra Tempel – New Age of Earth (1976)
New Age of Earth finds the old Ash Ra Tempel entirely dissolved except for mastermind Manuel Göttsching, who transitioned from psychedelic krautrock into becoming a proto-techno master. Although it would take almost ten more years for his New Age soundscapes to gel into electronica as we know it today, New Age of Earth shows how eager Göttsching is to use his new tools and his obvious talent for them. The album moves from fairy-like synthesizer fantasies (“Sunrain”) to gradually slower, spacier pieces (“Ocean of Tenderness” and “Nightdust”). Despite the foreboding cover art and extended titles, this album charmed and absorbed me. A very pleasant surprise.
Listen: Ash Ra Tempel – “Deep Distance”
8. Helmet – Strap It On (1991)
Helmet’s major-label debut Meantime is a bigger, more professional album, but its gauzy production caused the songs to blur into each other. Somehow, despite playing with the same tools, their first album Strap It On suffers none of that. Page Hamilton is preposterously influential for a generation of metal guitarists, who took his slash-and-burn start-stop guitar riffs. But drummer John Stanier is equally important, hammering his kit with machinistic intensity no matter how jazzy and difficult Hamilton’s time signatures get.
And they do get difficult; still on Alternative Tentacles rather than major-label Interscope, Hamilton is free to let his freakier and funnier side fly with cuts like “Sinatra” and “Murder.” The latter follows from the great tradition of Black Flag’s “Damaged II.” After a whole album of crushing, pounding riffs and hollered pain, the band unleashes a wild yowl of pain that undoes itself. You couldn’t ask for a much better indie-metal record.
Listen: Helmet – “Blacktop”
7. Max Richter – The Blue Notebooks (2004)
So what’s the point of the Kafka passages? Uh… search me. I got no clue. What I’m here for is the aching, tragic minimalism. Max Richter was one of the first to incorporate electronic soundscapes into very, very traditional classical compositions. He doesn’t use electronics to haunt the songs with digital ghosts – instead you have synthesizers cresting around, no more or less important than any other instrument. In 2017, composers will happily throw a synthesizer in there – your Hans Zimmers, Nico Muhlys, Bryce Dessners – so Richter’s sound no longer seems radical.
Which leaves only the music – simple, emotional, completely unpretentious or corny. Richter’s melodies and tempos are indebted to Steve Reich and Philip Glass, but he wants to tug on your heart, not poke at your brain. It’s no wonder that this approach became so influential to film scoring. These songs work as soundtracks and as cinematic experiences themselves.
Listen: Max Richter – “On the Nature of Daylight”
6. Janet Jackson – Rhythm Nation 1814 (1989)
Yes, I'll bring back The Crater's Edges eventually. After all, it introduced me to a lot of great music, which is how I listened to Rhythm Nation 1814. It’s a crime that the world allowed me to miss it, because this is one of those inescapable albums that generated hit after hit. Even just reading descriptions of its success – seven top five singles, best-selling album of 1990, nine Grammy nominations – causes one’s jaw to drop. Any man who made an album this successful, innovative, and great would consistently launch into the top 10 pop singers of all time, at the very least. And that is what Janet deserves.
Following on from the industrial R&B of Control, Jackson uses the same sound to tackle social injustice, racism, police brutality, media brainwashing, homelessness… things that still feel necessary today. And the songs! You’d expect from a 20-song, 65-minute album that there’s going to be a duff track somewhere, but the jams just keep coming. By the time the immaculate pop edifice “Escapade” tumbles into the heavy-metal thunder of “Black Cat,” I had given up waiting for a bad song. It’s just brilliant all the way through. One of the best pop albums of all time.
Listen: Janet Jackson - "Escapade"
5. Billy Bragg – Back to Basics (1987)
Billy Bragg’s signature song, “A New England,” opens with the line “I was 21 years when I wrote this song / I’m 22 now, but I won’t be for long.” It’s a Paul Simon quote, but coming out of Bragg’s voice – a thick, round, mangled accent – it’s impossible to argue that he doesn’t have his own sense of identity.
“A New England” first appeared on Life’s a Riot with Spy vs. Spy, one of three early albums collected here. For these recordings, Bragg used little more than an electric guitar and his voice, shouting folk-punk songs to the void before folk-punk existed. Despite his limited tools, he shows many sides of himself throughout: socialist rabble-rouser, interpreter of classics, national chronicler, poetic soul, sharp satirist, and confessional lover. He ties them all together with lyrical grace and a way with a catchy guitar hook. To anyone without the traditional equipment to make music, Bragg’s ingenuity and tenaciousness will inspire and intimidate in equal measure.
Listen: Billy Bragg – “Between the Wars”
4. Tame Impala – Currents (2015)
Kevin Parker is haunted by his potential as a rock-star. “Elephant” became his biggest song, showing up in commercials and movies, affording him a new house and private recording studio. But it was a re-recording of an old song, almost a parody of a bloozy rock standard, out of place among the advanced, thorny psychedelic rock of the rest of Lonerism. Not to mention that bands like Cage the Elephant and Young the Giant were doing watered-down Tame Impala and having explosive success. Couldn’t Kevin Parker do that?
He sure could, but he also finds it boring. Parker couldn’t stand being boring. It’s why he loaded up his psychedelic rock songs with psychedelic effects, sometimes to the detriment of the actual songs. So instead he took a left-turn into dance music. And, look, it’s not 2000 anymore. We shouldn’t be surprised when rock bands start ditching the guitars and picking up synths. It’s standard at this point. Instead let’s talk about how the synthesizers and drum machines fit Parker’s tendency to fiddle and experiment so much better. The actual songwriting is always crystal-clear, hearkening back to old FM soft-rock, R&B, and pop. But he knocks the standard 4/4 dance grooves out of whack, incorporating glitches, tape loops, unusual drum patterns, prominent basslines, and heavy stereo panning. So even when songs veer off into long bridges (as in the album closer and highlight “New Person, Same Old Mistakes”) Parker always reins it back in, making every excursion sound vital. Currents is audibly the product of an obsessive, unique songwriter. The obsessive fandom he’s garnered in response is totally justified.
Listen: Tame Impala – “Eventually”
3. Link Wray – Rumble! The Best of Link Wray (1993)
“Rumble” was the first song to use power chords on the electric guitar in a rock-and-roll song. For that reason, it deserves credit-slash-blame for every hard rock and heavy metal song it made possible. But just go back and listen to it. Hear the menace in Wray’s playing, how he drags the beat behind with his strums. Listen to the uneasiness of the guitar tone – it’s a distorted power chord, the kind of thing you always hear in rock songs, but never so unpolished and dangerous. Wray couldn’t press a pedal for that sound; he had to poke a hole in his amp’s speaker cabinet. That sound, the power-chord played through broken equipment, finally gave a noise to a feeling so intense that the form and the medium alone couldn’t express it. It was wild, and unruly, and when Link Wray & His Ray Men first played it, the audience demanded four repeat performances of it. No wonder they called it the devil’s music.
Here’s the thing, though. Nearly all the songs on this compilation are as good as “Rumble.” No, they aren’t all birthing genres. They all sound similar, really. Country-tinged, distorted surf rock instrumentals. But they all have the same power, of an idea so raw and so new that nobody had managed to make it sound “safe” yet. Wray’s run of early singles, all of which are on this compilation along with some worthy latter-day songs, are a burst of wild energy that manage to transform both originals and standards into pure fire.
Listen: Link Wray – “Ain’t That Lovin’ You Baby”
2. Panasonic – Vakio (1995)
Vakio is German for “constant,” and indeed the first song on this album, “Alku,” is a single tone sustained for two and a half minutes. Panasonic (later Pan Sonic) were one of the original glitch groups in early-90’s Germany. Listening to Vakio brings us back to the very earliest ideas anyone had about how to incorporate the sounds of malfunctioning electronics into songs. As such, the album is austere, spartan, alien. “Urania” sounds like an 8-bit video-game alarm noise with a microwave beatboxing on top of it.
Except… remove all the humor and fun and life from that description. Because it’s not a fun album. The rhythmic glitches pound out dead-on, lifeless beats. The tones blear and beat against your head, wobbling at frequencies that music isn’t supposed to wobble at. Listening to it might make you feel ill. But it’s intense, single-minded, visionary music. For as much as these songs unceasingly loop, I get something new and alien out of it every minute.
Listen: Panasonic – “Radiokemia”
1. Susumu Yokota – Sakura (1999)
When you listen to a lot of ambient music, as I do (everything else is too distracting to read to, okay?) finding a truly special release among the scores of faceless albums is a moment of instant and joyous connection. Ambient albums often have implicit concepts, but whether you like it or not is strictly utilitarian: do I want to use this album a lot? Do I want to let it seep into my life? Is it a space I find myself wanting to exist in? Yes, yes, yes.
Sakura is a tactile, inviting world that works as background music or as a dedicated listen. As background music it’s focused, keeping its head down while also conjuring a very Japanese love of the natural world, animals, food, etc. Upon closer inspection these jazzy electronic compositions take charming musical themes and work subtle, dissonant variations around them.
You can probably guess I threw on Sakura at almost every possible opportunity this year. Whatever you need it to do, it works. It did more favors for me this year than any other album. Least I could do is give it the #1 spot.
Listen: Susumu Yokota - "Tobiume"
