Archive for December, 2015

Best of 2015

Top Singles of 2015
1. CCTV CCTV 7″
2. Vexx Give And Take 7″
3. Galcher Lustwerk Parlay 12″
4. Beatrice Dillon Face A/B 12″
5. Lutto Lento Whips 12″
6. Nhk Yx Koyxen Hallucinogenic Doom Steppy Verbs 12″
7. Perc Gob 12″
8. Mystic Inane Eggs Onna Plate 7″
9. Shed Constant Power 12″
10. Dynamo Dreesen, SVN & A Made Up Sound Untitled 12″
11. Asda Three Tracks 10″
12. Powell Sylvester Stallone 12″
13. Golden Teacher Sauchiehall Enthrall 12″
14. Sheer Mag II 7″
15. Lime Crush Lime Crush 7″
16. Snakepiss Arson 12″
17. Frau Mira 7″
18. Chaperone Pond 12″
19. DJ Jus-Ed & Move D Brothers EP 2×12″
20. Sacred Product $ A Ride 12″

Honorable Mention:
Archie Pelago Clammy Customer EP 12″
Joey Anderson 1974 12″
Violence Creeps I’m Broke / Gridlock 7″ flexi
Zadig Kern Space Adventures Ep #2 12″
Patsy Tuley-Tude High 7″

Top Albums of 2015
1. Daughn Gibson Carnation
2. L.O.T.I.O.N. Digital Control And Man’s Obsolescence
3. Helena Hauff Discreet Desires
4. MB / OD Shplittin’ The Shtones
5. Institute Catharsis
6. Goatsnake Black Age Blues
7. Hieroglyphic Being & J.I.T.U. Ahn-Sahm-Buhl We Are Not The First
8. Egyptrixx Transfer Of Energy [Feelings Of Power]
9. Mike Cooper Fratello Mare
10. CP / BW Untitled
11. Kerridge Always Offended Never Ashamed
12. Marching Church This World Is Not Enough
13. ADMX-71 Coherent Abstractions
14. Kurt Vile b’lieve i’m goin down
15. US Girls Half Free
16. Rupert Clervaux & Beatrice Dillon Studies I-XVII For Samplers And Percussion
17. Grimes Art Angels
18. Dawn Of Humans Slurping At The Cosmos Spine
19. Royal Headache High
20. November Növelet The World In Devotion

Honorable Mention:
Richard Papiercuts If
Vainio & Vigroux Peau Froide, Léger Soleil
Greymouth Greymouth
The Coneheads L​.​P​.​1. Aka 14 Year Old High School PC​-​Fascist Hype Lords Rip Off Devo For The Sake Of Extorting $​$​$ From Helpless Impressionable Midwestern Internet Peoplepunks L​.​P​.
Cairo Pythian Touched

Holy moly, let’s flush this year down the toilet and start fresh! Thankfully there has been some great music to help us suffer through it, although everyone always says “Wow, so much great music this year!” and it’s kind of a pointless thing to say because there is great new music every year. I thought Vexx was going to be the best live band I’d see in 2015 (nothing can stop Vexx but Vexx itself), second year in a row, but then Goatsnake quietly decided to do a few East Coast dates and utterly melted my mind, as each band member’s sheer perfection at their craft added up to something beyond perfection, some sort of godly event no human deserved to witness. I’m serious! I also loved watching Marching Church’s drunken performance, although I probably enjoyed one of the Ian Mackayes in the band shushing the crowd during Norman Westberg’s opening set even more. And of course, RIP, Scott Weiland.

CCTV CCTV 7″ (Lumpy)
The NWI punk scene (that’s “Northwest Indiana”, believe it or not) has been responsible for an overflowing cornucopia of top-shelf punk music this year, mostly at the hands of one Mark Winter and his friends. The Coneheads certainly got the most recognition (the dreaded “people outside of the immediate underground punk scene taking notice and giving praise” scenario), but this 7″ by CCTV is its finest export thus far. I first heard this band from a freakin’ Tumblr MP3 link and was immediately hooked, and this four-song EP builds on that wonderfully, exhibiting ultra-speedy undistorted new-wave punk that instantly worms its way into your brain. It’s proof that a thoughtful four-track recording will forever out-do laptop recording software (or even most studios), and that no matter what the musical climate, there will always be amazing weirdos doing what they wanna do all by themselves.

Daughn Gibson Carnation (Sub Pop)
I willingly acknowledge that I am probably Daughn Gibson’s biggest fan, but even with full awareness of that fact, where was the rest of the world when Carnation came out? It’s not even that the vast majority of indie critics and radio DJs and bloggers who loved All Hell hated on Carnation, it’s that no one even seemed to acknowledge its existence at all. Fucking SPIN lists Daughn as one of their “artists to watch” or whatever and then doesn’t even review the follow-up to his Sub Pop debut! I suppose that’s a not-totally-unexpected outcome for a record as singularly-minded and fearless as this, carving out an entirely separate path from whatever people expected of Daughn Gibson and breaking into territory I can only assume the world will eventually catch up to. The whole record exists in a mist of sad longing, while each track takes on a different role, like eleven fascinatingly different movies from the same director, all rich with their own bent characters, evocative moods and all-too-real human emotion. I must’ve listened to “For Every Bite” a hundred times this year, and each time it made me feel like I was Charles Bronson, walking into a bar where ZZ Top is playing pool and George Thorogood is pouring shots, fresh from the revenge-murder of the thugs who kidnapped my daughter. What do you want music to do for you if not that?

Interviews

Hello friends, you may have noticed the lack of an interview this month or last. I apologize, but I have to say, it’s not for the lack of trying! It has been increasingly difficult to find bands and artists that I dig that are willing to engage me in an interview, particularly one that involves emailing, and I’m not going to interview a band I personally am not thrilled or intrigued by just to fill the space.

I hope the interviews will return sometime in 2016, but I can’t say for sure. In the meantime, please enjoy this list of artists that I’ve attempted to interview over the past few years. If you haven’t heard them, by all means get to Googling! And if you are a passionate fan of one of them, and feel the need to start an online petition to get them to respond to me, I won’t stop you.

Kerridge (his representative said he is “taking a break” from interviews)
Lumpy and the Dumpers (after a couple years, only answered two questions)
Vexx (politely declined)
Beatrice Dillon (never responded)
US Girls (her publicist said she is “unable to accommodate my request”, whatever that means)
L.O.T.I.O.N. (never responded)
Slutever (responded to a couple questions and then stopped responding, then I saw Rachel in person and she said that she was waiting on my response but I confirmed that this is untrue)
St. Julien (never responded)
Portable (initially said he’d like to do the interview, then never responded to my questions)
Egyptrixx (initially said yes, I sent the questions, then he responded months later saying he is too busy to do interviews)
51717 (initially said yes, answered the first couple questions and then stopped responding)
Cairo Pythian (amazingly, somehow he was unable to figure out how to respond to an interview in email form, obtained my phone number and sent me a text about it, but still never responded to the actual interview)
Lime Crush (said they would be happy to do it, then never responded to my questions or follow-up emails)
Mystic Inane (got about halfway through the interview, after months of me following-up, and I’ve essentially given up at this point)
Cock ESP (initially said yes, then never responded to my questions or follow-up emails)
John Wiese (initially responded to a few questions then stopped responding entirely)
Terrorism (he’s my damn friend and never responded to my requests)
Profligate (politely declined, stating he doesn’t like to do interviews (although I have found other interviews of his online))
Torn Hawk (reluctantly said yes he would do the interview, then stopped responding, and after prodding him a bit further he sent me this JPG which I admit is pretty great)
Una Bèstia Incontrolable (politely declined, stating that they are very slow and “not totally comfortable answering interviews for web content”)
Coneheads (never responded – I should’ve texted instead)
Sheer Mag (never responded)
The Party of Helicopters (originally said yes, then never responded to the actual questions)
Joey Anderson (never responded)
Mad Nanna (never responded)
Hoax (said yes, then never answered the questions, then told me in person he felt overwhelmed by the idea of having to write out answers to questions, which I can respect)
Gazelle Twin (never responded)
Powell (politely declined, stating he was taking a break from the press (this was over a year ago))
Agathocles (agreed to the interview, then never responded to my questions)
Emptyset (politely declined, stating they had done a large number of interviews recently)
Iceage (initially said yes, then did not respond to the questions (this was years ago))
Men’s Recovery Project (said yes, was into the idea, had a meeting to discuss, then never quite got it together)

See you next week for my year-end best of lists!