SEAL ON PSYCHEDELICS

Darkstar // News From Nowhere // February 4, 2013 // Warp Records

Sometimes you think you have the band figured out and expect them to sound just like you want them to. Sometimes, that’s just not the case. Darkstar are an English group who started out making cool dubstep which they then put out on the ever cool Hyperdub. This is where we left off when we finished listening to their debut record North. News From Nowhere lives up to its title by changing things without any reasoning or explanation to the point where the music is so grounded and playful that it sounds like anything but music that should be put out by someone called Darkstar.

Once again, just to reiterate ourselves for the newcomers, we like artistic change as long as it’s well explained. If you make beat driven dance music but then, without dropping any clue, change your sound to generic ambient pop, we are going to be miffed with it. That’s how we feel about News From Nowhere, a record that is not only a terrible Darkstar record that has little to nothing to do with what made us like them in the first place, it’s pretty fucking terrible at what it attempts to do on its own merit. The other week FaltyDL released his new record Hardcourage which saw the producer move away from the UK garage sound towards a more welcoming, summertime moods. That’s more or less the case with News From Nowhere which sounds like an outdoors record gone warped. The energy that the group once had are now evaporating within these songs that are either completely pointless (Light Body Clock Starter, -) or sound like really bad Panda Bear rip offs (A Day’s Pay For A Day’s Work).

It’s pretty hard to hide that on here Darkstar are trying their best to sound like Animal Collective but they seem to be missing the point completely. Both AnCo and Darkstar used to possess a gift for an uplifting note within what could sometimes sound like a dark chaos, a bad trip. News From Nowhere is all downer that feels lethargic song after song. And then, when a brighter moment comes, you just can’t help but cringe at how “weird” music can be so unimaginative. Take Amplified Ease which is possibly the biggest Animal Collective circa Strawberry Jam rip off, minus the personality and childlike energy. Even Armonica, which is the most classically Darkstar moment on here feels tired. Some songs merely feel like ambient passages that could hardly be described as songs in the first place. Light Body Clock Starter is not an intro judging by its reasonable 3 minute running time but it does so little, it just can’t be treated as a song. It would’ve been interesting if Darkstar attempted to use the AnCo flowery playfulness within their own warehouse world but instead they abandoned themselves for something that may be completely new to them but something that is done to death for the rest of us.

News From Nowhere is a pointless record and one that finds a band standing confused. On here they aren’t trying to find their path as much as they are already going down the path that’s been walked down before by many artists. When it comes to British musicians ripping off Animal Collective, you may as well stick with that passable Fixers LP from last year. Both records have much more in common that you would imagine if you approach this based purely on your love for North. As a dance record, News From Nowhere is disappointing and as experimental album, well, there’s just no experimentation here. I can imagine that if AnCo bros ever heard this album, there would (or should) be lawsuits up the bottom.

10 // The Men // Open Your Heart

   Why isn’t contemporary rock all over the radio? Because it doesn’t make you want to rock out, that’s why. No amount of sing along friendly choruses will replace that harsh yet natural sound of a power chord being strummed feverishly. Now while there’s nothing new to hear on The Men’s third record Open Your Heart, this band are not the ones to care about anything but rocking out as hard as they can. Open Your Heart finds them toning down their often unwelcoming barrage of sound into ten songs ranging from punk, shoegaze to noise rock and country. Open Your Heart’s strongest point is that it doesn’t try to make too much sense and acts like a mixtape of the very best rock history has to offer. Animal sounds like Pixies, topped with female backing vocals, the title track bites Buzzcocks, Please Don’t Go Away sounds like pissed off My Bloody Valentine while Ex-Dreams is a classic Sonic Youth album closer. It’s not about obvious influences though. We complain that rock music get’s away without innovation. The Men reminds us that it’s the sheer passion and energy on display that will make rock like this huge again and again.

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9 // Beach House // Bloom

   This year Beach House brought up the dilemma that audiences tried to avoid for long enough. Is there really something wrong with having a signature sound and sticking with it? If you’re a rock dinosaur then yeah, sit down, have a think and find some new ideas but when you’re on your fourth record, perfecting what was already near perfect in the first place, go ahead. Bloom is exactly what one expected from Beach House after listening to their first three records. It’s more polished, it has even stronger sense of grace and beauty but on here it’s all about songwriting. At the start of their career Beach House were being described as drone pop, something that is pleasant on the ears but not exactly moving. The songs on Bloom are moving, in fact, they’re bright fireworks exploding in the night sky. Every single moment on here is familiar but nevertheless monumental. Beach House are not going to blow your mind by inventing a new flavour of the month sound, they’ll complete you with the best songwriting you’re likely to find on any album in 2012.

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8 // Jessie Ware // Devotion

   Admittedly we’re not in touch with every chart on the planet but from what we understand, British female singers are having their moment right now. There was always a chance that post-dubstep’s best kept secret Jessie Ware was going to churn out something that will be swallowed up by something the British press are calling the new boring but Devotion rises above all the competition by combining the everlasting beauty of soul, R&B and quiet storm. Devotion is a diamond in the rough kind of record. A female vocalist opening her heart over danceable rhythms, electronic pianos and guitar solos during the climaxes on these songs may not sound like something overly inspiring but the songwriting here is smoother than silk itself. Devotion if often predictable, that’s only because it deals with the classics. But instead of ripping off it borrows and in exchange creates a blueprint, a near flawless template for the female singers that want to take their old school influences into the present day without losing the perfect harmony. Devotion is soulful pop in perfect harmony: past, present, future.

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7 // Animal Collective // Centipede Hz

   We are fully aware that some critics will always compare a new album from a certain band with their previous LP, and if their previous LP was Meriweather Post bloody Pavilion then the band, Animal Collective in question, should be well advised to turn the cold shoulder to the critique. Centipede Hz in this regard feels naked. It’s a record that is full of life but not one that you’d necessarily call colourful. It’s stark and at best feels like an overpopulated planet that doesn’t even have an atmosphere to begin with. However, Centipede Hz naivety is also one of his most enjoyable aspects. It doesn’t care, it’s a child with no immunity system going out to play in the dirty puddles. It knows that in time it’ll be as appreciated as Feels or Strawberry Jam. The sense here is unity and fun. It makes sense that it was first broadcast as a stream over a custom set up radio. We’ve all heard this at the same time and for many of us it’s the fondest memory of this summer. For one hour Centipede Hz did what it’s supposed to, it united the planet. Listening to it now is like holding a physical memory of your fondest memory. Wait, isn’t that the feeling that makes Animal Collective so great no matter the sound palette? We’d say so.

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6 // Tame Impala // Lonerism

   Okay, so we weren’t that huge on Tame Impala’s second studio record Lonerism (loosely speaking, we still considered it, at 7.9, to be very good) when it first dropped a couple of months ago. Then it hit us. Lonerism is not a record that will give up easily if the listener interrogates it. It’s may be confessional but it’s also deeply shy. Don’t approach Lonerism looking for answers as on here Kevin Parker asks questions about the meaning of youth that are both clearly understandable and yet eternally rhetorical. The themes only start to make themselves clear when the expectation stops. You see, Lonerism may have all the same guitar tones that Tame Impala’s debut album Innerspeaker had but with every passing listen it becomes more and more clear that the two are incomparable. What’s more, Lonerism starts feeling less like a rock album (apart from Elephant, that shit jams forever) and more like a never ending psychedelic confession. Lonerism doesn’t stone you by liquids or smoke but purely by its all washing invitational nature that is timeless. No wonder no one’s calling Tame Impala revivalists anymore.

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5 // Death Grips // The Money Store

   You spend time listening to the noise of the machinery just to realise that it’s female vocals mangled to a cubic car crash. You approach the macho shouting and huge beats expected to be blown away but despite the anger, there too much fear and paranoia to make this music masculine. You approach The Money Store as a record that is the physical and aural dawn of the new era where real emotion is louder than a chainsaw orchestras just to realise that this came out on a major label band signed by LA Reid. Nevertheless, we all know what happened later. The meltdown that surrounded No Love Deep Web makes The Money Store look like a peaceful record in comparison but it’s not, it’s simply the point at which Death Grips were interested in writing songs that are as abrasive and inventive as they are memorable and catchy. This wasn’t an act of selling out. This was an internet age virus crawling inside the money store to spend all of its digital currency on disposable technology. Obviously, since it’s Death Grips, The Money Store is the precise and glorious sound of technological, and as we later witnessed, human self-destruction.

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4 // Grimes // Visions

   Grimes will meet you in the dark night but don’t expect her to hold your hand or anything. As a human, her skin is freezing cold and her voice is an angelic echo which shouldn’t be coming out of ordinary girl’s mouth but rather one of a perfectly calculated android. Claire Boucher is not your average girl though. She composed her first two albums using Garage Band. Both of those are actually listenable and enjoyable. It’s her third LP Visions and in a way first proper one that shows the full capabilities of what she can do with more conventional instruments and songs that can not only mesmerise but also linger in the heads of listeners from February til the very end of the year despite being some of the vaguest stuff we’ve heard all year. Visions is one of those rare pop albums that are truly and completely free of any time constraints. These songs sound like both past and future at the same time, combining the classic elements of synthpop and plastic early electronic beats with the sort of music we imagine when we think about the future: bleakness, chrome coated vocals and cold mist covering most of these ethereal keyboard melodies. Visions lives up to its name by being visionary pop record and an artifact of a certain period in time that we are not yet living in, a cyber utopia.

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3 // Chromatics // Kill For Love

   Is it a coincidence that the best three albums of 2012 are all based on a concept of a movie. Or is it merely a rebirth of visual storytelling? Chromatics’ fourth album Kill For Love goes a long way to establish the movie myth. Overstepping all the things that have already been said about the scrapped soundtracks, let’s just agree that Kill For Love is a movie itself and if it will be compared to Drive then let it be the ambiance of Ryan Gosling’s character driving into the darkness in the last shot of the movie. Just like Drive, Kill For Love is based on a protagonist that doesn’t have a name but possesses a strong identity. Kill For Love goes for the inner emotion rather than showy costumes and the perfectly balanced sixteen tracks on here deal with existential pop outbursts, moody minimalist hypnotists and barely there grim ambient pieces. At 75 minutes long it’s more than an outstanding album where dance, rock and ambient make perfect sense. It’s one of those virtually non existent records where these separate parts work together to make each other stronger. It’s a piece of mood, a pure visual. It really says something that it’s easier to compare Kill For Love with a movie rather than, you know, a studio album.

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2 // Frank Ocean // Channel Orange

   One can only wonder what sort of reaction Channel Orange would’ve received if Frank Ocean didn’t stage the best coming out in the history of music. Ocean’s debut album is soaked in a myth of a man who is stronger that the opinions of those around him. Admirable, but let’s imply that the coming out changed nothing and Channel Orange is still one of the realest and bravest R&B records in recent memory. It’s stitched from many different parts: speeches, Playstations being turned on, car doors opening and rain pouring onto the protagonist, but amid all the subplots and backstory it packed something more physical, something that will make Channel Orange an album that will be remembered in many years to come: a great empathy and understanding packed into some of the best R&B songs 21st century has seen so far. If we’re talking about instant classics, Channel Orange has so many of them (Thinkin’ Bout You, Sweet Life, Super Rich Kids, Pyramids) simply because it treats the rule book with the greatest of respect. Ocean has the knowledge that he can wrap the the golden age of R&B and soul around his own persona and back it up with layers upon layers of heart and passion. Here he executes his own talents within genre’s canons to near perfection. R&B seldom gets as heartfelt, brave and ground breaking as Channel Orange. And Frank Ocean? So many great qualities about this young man you’ll be wondering if he’s a fallen angel.

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1 // Kendrick Lamar // good kid, m.A.A.d city

   Kendrick Lamar may have borrowed his mother’s van for fifteen minutes but this is no fifteen minutes of fame. This is hall of fame. We finished 2011 as a world that was obsessed with animosity, surrounded by myriads of artists who would rather create fake backgrounds and stories for themselves instead of saying something real. It’s such a breath of fresh air that on this Christmas day when we’re supposed to be celebrating family and unity, Seal On Psychedelics can proudly say that the best album of 2012 was a story of a kid who was too afraid to be himself, too ashamed to embrace his family and simply too good to live up to where he’s coming from. Mad city, Compton, everything just has to start and finish there doesn’t it? good kid, m.A.A.d city is the sum of Kendrick Lamar. Every detail, from his background to his connections, make this record almost too good to be true. As an album, good kid, m.A.A.d city offers beats which are both classic (Sing About Me, I’m Dying Of Thirst) and new school (Backseat Freestyle), sampling Beach House (Money Trees) and outdoing Late Registration at the orchestral game (Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe). It wraps the story around them so well that tracks like Backseat Freestyle or Swimming Pools (Drank) have already been going over dumb people’s heads big time. Unlike some of the best hip hop albums of all time, you don’t need to have an experience of living in the hood to get on the same level as Lamar. You just need to understand the feeling of loss, alienation and fear of being yourself. As a short movie, which it claims to be on the album cover, good kid, m.A.A.d city is iconic, offering cutting visions into Lamar’s most important teenage moments. All the details check out and after many close listens you’re awarded with a famous story about a kid struggling to find himself among his older and more influential peers. The beats are varied, yet in touch with the West Coast feel while the lyrics are on point verse after verse, line after line, word after world. Just like Illmatic, College Dropout, 3 Feet And Rising, Doggystyle, Paid In Full, Ready To Die and Straight Outta Compton, good kid, m.A.A.d city is a hip hop classic not only because it captures generation’s voice in an everlasting ether, but also because it will be played everywhere, from countless backpackers’ headphones to house parties, year after year. And honestly, it’s better than at least half of those classics.