\n
![](\"\/images\/powellclub.jpg\")
As you probably know, I listen to a ton of underground experimental techno, and while I truly enjoy it, most of the time I’m just waiting around for someone like Powell to show up and twist my head around completely with his left-field, entirely original take on electronic dance music. There’s really no place to file Powell besides “Diagonal Records”, the label he owns and operates, and while it’s great that he has created his own scene entirely, it’s even greater that the music is as zany, uninhibited, banging and severe as Club Music<\/i>. Synths bubble, samples sword-fight each other, beats drop and never return, and the concept of linear music is diverted, teased and avoided entirely, much to my delight. After retroactively checking out his earlier EPs (they’re all killer too, but not as killer as Club Music<\/i>), it seems like Powell is poised to take over 2015 if he wants it. <\/p>\n![](\"\/images\/vesselpunish.jpg\")
Alright, quick caveat: the decision to rank Vessel’s Punish, Honey<\/i> over Riff Raff’s Neon Icon<\/i> wasn’t an easy one, as Neon Icon<\/i> probably provided me more musical entertainment than anything else this year, and I never reviewed it simply because once I start talking about this record, it’s nearly impossible to stop. That said, Vessel has rightly claimed the top spot, as no other album this year was as cohesive, inventive, stark, pounding, twisted and downright astonishing as Punish, Honey<\/i>. Using a set of homemade electronics to create these varied-yet-consistent tracks, it’s as if Vessel was trying to clone humans and just ended up with mutated human flesh, like a foot with an ear on it scampering across the floor as a hairy belly with a face looks on from the operating table. It’s more epic than metal, more brutal than power-violence, more alien than Shackleton, and you can still shake your ass to it. Just let me hibernate with this record and come knock on my door once it’s warm out again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"