2012: A great year for creative music

If pure creativity and uncompromising expression are among your favorite qualities in music, 2012 has been the best year for new recordings in a very long time. There have been a large number of amazing records this year, and the best among those records rivals the most amazing music I've ever heard.

I find myself lagging behind in posting reviews over the last few months, but much of the music I'm presently evaluating deserves to make "the list" of amazing 2012 records. So consider this post to be both an annual "favorites" list from the Words on Sounds camp, as well as a preview of some upcoming reviews of records so noted.

Wherever possible, I'm going to link each record to an artist or label-direct method of ordering.

I have a hard time reducing so much evocative, brilliant, and moving music into lists, but I guess that's what reviewers do occasionally. So here's my top 20 absolute favorites of 2012, regardless of genre considerations:

Normal Love - Survival Tricks
Zs - Score: The Complete Sextet works 2002-2007
Igorrr - Hallelujah
Killer BOB - Fear May be a Builder (full review coming soon)
Pajjama - Staarch (full review coming soon)
Yowie - Damning With Faint Praise
Behold the Arctopus - Horrorscension
Lovely Little Girls - Cleaning the Filth from a Delicate Frame
Andromeda Mega Express Orchestra - Bum Bum
House of Hayduk - City of Quartz
Kayo Dot - Gamma Knife (or digital-only here, but the vinyl is damned beautiful)
Tom Ze - Tropicalia Lixo Logico (no US distro yet, alas)
John Frusciante - PBX Funicular Intaglio Zone
Captain Beefheart - Bat Chain Puller
Ernesto Martinez - Sincronario
Jeremiah Cymerman - Purification/Dissolution (full review coming soon)
Higgins - Stereo (full review coming soon!)
Diamond Terrifier - Kill The Self that Wants to Kill Yourself (full review coming soon)
Triptet - Figure in the Carpet (full review coming soon)
Giant Claw - Mutant Glamour (full review coming soon)


Favorite creative approaches to rock-related idioms:

Extra Life - Dream Seeds
Neptune - msg rcvd
Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!
Wei Zhongle - s/t
BBBJr - How to Fuck All Your Co-Workers in One Sitting
Japonize Elephants - Melodie Fantastique
Starring - ABCDEFG-HIJKLMNOP-QRSTUV-WXYZ
Farmers Market - Slav to the Rhythm
Acid Mothers Temple - Son of a Bitches Brew
SCUO - 5678765 (full review coming soon)
Jealousy Mountain Duo - No. 2
Ahleuchatistas - Heads Full of Poison
Alec K. Redfearn and the Eyesore - Sister Death
The Residents - Coochie Brake: Sonidos de la Noche
Many Arms - s/t
Magma - Felicite Thosz
Thinking Plague - Decline and Fall
TrioVD - Maze
Alamaailman Vasarat - Valta
Dysrhythmia - Test of Submission
Hazel-Rah - The Africantape EP
Stern - Entitlement
Big Blood - Old Time Primitives
George Korein and the Spleen - Condition of Air (full review coming soon)
Bobby Conn - Macaroni
Nels Cline/Elliot Sharp - Open the Door

Favorite creative approaches to pop idioms:

Micachu and the Shapes - Never
Grimes - Visions
Dirty Projectors - Swing Lo Magellan
Byrne/St. Vincent - Love This Giant
Ergo Phizmiz - Eleven Songs (full review coming soon!)
Maps and Atlases - Beware and be Grateful
Deerhoof - Breakup Song
Of Montreal - Paralytic Stalks
Soap & Skin - Narrow
Power Animal - Exorcism
Guano Padano - 2
BEAK> - >>
Shugo Tokumaru - In Focus? (getting US release in early 2013)

Favorite creative approaches to non-rock/pop idioms (jazz, classical, free improv, lowercase, soundart, etc).

Ron Miles - Quiver
Charles Gayle Trio - Streets
Chicago Underground Duo - Age of Energy
Cactus Truck - Brand New For China!
Boron - The Beige Album
Joe Moffett - Ad Faunum (full review coming soon)
Floratone (Bill Frisell) - Floratone II
Johnny DeBlase Quartet - Composites
Nick Millevoi - In White Sky
Tatsuya Nakatani - Nakatani Gong Orchestra (full review coming soon)
House of Low Culture - Poisoned Soil
The Home of Easy Credit - s/t
Skeletons - The Bus
Boron - The Beige Album
(D)(B)(H) - Masterpieces of Objective Reporting
Don Preston - Filters, Oscillators and Envelopes 1967-82
Psychotic Quartet - Cordyceps
Hafez Modirzadeh - Post-Chromodal Out!
RED Trio + Nate Wooley - Stem
William Hooker Strings 3 - A Postcard from the Road
Philip Gayle - Babanco Total
John Zorn - A Vision in Blakelight and Nosferatu
Anderson/Pepper/Tamura/Petit - Closed Encounters of the 4 Minds
The Gate - Destruction of Darkness and Vomit Dreams
Moulttrigger - Birds (review coming soon)
Louis Guarino Jr/Benjamin Klein - Standing Still in a Whirlpool of Dreams (review coming soon)
AMFJ - BAEN (review coming soon)
Philip Glass - Rework
Eftus Spectun - Turtus
Trapist - The Golden Years

The Year of Pauline Oliveros

Composer Pauline Oliveros turned 80 this year, which has been celebrated with the release of recordings new and old. Important Records released a 12-disc box set of some of Oliveros' amazing tape and electronic music of the 1960s. This kind of music is hard for me to review, but a pleasure to experience, and $80 for a 12-disc box set is a great deal for experiencing some of the best efforts in early electronic/tape music.

More recent efforts by Oliveros and her Deep Listening Band ensemble have also been released this year: Important gave us Octagonal Polyphony and Great Howl at Town Hall. To those, Minneapolis-based vinyl-only label Taiga Records gave us 2 additional double LPs produced with immaculate attention to detail, direct metal-mastered 200 gram vinyl in double-wide jackets with metallic inks and flooded pockets, themselves enclosed in a custom slipcase. These sound as amazing as they look, and the pleasure of not only hearing but truly feeling Oliveros' "Primordial/Lift" and the Deep Listening Band's "Needle Drop Jungle"in these incredibly celebratory packages is an opportunity I suggest taking. I'm relatively new to the "Deep Listening" concept, but it's clear that both this music and the broader practice of deep listening have going to become an important part of my life and ears.

Labels worth watching

In addition to Taiga and Important mentioned above, this has been a banner year for labels like Northern Spy and Public Eyesore, who are maintaining ambitious release schedules full of compelling music. I'm excited to see what the next year will bring from them. The last few years of Skin Graft releases have also been among my favorites. I'm also amped for the newest batch from New Atlantis Records, as almost everything I've heard from them gets stuck in my head for weeks. I'm keeping an eye on the recent efforts coming from Engine Studios, whose releases have some overlap w/New Atlantis artists and are another great source of amazing creative music from many styles and geographies. And cassette labels are continuing to flourish: this year, releases from Orange Milk, Words and Dreams, and Crash Symbols in particular continued to kick my ass, along with occasional cassette editions from labels like Captcha and Sockets.

Things to anticipate in 2013

--a new Pajjama record?
--Mike Pride Drummer's Corpse?
--several awesome projects from Jeremiah Cymerman's 5049 label?
--more BBJr vinyl via Captcha?
--Luke Polipnick debut?
--new Zs?
--new Period album?

...but I don't want to think too far forward just yet. I have plenty of reviews left to finish from the end of 2012, and there are a few records I haven't even found the time to acquire yet that I'm sure will be amazing (like the 2nd I Don't Hear Nothing But the Blues album, a few new releases from the Eh? imprint of Public Eyesore, etc). With a year so rich in creativity as 2012, there is a lot left to hear, and hear again. Happy listening, and Happy New Year!

The Home of Easy Credit - s/t

Here's another knockout from Northern Spy. The Home of Easy Credit is the husband/wife duo of Louise Dam Eckardt Jensen and Tom Blancarte, whose intricate, dense work together is hard to define in terms of genre. This music shifts between worlds of composition and free improvisation, pop, avant-jazz, postmodern classical, psychedelic and electroacoustic work, often woven within the boundaries of each track.

Jensen primarily focuses on alto saxophone and voice performance with electronic manipulation. She builds layers of sound with live electronics and loops, over which motivic materials are often reinterpreted or extended. And Blancarte (who also played on the beautiful "Fire Sign" album from Jeremiah Cymerman that I recently reviewed) creates a powerful foundation for this music with his amplified upright bass work, mostly playing with more conventional pitched ideas to hold everything together, though he does get into extended techniques like bowed harmonics and sul ponticello passages when the music heads into more ethereal territory. The pair make an incredible amount of sound on their own, and once loop-building is added to their approach, you would never imagine this music coming from only two performers with no overdubs.

Although The Home of Easy Credit covers a wide stylistic territory, this music evolves through structured consideration: these pieces fuse raw musical materials together slowly and thoughtfully, adding and removing layers with patience. I like my share of collage/cutup compositions, but there's something about these kinds of more mature methodical fusions of sound. They tend to stay with you longer. It also invites a more participatory kind of listening--I feel like I can get "inside" these tracks, as opposed to looking at them on a wall. They're plaintive, emotional pieces, and they readily invite you inside. Check out a track from the album, "The Feast of the Meal Replacement Bars" below, and you'll see what I mean.

Usually I don't have a strong opinion about the methods used in the creation of a good recording, but in this case I think that the "no overdubs" approach contributes a lot to the emotional intelligence of this music. The band's name and the titles of the tracks all point to frustration with the shallow artifice of consumer culture, toward having genuine shared experiences instead of choosing among brightly-colored, prepackaged Mcexperiences. These pieces succeed at being very complex and nuanced without losing a sense of intimacy. I can imagine how well this music translates live, a vibe that The Home of Easy Credit sustains by selecting small, intimate venues to play: galleries, coffee shops, house shows, all places where artists and audiences can be together with a minimum of mediation.

Fortunately, I won't have to simply imagine the live performance of this music for long, and maybe you won't, either: The Home of Easy Credit is on tour right now (check out their tour dates below). And their Lincoln, NE stop will be at my house! It seemed right to start hosting occasional shows as the opportunity presents itself, as I've been co-hosting a radio show and actively writing music reviews for a few years now. If you live in the area, you can keep up with our events on this blog, or "like" our Facebook page here.

--also published at Killed in Cars

Home of Easy Credit tour dates:
10/4 San Francisco @ The Luggage Store
10/7 Berkeley, CA @ Berkeley Arts Festival
10/8 Corvallis, OR @ The Red Room
10/9 Portland, OR @ Creative Music Guild
10/10 Seattle, WA @ 1412 Gallery
10/11 Caldwell, ID @ The Bird Stop Coffee House
10/13 Denver, CO @ Plus Gallery
10/14 Lincoln, NE @ Think Tank House (my house! This will also be the debut show for local duo Moss!)
10/15 Chicago, IL @ Jerry's
10/17 Cleveland, OH @ Black Cat Factory

Jealousy Mountain Duo - No_2, The Home of Easy Credit

I reviewed the debut record from Jealousy Mountain Duo back in April, and I'm pleased to report that they're already back with their second album. And it's another keeper--while staying close to the style and approach of their debut, No_2 finds Jealousy Mountain Duo digging even deeper into their unique style. Blending elements of math rock with creative looping and collaborative improvisation, this record shows continued growth and development for JMD: the interplay between Berger (guitar) and Schneider (drums) continues to improve as they play together.

The JMD sound will probably remind listeners most immediately of the duo configuration of Hella, but I like this band much more. They're capable of subtleties that one rarely hears from Hella--Berger's loop-layering techniques let him build vertical dimension in the music that gives space and support for some great melodic ideas, instead of having to blaze along with noodly horizontal passages most of the time. Berger writes beautiful melodies, and finds great ways to embellish them with thoughtful loops as real support, rather than layering a bunch of unnecessarily complicated figures. At times, he somehow balances Frippertronics-sounding layers, rich with backwards-sounding volume swells and occasional whammy pedal glissandos, with very listenable and memorable melodies, something often lacking in experimental rock circles. It sounds like guitar synths are getting some play on No_2 as well, with sub-bass tones and waspy synth textures added to tracks like "All Day Blizzard."

The "complicated figures" in JMD are mostly the domain of Schneider, whose drum work combines rhythmic density with a very light, free spirit. Although his playing in this band is very busy, it's much more jazz-influenced than the constant barrage of megabashing one gets from Zach Hill (I like Hill's approach sometimes, but he totally has the "Buckethead problem" of doing the same crazy over-the-top thing on almost everything he plays). Schneider balances his complicated ideas by spending a lot of time working the rims of his drums and paying attention to dynamics and shifts in volume and intensity, and he generally saves his cymbals for especially poignant emphasis.  He's certainly capable of being a hard hitter and playing more riff-oriented drum parts (hear his work in Nicoffeine for great proof of that), but the heart of the JMD sound is his transcendent thoughtful-yet-rocking drum work, at least to me. I love listening to this guy play--he's intense, but very deliberate.

Like the first Jealousy Mountain Duo record, I'm sure there's some improvisation involved in these tracks, but it's obvious that even on the most free-form cuts, a lot of planning and composition is helping to guide this music. It's awesome to hear math-y music that can feel composed and loose at the same time. The music has room to breathe, and listeners have room to have fun.

Schneider is a skilled producer as well. He does it up old school with JMD, recording live to 1'' tape and pressing vinyl. If you don't buy the hype about analog recording and vinyl sounding "warmer," you might change your mind after a few spins through this record. Tubes, vinyl, and tape make the world of Jealousy Mountain Duo go around, and the kind of beautifully warm, diffused light and heat one can expect from using them is reflected throughout this music and all the way onto the album art, which makes a great companion piece with art and design of their the first record. Another well done record! I'm excited to hear what the future holds for JMD.

Good news for America: Jealousy Mountain Duo is touring the US through October and part of November! I'm sure we're not likely to see this German duo play here often, so be sure to get out and see them while you can. Their tour started in Boston last night, and the rest of their tour dates are listed below. Maybe I'll see some of you at the Omaha show. And in case you're not able to make it to a show, check out the Jealousy Mountain Duo BandCamp site for record ordering information.

--Scott Scholz

October 2012

 2 whitehouse family records, Boston, MA, US

 3 The Flywheel, Easthampton, MA, US

 4 Shea Stadium, Brooklyn, NY, US

 5 The Space, Ithaca, NY, US

 6 Elm Bar (old Rudy's), New Haven, CT, US

 7 houseshow with hyrrokkin, Athens, OH, US

 8 Mickey Finn's Pub, Toledo, OH, US

 9 The Shop, Pittsburgh, PA, US

10 Bug Jar, Rochester, NY, US

11 Now That's Class, Cleveland, OH, US

12 Stone Taverne, Kent, CT, US

13 Borg Ward Collective, Milwaukee, WI, US

14 The Frequency, Madison, WI, US

15 Burlington Bar, Chicago, IL, US

16 Black Sparrow, Lafayette, IN, US

17 Slowdown, Omaha, NE, US

18 Replay Lounge, Lawrence, KS, US

19 Lemp Arts, St Louis, MO, US

20 Court House Co-op, Memphis, TN, US

21 SoundPony, Tulsa, OK, US

23 The Trunk Space, Phoenix, AZ, US

24 Bar Eleven, San Diego, CA, US

25 Solar Culture Gallery & Performance Space, Tucson, AZ, US

26 The Percolator, El Paso, TX, US

27 1919 Hemphill, Fort Worth, TX, US

28 Notsuoh, Houston, TX, US

29 Beale Street Tavern, Austin, TX, US

30 The White House, Conway, AR, US

31 The Owl Farm, Nashville, TN, US

November 2012

 1 Conondrum Music Hall, West Columbia, SC, US

 2 Roasted Lounge, Macon, GA, US

 3 The Goat Farm, Atlanta, GA, US

 4 The HandleBar, Pensacola, FL, US

 5 Burro Bar, Jacksonville, FL, US

 6 The Junkyard Saloon, De Leon Springs, FL, US

 7 Safe // Sound, Savannah, GA, US

 8 Chapel Hill Underground, Chapel Hill, NC, US

 9 Slim's Downtown, Raleigh, NC, US

10 subterreanea collective, Richmond, VA, US

--also published at Killed in Cars