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Molek FMBest of Sounds 2012
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TENDERFIST
TOURIST CAR
We weren’t sure if Tenderfist were capable of extricating themselves from the stasis that was their post-‘This Wasted Heart’ point in career. But out comes Tourist Car, a little record that showcased their mettle as a (now) trio. There’s a Talking Heads-era David Byrne quality to Tourist Car – it’s not the sound per se, but the feeling of modern day ennui they exude. More optimistic than the synthy melancholy of the beat and Edzwan’s emotionless mumbling singing would suggest, the records proposes the romantic notion of eschewing the façade of modern propriety and replacing it with modern excess. Perfect soundtrack for every young slacker and office drone in modern day KL.
TAME IMPALA
LONERISM
Tame Impala’s sophomore Lonerism is similar to its predecessor, a retromancy of the late ‘60s and ‘70s. These guys don’t just make Xerox copies of dead decades though, these aren’t facsimiles, period. Instead the band appropriates psychedelic rock and improves upon them by augmenting that sound with current technology – maximising the spirit of psychedelia. Similarly, there’s a sense of awe that is both natural and man-made to the album, human work and technology can coexist to create something jaw-dropping without undermining each other.
FIONA APPLE
THE IDLER WHEEL…
The title of Fiona Apple’s latest is impossibly long, for convenience sake we’re just going to call it The Idler Wheel. Her previous releases dabbled with musical eclecticism (no doubt thanks to producers the likes of Jon Brion), so it’s a tad startling to listen to The Idler Wheel and realise how Spartan she’s gotten with the production now. Not that the bombast’s disappeared, just reined in much like Feist’s latest last year. There’s still a reigning percussion signature that permeates the entirety of the record in the homemade percussions of truck stomps and even pillow, if the credits were to be believed. The sparser sound is complemented by the feel of the album that might not be so immediate from just listening to it, but by looking at the supplements – the cover art, the album name, the lyrics, the squid on Fiona’s head in the video to single ‘Every Single Night’ – you might surmise something of it.
KILLER MIKE
R.A.P MUSIC
It was a tossup between this and El-P’s own Cancer 4 Cure as the best El-P-produced album of the year. Easily our favourite rap record of 2012 next to Kendrick’s major label debut. To paraphrase a friend; R.A.P. Music makes us wish El-P would bring back Def Jux with a lineup of Killer Mike, Danny Brown, Das Racist, and Mr. Muthaf*ckin’ eXquire. We don’t know why it took so long for El-P’s brand of syncopatic industrial hip hop beats to finally find a soul mate in the 808s of southern hip hop but goddamn, it works wonders. This is the modern day equivalent of AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted-era Ice Cube; politically heavy and didactic rap music backed by loud chaotic production. Like the last track’s claim of apotheosis, this record really got us feeling the religion in rap.
THEY WILL KILL US ALL
VULTURE
They Will Kill Us All (TWKUA) had seen multiple incarnations with a few different vocalists but it is not until Edwin took the frontman role that the band truly lived up to their potential. Four years in the making and finally released toward the end of December ‘12, Vulture almost didn’t make our year end list. Yet the album is just too impressive of a local release for us to have this issue out without mentioning it. Moving away from the rock missive of super sonic twin guitar attack with heavy reverb, TWKUA has embraced a more minimal yet complex songwriting – evident in the addition of a keyboardist (“No synthesiser, no satisfaction” after all). The 9 tracks include formerly released singles ‘Great Glass City’ & ‘Under the Red Sky’, both remastered here, and their interpretation of P. Ramlee off of Indiepretasi. Throughout the album, style diverges with hints of shoegaze, indie pop, hardcore, good ol’ rock’n’roll, and even Chinese-style guitar, yet it maintains a cohesion only seasoned bands could pull off.
(OKAY, MAKE THAT 11 ALBUMS OF ’12)
ACTRESS
R.I.P
IDM is an annoying label, for one it stands for “intelligent dance music”, and second it assumes superiority immediately just from the name. It doesn’t help that its fans are some of the most obnoxious music elitists one could ever hope to not meet. But Darren Cunningham’s latest release R.I.P. (as Actress) is actually deserving of the title – half of the record doesn’t have beats – he seems to have very little interest in getting people on the dancefloor. His vocabulary of dance music could probably envelop genre compatriots like Zomby and Burial’s music at their most abstract. If this were JUICE’s first featured album, we could wax lyrical about the accomplishments of the album. So just take our word for it in this sentence-long summary; R.I.P. marries the familiarity of techno with the abstraction of minimalist and ambient, marring none of the genres and coalescing into something of a transcendental dance record.
