15
Bottomless Pit (Death Grips)
Though they have come to be known for their bizarre off-stage antics, at times resembling a group created for the purposes of performance art, it can be easy to forget that Death Grips are one of the most exciting groups to currently be making music. I thought that Jenny Death was a fitting sendoff but was hardly going to argue when they said that they had not in fact broken up. What we were given was something that combined the tight song structures of The Money Store, the grunginess of No Love Deep Web, and the urgency of something new entirely. Bottomless Pit exhibited obvious influence from more extreme genres of metal, MC Ride screeching over blaring guitars from the outset, walls of noise being constructed in listeners headphones only to be brought crashing down in a beautifully chaotic cacophony. Despite this, it is perhaps their most accessible release to date; most songs have a tight hook and a danceable rhythm, following fairly traditional song structures and utilising pitch perfect production to make what could be as close as we get to a Death Grips pop album. Whilst I think that Eh is one of the weakest songs they have ever put out, they more than make up for it with the cathartic joy I get from Spikes, the satisfyingly screamable chorus of Three Bedrooms in a Good Neighborhood, the eerily funky guitar on Ring A Bell. Bottomless Pit is an album of highlights that serves as a reminder that just because a band shocked us with every album they have previously released, it doesn't mean that they are incapable of doing so one more time.
14
You Will Never Be One of Us (Nails)
Should we judge every album by how much pure 'enjoyment' we get from it? That doesn't serve as a particularly good metric by which to gauge the head-caving, earth-shattering hugeness of the most recent offering from California grindcore act Nails. From the start they sought to come in, smash your ears about with a hammer for a bit, and get out of there sharpish. You Will Never Be One of Us clocks in at a seemingly tiny 21 minutes but all this means is that not a second is wasted, and Nails never slow down. Usually a lack of adequate pacing affects an album negatively, but to try and break up the short bursts of aggression here would only raise their relative effect to little end; the extremity present needs no heightening, Nails are at the zenith of their patented powerviolence sound. What is intriguing is that to round off this collection of songs which rarely break the one minute mark, there is something of an epic in the brilliant, cavernous They Come Crawling Back. Admittedly the musical ideas could have been broken up into the smaller parts that comprise the rest of the album, but it creates a huge sendoff, the type of insurmountable wall of noise that I crave because black metal just hasn't done the business for me in 2016. I don't think it ever reaches the giddy heights of the title track once it passes us by, but there is still a plethora of pleasingly grimy riffs spread throughout the album to ensure that you'll find yourself jerking strangely along to the breakneck grooves. Without a doubt, You Will Never Be One of Us is the headbanger of the year.
13
Retribution (Tanya Tagaq)
Eventually, we will reach an album on this list that one would not describe as 'terrifying'. You'll need to press on to reach that point, though, as no album brought the creeps further up my spine than the latest offering from the most prominent throat singer in the current recording industry. Whilst Nails and Death Grips would seem to construct the cage of noise with the sounds they offer, Tanya Tagaq instead makes the listener feel surrounded by a vengeful, feral nature and leave us there to die. The opener, Ajaaja has an almost childlike voice being followed up by that of a wizened older man, all surrounded by creeping percussion and field recordings; the line between the natural and the artificial begins to blur. We are plunged into a murky darkness, and Retribution holds our heads down. Tagaq even manages to pull off moves that would usually be so ill-advised that I would consider them to be career ending: namely, a rap song in the middle and closing the album with a Nirvana cover, Rape Me. It's for the best, then, that Tagaq was always in such expert control of this album's atmosphere that, far from ruining the album, they elevate it to being the sprawling multiple threat that it is. What ultimately makes Retribution is the experimental rock elements that build through many of the album's more rousing songs. The guitar drone in the title track makes the animalistic sounds of the throat singing sound all the more threatening, and then removing them to be all alone with the human voice at the start of Nacreous leaves us wishing that we had turned a few more lights on in the house. Retribution is an astounding achievement in the art of atmospheric music, and scared me more than anything else this year.
12
Imperial (Denzel Curry)
Trap is often better for little more than a single song. There are very few consistently good, consistently trap albums. Why might this be? Is there a lack of an album mentality in the community of artists producing trap music? Are the beats too derivative to carry an album for the whole duration? I don't hold the answers to this but Denzel Curry came through in 2016 to try and tackle these issues head-on. Curry has a trap flow, and whilst the beats are often underpinned by some thumping bass, he often opted for instrumentals that would sound more at home on a cloud rap album. The result of this is a album that brings with it a voice that sounds genuinely new, and the 2016 breakout that I most want to keep an eye on. Curry stated in his XXL interview that he wants to focus on lyricism in the road ahead, fine-tuning his verbal craft so that he can be one of the greats. Whilst the focus in the early tracks like ULT and Gook would appear to be on his aggressive, rapid fire flow, there is a lot to unpick in the seeming sixteen-words-per second that come through your headphones. Curry is also smart enough to allow us to listen to the aspect of his rapping that he is so proud of, coming out with some of the smartest, most introspective bars of the year on tracks such as Zenith and If Tomorrow's Not Here. Most impressive of all is how Curry carries this album with very few featured guests, who all serve their purpose astoundingly well. Joey Bada$$ was born to rap on the zenith beat and, most surprising of all, Rock Ross delivers a brilliant verse on Knotty Head which is in keeping with the mood, entertaining, and lyrical. All of this is tied together by the assertive shout of a rapper who, at the tender age of 21, will surely be one of the leading voices in rap in the next few years. Watch this space.
11
The Glowing Man (Swans)
Swans have managed to be one of the most remarkably critically acclaimed groups to have ever produced music. The consistency at which they have everyone swooning over their albums is nothing short of amazing. Regarding their trilogy that has been put out in the 2010s, I liked The Seer a decent amount, I took a strong dislike to To Be Kind, and I bloody love The Glowing Man. It combines the feeling of a sprawling epic that The Seer had with the chugging riffs of To Be Kind. There are a couple shorter tracks here and there, but this album is held together by some masterfully sprawling, ever-evolving songs that are jam packed full of more grooves and riffs that I would care to mention for their twenty minute plus duration. Michael Gira yowls over chanting backing vocals and haunting polyrhythms at the beginning of the title track, but some fifteen minutes later it finds a chugging rhythm that you could see yourself dancing to. This type of transformation is indicative of the album as a whole; there is not a single song present that lacks in scope or feels at all reserved. It's length can be daunting but it pays dividends to listen to The Glowing Man in a single, unbroken streak. The songs begin to blend together into a terrifying miasma, the vocals come to feel almost ritualistic at points, and the pace arcs so perfectly that when the final notes of Finally Peace play, you will probably find yourself wanting to give it another spin immediately. It is an album that chews you up and spits you out but will have you coming back for more. The Glowing Man is a wonderful piece of work which shows clear experience, as well as an insatiable appetite to continue with experimentation in their music.
10
Beyond the Fleeting Gales (Crying)
Let's take a break from the crushingness, the terror, and the non-stop intensity of the last albums. Beyond the Fleeting Gales is the album you wish you were listening to in high school. I don't know if there was a book on power pop, but Crying make an excellent case for rewriting it. The first thing we hear is Elaiza Santos sweetly sing some strangely melancholy lyrics before the brilliantly produced guitars and synths crash in all at once in a concerted effort to bring a smile to your face. Crying basically throw the kitchen sink at every song as the album progresses at a breakneck pace, with each and every song continuing the triumphant crescendo started by Premonitory Dream. There are obvious elements of a late 80s throwback in the crystalline production, but also something of a nostalgia for the early 2000s frat rock of groups like Fountains of Wayne and Wheatus, only more consistently good, and with a sound distinctly more tongue in cheek. Crying can also write riffs and songs better than most of their peers, even when playing on hard mode with lots of songs on Beyond the Fleeting Gales not having any obvious chorus, meaning that you end up learning the entire song just so that you can sing along. I have already used too many superlatives on this list so I am running out but the long and short of it is that very few albums from 2016 were as fit for purpose as Beyond the Fleeting Gales. It's a necessary, beautiful injection of poppiness that made me smile like very few other albums in the year just gone.
9
Made in the Manor (Kano)
Grime has well and truly arrived now. The genre staples are inescapable, though for many people the only songs that exist are That's Not Me and Feed Them to the Lions. I am hardly a connoisseur; I generally listen to full albums rather than songs and most grime albums feel more like anthologies, merely collections of songs with not much sense of connection or pacing. Kano is something of a veteran who gifted us with the greatest grime album I have ever heard this year, which may not be saying much, but I can see this holding that accolade for a very long time indeed. The real sticking point for Made in the Manor is that there are multiple slower songs, all in aid of the bigger picture that Kano seeks to paint. He humorously, yet tenderly describes the London of his youth, the London of the present, and where he sees it heading. Kano has seen most of it in the grime scene, still perfectly capable of creating traditional 'bangers' like 3 Wheel Ups, whilst also incorporating smoother production techniques on songs like This is England and Seashells in the East, and sometimes completely slowing it down like on Strangers and Drinking in the West End. It's a very complete album without many of the loud jams that some would see to have characterised grime. This could be a risk, but Kano is not satisfied to cash in his talent on a quick fifteen minutes of fame. What with Skepta happily occupying the role of the archetypal grime artist, Kano played a smarter game and went down a different route. The lyrics are consistently brilliantly constructed, conveying so much in what could have been a tedious act of reminiscence. He didn't win the Mercury Prize like his peer, but if there is any justice, Made in the Manor could represent something of a watershed for grime, seeing it turn its head more towards the lasting appeal of albums over the fleeting success of singles. It certainly deserves to be. Time will certainly tell, but for the moment I am happy to merely call it one of the best things to come out of 2016.
8
A Hermitage (Jambinai)
Jambinai's debut album Différance was quite unlike anything else when I first heard it. The usage of traditional Korean folk instruments in a sludgy post-rock context was a novel idea, executed in a manner that blew me away. Nothing will ever compare to the first time you hear a huge chord erupt over the screeching haegum but A Hermitage sees Jambinai taking the sound that they created on their debut, and creating more fully-fledged ideas with it. The songs are not as drone-heavy this time out, but they are tighter, often centring on a few catchy musical ideas whilst losing none of the intensity that characterises Jambinai's sound. The riffs that Shim Eun Yong smashes out on the geomeungeo are absolutely unreal this time out, and it is used in a myriad of different ways; sometimes as the lead, sometimes a chugging accompaniment, and fairly often brings with it a percussive element too. Percussion has definitelyy come more into the forefront of Jambinai's sound and the songs on A Hermitage sound rich and full, yet still contain the foreboding quality that hung above their debut. They also feel more like a band who all get their voices heard. Différance had lots of elements created by guitarist and p'iri player Lee Il-Woo and he often seemed to take centre-stage, but the songs on A Hermitage are a celebration of all the instruments that everyone plays. It is particularly nice that the folk instruments are still the stars of the show, even with bass and guitar being more prominent here, everything is done to elevate the haunting sounds of the p'iri, the haegeum, and the geomeungeo. The post-rock element still lives on as well, For Everything that You Lost is cavernous in its buildup and shows influence from the spaciousness of groups like Explosions in the Sky. Overall, though, the best thing about A Hermitage is how unique it shows that Jambinai still are; to sound new in music nowadays is an increasingly hard act, and yet Jambinai are still able to make a song as thrillingly catchy as They Keep Silence which is undeniably theirs. They are utterly peerless in the style of music they are making.
7
Atrocity Exhibition (Danny Brown)
Danny Brown has always seemed to be a strange anomaly. His voice is probably the highest in the game when he raps, he cites 60s psychedelic rock acts as chief influences, and he names his albums after J.G. Ballard quotes. Atrocity Exhibition sounds like an adequate description though; from the song Downward Spiral, Brown wants to take us on a tour of a grimy underbelly of... somewhere. This is not an easy album to listen to, going out of its way to make it impossible for you to force it to the background. It's also not an album that is full of hooks in the obvious sense, aside from the bombastic posse cut Really Doe which still has a dingy, unsettling quality to the beat, built around an eerie chime sample, all four rappers sounding vicious and angry. Every new single in the lead-up to the album felt deeply unsettling; the bizarre bleeps on When it Rain, the heavy, ponderous pace of Pneumonia. Danny Brown is the rapper who most expertly defined what his sound was this year. He had hinted towards darker sounding songs on his previous projects XXX and Old but Atrocity Representation is an assured project which acts as a mission statement. It is the album that least resembles any other album on this list, and that is what is most impressive about it. Brown twists his trademark yelp to an almost caricature level at points, whilst at others he keeps it lower to sound almost unrecognisable; Brown shows himself off as a hip-hop chameleon, the least predictable rapper currently in the game. All this, and he doesn't require to do any shock tactics like Death Grips to pull this off, he allows his music to speak on his behalf, to announce himself as arguably the most interesting musician who is currently working.
6
Mahoroboshiya (Ichiko Aoba)
Very few musicians have a sound quite as stark as Ichiko Aoba. The 27 year-old Japanese artist has made a career for herself by making just a voice and a guitar sound interesting and beautiful. It's quite the feat to make such simple music still be appealing to people who can't understand the language, not that that was necessarily her aim. Mahoroboshiya sees her expanding her sound somewhat, bringing in additional instrumentation and writing markedly longer songs. The first three tracks gorgeously run into each other, with the title track being a particular highlight, the title word (which seems to have no meaning) being a constant landmark throughout the song, which otherwise slips transiently into a brilliant dream-like state. Cosiness is an underrated quality in music. I often do it myself, opting for the more crushing releases that populated the first few entries of this list. I often forgot how much I adored Mahoroboshiya until I gave it another spin and it is built on the back of how comforting it is. It has a vaguely nostalgic tone to it, also giving off the vibe of the beautiful liminality between sleeping and waking. Aoba has quite possibly my favourite voice in music,and it sounds more assured this time around. On 0 it still held a girlish quality, but she is 27 now and on Mahoroboshiya there is weight to it, a certain huskiness that was not present before. It has lost nothing of the sing-song nature, but it sounds more like the type of voice that can carry an album before, and make no mistake, it is Aoba who carries this album with her voice. It is the album of hers when she relies least on merely composing fantastic tunes, but she takes centre-stage and elevates said tunes. It's an utterly fantastic set of acoustic songs that should not be overlooked.
5
Run the Jewels 3 (Run the Jewels)
How on earth do they do it? Somehow, even when we know exactly what to expect from hip-hop's lamest dads, they amaze us every time, whilst sitting firmly within the confines of those expectations. Admittedly we expect that they will create angry, of the moment, fantastically produced rap music. The pairing began as an experiment following the success of Killer Mike's R.A.P Music, but their second album showed that they were here to stay. I went into the third album with the expectation that their sound would still be good, but somewhat stagnated. Instead I was greeted on Christmas morning with an album that sounded distinct, prescient, and fantastic. El-P's production style has changed since the paranoia of Cancer 4 Cure, but he has created for himself a sound that is representative of Run the Jewels rather than his solo career. He has never made a song as simultaneously crisp and frenetic as the glorious Panther Like a Panther (I'm The Shit), and Killer Mike hasn't sounded as angry as he does on A Report to the Shareholders / Kill Your Masters since 2012's Reagan. 2016 has been a hell of a year and this album is full of all the righteous anger that this brought with it. This is balanced expertly with the traditional tongue-in-cheek braggadocio, taken to new and hilarious heights with lines such as 'I've got a unicorn horn for a cock'. I don't know if it is better than Run the Jewels 2, but it is definitely more polished and complete effort. There is no obvious weak track present, the chemistry between the duo is better, and the features are utilised sparingly, but very well. Kamasi Washington delivers a killer saxophone line on Thursday in the Panic Room, and Danny Brown has the only true guest verse on the thrilling Bumaye (Kill Them). The overall lack of guest features is a sign that Run the Jewels are still progressing and arguably better than ever. It would be unthinkable for anything else to be my hip-hop album of the year were it not for...
4
Floss (Injury Reserve)
When the first line of an album is a screamed iteration of the time honoured phrase 'Oh shit!' it will certainly grab my attention. That doesn't mean that it will hold said attention for the duration of this album, but in the case of Floss it grabbed me, shouted at me articulately, and refused to let me go for all 40 minutes. This is technically Injury Reserve's first full length album, following last year's mixtape Live From the Dentist Office, and yet this is the type of assured project that you would expect a group to be making deep into their careers. It's an album that sounds like the group would rather be doing nothing else other than making music, the bars often being equal parts exciting and hilarious. The beats are also incredibly playful, combining old-skool grooves with newer sounding twists added in here and there. There is an intriguing duality to Floss; the first half being filled with the more bombastic songs, bragging about their overall superiority whilst peppering it with self-deprecating humour. Then the second half of the album is far more introspective and emotional, with the closer Look Mama I Did It easily capable of bringing me to tears. They balance these two sides of the album very well without there being an obvious disjoint; the production style and overall intensity of the performances remains powerfully consistent, either bouncily rattling or going down a smoother jazz rap path. The meeting of these styles is best represented by the album's midpoint track Girl with the Gold Wrist which samples Rum Pum Pum Pum by f(x) to create a sun-bleached sounding story of lust and money. It's heartening to hear that on this song they are willing to not always be precise with their rhythms, instead prioritising the mood of the song over any level of microanalysis of whether they stick exactly to the beat. This is indicative of everything that this album is; with only two feature verses (absolutely spectacular performances from both Cakes da Killa and Vic Mensa on these), Floss lives and dies by the chemistry held by the guys in Injury Reserve. There hasn't been an album this year whose recording sessions I would rather have been present at; not only is it lyrical, not only is it brilliantly produced, but it's a short sharp jolt of fun. It's the best rap album of the year.
3
E·MO·TION: Side B (Carly Rae Jepsen)
I know that this is technically an EP, but it is longer than another release on this list, and I never miss an opportunity to talk about Carly Rae Jepsen, so I will give myself the benefit of the doubt on this one, as I am wont to do. E·MO·TION was my favourite album of 2015 and I knew that she had recorded an inordinate number of songs for it, so always felt a follow-up release was inevitable. What we were given was a smaller dosage of the pure-pop mastery that Jepsen seems to be in the business of peddling nowadays. Words cannot do justice to how happy this release makes me; in many ways happier than the original album because E·MO·TION: Side B doesn't concern itself with pacing in the same way that the original does, instead just hurling anthem after anthem at your eardrums. Picking a favourite song is impossible because it will always be the one that I happen to have listened to most recently, and whilst they all serve the same purpose of bringing me unreasonable amounts of joy, every song is distinct and self-contained. Whether it be the blaring synth-saturated cutesiness of First Time, thee more contemporary sounding Higher, or the genuinely hilarious break-up bop Store. E·MO·TION: Side B plays like a highlights reel; many artists would kill to have made eight songs of such unbridled pop perfection, and yet these are the songs that didn't make the cut for the original album. The producers have all done god's work here, creating the best platforms for Jepsen's sultry vocals to glide over and make every song sound silky smooth. It's impressive that so many different producers could have worked on this EP and yet it still sounds united, like a planned vision. The lyrics also help with this; there is a lot to be said for a love song, even if every emotion surrounding them has been explored at this point. The lyrics are captivating here because it is a pop song when Jepsen sounds like she still holds a genuine belief in the power of love, and her passion for this is infectious. Perhaps this release sounds childish to some, but those are the types of people who you need to cut out of your life. E·MO·TION: Side B was such a good EP that I decided to consider it as an album, and Carly Rae stunted on all the pop singers who may have chosen to sing about more 'complex' things this year. It is the most joyous release of the year, and there is nothing about it that I would change.
2
Blackstar (David Bowie)
I can't think of an album whose context of release is so tied to the album itself. The spectre of death lingers on every song on Blackstar, as we are filled with the unshakable urge that surely Bowie knew what was going to happen and has left some message for us. What a way to go, though. Bowie has always been known for pushing the envelope of pop and rock music, carving out multiple niches for himself and creating new sounds wherever he goes. He continues this on Blackstar, creating a tight set of songs which sound powerfully unique, not only from other artists, but from Bowie's own back catalogue. It's also an album that sounds representative of Bowie in his older state. His previous album, The Next Day, sounded rather good but it still felt like an effort to relive his glory days. Blackstar is an album of acceptance: acceptance of ageing, acceptance of societal change, and, of course, acceptance that there comes a time when we all must die. the title track and Lazarus were released with videos that also played into this narrative. It would be interesting to see what people thought of the mood of this album had Bowie not died, but as it stands, listening to Lazarus is the most emotional musical moment of the year; the haunting saxophone section playing a plangent phrase over the rumbling bassline as Bowie talks of rebirth through the lens of constant fear. The album would almost seem to play out like Bowie going through the seven stages of grief across the seven tracks, as he takes us with him across the entire emotional spectrum, concluding with the strangely hopeful I Can't Give Everything Away, which we pray never ends, because only then will we truly have to say goodbye to the man. Bowie left this world knowing that he had left a huge musical legacy, and his stated influences show that he was clearly optimistic for the future of music, saying that Death Grips and Kendrick Lamar's work had inspired some of the music on Blackstar. The album takes many different forms on all of the different songs, but it is still definitely a unified project, meticulously planned and recorded with love. I apologise if this entry read more like an obituary than an appraisal but as I said, one can't ever listen to this album without even a tiny nugget of awareness of its links to death, an the loss of a legend. Regardless, it's a wonderful parting gift, and you have probably listened to it already, so don't need me to tell you why.
1
Crippling Lack (David Thomas Broughton)
From the first few tracks of Crippling Lack, you could be forgiven for thinking that David Thomas Broughton was a regular white guy with an acoustic guitar. Admittedly, one who makes very pretty music with astute lyricism, but ultimately derivative. There will inevitably come a point when this view changes, completely altering the way you listen to the album. For me it began with the song Dots but really hit home on the brilliantly sprawling I Close My Eyes. The way that the vocals kept layering over each other, how tragic the lyrics were, and how Broughton understatedly incorporated electronic music and progressive production into his seemingly pared-back sound. Nothing was the same from there, and I had to immediately relisten to the album when it was done to re-appraise the first three songs which I admittedly hated at first. One could put this down to Broughton's voice, which is only strange because we are used to Northern singers masking their accents, but Broughton utterly owns it and uses its full-bodied roundedness to bounce through some songs and float through others. It's a powerfully emotional album, and even if you laughed at his voice when you first hear the title track, by the time Crippling Lack Part 2 rolls around, you feel every pathetic body blow that Broughton sings about; creating a vision of an utterly tragic character for whom nothing goes right, but finds unassailable levels of beauty in this. Crippling Lack is a long album; on this list only The Glowing Man is longer, but length feels like a necessity here. It creates such a perfect portrait of sadness, of desperation, that to rush through it would lose any emotional intensity that may come with it. The album always sets its own pace and songs move in circles, looping back over themselves and building to bizarre, dissonant crescendos that completely surround the listener, creating a voluptuous terror from usually benign sounds. It is an album that puts the listener through the emotional wringer, and I just lay in silence after the first time I had finished it, not entirely sure what my thoughts on it were at the time; it is certainly the album that has climbed the most in my estimations since the first time I listened to it. Now I can say with a great deal of certainty that it is my favourite album of 2016, and one of my favourites of the decade so far. It is an album that is never content to do things by half measures: it will take as much time as it needs, create the exact sounds that it feels to be necessary, and pull no punches in its lyrical content. It is closed off by the wryly hilarious Plunge of the Dagger, when the poet Luke Droszd tells us of his plans to drink himself to death, but through lemonade due to being teetotal. It is this strangely humorous self-destruction that characterises Crippling Lack, and David Thomas Broughton has created nothing short of a masterpiece in doing so. If you only listen to one album from this list, let it be this one.
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