In no order:
Art Of Burning Water- The Tempest. Britains most daring violent hard rock bands. They pysch out, sure, but always with focus and determination and dazzling musicianship. Brutal.
DJ Roc- The Crack Capone. Low end science and baffling hyper-programming…but lots of space and capable of great feats of aching beauty.
Janelle Monae- Archandroid. Total epic pop. Touches everywhere simultaneously.
Isobell Campbell & Mark Lanegan- Hawk. Just mesmerising, lots of different styles here and there, not at first all that cohesive, but given time the pushes and pulls in multiple directions becomes a thing of great strength.
Helmet- Seeing Eye Dog. Page Hamilton has engineered a real corker taking elements from every stage in Helmet’s frankly dazzling career and still managing to surge forward. His pure liquid guitar tone is aural paint.
Dosh- Tommy. The single most inspiring thing I saw at Supersonic was Dosh, I don’t mean the greatest..just the most inspiring..this album reaches the hotspot.
Tricky- Mixed Race. Quite stripped down for him and very focused. A real 10 track treat. This man’s on a roll.
Warpaint- The Fool. Bathe in the warm water, feel the sun as Autumn gives way to winter, let the vocals breathe through the woods, the guitars pinch a nostalgia for The Cure’s Disintergration. Look into your lovers face…
Electric Sunset- Just magical electronic pop from the ashes of Desolation Wilderness.
Thou- Baton Rouge..Unholilee Heavee. They fist fuck their way through a Nirvana cover from Bleach, ramp up the grainy levels of HE-ROCK and spew out dead cities..big, nasty, sludgey. Everything they do right now is vital.
Squarepusher- Shobaleader One: D’Demonstrator. Strangely Squarepusher has crept up on me. I spent my 20s ignoring him and then I thought ‘well why not’, gradually ‘why not’ turned into to ‘OMG’. This album has a druid selection of bass teknologies, nestled up to vocoders and synths and the odd stray into hybrid METAL. People seem to be a bit down on this one, shame, it’s luminescent and delightful.
