Undertale - Toby Fox (Self-Released, 2016)
The full soundtrack for Toby Fox's masterwork Undertale comes in at 101 tracks that cover over two hours of music -- and that feels about right. The indie gaming hit of the decade, Undertale's personality and ever-changing gameplay styles help distract from how basic even its basic throwback graphics are, but the love and care Fox has placed into the soundtrack is nothing short of extraordinary. Working within idioms developed by the original NES versions of everything from The Legend of Zelda to the first few Final Fantasy games, Fox crafts immediately memorable themes that are given revisions and revamps as the story of the game changes, and listening to these even removed from the game recalls classic battles. "Nyeh Heh Heh!" might as well be the best Tetris theme never used, "Home" is that classic motif of a starting village that you just know you're going to revisit later on, and the great techno workout that is "CORE" recalls level-jumping platformers at their best. It's a Greatest Hits for video game aficionados because, well, it was crafted by someone who grew up on the sounds, mechanics, and music of some of the best video games in history -- only fair that his score joins that same lineage that inspired him so. - ES
Virgins - Tim Hecker (Kranky, 2013)
Tim Hecker got his PhD at McGill University, writing a dissertation titled “The Era of Megaphonics: On the Productivity of Loud Sound.” Hecker studies both the atonal squall of the early Musique Concrète eccentrics but also the unholy noise of sirens, bombs and war. He focuses on the “aspects of sonic power and its ability to paralyze the body, empty the mind and even threaten life.” And goddamn if that doesn’t sum Virgins up in a neat few lines.
In the modern era, Hecker lands squarely between Musique Concrète’s disciples and the sonic destruction of industry. The warm, melancholy glow of Stars of the Lid or the humming meditation of Gas on one end, the gale force notes of Colin Stetson and the gnashing hopelessness of Ben Frost on the other. Hecker molds them all. The Abu Ghraib imagery on the cover hints at Virgin’s political undertone, searching through the morbid history of noise as weapons, from concussive blasts to Guantanamo Bay prisoners subjected to ear bleeding renditions of Rage Against the Machine.
But much like his later Konoyo, there is peace in the sublimation. Submit to the sound and find beauty. The seven-minute long centerpiece, “Live Room” scatters piano across the channels, fuzz and booming bass growling below as the sound grows like a miasma. It is impossible to do anything else while listening to Virgins. Its noise, its command is absolute. - NS
Wildlife - La Dispute (No Sleep, 2011)
In Wildlife, I think of Keith Basso’s great book Wisdom Sits in Places. In it, Basso interviews four Apache people, each of whom provides a unique perspective on what makes places significant. One of them, a man named Dudley, tells Basso, “It’s like water that never dries up. You need to drink water to stay alive, don’t you? Well, you also need to drink from places. You must remember everything about them.” La Dispute frontman Jordan Dreyer echoes this sentiment all over Wildlife; a study in short-form narrative and character development unprecedented and as of yet unmatched in the world of contemporary post-hardcore. Over the course of about an hour, La Dispute weave intricate, intimate tales of love, loss, despair, religion, schizophrenia, cancer, sex, and the decline of western Michigan. The songs on the tracklist stutter and spurt and threaten to explode, and when they do — like on the bananas three-combo punch of “King Park,” “Edward Benz, 27 Times,” and “I See Everything” — it is pure, unadulterated melodrama of the highest order and caliber.
However easy it is to spot the band’s major influences (Fugazi, mewithoutYou, Envy, regional acts like Ivan and Victor! Fix the Sun), it is perhaps even easier to see how much they have influenced this style of music since Wildlife’s release. Some of the groups taking a cue from LD have gone on to enjoy a bit of crossover popularity (Dance Gavin Dance, Being As an Ocean) while others have made terrific music in their own right (Touché Amoré, Pianos Become the Teeth, the Hotelier). Structurally and semiotically, the material on Wildlife succeeds in every way. Dreyer’s love-em-or-hate-em vocals and lyrics, Chad Sterenberg and Kevin Whittemore’s jagged guitar work, and Adam Vass and Brad Vander Lugt’s robust rhythm section all add up to something that is more than the sum of its parts. On album centerpiece “St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church Blues,” Dreyer searches for external comfort in his immediate environment, even though the places to which we assign value, the spaces to which we cling, will certainly and absolutely die one day. But with an emphasis on diegesis, melody, raw instrumentation, and clean production, Wildlife — almost ten years later — remains a triumph and a place of shelter. - HM
This is How You Smile - Helado Negro (RVNG, 2019)
Political moments are loud. They are sermons, rallies, cries and marches. In times of strife and dread, just the act of noise can feel like a vital interruption, a reminder of ignored fears. Sometimes our most powerful psalms come in the quietest tones. A prayer can be for the world, but only be heard by its speaker. And Helado Negro made an album of prayers. This Is How You Smile is 12 hushed hymns to health, happiness and defiance. This is cozy, cloudy music, whispering that the revolution is imminent.
Roberto Carlos Lange’s prominence this decade has come from his synthesis of solace and politics. “Young, Latin and Proud” and “My Brown Skin” were celebrations of Latinx identity in an America increasingly hostile to the very existence of color. Like a calmer version of Chicano Batman, Lange’s works were self-affirmations, hoping to imbue the listener with courage. And This Is How You Smile opens with the same sentiments as Lange coos “Brown won’t go/ Brown just glows.” “Please Won’t Please,” is a soft, mewling track with sleepy synths and shimmering piano that hides Lange’s steely determination, “We’ll light ourselves on fire / Just to see who really wants to believe / That it’s just me. Even among all this blanketing beauty, Lange is pleading to be recognized as human, seeing millions with his same pigment treated as animals in the country he calls home.
Some of Lange’s last words are “Take care of people today.” Lange instead discovered a quiet perseverance and the radiant, hushed warmth of hope. And he nestles it in his, and our, heart. - NS
XXX - Danny Brown (Fool’s Gold, 2012)
The one-liners of Danny Brown’s XXX easily come back to memory; you might even read “stank pussy smelling like Cool Ranch Doritos” in his impish voice unprompted. But be warned: the Detroit rapper’s breakout album is bleaker, more dilapidated and depressing than you remember. It foreshadows Danny Brown’s wild, reckless decade, but he didn’t care about whether or not the track could inspire a Vice Media-friendly persona for the future couch potatoes of America to love. The guy just wanted to rap. XXX is far from glamorous. He titled it “Die Like a Rockstar” for a reason: indulgences here feel dangerous and fatal. “Blunt After Blunt” brutally repeats the titular run-on hook as if to replicate the nausea; the recollection of a thrill-seeker in “Party All the Time” is the most downtrodden track on the album.
Detroit looms behind XXX as a hellscape. The beats provide the grime with its filthy bass synths, crushed drums and disconcerted chops of samples. But Danny Brown couldn’t have illustrated its state of misery more concise than the chorus of “Fields”: “Where I live / it’s fields, fields, fields.” The city also represents the cycle that’s eating him alive as well as the life he’s dying to escape from. The album title alludes to the explicit content, but it also represents his age and his imagined expiration date if this album doesn’t get his humble career off the ground. “The last 10 years, I’ve been so fucking stressed,” he screams in “30,” his voice quivering from genuine exhaustion. Fortunately, this decade have been a bit more kind to Danny Brown. - RM