2015 All-the-Way Halfway Almost There It's Already July Music List

My 2015 favorites so far.

Dan Deacon - Gliss Riffer
I've long admired Dan Deacon, but Gliss Riffer has transformed me from casual admirer to Deacon fanatic.



Domenique Dumont - Comme Ça
Wistful beach-dreaming tropicalia pop music for dancing and gentle smiles.

Eric Chenaux - Skullsplitter
Chenaux has been creating slow-burning outsider blues and balladry for some time now, all of it consistently beautiful and weird. Skullsplitter though is weirder and more beautiful than the rest.
 

/F - pq:c
What happens, I assume, when you run your circuit board through a grocery store tortilla. This is the future of electronic tortilla music, and the future is bright.


The Go! Team - The Scene Between
Don't sleep on The Go! Team. I know, they seem like old news. Maybe they are old news, I don't know. But this album, The Scene Between, has been an amazing grower, flush with melodic brilliance, definitely the album I've replayed the most in 2015.



John Wiese - Deviate From Balance
What can I say? New work from John Wiese is new work from John Wiese. Harsh musique concrete to sate us faulty-wired texture nerds.


Mount Eerie - Sauna
The best album Phil Elvrum's made since he began recording as Mount Eerie.


Quicksails - Spillage
Awkward aliens, laser beam button-mashing, sunburst chaos streams, radio-hacked starship worship beauty pageants: the new Quicksails album has it all.


Radicalfashion- Garcon
Neatly composed, classically beautiful piano pieces that, as the album progresses, take on minimalist electronics and a spryly playful air. More conservative than his debut, Garcon has been my palette cleanser, a nice counterpoint to the more chaotic music that's been dominating my headphones.

Radicalfashion - Odori

Radicalfashion
Odori
(01.2007, Hefty)
Verdict = Piano Essentials

As a self ascribed diction geek I often grasp onto certain new words and phrases that I read in various texts and have the compulsion to write them down, cataloging interesting word usage. It hasn’t really served a specific purpose, aside from pacifying my occasional literary OCD, until now. A certain descriptor used by Alexander Pope to describe the fantasy creatures like nymphs, pixies, gnomes and the like seems completely and unequivocally applicable to Radicalfashion’s Odori. He didn’t originate the term, but 'machinery' as a literary device harkening fantasy creatures just seems so perfect in its double meaning here. Radicalfashion seems the product of this specific 'machinery.' The album is piano based but flourishes with several electronic treatments including several magnificent uses of samples. Despite the strength of the electronic decorations, Radicalfashion’s piano remains the back bone and tonal thrust of the tracks. The piano playing seems stridently unique among peers, being played with a much more apparent classical background and technique. Radicalfashion also never submits to falling into the plaintive minor chord piano loops that seem to be flooding the home listening market as of late. No, Odori is constantly marked by light plucked agility and harkens tiny, magical fingers. The playing also marks a range of moods that seem to flutter about with an odd magical proficiency. It is as if that ‘machinery’ was at work in the album’s creation, not overly grandiose, but like Pope had written of his precious 'machinery,' it feels like it was played by a "light militia of the lower sky." The dualistic implication of machinery also applies to the robot-esque samples and electronic fuss that occasionally clouds the tracks. I don’t mean to appear well read or particularly insightful, because I am far from either, but I do mean to assert that this album is completely out of the ordinary for someone who listens to an over abundance of music. The last time I think that I was charmed like this was the first time I heard The Books. It may not be entirely unique in its instrumentation or methods, but in the success of its aim Radicalfashion’s Odori is virtually unparalleled.

-Mr. Thistle