Well, as you may have gathered, life rather ironically got in the way of that ‘collective deathblog’ post I had planned, and now suddenly it’s December, which means a desperate scramble to keep up the schedule on my inevitable ‘records of the year’ count-down, so that we can get the majority of it out of the way before the gongs chime on NYE and beat fans consign their 2015 LPs to the storage boxes, looking hungrily toward the meagre scraps of The Future, etc etc.

Before we get started on that then, let us simply note that the past few months have seen the passing of Allen Toussaint, ‘Filthy’ Phil Taylor, Steve MacKay (of ‘Funhouse’ sax blurting fame) and Cynthia Robinson (trumpeter & vocalist in Sly & The Family Stone). All of them were awesome, and their respective contributions to the world of music are greatly appreciated, at least in this house. If you need further elucidation, well hey, you’re on the internet - youtube, wikipedia etc await. Whichever one of those names you type in, you can be guaranteed a fun trip.

Right then, moving on – 2015! Bloody hell. Loss, entropy, blind continuation in lieu of a plan and an increasingly desperate struggle to hold onto scraps of the traditions and institutions that actually make life worth living – and that’s just been my cooking. But seriously folks, life (personal) has been blessed with love, companionship and comfort and as life (planetary) reaches a new low almost daily, and, music-wise, I guess the year has followed a now-familiar pattern of spending the first third feeling largely disengaged, wondering where all the good music’s gone to, then building up steam again in the middle third, and spending the last few months of the year so besieged by great releases and gigs that I’ve barely got time to process them. Does that annual cycle ring true for anyone else I wonder, or is it just me?

Anyway, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover here, so best cease talking bollocks and just get on with it: a top twenty list, culled from everything new I heard this year. As luck would have it, I didn’t really encounter many two song singles or random, one-off download tracks or anything, so this year it’s an all in list, encompassing EPs, tapes, downloads and other non-album formats, and excluding only a few things that were put out by friends of mine (and are thus disallowed for ‘conflict of interest’ reasons).

A quick run-down of numbers #20 – #17 follows here, and #16 – #1 will each get their own post over the course of (fingers crossed) the next 30 days. Clear? Ok, let’s go!


20. Saturn Form Essence – Stratospheric Tower tape (Invisible City)

85 minutes of sinister, cosmic loner drone from Ukraine. If you’re currently hitting the deadline on your epic dystopian science fiction novel, this’ll get you through the night and no mistake. In April, I said the following:

“‘Stratospheric Tower’ comprises a veritable motherlode of deep space void exploration, touching upon Tangerine Dream’s synth limbo, Alan Splet’s landmark space drones, perhaps even a touch of Badlamenti’s sublime ‘Twin Peaks’ mind-meld on the epic closing track…. but, basically, always falling back upon the spirit of anyone who ever plugged a short wave radio into their mixing board in the hope of capturing something a bit creepy, and aspiring to leave all traces of human consciousness quadrillions of light years distant. (And christ, who can blame him).”

Listen & buy from Invisible City.


19. Sang - Mon Oblidat 7” (La Vida Es Un Mus)

Alongside Rakta, one of my favourites amid the current wave of effects-damaged ‘weirdo’ punk bands must be this crew, who apparently hail from the town of Trento in Northern Italy, despite their vocalist’s preference for writing/singing in Catalan.

Not much to say here, as the readily apparent qualities of the music on this 45 make redundant ‘guess the influence’ games happily unnecessary.

Like all great riffologists, Sang’s guitarist has a knack for generating lines that sound knuckleheadedly obvious yet also confoundingly original at the same time, prompting a distant “why didn’t I get that one first?” itch in the back of the mind of every listener who owns a guitar.

As his certifiable killer riffs arise from amid bursts of tormented processed feedback, sounding like vicious animals chomping at the bit, the rhythm section delivers a relentless mid-tempo h/c beatdown, vocalist Marta shrieks unholy like a deranged giallo heroine about to dismember someone with a bread knife, and for a few all too short minutes, I’m in an exhilarating and happy place; that being on the receiving end of that bread knife, more than likely.

Aggrieved and forward-thinking noise-mad hardcore? Yes please guv. Nuff said I hope.

Listen and buy from La Vida Es Un Mus.


18. Dregs – Demo Tape (Muscle Horse)

To be honest, there is little I can say about this tape that did not apply equally to Dregs’ bandcamp download tracks, which I included in 2014’s best records run-down.

Some of the same songs are revisited here, and they are still bloody brilliant, and there are some songs too, which are also brilliant. Possibly the fidelity suffers slightly for being put through cassette, but if you care about that, you’re probably not PUNK (captials) enough to own this, so there.

I don’t know if there will ever come a time when ferocious, d-beat/sludge influenced female-led hardcore won’t sound both necessary and hugely enjoyable, but suffice to say, we’ve certainly not reached such a time yet, and in the meantime, Dregs remain exemplary purveyors of the form. Nod sagely along with me, and mutter “great band”.

To fill further space, I could start off again on my pedantic gripe about how a ‘demo tape’ is no longer strictly a ‘demo’ once it is released and sold to the public…. but frankly I suspect Dregs would be liable to flatten me if I attempted to waste their time with such rubbish, so I’ll shut up now.

Listen via bandcamp, buy from Muscle Horse.


17. Wymyns Prysyn – Head in a Vise LP (Drugged Conscience)

When I wrote about this one in the April post linked above, I made some dumb mistakes about the band’s home town & other projects that I should have corrected, and maybe got a bit too sarcy/oblique for the band member who subsequently left a miffed comment. To clear the air then: I am very sorry about all of this, and very sorry I never had a chance to reply to his comment, which I didn’t notice until long after the fact. This, and failing to amend the post to amend the misinformation therein, was all very bad of me, and I regret it.

That said, I still enjoy this record very much, and wish the band the very best. To avoid similar blunders to the last time, let’s just say that it is great American punk/indie-rock/whatever that is driven, angry and persuasive, and, barring some rather inelegant use of reverb, it should remind listeners of a certain age of the glory-days when Dischord did new releases, people didn’t argue so much and Steve Albini actually did something useful now and again. Oops, there I go again. Totally recommended anyway, with no bad blood intended whatsoever.

Listen & buy from the band.

Labels: best of 2015, deathblog, Dregs, Sang, Saturn Form Essence, series intros, Wymyns Prysyn