Best 50 Albums of 2010...Plain and Simple...

50) Warpaint - The Fool
49) Cloudland Canyon - Fin Eaves
48) Best Coast - Crazy for You
47) Woven Hand - The Thrashing Floor
46) Javelin - No Mas
45) Soundpool - Mirrors in Your Eyes
44) Koen Holtkemp - Gravity / Bees
43) Future Islands - In Evening Air
42) Barn Owl - Ancestral Star
41) Crocodiles - Sleep Forever
40) Jonas Reinhardt - Powers of Audition
39) Sleepy Sun - Fever
38) Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest
37) Nurse with Wound and Larsen - Erroneous: a selection of Errors
36) Twin Sister Moon - Then Fell the Ashes
35) The Fall - Your Future, Our Clutter
34) Ceremony - Rocket Fire
33) Xela - The Devine
32) Sun City Girls - Funeral Mariarchi
31) Gary War - Police Water
30) U.S. Christmas - Run Thick in the Night
29) Wild Nothing - Gemini
28) Morton Feldman - For Phillip Guston
27) Rangda - False Flag
26) Mugstar - Lime
25) The Vandermark 5 - The Horse Jumps / The Ship is Gone
24) Flying Lotus - Cosmagramma
23) Chrome - Blood on the Moon
22) Wooden Shjips - Volume 2
21) Wolvserpent - Blood Seed
20) Villages - The Last Whole Earth
19) Boduf Songs - This Alone Above All Else in Spite of Everything
18) Wadada Leo Smith and Ed Blackwell - The Blue Mountain's Sun Drummer
17) Eddie Current Suppression Ring - Rush to Relax
16) Four Tet - There is Love in You
15) Legendary Pink Dots - Seconds Late for the Brighton Line
14) Grinderman - 2
13) Agalloch - Marrow of the Spirit
12) Locrian - The Crystal World
11) Magda - From the Fallen Page
10) Coil - Colour Sound Oblivion
09) J.G. Thirlwell - Manorexia
07) The Soft Moon - S/T
06) Swans - My Father Will Guide Me up a Rope to the Sky
05) Umberto - Prophecy of the Black Widow
04) Zola Jesus - Stridulum
03) Emeralds - Does it Look Like I'm Here?
02) Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Before Today
01) Blessure Grave - Judged by Twelve, Carried by Six

Watch Blessure Grave "Open or Shut" Video

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Locrian - The Crystal World (2010)

Chicago based duo (now trio) Locrian are the epitome of the current Avant Metal Scene. Devising a brilliant pastiche of Noise, Doom, Drone and Black Metal, the result is a highly intriguing journey.

Based on the 1964 novel by J.G. Ballard about a doctor specializing in the treatment of leprousy, the caustic overtones make for an intense scenario. The compositions feel loose and improvisational and that's a format I'm consistently fond of. This is a nearly stream of consciousness aesthetic that is extremely dismal and chaotic yet pleasant and mature amidst the build-up and deconstruction.

Minimal synthesizer/keyboard drones and sometimes agressive sometimes buried growling vocals lead into quiet tribal drumming and patient guitar swells. The desperate and apocalyptic tension gives way to a crescendo of noisy blackened doom. The e-bowed guitar is reminiscent of Nachtmystium's album "Instinct:Decay" (Blake Judd has actually joined them on a previous outing). The second movement of this double length record is an epic single track of nearly an hour.

After seeking a tasteful merger of Black Metal and Drone for quite a while, I've stumbled upon it here. Experiencing the intensity of this group's live show earlier this year was quite an experience as well. In fact, it was one of the best I've ever had.

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Klaus Schulze - Mirage (1977)

A stunning piece from a still underrated pioneer. Beginning his career as drummer for Tangerine Dream and leaving in 1970 to found Ash Ra Tempel, Schulze has made an indelible mark on Ambient and synth based music in general. Everyone in these genres has been incredibly influenced by his work. With over 60 solo albums he still strikes an occasional chord with me on albums to this day.

Utilizing analog synth, non-modular Moog, Farfisa and Mellotron and experimenting with strange electronic samples accompanied by a doom-like bassline, this is easily his darkest and best album. Lush atmospheres created here are reminiscent of Eno's Ambient 1 or Apollo. A warm and hypnotizing journey through 70's avant keyboard dreaminess.

The liner notes say it all:

"Music is a dream without the isolation of sleep. In fact whilst listening to music, your ego is living. But your universal ego, your principle watchs of your self ego is taking a new level of participation, the dream is reality because your are living the dream and your dreams control your reality. The supreme reality is creativity (all kinds of art) which takes you back to your mental origins. The musical theory is perfection, sometimes never obtained. The concept is a mental reaction, the process of movement and change, the basis of mankind. Music is the background to a mental picture, but the exact interpretation must be made by the listener, hence the music is only half composed and the listener himself should attack the composition to gain a mental repercussion. The listener has to add the meaning. The principles of music are to make the listener powerful and happy to endure our dying planet like by using their own creativity and being aware of emotion."

Schulze is a god. Eno got most of the credit.

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Trisome 21 - Million Lights (1987)

Taking their name after the condition known as Down Syndrome (for reasons unknown to me), Brothers Phillipe and Herve eventually created this definitive French Coldwave classic. The first two records are also solid but this is the one I find most cohesive and accessible.

Meandering through dark Ambient synthesizer interludes and banging yet lush drum sequencing,, they accomplish an oddly romantic hybrid of Joy Division, Dead Can Dance and early EBM. This is a dreamy, quirky, cerebral and impressive record.

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Legendary Pink Dots - Seconds Late for the Brighton Line (2010)

Three decades and over fourty albums on and the Dots still fail to disappoint me. This follow up to the accessible pop deviation that was 2008's Plutonium Blonde sees Ka-Spel and Knight returning to their trademark Post-Industrial and Neo-Folk brooding that we know and love.

Eschewing guitars and drums, they rely on heavily psychedelic keyboard and synth sounds, producing a somber and melancholy yet warm and intellectual work that softly penetrates the dark recesses of the mind.

The lyrics feel like Ka-Spel is reflecting on the history of the band and its output and although its probably hard to believe, the lyrics are even more impenetrably cerebral than before. Regardless, the creepy electronics coincide with this ever darkening narrative.

I must say that as a long-time fan I sincerely miss Niels van Hornblower's occassional but brilliantly effective skronking but I'm thankful for the return to
the pre-pop Dots.

If you're unfamiliar with their body of work but enjoy misanthropic pop music and the drone aesthetic, begin with this and prepare to research back through thirty years of deeply beautiful contemplation of the subconscious.

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