{"id":1518779,"date":"2016-12-09T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-12-09T03:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1518779"},"modified":"2016-12-09T06:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-12-09T03:00:00","slug":"the-20-best-experimental-albums-of-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1518779","title":{"rendered":"The 20 Best Experimental Albums of 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Lists & Guides<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The 20 Best Experimental Albums of 2016<\/h1>\n
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From Arca to Moor Mother to Tim Hecker to Meredith Monk, the best experimental records of the year<\/div>\n
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By <\/span>Kevin Lozano<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

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What forms can pleasure take? Is it exclusively the province of serenity and happy thoughts? Or is it possible that political confrontation and discomfort are even more powerful venues for deriving pleasure? If there is anything that unites the music on our list of the best experimental records of 2016, it is the idea that aesthetic beauty and fun can come from unlikely places and from strange sources, be it the archival sounds of protests or the pitter patter of a washing machine. Perhaps the impetus of experimental music is to challenge, but spend some time with these records, and you\u2019ll discover not just radically different ways of finding joy in the world, you\u2019ll also be dumbstruck with the creative methods artists use to get to that sweet spot.<\/p>\n

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Amnesia Scanner<\/div>\n

AS EP<\/h2>\n
Young Turks<\/div>\n

The music the Berlin duo Amnesia Scanner makes doesn’t seem to exist in any knowable zone of time or space. It might be dance music, but it also just be might be a new way of writing a science fiction horror story. The sounds they utilize can feel both primeval and dystopian: existing somewhere between Lotic\u2019s free-flowing club music and Holly Herndon\u2019s postmodern experiments.\u00a0Their debut release, a short EP of six tracks, is a riotous collection of experimental electronic music. The songs here are all small Frankenstein’s monsters of sound art, stitched together with unlikely samples, biological bits and parts, terrifying voices, and gurgling noise. And against your expectations, what these two have created will make you move.<\/p>\n

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Arca<\/div>\n

Entra\u00f1as<\/h2>\n
self-released<\/div>\n

The 14 sections of Arca\u2019s unclassifiable release Entra\u00f1as<\/em> exist as a single 25-minute block of jagged, queasy, and unexpected electronic sound. You\u2019d be hard pressed to know when one section begins or ends, or discern the moments when collaborators\u00a0Mica Levi, Total Freedom, and Massacooramann enter the scene. It is a rigorous piece of music that bears many of the fluid and rippling hallmarks of Arca\u2019s compositional style, but with a voice even more abject, harsh, and slippery. Here, he takes a turn for the truly nightmarish and gothic, sampling everything from the Cocteau Twins to a Charlotte Gainsbourg monologue. Entra\u00f1as<\/em> in Spanish means \u201cbowels\u201d or \u201centrails,\u201d a winking nod to Ghersi\u2019s continual project of shattering and transforming the normative sense of disgust into a new kind of pleasure.<\/p>\n

Arca: Entra\u00f1as (via SoundCloud)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Jefre Cantu-Ledesma<\/div>\n

In Summer<\/h2>\n
Geographic North<\/div>\n

Romance isn\u2019t what first comes to mind when you think of noise music. Jefre Cantu-Ledesma is here to change that. He has described his new five-track cassette release, In Summer<\/em>, as a \u201ccatalogue of photographs,\u201d a strange description for drone. His sweltering and harsh compositions are supposed to be like little snapshots that evoke reminiscence and longing. The listening experience he provides with In Summer<\/em> often feels extremely tactile and the mood is lush and humid and dreamy. And he does something that seems so unlikely with tape loops and crunching noises, he writes amazing love songs that just happen to\u00a0make your ears ring.<\/p>\n

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: \u201cLove’s Refrain\u201d (via SoundCloud)<\/p>\n

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Elysia Crampton<\/div>\n

Elysia Crampton Presents: Demon City<\/h2>\n
Break World<\/div>\n

Over just two albums, Elysia Crampton has offered a body of work that burrows deeply into American history, sexuality, and community. With Demon City<\/em> she has invited a host of collaborators to write what she calls an \u201cepic poem\u201d that looks at 18th century revolutionary Bartolina Sisa and \u201ctransformative justice\u201d through music. She has fine-tuned her abilities as a supremely talented electronic collagist: mixing the sonic\u00a0vernaculars of\u00a0huay\u00f1o and cumbia into \u00a0a dizzying electronic geography that samples the sounds found in clubs around the world.\u00a0With this album, Crampton cements her place as one of the foremost minds in electronic music, and in the years to come we\u2019ll still be figuring out what messages she left behind.<\/p>\n

Elysia Crampton \/ Rabit: “The Demon City” (via SoundCloud)<\/p>\n

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Dedekind Cut<\/div>\n

$uccessor (ded004)<\/h2>\n
Hospital \/ NON<\/div>\n

Just a few years ago Fred Warmsley was a Soundcloud producer who worked under the name Lee Bannon. He collaborated with Joey Bad$$ and the Alchemist, making nostalgic hip-hop beats. Then he abandoned all that to make jungle and drum\u2018n\u2019bass. Now he\u2019s abandoned the name Lee Bannon all together, and along with it the easy logic of dance music to make eerie ambient pieces. His debut full length as Dedekind Cut, *$ucessor, *illustrates the circuitous journey Warmsley took to figure out what he might be best at doing: making \u00a0soundscapes of tape hiss, pained voices, and pointillist synths that are strikingly urgent. His new brand of ambient is in no way music for airports. It doesn\u2019t exist in the background to activate comfortable thinking, but rather combats anxiety by tackling it with tempestuous noise.<\/p>\n

Dedekind Cut: \u201c\u2110ntegra\u201d (via SoundCloud)<\/p>\n

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Brian Eno<\/div>\n

The Ship<\/h2>\n
Warp<\/div>\n

Ostensibly,\u00a0Brian Eno\u2019s The Ship<\/em> is about the Titanic. In this suite of 48 minutes of palatial ambient, including a cover of the Velvet Underground\u2019s \u201cI\u2019m Set Free,\u201d Eno attempts to tell the tale of \u201cthe apex of human technical power\u201d thwarted by the random force\u00a0of nature. Unlike, say, James Cameron, another great bard of this historical disaster, Eno has no desire to dwell in drama, but is more interested in the creation of startling sensations. At points you might feel like you\u2019re floating in the middle of the ocean, or washing up on shore, or in the middle of a maelstrom.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Foodman<\/div>\n

Ez Minzoku<\/h2>\n
Orange Milk<\/div>\n

Takahide Higuchi started making footwork because he thought the feeling it generated was something akin to punk or dub, the creation of its blistering beats was \u201cabout an expression, a way of approaching sound that transcends multiple genres.\u201d The special form of footwork he makes transforms the quick pace of the genre into something that mimics the frenetic action of a human body. He deploys belching horns, bright drums, and distended samples that seem to come straight from the churning \u00a0stomach of a massive whale.<\/p>\n

Foodman: \u201cMid Summer Night feat. Diskomargaux\u201d (Buy on Bandcamp)<\/p>\n

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Jan Jelinek \/ Masayoshi Fujita<\/div>\n

Schaum<\/h2>\n
Faitiche<\/div>\n

On the back cover of Schaum<\/em>, Jan Jelinek\u00a0writes that his collaboration with the Japanese vibraphonist Masayoshi Fujita is in some part informed by an obsession with \u201cthe tropics.\u201d This obsession, he continues, is centered around a \u201cspecific quality of landscape\u201d that is defined by a \u201cdeliriously extravagant unstructuredness.\u201d The tropics to these two might be best be understood as an undefinable thicket shrouded in mist, which is an accurate way to describe how they wend together their specialties of lulling loops and vibraphone exploration. There is a powerfully organic quality to Schaum:<\/em> the sounds here are wet, diffuse, and filled with samples of chirps and quacks. In effect, it is transportive, and the album becomes a small experiential filter, suddenly changing the space you inhabit into the riverbed of a sumptuous rainforest.<\/p>\n

Masayoshi Fujita & Jan Jelinek: \u201cBotuto\u201d (via SoundCloud)<\/p>\n

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Tim Hecker<\/div>\n

Love Streams<\/h2>\n
4AD \/ Paper Bag<\/div>\n

If artists who experiment with the modalities of noise are sculptors\u2014chiseling sine waves to do their bidding\u2014then Tim Hecker is a land artist, bending his surroundings into massive pieces of art. Love Streams**,<\/em> the latest in his fruitful career, finds Hecker working with J\u00f3hann J\u00f3hannsson and an Icelandic chorus to make some of his most textured musical pieces. The songs on Love Streams<\/em> reimagine the sensorial possibilities of things as basic as voice and noise. His work makes these normalities feel like natural wonders well worthy of inspiring reverie.<\/p>\n

Tim Hecker: \u201cCastrati Stack\u201d [Preview] (via SoundCloud)<\/p>\n

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Huerco S.<\/div>\n

For Those Of You Who Have Never (And Also Those Who Have)<\/h2>\n
Proibito<\/div>\n

There is a moment during some club nights, where dry ice fog drapes every corner, the bodies that surround you seem like apparitions, and time moves slower. Brian Leeds (aka Huerco S.) has logged enough hours in clubs around the world to watch this ghostly moment slowly take hold over a crowd. He abandons\u00a0the strictures of techno and house music\u2019s grid in For Those of You Who Have Never (and Also Those Who Have)**,<\/em> for a form of ambient music that\u00a0can help imagine what it must be like to have a seance on the dancefloor. Huerco\u2019s ambient work is spectral, haunted, and shimmering with moments of romantic bliss. There is no hard beat, percussion, or sense of total rhythm, here, and rather his music exists like a gust of warm wind or a plume of smoke\u2014seemingly ever present and wonderfully ephemeral.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Huerco S: \u201cPromises of Fertility\u201d (via SoundCloud)<\/p>\n

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Jenny Hval<\/div>\n

Blood Bitch<\/h2>\n
Sacred Bones<\/div>\n

More than an album of music, Blood Bitch<\/em> is what Jenny Hval calls an \u201cinvestigation of blood,\u201d a celebration and analysis of menstruation, \u201ca poetic diary of modern transience and transcendence,\u201d a cornucopia of sly philosophical musing, and a funhouse romp through a vampire story. She is one of the smartest and funniest musicians currently working, and Blood Bitch<\/em> is a testament to Hval\u2019s skill as a storyteller and thinker. Her stories are accompanied by breathtaking, atmospheric sound that extract the grandeur of Norwegian black metal, liturgical, and ambient music. Here she reinforces her genius yet again, showing that blood is what we all share and what we should worship.<\/p>\n

Jenny Hval: \u201cConceptual Romance\u201d (via SoundCloud)<\/p>\n

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Matmos<\/div>\n

Ultimate Care II<\/h2>\n
Thrill Jockey<\/div>\n

At the release party for Ultimate Care II**,<\/em> M.C. Schmidt warned the crowd, “this is genuinely an experiment. It\u2019s experimental fucking music, so we\u2019re going to play a washing machine.\u201d For almost an hour, they did just that, by processing its sloshing sounds through arrays of microphones and samplers, and literally drumming all over the machine\u2019s metal body. Ultimate Care II<\/em> documents their experiments with their washing machine, and the album extracts a special discombobulating joy from the banal domestic object. It shows that the elder statesmen of experimental music are not done thinking outside of the box.<\/p>\n

Matmos: “Ultimate Care II Excerpt Eight” (via SoundCloud)<\/p>\n

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Anna Meredith<\/div>\n

Varmints<\/h2>\n
PIAS \/ Moshi Moshi<\/div>\n

The classically trained composer Anna Meredith dove into the world of electronic production and slightly unhinged dance music because she \u201cwanted more volume\u201d than concert halls could provide. Her 2012 debut single \u201cNautilus,\u201d is a swaggering, imperial march, where instruments chase each other towards a endpoint of chaotic action. Four years later, that single opens her debut LP, Varmints**,<\/em> a set of 11 tracks that move with the same demonically possessed pace. Her music is entropic; these compositions are always on the brink of tearing themselves apart. Across these songs Meredith displays a knack for making inimitable compositions of immense scope and eccentric grace.<\/p>\n

Anna Meredith: “Taken” (via SoundCloud)<\/p>\n

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Meredith Monk<\/div>\n

On Behalf of Nature<\/h2>\n
ECM New Series<\/div>\n

Meredith Monk has said that philosopher Claude L\u00e9vi-Strauss\u2019 concept of \u201cbricolage,\u201d the way cross-cultural myths use the same materials and tools of narrative to create new forms, was one way to model her practice. On her performance piece, On Behalf of Nature<\/em>, she weaves through 19 grandly wrought exercises of glossolalia, her ensemble of singers and instrumentalists maneuver the human voice through all of nature\u2019s sounds: infantile coos, bird calls, screams, laughs, hymns, and chants. The goal was to speak on behalf of nature, and she does so with panache, celebrating the lexicon of sounds our mortal vocal box can offer and mimic.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Moor Mother<\/div>\n

Fetish Bones<\/h2>\n
Don Giovanni<\/div>\n

Camae Ayewa is a Philadelphia activist, organizer, and a seasoned veteran of one of America\u2019s most fertile and diverse music scenes. Her most recent album as Moor Mother, Fetish Bones**,<\/em> is a focused, dense, and harrowing journey through the history of government mandated racism, housing discrimination, mass incarceration, and all manner of sickening facts that came from centuries of mistreatment folks of color have suffered in this country.\u00a0Using archival sound, dissonant noise, and insanely intelligent poetry, Ayewa has offered something that throttles a listener with the weight of trauma and the love that can eke out of years of hardship.<\/p>\n

Moor Mother: \u201cDeadbeat Protest\u201d (via Bandcamp)<\/p>\n

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Mikael Seifu<\/div>\n

Zelalem<\/h2>\n
Rvng Intl.<\/div>\n

The producer Mikael Seifu hails from the Ethiopian capital city Addis Ababa. After a period of study in the States and an exposure to the tropes of Western electronic music, he returned to Ethiopia with a newfound appreciation for the sounds that eked out of drinking halls and the azmaris musicians on the city streets. He is part of the \u201cEthiopiyawi Electronic\u201d scene, and Zelalem<\/em> is his love letter to the homegrown genre that\u2019s emerged in his city. He combines electric pulses and wonky synthesizer work with indigenous instruments like the krar and masinko. On top of all this he gives a beautiful local color to his music through the use of field recordings from cafes and public spaces around\u00a0Addis Ababa.<\/p>\n

Mikael Seifu: \u201cHow To Save A Life (Vector Of Eternity)\u201d (via SoundCloud)<\/p>\n

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serpentwithfeet<\/div>\n

blisters EP<\/h2>\n
Tri Angle<\/div>\n

Josiah Wise\u2019s debut EP, blisters**,<\/em> pairs his devastating, multivalent voice with the baroque soundscapes of co-producer Haxan Cloak. blisters<\/em> in some respects is an incredibly chaotic record: a mercurial environment where ancient medieval sounds borrowed from harps, organs, and armadas of string instruments collide into luxuriant electronics. Yet it\u2019s empathetic, emotionally complicated, and controlled by the exquisite power of Wise\u2019s singing voice, which can evoke all the travails that can seem to exist in a single lifetime.<\/p>\n

serpentwithfeet: “blisters” (via SoundCloud)<\/p>\n

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Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith<\/div>\n

EARS<\/h2>\n
Western Vinyl<\/div>\n

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith is a disciple at the altar of the Buchla Music Easel, a rare synthesizer that looks like an overgrown piece of alien flora. Smith has extracted an extraterrestrial magic from this bizarre object, and EARS**,<\/em> her latest dispatch from the Buchla\u2019s musical universe is a terrarium of hypnotic sounds that meld together influences ranging from \u201970s new age, Laurie Spiegel, and Terry Riley. She adds her relaxing voice to a chorus of beautiful sounds and an army of woodwinds provided by Bitchin Bajas member Rob Frye, make for a transcendental experience.<\/p>\n

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith: “Existence in the Unfurling” (via SoundCloud)<\/p>\n

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Suzanne Ciani \/ Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith<\/div>\n

Sunergy<\/h2>\n
Rvng Intl.<\/div>\n

In the coastal town of Bolinas, California, Suzanne Ciani met Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith at\u00a0a dinner party, and both musicians are grand masters of the arcane arts of Don Buchla\u2019s synthesizers. After their chance meeting, Ciani invited Smith to be her studio assistant, and their collaborative effort for RVNG Intl., Sunergy<\/em> is akin to a blissful Matisse-esque landscape painting that crystallizes the Pacific cliffside view from Ciani\u2019s home. Over three pieces, their dialogue is glittering and oceanic: a beautiful tapestry of white noise, drone, and electric magic.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith\/Suzanne Ciani : \u201cClosed Circuit\u201d (via SoundCloud)<\/p>\n

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Yves Tumor<\/div>\n

Serpent Music<\/h2>\n
Pan<\/div>\n

Rahel Ali started composing Serpent Music<\/em> after a stint in Leipzig, looking for an outlet to write about \u201crelationships and stuff.\u201d The album is Ali\u2019s interpretation of soul music, as informed by Throbbing Gristle as Otis Redding. He utilizes a sleepy falsetto, opiated guitars, jagged percussion, and a variety of field recordings that range from solemn choruses to the sound of lapping water. Serpent Music<\/em> is an astoundingly sensitive portrait of Ali\u2019s emotional range as a producer who can generate a kaleidoscope of moods at will.<\/p>\n

Yves Tumor: \u201cRole in Creation\u201d (via SoundCloud)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

Source URL: https:\/\/pitchfork.com\/features\/lists-and-guides\/9992-the-20-best-experimental-albums-of-2016\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lists & Guides The 20 Best Experimental Albums of 2016 From Arca to Moor Mother to Tim Hecker to Meredith Monk, the best experimental records of the year By Kevin Lozano December 9, 2016 What forms can pleasure take? Is it exclusively the province of serenity and happy thoughts? Or is it possible that political […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[54],"class_list":["post-1518779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-pitchfork-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1518779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1518779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1518779\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1518779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1518779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1518779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}