KILLED in CARS

What years actually mean is something that constantly changes. As more and more music is unearthed, the tidy timelines of developments in sound are continually undercut. In reality, music is something that develops in remote places randomly. I only feel now, 600+ albums in, that I have a small grasp on 2009. Yet this year, a big one for the blog (now more or less a site, and on a new platform) and for me (with fatherhood and a move away from NYC), took on its own personality sooner than most. I returned time and again to a prevailing darkness in music, a weirdness and pressure that was obvious in politics yet manifested strangely, sometimes subtlely, in music. That is, while releases can be dramatic, the dread in many records didn’t seem to be put on. It truly seemed reflective of a shifting worldview, where only the most extreme sounds, large and small, could seem relevant. The divide no longer felt like one between commercial and artistic, but rather one marked by escapist and realist. My selections seem to lean towards the latter. We’ll see in a year if that’s still the case. (Paul)

The below list is the top twenty albums from 2010, as voted on by seven contributers to Killed in Cars, past and present. In total, ballots were cast for 133 albums; obviously consensus was far from reached, and as such, many fantastic albums were omitted. Killed in Cars has always strived to be an eclectic destination, and I think this list, in the end, represents us well. Individual lists will be posted in the comments. (Matt)

20. anbb - Mimikry (raster-noton)

While listening to Mimikry, I immediately think “Coil on raster-noton” more or less. Perhaps this is simplistic, and there are differences, but if you like that description, stop reading and seek out the record. What impressed me enough to include this album was the lack of sterility that is common on r-n releases. This record isn’t just aesthetically similar to what the imagined pairing of Coil to the label would be, but in a sense a pointy, bright jigsaw of dread and malice rolled into one. Sadly, this represents my take on the prevailing mood of our times. (Paul)

19. Gate - Republic of Sadness (Ba Da Bing!)

For Dead C devotees, 2010 has been quite a boon. Not only did the scuzzy Kiwis release the stellar Patience—a return to their meandering noise-rock excursions after the buzzing seas of Secret Earth—band members Bruce Russell and Michael Morley put out excellent solo efforts. Morley’s A Republic of Sadness, under the Gate moniker, does go the electronic route, but filters it through his distinctive, misery-fed approach. The album allows no waste or hubris: a bedrock of cheap, canned, simplistic beats; monotonous vocals snailing in a dull drone haze. But somehow it all works, and begs a return visit when you have everything and nothing to mope about. (Stephen) 

18. Aboombong - Asynchronic (Self-Released)

Aboombong’s digital release Asynchornic opens with the killer “Never Been to Konono,” a sprawling eleven minutes of field recordings, mounting drones, and danceable steel drums—a top squalor anthem for night folk. While, for me, the rest of the album lags (relative to the stunning opener), there is plenty here to be mightily impressed. Check the linked bandcamp for free downloads and support options. (Matt)

17. Sabine Ercklentz & Andrea Neumann - LAlienation (Herbal International)

As the tides have changed in realm of KiC affiliated nerds over the years from progressive indie, to noise, to avant-classical and EAI, I have begun to feel more and more out of place. While my appreciation for music spans all genres, and the sounds created by EAI musicians are of particular interest to me, I find it impossible to get all the way through a record like Good Morning Good Night. Along come Sabine Ercklentz & Andrea Neumann with LAlienation, playing a near-funky equivalent to the “classics” of the genre and maintaining a charming sense of humor. Humor in the arts, according to my potentially twisted neuroses, is often interpreted as a self-conscious form of honesty. That is what I appreciate about LAlienation, and I certainly think it says something about EAI as a whole that a record like this now exists. Or in any event, EAI has at least been around long enough now to make fun of itself. For me, that is what validates the whole scene. It also doesn’t hurt that LAlienation is a damn good record. (Alex)

16. Hong Chulki - Amplified WC (Ghost & Son)

“This simulation, if you will, spits out some real face-melting drone. It never reaches tinnitus inducing volumes or densities, but shit is popping. A nearly constant howl remains in the background, as a crunching buzz fades in and out, culminating in moments of short-circuit saturation. Amplified WC provides 20 minutes of not-music that any noise fan can latch onto. It’s appeal is wide; the “intellectual noiser” can mediate on its implications on the nature of performance, while the everyman noise-nick will appreciate the physicality of its sound, how tangible each pulsation is.” (Matt)

15. The North Sea - Bloodlines (Type)

It’s been a damn fine year for Brad Rose. Between his new, awesome project with his wife (Eden Hemming Rose) Altar Eagle, the ‘rad as fuck’ The Origin of Chaul as Ajilvsga with Nathan Young (scroll down), countless stellar Digitalis releases, and the visceral pile of noise that is Bloodlines, I really do not know how he does it. Either way, Brad might get my vote for musician of the year. (Matt)

14. Mieczysław Weinberg / Fyodor Druzhinin - Weinberg: Complete Sonatas for Viola Solo; Sonata op. 28 / Druzhinin: Sonatas for Viola Solo (Neos)

This is just to say that I am so fascinated with Mieczyslaw Weinberg and Fyodor Druzhinin’s sonatas for solo viola (+ Weinberg’s op. 28, which includes piano) in member of the Berliner Solistenoktett Julia Rebekka Adler’s garthknox-enesque interpretations that I do not have—and do not want to have if that is the price of sonic rapture—conditions to write a review on this 2 CD set. Everything therein is so well accomplished, proper, and apt in the most unbearable, perfectionist fashion, that it defies Plato’s notion of the un-actuality of perfection (that for him has to remain unattainable, as an intangible ideal). From the technically unflawed and emotionally drenched renditions (come on, it is high time to drop the cliché opposing technique to passion), to the choice of forgotten works by forgotten composers, sound engineering, cover image (remarkable how they managed to turn Julia into an over-maked up wax doll, side by side with the inviting curly end of an ancient viola) to the booklet, which is informative but to the point, refraining from risking phoney ‘analyses’ or throwing up embarrassing eulogies (this part I can hereby do in my hyperbolic comments).

This is a benchmark release the shunning of which might be harmful to your health, and the fruition of which might kill you. Of pleasure. (Doc)

13. oOoOO - oOoOO (Disaro)

This summer I was at a flea market in the preserved historic part of my hometown with two very good friends and a girl I would soon fall head-over-heals for, shopping for gigantic RCA videodiscs and toy pianos, when one of them turned to me and asked “have you heard of witch house?” Soon after that I was on the then-offshoot tumblr version of KiC listening to “Sedsumting.” Soon after that “Nosummer4u” became an anthem for the bizarre personal era I had found myself in the midst of. Soon after that “Pckrfcrmx” found its way on to my Summer Mix. Soon after that I found out that it was a Lady Gaga song. Soon after that I didn’t give a fuck. Soon after that I fell for the aforementioned girl. A few months after that we parted ways. Soon after that I declared oOoOO the second best record of the year. Soon after that KiC said “fuck you, it’s the thirteenth.” (Alex)

12. Demdike Stare - Liberation Through Hearing (Modern Love)

Miles Whittaker and Sean Canty presented an electronic album with an elevated sense of perspective and scale with Liberation Through Hearing. With standard techno, quite often the sound is based on the mechanics of the music, a look at the moving parts and shifting focus from part to part. Liberation, however, to take the analogy further, isn’t the moving parts of the factory, but is the distant effects of that factory, a minute building on the horizon you can see while you’re tasting the fumes. This scale is the album’s trademark, and more importantly, its breakthrough. (Paul)

11. Koboku Senjû - Selektiv hogst (Sofa Music)

“The sound herein is warm and inviting — friendly almost. Selektiv hogst may be the closest an EAI album has come to being a summertime jam for me, with the no-input mixer re-invoking the cicada imagery of Semi-Impressionism. Though their solo contributions deserve merit, Taxt and Reinertsen frequently provide the harmonic backdrop for the remaining three’s meandering — Tetuzi’s scratching, Lønning’s muted squeaks, and of course Toshi’s outbursts. However this affair isn’t just a lazy July evening down at the lake; like a heat induced thunderstorm, this collective manages to frequently reassert their obtuse tendencies, spoiling and dispelling the summer daze.” (Matt)

10. Thomas Ankersmit - Live in Utrecht (Ash International)

Tapes, synthesizers, and a treated alto merge on Thomas Ankersmit’s debut album to form a hissing mess of noise and improv dynamite. Truly immersive stuff that all at once overwhelms and invites the listener. Tell us more Thomas, please. (Matt)

09. Ajilvsga - The Origin of the Chaul (Dial Square Tapes)

While I’ve covered this before, I should note that I wait until the end of the year to actually decide on my favorite album. However, upon first hearing The Origin of the Chaul, I had a good idea what my selection would be. As time has worn on, I have continually returned to this mammoth, multi-cassette release. With drone, there are many characteristics you can point to as the reason you like the music, but I feel with music like this, it is the intangibles that define the record. How does this record make you feel? Can it do more than promote an emotional response? By this standard, I must say The Origin of the Chaul certainly can. It not only evokes a multitude of emotions in me, but creates its own atmosphere, a sense of drama, a sense of dread, longing and repulsion and distance. Why choose to envelop ones self in these feelings? Perhaps it is the size of this record, the power and scope of the sounds so large that the sheer power involved is magnetic, the urge to fly into the event horizon in the cold and the dark. Perhaps it is simply giving in to something that feels larger than life and ceasing thought for a moment. If you take anything from this list, it is this: listen to this music. (Paul)

08. Friedrich Cerha - Spiegel–Monumentum–Momente (KAIROS)

“These works catapult contemporary atonalism-serialism to new grounds, and by the same token place Friedrich Cerha’s legacy at the same rarefied level of composers such as Giacinto Scelsi, Luigi Nono, Morton Feldman, Alfred Schnittke, Iannis Xenakis, Sofia Gubaidulina, György Ligeti, Per Nørgård, Stefan Wolpe, Galina Ustvolskaya, and Salvatore Sciarrino. Renditions and the sound engineering therein have to be taken into account as decisive factors in this remarkable event.

In order to enjoy these works by Friedrich Cerha one has to learn how to progress by actively not advancing. Call Cerha’s blend of atonalism a game of unveiling fruition vantage points whilst opting to statuesque hyperesthesia. It takes all the perception speed one is able to attain in order to remain in the same place; and only then thoroughly enjoy his music.” (Doc)

07. Little Women - Throat (AUM Fidelity)

Ordering my favorite albums of the year annually proves a tedious if not impossible task. But even not listening to Throat for several months can’t remove it from my top slot. I simply didn’t hear a record like it in 2010—no collection of songs as defiantly themselves. Perhaps, no certainly, Throat’s appeal and strength lies in its seamless marriage of order and violence—a methodical madness similar, well, to the throat itself. That mess of mucus channels, those grooves and glands absorbing and birthing sound—all of it chaos and yet working toward an invisible purpose. So while comparing Throat to a throat may be a bit…easy, Little Women affirms just how well the title fits on the atavistic final track. There the band goes primal, displaying how the throat behaves when tools are forsaken and hunger is flexed. (Stephen)

06. Alessandro Bosetti - Zwölfzungen (Sedimental)

Outside of Taku Unami & Annette Krebs’ Motubachii, Zwölfzungen is the weirdest thing I’ve heard from 2010. Herein, Bosetti constructs twelve tracks, each in a different language (some of which are of his creation). Truly a bizarre, yet gorgeous exploration of sound and linguistics. (Matt)

05. Hammeriver - Hammeriver (Mikroton)

The timbre of [Hammeriver] is established early, with the opening track being an informed exploration into Alice Coltrane’s “Ohnedaruth,” from her 1968 album A Monastic Trio—a profoundly moving tribute to her then-recently deceased husband. ‘Ohnedaruth,’ which is sanskrit means compassion, was John Coltrane’s spirit name and also a chant performed by himself and his last group in concert. And there is little mistaking the spirit of the late Coltrane that moves through every moment of it; that same spirit that dwells in improvised music to this day. John Coltrane’s powerful later period set so much of the groundwork for thousands of free improvisational and even electro-acoustic arrangements to come. On Hammeriver’s version, “Second Stabbing (Ohnedaruth)”, all of the essential hallmarks are present: the underlaying drone, the textural rattles, a free rhythm, the splash of cymbals and bells, the ghost of Coltrane and Pharoah’s sax. All a familiar flavor that’s been toyed with over and over again and absolutely brilliantly conquered by this group.

A similar ethereal tone infects the remainder of the album. “E” is the only other track rooted in any sort of composition. It is more of a set of instructions laid out by Cooper in which all of the musicians must base all of their playing around the note E (which is quite amazing when listening to the depth that they take it). The other three tracks (“First Free,” “DD,” “Heartbreaker”) are group improvisations that swell and blossom, moving effortlessly between and above specific genres, settling nowhere but beyond. If I were to give out awards for the musical statements of the year, Hammeriver would be my first nominee.” (the Cookshop)

04. Graham Lambkin & Jason Lescalleet - Air Supply (Erstwhile)

“Many observed that The Breadwinner sounded much more like a Lambkin album; an album grounded in field recordings, augmented around its edges by Jason Lescalleet. So then, one might say that Air Supply is more so a Lescalleet long-player, featuring more prominently his manipulations. But despite these difference, the principal theme—an uneasy reinterpretation of the everyday—is ever present and equally as compelling as their formative work. This is easily one of the best albums of the year.” (Matt)

03. Michael Pisaro / Taku Sugimoto - 2 seconds / b minor / wave (Erstwhile)

In a post on erstwords, Michael Pisaro wrote, “…I wonder if some of the most fragile seeds planted in the mid-century, by Cage and the experimental tradition, by the certain subgroups within free jazz and improvised music communities, and by the quiet experimental tendencies in Japan…have, after spending many years underground started to spring to life: invisibly – everywhere.” 2 seconds / b minor / wave is the fulfillment of this idea: two individuals, of American and Japanese nationality, (almost) independently arriving at compositions that are incredibly synchronous. And then, in turn, combining their developments to form one of 2010’s most adventurous and sublimely beautiful records. (Matt) 

02. John Butcher & Rhodri Davies - Carliol (Ftarri)

”[Carliol] is at once calm in its limited amount of sounds occurring at one time, and intense in its proper balance at all times. Speed is varied just so, textures are deployed in a timely manner, a most of all pitch and volume are both masterfully manipulated. Each sound Davies creates has a retort from Butcher’s sax. When writers refer to the textures of sound, they are often referring to a combination of a pattern at a pitch and how much it makes sense with the other sounds. By that definition, this album transcends the typical textural affair in that it doesn’t just unleash a progression of unrelated, though beautiful textures, but it rather has great compositional development that happens to be adorned with imaginative textures throughout.” (Paul) 

01. Yellow Swans - Going Places (Type)

“Another year, another Yellow Swans release; did this duo not break up? Indeed they did almost two years ago, but splits-ville came and went, as did two 2009 releases, and now finally Going Places. Throughout the last decade, Pete Swanson and Gabriel Mindel Saloman have attracted an army (by noise standards) of devoted fans, many of which secretly wish this Type release was not the group’s swan song. Well I am here to say this is it (or is it?…) and everything will be alright; maybe this is a good thing?

“Malarky!” you cry, “I thought one of the first axioms of choice theory was that more is better?” Okay, you got me. I am probably just rationalizing this situation, trying to come to terms with it in my own way. However, I could not imagine a better bookend to the Swans’ career than Going Places. Instead of continuing the ballistic speed of five CD-Rs a year, with this album Swanson and Saloman hit one last home-run in a catalog already littered with gems, opting to be Sandy Koufax instead of Brett Favre.

Oh right, what does Going Places sound like? Those who have played At All Ends and Deterioration to death already have the basic picture. With this release, the Swans focus on the droning side of their sound, throwing in some lush swells and hints of crackling noise for good measure. But Going Places is far from a genre exercise or a linear progression from the duo’s recent output. No, it is an extraordinarily meticulous release, further developing the soundscapes explored on records past. Maybe partly due to a less hectic schedule, songs like “Opt Out” breathe in ways I have seldom heard from the Yellow Swans. Awash in the feedback there is a subtle pulse to this record, wherein a majority of the 45 minute duration is underscored by a minimal, down-tempo beat. Gone are the days of schizophrenic rhythm found in Dreamed or even the slow evolving backbone of Psychic Secession.

Through these elements, the Swans pull the listener in for an intimate experience, exhuming Swanson and Saloman’s deepest emotions for this almost decade long project and leaving it all to bare. Far from merely self-indulgent, Going Places can serve as a catharsis for their fans — as I previously mentioned, serving as a medium for acceptance. Equally as important, Going Places is one of the best records the Swans have released and is the best new noise album I have heard in a good while.” (Matt)

(via songz)