Swans are potentially the greatest rock band that is active right now.  Their music is heavy, spiritual, and very visceral and human.  For newcomers to Swans I’d recommend checking out their record from last year, “To Be Kind” as well as others in their discography like “Songs for the Blind” and “The Seer”, but for those who have already dug into their studio discography this is a great document of their mind shattering live shows from the past year.  On “The Gate” there is a couple songs from “To Be Kind” as well as tracks that will be released on their next studio album (which this album serves as a fundraiser for).  The record also contains five “rough, crudely recorded demos” performed by Gira on an acoustic guitar that will be re-recorded for the upcoming album.  It has been announced that this next record will be Swans last album – and from the progression they’ve been going in since their return from hiatus and the sounds on here – it sounds like it’s going to be a pretty epic conclusion.
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9 – From Kinshasa (Mbongwana Star)

“From Kinshasa” is the debut studio album of Mbongwana Star – which as the title suggests are from Kinshasa (which is in the Democratic Republic of the Congo).   The original title was “From Kinshasa to the Moon”, and as you may gather from the artwork there – this shit is some crazy African space funk.  There’s a lot of joy and of energy on here and the grooves are infectious.  It is a fresh urban interpretation of this region’s music with elements of electronic music and psychedelia that still remains true to its roots.
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8 – Universal Themes (Sun Kil Moon)

“Universal Themes” continues the musical direction Sun Kil Moon has been taking with his last couple records – in which his writing is more verbose, literal, and stream of consciousness.  It’s musically much more orchestrated and denser than it’s predecessor, “Benji” (which was my pick for top album of the year last year and I wrote a whole bunch about it on here).  The songs on here are much longer – with 5 of the songs being around 9ish minutes and are less tied to pop song structure (sometimes being more through-composed like the opening track “The Possum“).  Musically it seems like Steve Shelly (former Sonic Youth drummer who is drumming on this record) had more influence – and it’s much louder and more aggressive than anything else in Sun Kil Moon’s catalogue so far.   Lyrically the details on here are even more mundane and are generally about what was happening to him day to day (whether it be what he’s eating, conversations, health problems, touring and such) – but then he’ll break from that into a something that really hits hard of the mortality of all things (and often when this happens there is a huge musical shift/break-down as well).   Although this record isn’t nearly as perfect as it’s predecessor “Benji”, it’s great to hear Mark continuing to grow, evolve, and experiment as a songwriter and take a direction that I have not heard anyone else take before. 
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7 – Amorphae (Ben Monder)

Jazz guitarist/composer Ben Monder’s ECM debut started as a duo recording with Paul Motian in the fall of 2010 – but Paul Motion passed the following year.  Two of the tracks on here have Paul Motion drumming on them, two tracks are just solo guitar (the opener and closer), and the others have Pete Rende and drummer Andrew Cryille on board as well.  The album to me feels very much like a eulogy to Paul Motion.  It’s a departure from his last few records which are much more angular snakelike and a lot of the music on here is more ambient, mysterious and haunting
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6 – Divers (Joanna Newsom)

Joanna’s fourth album, “Divers” finds a middle ground between her earlier style and the more stripped down/songwriter/literary approach of her previous album “Have One On Me” – such as musically in her use of polyrhythms (such as on the title track) and the more baroqued orchestration on some tracks (such as was heard on Ys).

While lyrically this album is basically perfect (and my favorite album lyrically of hers to date), and there are some tracks that are mind blowingly awesome musically and everything she is going for works, there are some flaws musically (most of which show up in the second half of the record) that stop this from being as good as it could be.  The first track, “Anecdotes” is orchestrated by Nico Muhly – and this is by far the best orchestrated track on the album – where even as dense as it gets, everything in the orchestration flows and is completely balanced.  The final track is orchestrated by Dave Longstreth – and his style works really well with Joanna’s and he provides exactly what is needed to that track.  The remaining 9 tracks were orchesrated by Joanna.  Some of these are more stripped down – such as “The Things I Say” and others are more dense.  On some of the more densely orchestrated tracks she ends up stepping on her own toes a bit and some of her orchestration sounds pretty awkward, such as on the weakest track on the album, “You Will Not Take My Heart Alive”.  On others, the orchestration is a bit too bland, such as “Same Old Man” – which I can’t help but think how much better this track would have been had Muhly orchestrated  it (considering how it’s an old folk tune, Muhly’s work with Sam Amidon comes to mind – and I can imagine how tight this track could have been).  But despite these choices that detract from the album – the lyrics on this record are so strong and profound that it’s pretty easy to look past the album’s flaws.

In a conversation I was having a few weeks ago with someone who was just getting into the record, this someone asked, “What is Divers about?  Is it about Death?” – and I feel like I wasn’t able to answer her very well as the concept of this record is a a difficult one to articulate – but hope to do so better on here:

In some ways, “Divers” is about death – but the record is really more of an existential perspective on time.  Joanna stated in speaking about this album, “I would say all the songs on this record either ask the same question, or attempt to make the same case, or are lamenting the same thing or celebrating the same thing or railing against the same thing.  I think that, taken as a set or cycle, they are each sort of like relay racers passing the baton on from one to the other. They are circumnavigating the perimeter of the idea that is the central narrative of the album. So each of the songs is representative of one stretch of the landscape. Then you can sort of see that what they’ve traced is the central thing. So there are all these sorts of set pieces. They’re not really what the album is about; they’re just things that appear again and again and again: a sort of context.”

JLA also mentions in the liner notes that the first music he connected to was rock drumming – and the main performer in this piece is a rock drummer – Glenn Kotche (the drummer from Wilco).  Although this music has a connection to rock drumming – it’s more in it’s primal and raw energy than it’s rhythmic composition.   It’s scored for three different stations of percussion instruments (which Kotche plays), some live-electronic processing of Kotche’s playing, as well as electronically manipulated field recordings of nature.  This is by far the most visceral compositions that Adams has created so far – and definitely one of his best.
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The second disc, “Jenny Death” on the other hand is the most straightforward lyrically that Death Grips have released.  Musically it’s a much more punk sound – with lots of guitars (some provided by Nick Reinhart of Tera Melos as well as Julian Imsdahl) and sonically it’s aggressive and at times abrasive (such as in “Inatimate Sensation” where there’s a vocal part that sound like they are drilling through your eardrums”).  Lyrically this record often aims to shatter the way our minds are controlled and put in a state of isolation by the our technology and media.   I sincerely hope that this is not the end of Death Grips and that they will continue to make more music – but if this is in fact the end, and MC Ride’s last verse on the emotive final track on here, “On GP“, is the last Death Grips anyone will ever here – it’s a pretty phenomenal ending.
 

3 – Garden of Delete (Oneohtrix Point Never)

“Garden of Delete” is Oneohtrix Point Never’s seventh studio album and second album for Warp Records.  It’s incredibly sad and beautiful and completely terrifying.  It is the best Oneohtrix Point Never/Daneil Lopatin record so far – as well as the best thing that has come out of the whole vapor wave movement (a style that emerged in the early 2010s that use retro/80s technology/aesthetics in a nostalgic and sometimes parodic way – often using samples that are pitch shifted/chopped and screwed).  It uses this vapor wave sound as it’s primary sound pallet – but also expands this with drawing from metal, EDM, and industrial music.  The easiest outside influence to see on this record is from Daneil Lopatin touring with Nine Inch Nails – not only with the more aggressive industrial/metal and vibe on here at times, but in the mood and lyrics.

Lyrically/conceptually this this is one of the darkest records I’ve heard in a long time.  It’s a rather abstract record – so it’s a difficult one to talk about without projecting myself into my interpretation of the record, so I will only say a few things about it.  First of all – it should be noted that the title of the album, “Garden of Delete” is an acronym for GOD.  Although the lyrics are often chopped and screwed – the album comes with a lyric sheet which really helps in providing this programatic side of the album.  The lyrics are often nihilistic and hopeless.

And I should mention – if you chose to go down it – this thing is a fucking rabbit hole.  OPN cited a hypergrunge band, Kaos Edge, as a main influence on the album – come to learn the band was just made up by him…but he created an album from them as well as a website where you can hear their music and read the lyrics to their entire discography.  There’s also other stuff you can investigate if you care to – such as a fake interview with an alien named Ezra who has a blog, and real phone numbers in the lyrics…But all this shit is only cool because the music on here is so good that it makes you want to dive into this alternative universe.   GOD builds on the sonic pallet that OPN has created and paints something more cerebral and emotive than any of his previous work – it is easily one of the greatest electronic albums in the last few years.
 

2 – Synovial Joints (Steve Coleman and the Council of Balance)

Chicago based saxophonist/composer Steve Coleman’s “Synovial Joints” explores a concept of using the movement of the synovial joints in the human body, and how they pivot, flex and bend and applies to this concept throughout the composition.  He also uses a concept he developed called camouflage orchestration – in which he tunes into how an instrument sound can be distributed so they can be shifted in how they are perceived to be in the foreground, middle ground, and background – phasing them in and out of focus to a kaleidoscopic effect.  The album relies primarily on spontaneous composition from ideas he tapped into while getting his mind into a near-trance like state (which he describes more in depth in the liner notes).  This record is more accessible (this is relative…it’s still not really accessible to people who don’t like MBase/weird jazz music) than what Coleman has been doing recently and is his strongest record in a good long while.