BEST RELEASES OF 2009

Originally I was going to wait until mid-December to post this list, but D-Hags gave me free-rein to go ahead and share my wisdom'd opinions with the world. Citing that I've had nothing substantial to do with my day, and the only major up-coming record I'm psyched about (Xiu Xiu's Dear God, I Hate Myself) doesn't drop until 23 February 2010, well ... here you go.



Rose Pillar by Prurient (11" + Hardback Book, Heartworm Press)
The question isn't really where on this list Prurient should go, but which 2009 release should be on the list. Hands down, Rose Pillar earned its place as the year's best release. First of all, multimedia releases tend to get me wet, so when Heartworm Press announced that the new Prurient LP would actually be part of a book, needless to say I got pretty excited. 500 copies, no less!
This entire work is a dedication to a recently-deceased uncle, drawing on text from a memoir written by his Mother about "Stephen Feraca, the brilliant but troubled older brother, an anthropologist who was adopted into a Sioux tribe" (Heartworm Press). Text appears in stark white on black, accompanied by dreary photos of plants, insects, decaying machinery, collapsing buildings.
Visually, this project conveys the sort of dark loss and helplessness that so many other musical
projects try to convey by screaming about being lonely. "Feraca’s text is juxtaposed with Fernow’s collages of fallen empires, plant-life and industrial decline. The imagery presented is both stoic yet strangely profound and revealing as an analogy of death." (Heartworm Press) Prurient makes you feel lonely, without ever having to tell you he is.
Then comes the record: easily some of the strongest material as yet recoded. Similar in tone / feel to 2007's The Golden Chamber cassette, which vanished in a limited run of 44 copies. Dark symphonic loops and sounds of upturned earth, rusted plows, cracking mortar surround, attempt to bury, Fernow's own howling from the edge of human endurance. If "Spins The Worlds Wheel Again" isn't the track of the year, then I'm obviously far more gone than even I fear. The line "what does one do in paradise" has become a mantra to my year; whispered, pleading to the universe for direction; shouted, begging for a hand-out, hand-up, hand-me-down, anything to crack the void. I won't lie: I probably listen to this record far more than is healthy.


Always Wrong by Wolf Eyes (CD/LP, Hospital Productions)
Do I even listen to conventional music anymore? Sometimes, but what really stands out is more interesting to listen to. "Is that a drum? Broken synthesizer? Tape loop?" "Cymbal? Rusted metal? Guillotine?"
Wolf Eyes is up there with Prurient in the obscene-amount-of-releases category. So far in 2009, they've got 15 tapes, CDrs, lathe cuts, LPs, 7"s, CDs to their name, and that's only the stuff I can track down. 20 is probably a safe bet. That being said, Always Wrong is probably the closest thing to an "album" that they've released. Between live recordings, untitled single-sided lathe cuts, splits, and ongoing sound projects, Always Wrong feel like an album, though true to form, the Wolf boys use a limited palate of sounds for the recording.
Honestly, this falls somewhere between the electronic schizophrenia of 2004's Burned Mind (Sub Pop) and the disgusting open-grave of 2006's Human Animal (Sub Pop). Where Burned Mind came across as time spent in the studio goofing around, huffing Dust-Off and doing speed, Human Animal felt like a project, a singular idea fleshed out across eight tracks. Always Wrong is the marriage of the two, and yet individually neither; bastard whelp, perhaps, huddling on a dark stoop at the edge of Apocalypseville.
Percussion fills in for tapes and synth. The highs seem sharper. The lows seem deeper. The beat goes on. Mike Connelly's presence is palpable, but at the same time, Dilloway's absence is noticeable. Not that this is a weaker album because of it; FUCK NO. Always Wrong is a solid-jam, and I'm proud to say I've puked on the side of the road while "Broken Order" and "Always Wrong" pulsed in my car.


Wind's Poem by Mount Eerie (CD/2xLP, P.W. Elverum & Sun, Ltd.)
Have I mentioned that Phil Elverum is going to single-handedly save songwriting? I haven't? Oh, well Phil Elverum is going to single-handedly save the age-old art of songwriting. He is.
Remember "Samurai Sword" off of The Glow, pt. 2 (K Records) from way back in 2001? I love that track. The beat eluded me for months on end, and the guitars are less tonal than textural. That being said, you can tell that Phil's time in Norway a few years ago, and his interest in black metal, à la acts like Xasthur and Malkuth, is paying off. BUT: do not misunderstand. This is a Mount Eerie record. A "metal" Mount Eerie record is still a Mount Eerie record. Phil donned no corpse paint, shredded no vocal chords. He still sings about the night, and the dark, and the wind, and MOUNTAIN, and the sort of Zen introspection that convinced a lot of us at What-The-Heck Fest 2006 (when No Flashlight was unveiled) that Mr. Phil Elverum was the savior of lyrical-meditation, finally wrenching the title away from that hack, John Updike.
Also, he quotes Angelo Badalamenti's Twin Peaks compositions on "Between Two Mysteries," which pretty much makes me a bigger geek than you might think I am, but also cements a slightly sonically-uneven track when considering the album as a whole. Stuck between tracks of atmospheric whisp and amp rumble, "Between Two Mysteries" seems out of place with its marimba (?) line and synth brass. However, if you ever watched Twin Peaks, then the citation of Badalamenti's compositional work almost INSTANTLY keeps the post-paranoia mood that wafts between the trees of Wind's Poem.


Dead Times by Dead Times (cass, Aum War)
I found Dead Times by pure accident. Since I have no sort of solid spiritual / mystical beliefs, I can't thank fate or GOD or anything. I just have to say "oh, neat," which is great because this tape proudly declares that "Dead Times supports the war against the self and the other. Death to false."
Anyway, I have a cassette fetish, I do. When I see that a good band has a 250 limited run of hand-numbered cassettes with hand-screened inserts, I basically wet myself; better than sex, I swear.
This tape opens with a tentatively plucked minor-key progression on acoustic guitar. Enter the
weeping, then the slowly multiplying voice, repeating "I'm so devastated / I get nothing out of life / I can't see anything in the future / I wish that they had just killed me too that day."
From there on, Dead Times turns into some sort of weird offspring from Law of the Rope, whom would have been on this list, but released nothing at all in 2009. BUMMED? Not really. Dead Times make up for LotR's (ha ha) inactivity.
Dead Times is part tape-loop, part power electronics, part plundercore (at least from
Bergman's Det sjunde inseglet, as far as I can tell), weirdo black metal, evil dance music. Guitars cover a chanting funeral procession in plague-swept Medieval Sweden, ceremonial death-drums keep the march, and Belial splits a skull and offers some shriek-soaked advice about something. I really can not get over how good this tape is. I have high hopes for Dead Times and I sincerely hope there's more in the future.


Sefirah Gevurah by Malkuth (CD/LP, Hospital Productions)
When you mention American Black Metal, you run into the same sort of drama that follows scene-kids, the world of gay-dating, and high school. Don't believe me? Allow me to take a very small cue from Pitchfork Media (I know, I'm sorry) and show you this. As a musician, I don't really give a shit about what country or continent you're from when it coms to being TRÜE. If you're good, I'll listen to you; if you suck ass (in the bad way), then you suck ass (in the bad way).
That being said, Malkuth do not suck ass in the bad way. They suck huge cock, which I would consider a positive attribute, and fairly pleasurable to most parties involved. Who doesn't like a good blowjob? Well, me, but that's not the point. Enough sexual word-play.
Sefirah Gevurah consists of six tracks of blistering black metal in the vein of Darkthrone, if Darkthrone had better equipment when they started and turned down the high-end on their amps. At first, I found it really weird that these guys are from NYC, but when I stop to consider how I feel about visiting / living in NYC, I realize that black metal is a pretty good expression of my feelings. Sure, living in a cabin and singing about how much you hate everything works; you're working out of (self-imposed) exile, talking from experience. But what if you're surround by millions of people? That makes you some sort of masochistic warrior, right?
That being said, there are no lyrics posted anywhere (that I've found), so maybe they're doing the whole Wolves In The Throne Room thing. Probably not. Hard to tell. I feel pretty safe assuming that they have misanthropic lyrics because, goddamnit, they're a black metal band. HAIL.


Imperial Horizon by Kevin Drumm (CD, Hospital Productions)
By now I realize that I basically should have just posted the 2009 Hospital Productions catalog and been done with it, right? Look, don't blame me because Dominick Fernow runs one of the best damn labels / stores in the country.
Kevin Drumm: maybe you know him from Gastr del Sol and Brice-Glace, or even his more recent, 2007 collaboration with Prurient, All Are Guests In The House Of The Lord.
If you don't know of him, what you need to know is that he's straddling, sometimes strangling, the borders between Art Installation, Musician, and Scientist. Lately he's been working with suspended tonality, digging into a few notes / frequencies as possible and then seeing how far they'll reach.
Imperial Horizon is such an experiment. Consisting of one track, "Just Lay Down and Forget It," Drumm explores a very warm chord for one hour, four minutes, fifty-three seconds. Frequencies get boosted, reduced, doppler waves build, pulse, vibrate your body. This is what I imagine sensory deprivation must be like. The label description echoes my sentiments: "Imperial Horizon by Kevin Drumm is a further examination into sustained tone ... stretching out minimalism to unreached heights of serene ambient.lulling electronic drones slowly transform over the course of the hour plus piece in constant flux,echoing both an existential terror and Zen calm. mutations grow so quietly only the body opens to identify this change while the mind closes. the ephemeral and seeming lightness of the tones hang with taut balance in contrast to the method in which they are overlapped and rotated with deadly weight. How wildly divergent emotions rise, hover, and fall using so little is a mystery that only Kevin Drumm can provide. While you may not find an answer, you can certainly get lost in the question." (Hospital Productions)


Blizzard by Robert Turman + Aaron Dilloway (CD, Hanson Records)
I was skeptical at first. The Turman/Dilloway cassplit from 2008 is fairly perfect, all things
considered, so when the duo put out a CDr collaboration, I got a little worried. I like tapes; the hiss is always there, due to the physical act of the tape running across the stereo head. Aaron Dilloway works with tape loops. They are dirty, grimy, and they rumble with purpose. My concern was either A., this would be a rumbly CD that only hoped to sound like a tape, or B., this would be a far too polished affair.
Actually, it's a little bit of B., but un/fortunately, since I live in South Carolina, I never got to be anywhere close to where Turman/Dilloway toured, meaning I never heard any of this initially tour-only material.
Synthesizers and tapes are all that go into this CD, which I find confusing to a degree; I swear there's more going on. Granted, Turman's tape work is a little more precise than Dilloway's, and with Aaron manning the synths, that jumbled tape-decay I was expecting is absent.
So: what do I think? Blizzard is appropriately named. This release is cold and dark. I wish this release had existed when I was living in Fairbanks, AK. What sounds like Shakuhachi drifts over slowly pulsing synth drone. Short tape-loops flutter in bursts through delay FX. In all honesty, this is what it sounded like walking to B.C.'s cabin in -40°F weather. The pulsing crunch of legs moving through snow. Doppler waves of cars / trains passing in the distance. Static crackle in the air created by snow and ice. Too cold to stop, too cold to really want to keep walking, so you go on auto-pilot and keep. fucking. walking. The promise of beer, cigarettes, and sex is enough to get any college student through thigh-deep snow, I suppose.


Monoliths & Dimensions by SUNN O))) (CD/2xLP, Southern Lord)
Sunn O))) is a project that, by all accounts, should have run its course by now. In the hands of less musicians, men of infinitely more limited vision, 2005's Black One would have been the first release and, more than likely, the last of any interest from a one-trick-pony.
Fortunately, Stephen O'Malley et al are fiends of purpose, men (and women) of vision! Sure, working to sustain guitar rumble is central to the project, but the way in which they wield this tool is what manages to keep Sunn O))) at the forefront of modern, avant-garde composition.
Monoliths & Dimensions hands over the opaque blackness of the grave in exchange for the strangely vacant blackness of medieval mass in a barely-lit cathedral. You hear the crushing chime of the bells, the voice of the deacon calling you to rise, but all around you the rats scurry under pews, nails dig at slate walls, and from somewhere behind you a ragged breath creeps across your neck. Attila Csihar's vocals are not only welcome, but as much a staple of Sunn O))) as O'Malley + Anderson's SUNN brand amps now. That raspy cry from beyond, that deep growling, near-raptuous glossolalia. When the End of Days arrives, Sunn O))) will echo the Archangels' horns.


All Reflections Drained by Xasthur (CD/2xLP/cass, Hydra Head)
Really quickly: Xasthur is a black metal band. Most of what is released by Xasthur is done by one man, Malefic, a.k.a. Scott Conner. So: Malefic is Xasthur. Sort of like The Representative from Corwood plays at Jandek concerts. Okay?
What makes Xasthur so impressive is that the metal made by Malefic isn't of the same ilk as post-1988 Bathory, or Mayhem, or Gorgoroth. Overt violence towards others becomes violence towards the self. Aggression and strength are alchemically transmuted into depression and weakness. Misanthropy is the name of the game, and instead of an axe, Malefic wields his own isolated persona. What sets All Reflections Drained apart from other Xasthur releases is that the drums are real, which didn't start happening until 2007. Also, there are way more keyboards and synths on this album than on pretty much any other Xasthur release (which is a lot, considering).
This release is pretty draining--physically, mentally, emotionally. Xasthur is known for long, meandering tracks, but the overabundance of synth reverb makes me feel less like moshing, more like I'm being suffocated in a stuffy room, attending the wake of some distant relative. The Stranger anyone?


Passage by Pocahaunted with Bobb Bruno and Cameron Stallones (LP, Troubleman Unlimited)
This is not my favorite Pocahaunted release by far. However, this is one of their most focused
releases and, sadly, their last full-on, honest-to-god full-length releases. R.I.P. Pocahaunted,
I'mma gunna miss you.
Anyway. Passages is basically what people expect from Pocahaunted. Reverb-drenched vocal wailing hidden behind simplistic guitar patterns and some percussion. Very trance inducing, neo-tribal, psychedelic-fueled spirt quest sort of stuff that seems drenched up for the secret parts of the 1960s. This isn't Haight-Ashbury, this is a sweat lodge in the Lakota nation. This is Quetzalcoatl rising out of you peyote soup and buring an axe of pure light in your chakra.
Fortunately, this release brings good production values to the table, as well as some pretty
interesting guitar / keyboard / percussion flourishes that you won't find on other Pocahaunted
releases. Also, this is one of their slowest burning releases. When I was ripping this vinyl onto my computer, I didn't realize the record was playing at half-speed until I was about halfway through the first-track. Even then, this is what I imagine it must be like to have your chakras cleaned thoroughly.

HONORABLE MENTIONS
The Lucifer Rising Suite by Bobby Beausoleil (4xLP, The Ajna Offensive)
This incredible box only gets honorable mention because all the music was recorded in 1976 (in
prison) and has slowly been releases, re-released, and bootlegged over the years. Worth having (and damnit, one day I will), but the presentation is what's new.


Michigan by Various Artists (6xLP, Hanson Records + RRRecords + Chrondritic Sound)
Partially, I feel like this would have been cheating. 6 LPs, one artist per side, which makes this a relatively evil box set of music from Michigan's best noisemakers (literally). Besides, I already put Dilloway and Wolf Eyes on the list. Is that fair to give them double slots?
A. Princess Dragon-Mom
B. Raven Strain
C. Redrot
D. Aaron Dilloway
E. Tovah D-Day
F. Charlie Draheim
G. Hive Mind
H. Mammal
I. Evenings
J. Cotton Museum
K. Sick Llama
L. Wolf Eyes