STREAM! Our Favorite Albums of 2016

Holy Wave – Freaks of Nurture

About the album via Levitation…

Holy Wave are from Austin, Texas and uphold the Lone Star State’s long-standing reputation for top-notch lysergic sounds. The band consists of multi-instrumentalists Joey Cook, Ryan Fuson, Kyle Hager, Julián Ruiz, and Dustin Zozaya. Holy Wave released their first LP in 2011, Knife Hits, followed by The Evil Has Landed EP in 2012. Both albums were were paired up on a 2013 collection called Evil Hits, their first release on The Reverberation Appreciation Society.

2014 brought their second LP Relax, produced by Erik Wofford (The Black Angels, Explosions In The Sky, My Morning Jacket), which took the band on extensive U.S. and European tours…read more
 

 

Sam Kogon – Psychic Tears

About the album via Beyond Beyond is Beyond…

From its surreal title and occult cover art to its grand buffet of vintage sounds and period production moves, Sam Kogon’s Psychic Tears is a lavish, painstakingly detailed work of modern-retro guitar pop. But what distinguishes the Brooklyn artist from the psychedelic pop herd is not his access to Mellotrons, Vox Continentals, and Russian fuzz boxes. It is Kogon’s vast and fluid command of chamber pop harmony and arrangement. It’s his long-arc melodic genius and his sweet, understated crooning—the real reasons why we revere Sir Paul, Brian Wilson, The Shins, or New York’s own baroque pop institution, The Left Banke, for whom Kogon served as lead singer during a short-lived reunion in 2015…read more
 

 

Tortoise – The Catastrophist

About the album via Thrill Jockey…

Simply put, Tortoise has spent nearly 25 years making music that defies description. While the Chicago-based instrumental quintet has nodded to dub, rock, jazz, electronica and minimalism throughout its revered and influential six-album discography, the resulting sounds have always been distinctly, even stubbornly, their own.

It’s a fact that remains true on “The Catastrophist,” Tortoise’s first studio album in nearly seven years. And it’s an album where moody, synth-swept jams like the opening title track cozy up next to hypnotic, bass-and-beat missives like “Shake Hands With Danger” and a downright strange cover of David Essex’s 1973 radio smash sung by U.S. Maple’s Todd Rittmann. Throughout, the songs transcend expectations as often as they delight the eardrums…read more
 

 

Night Beats – Who Sold My Generation

About the album via Heavenly Recordings…

Night Beats play pure psychedelic R&B music that spikes the punch and drowns your third eye in sonic waves of colour. Theirs is a bastard blues, contorted and distorted into new shapes for 21st century wastoids — once tasted never forgotten. This is music to melt your sorry little minds.

Make no mistake: their new album Who Sold My Generation sounds like it has been created against a backdrop of burning Stars and Stripes flags and with the whiff of napalm hanging in the air — an alternative universe where ‘Helter Skelter’ is the national anthem and Charlie Manson is still on the loose. Acid-test heaviness is Night Beats’ currency, but this is no out-right nostalgia trip either. Instead of Nixon and Vietnam, Night Beats have their own epoch of God and guns and bombs and drones to rail against…or flee from. Besides, bad vibrations, blues jams and id-shattering explorations are timeless pursuits – why shouldn’t today’s young generation be allowed to take a ride down the slippery spiral that sits within the centre of each of us?…read more
 

 

Dungen – Häxan

About the album via Mexican Summer…

In between the release of Dungen’s most recent two albums (2010’s Skit I Allt and 2015’s Allas Sak), the beloved Stockholm quartet was asked to create an original score to Lotte Reiniger’s 1926 touchstone The Adventures of Prince Achmed, understood to be the oldest surviving full-length animated feature film. Inspired by the work and the characters – Prince Achmed, Peri Banu, Aladdin, the Sorcerer, and most of all, the Witch – the members of Dungen immersed themselves in the groundbreaking visual language of this landmark film.

Häxan (translation: “The Witch”) is Dungen’s first all-instrumental album. Produced by Mathias Glavå, and recorded, mixed, and edited by hand to tape entirely in the analog domain, Häxan was sequenced away from the linear narrative of the film. This process helped create a path of its own, capturing the rawness and spontaneity present in the studio sessions and a loose, abstract, fragmented collage feel. Dense with dissonant free-form rock-outs, haunting ambient passages, and gorgeously cinematic soundscapes, Häxan is an album that stands outside the presence of its primary inspiration. Moody, evocative, stormy, and brimming with life, Häxan provides both a tacit summation of the Dungen journey until now, and gives the beloved group a chance to stretch out like never before…read more
 

 

Adrian Younge – Something About April II

About the album via Linear Labs…

In the four years since the release of Something About April, Adrian Younge has been coined America’s black genius: the evocation of analog vestige in a digital era. His majestic music has garnered him reverence, likened to Ennio Morricone’s best work and the Beatles’ tenacity to create new sounds. Making an indelible impression on modern vinyl heads and producers alike (having been sampled by DJ Premier, Jay-Z, Common, 50 Cent) the Something About April brand is an axiom to the modern “Breakbeat,” and Linear Labs is happy to announce its successor: Something About April II.

Recorded with a collection of rare instruments, Something About April II advances Younge’s musical paradigm with enterprising concepts, and grander compositions, synthesizing the boundaries between dark American soul, and classic European cinema…read more
 

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