Note, 8/2/19: If you are reading this post, please also read this one re: Skullflower review below. Thanks.


1. Heron Oblivion – Live at The Chapel LP (self-released)

With 18+ months of hindsight, Heron Oblivion’s debut LP from early last year is one of the few albums from recent years that has really stuck with me, that feels better and better each time a track pops up on my earphones, and that I could still happily listen to every day. “It’s a real keeper” is I think the pat phrase I’m looking for.

Handed to me by a surly postman mere days before I decamped to a location several hundreds miles away from my record player for xmas, this live album, comprising much of the same material plus a few extra bits, is liable to prove an equally perennial pleasure on the basis of my first few spins, placing a somewhat different emphasis on the band’s work together. On the one hand, the extreme quiet/loud dynamic that stood out on the (beautifully mixed) studio recordings proves impossible to recreate in a live setting (‘Oriar’s explosive impact is slightly muted as a result). But, on the other hand, Van Harmonson and Saufley’s fuzz/wah-blasted guitar duelling is if anything even more intricately interwoven and hair-raisingly unhinged that in the studio set, and, perhaps more importantly, Meg Baird’s folk-derived songs and vocals – which I initially found a tad too prissy and precious on the album – really come into their own here, her delivery slightly more gutsy and forceful, as presumably necessitated by the need to compete with the band’s racket and the crowd’s whooping and hollering whilst out on the road (a test I perhaps wish more contemporary folk could be put to before its creators hit the studio).

Follow the link below and play through ‘Sudden Lament’ and ‘Untitled’ to hear a few relatively concise examples of this incredible band at their fire-breathing peak. Then, after buying (as you inevitably will), file under “really quite unbelievably good”, and keep both vinyl and mp3s close at hand for 2018 – I reckon they’ll be needed.

(Stream & download via bandcamp here. Best check with yr local dealers for the LP.)

2. Lower Slaughter – What Big Eyes LP (Box)

Stunningly good debut album of legitimately exciting, non-retro 21st century rock music right here. For tightness, groove, heaviosity and invention, Lower Slaughter’s trio of instrumentalists can offer a Top Trumps challenge to any other UK unit I’m currently aware of, whilst the vision and delivery of Sinead Young’s vocals is fierce indeed, shifting from witch trials and beyond-the-grave curses to earth-quaking broadsides against Tory austerity and relationship-based dissatisfaction, without dialling back the intensity one jot. “Fucking brilliant,” I’d offer up for the sticker on the front of the hopefully necessary repress.

(Stream/buy from Box Records here.)


 



3. Feral Ohms – s/t LP (Silver Current)

Sometimes, you just need a good, stupid, shred-filled rock n’ roll blast – and they don’t come much better than this one.

One of the very few things I actually bothered to review this year, my further thoughts (plus listen/purchase links) can be found here.










4. Skullflower - The Black Iron That Fell From The Sky, To Dwell Within (Bear It or Be It) LP (Nashazphone)

Other times however, total obliteration is what’s needed, and it’s rarely been dispensed in such sublimely beautific form as Matthew Bower & Samantha Davies conjure here. Headphones, a hardwood floor and whisky are what’s needed for full immersion here. Sadly, I believe the boat has left the harbour with regard to getting a copy of this LP, which is not currently available anywhere in electronic form, but much of the rest of Skullflower’s recent, voluminous, output can be sampled via their bandcamp.









5. Vibracathedral Orchestra – Live at Total Inertia 10”  
(Vanity Case)

Similarly, I feel it was merely good timing that led me to notice Norman Records were exclusively(?) selling copies of this 10” and asked them to sling one with another order I had awaiting dispatch, but I’m glad I made the effort, because this live set, recorded at some sort of do in Leeds, is the best thing VCO have put out since resuming activities a couple of years back. Performed by a six piece line up that sees stalwarts Neil Campbell and Mick Flower augmented by a bunch of blokes whose individual work I am less familiar with (Bridget Hayden seemingly AWOL on this occasion), Side A here is a chaotic, saxophone-skronking mess of Ayler-guesting-w/-Sun-Ra type stuff (nice if yr in the mood), building by the time Side B kicks in into a superb example of the kind of insectoid sonic mind-meld that made me such a VCO fan in the first place, individual instruments and noise-making strategies rendered near invisible as the sound is decanted into a heady, ecstatic totality.

(At the time of writing, this disc is actually still in stock via Norman  – or, you can listen to somebody playing it on a ropey old Dansette and pointing their phone at the resulting racket here (stay vigilant for the bits where a cat walks across screen and/or meiows, and the exciting moment when the man turns the record over)).


6. Grey Hairs – Serious Business LP (Gringo)

Hopefully qualifying by this stage as mighty stalwarts of DIY UK rock radness, Nottingham’s finest have here made their Best Album to Date (in capitals). As I said in pretty much the exact same words back in May, I particularly enjoy the way they’ve here perfected their ability to meld heavy duty Melvins/Flag riff-grind with a keen pop sensibility and uniquely tormented sense of humour. Great recording too. In essence, everything I said about Lower Slaughter above can equally apply here (joint tour? Just a thought..), but for the fact that instead of witch trials and curses, frontman James continues to build his own inexplicably appealing aesthetic from the contemplation of eating meat, drunkenness, exhaustion and male inadequacy. It’s a lot more fun than it sounds.

(Stream/buy from Gringo here.)





7. Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs – Feed The Rats LP (Rocket)

Having seen them twice this year, I can confirm that Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs are an exceptionally good live band – five high-ballin’ individuals pulling together into an ecstatic and inclusive juggernaut of rock action that not even the most skeptical punter could fail to find themselves caught up in to some extent.

Viewed in the warm tinnitus glow of their triumphant turn supporting (and very near upstaging) Acid Mothers Temple last October, the fact that they seem to have drummed up more interest from the increasingly myopic world of UK radio and magazines than every other group on this list combined is neither unexpected, nor undeserved. It’s fair to say that they’ve taken ‘Feed The Rats’ about as far into the realm of the “media” as it is possible to go with an album primarily comprising of two hefty, Sabbath-referencing psyche/doom epics addressing issues of mental illness, and I for one am happy to cheer their progress.

It’s also fair to say that initially I wasn’t entirely sold on this record, which, lacking the exultantly positive spirit of their live sets, plays out as an altogether darker, more tormented proposition. I do LOVE the perfect Motorhead/Hawkwind amalgam of the palette cleansing, rock n’ rolling middle track ‘Sweet Relief’ however, and my enjoyment both of it and of the aforementioned live sets now spills out across the longer cuts on either side of it, illuminating them with greater clarity, and allowing me to get with the programme. (In fact, how I failed to fully compute the true majesty of ‘Icon’ at an earlier date is a mystery. It’s middle stretch is Hawkwind-meets-Sabbath-fucking-tastic.)

Looking forward to whatever they do next, and I’ll leave you to insert your own cheer-leading “year of the pig” type comment here.

(Stream and buy via bandcamp.)


8. Endless Boogie – Vibe Killer LP (No Quarter)

I’ll be the first to admit that Endless Boogie’s peculiar MO – essentially mixing the ideals embodied by Canned Heat’s ‘Refried Hockey Boogie’ with the overbearing, obscurantist humour and alienated record collector weirdness of vocalist/lead guitarist Paul ‘Top Dollar’ Major – can be a bit of an acquired taste.

If relatively few make the effort however, those who do will find themselves regularly rewarded by strange, troubled masterworks such as this one, during which Major attempts to clear the room with pure Lynchian creep on the title cut before reminiscing in pain-staking detail about the time he went to see Kiss perform at a “kite flying contest” in 1974 (‘Back in 74’), instigating an unsettling suburban rewrite of ‘Sister Ray’ (‘High Drag, Hard Doin’), and… well god only knows what he’s going on about on the inchoate ‘Bishops at Large’ or the oddly hypnotic expanse of ‘Jefferson County’ (perhaps I’m not American enough to understand). Still, he certainly doesn’t make any less sense than Mark E. Smith has on any given LP side from the past 30 years, and, as the band keep on cooking as if Status Quo had rediscovered the joys of smoking weed and letting it all hang out before eventually taking on board some absurdly misplaced Chicago post-rock mannerisms, us initiates should consider ourselves more than satisfied.

(Stream/buy via bandcamp here.)


9. Midnight Mines – We Are The Primitives of a New Era tape/download 
(self-released)

Four more slabs of creeped out, Rallizified garden shed dub damage here from East London’s reclusive ‘Baron Saturday’ and ‘Private Sorrow’. This time around, they seem to be journeying out even further from their garage-punk background, inadvertently conjuring up a few spectres from my beloved early ‘00s ‘kneelcore’ scene, wherein 3” CDs briefly smoked out those bloody cassette tapes as both god and nature intended. I approve!

Hard to believe they haven’t yet sold a mere 50 tapes-worth of this, so for gods sake, follow this link and help ‘em out.







10. Blown Out – Superior Venus LP (Riot Season)

Ah, Blown Out. Always the same… always the same. Which is to say, exceptionally enjoyable. By this point, Mike Vest’s stoner/space-rock trio are ‘sticking to their story’ with a commitment to stylistic continuity that puts Motorhead or Dead Moon to shame.

Whilst I can’t in all honestly tell most of their records apart however, it nonetheless makes me extremely happy to continuing buying them and putting them on the shelf in order of release, keeping the latest close at hand for whenever the urge takes me. For, as those aforementioned bands understood, when your music can feed a particular appetite this satisfactorily, what’s to be gained by fucking with the formula? The hunger is always there, and I for one am always willing to be fed.

(Stream/buy via bandcamp)



POP QUIZ: Tell me the name of the individual who links THREE of the releases on the above list and win… I dunno, something? (HINT: for once it’s not Mike Vest.)

Esteemed runners-up:

11. The Bats – The Deep Set LP (Flying Nun) [link]
12. Mountain Movers – s/t LP (self-released?) [link]
13. Chain & The Gang – Experimental Music LP (Radical Elite) [link]
14. Leyland Kirby – We, So Tired of all the Darkness in Our Lives d/l (self-released) [link]
15. Aggressive Perfector – Satan’s Heavy Metal tape/d/l (self-released) [link]

Labels: best of 2017, Blown Out, Endless Boogie, Feral Ohms, Grey Hairs, Heron Oblivion, Lower Slaughter, Midnight Mines, Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs, Skullflower, Vibracathedral Orchestra