Some Stuff We Liked in 2012

Anderson "cf" Cook's birth sign is a white guy spelling "blood" with his knuckles & fingers. He co-runs a tape label you should check out, maybe.

Death Grips, The Money Store

Everything chopped and screwed and backwards and sped back up and played all at once. Streamed from Real Player into a massive setup with blown subs reverberating down the streets in a bad neighborhood. A dying toy ambulance frantically sputtering in a North Korean karaoke bar. Graceland recorded with child soldiers. Rad Racer revving into a dumb sunset. Overmodulated bass destruction and synth violence. Yelling, lots of yelling. Raw nerves. Throw the first punch at Christmas.

Grimes, Visions

Nell with a sampler. All skin and bone and melismatically lisping Hopelandish soaked in unearthly reverb. A broken digital scale and unlabeled baggies of research chemicals. Multiple viewings of the Plavalaguna performance on YouTube 240p and a CD of Mariah Carey's Greatest Hits. Samples of guided meditation records spinning at 78rpm, grooves worn flat. Corroded arpeggios and meandering synths. A sexy baby 3000-year-old animé demon raised by Project Monarch. Flawed and weird and darkly beautiful and fun. Sephiroth sheathes his blade.

The Secret, Agnus Dei

Headbang around a fire of burning backpatches. Get into the pit for the first time and push some stupid kid over and step on his glasses and don't pick him up. This album displays a level of coherence of mission and sound that shames their contemporaries' frequent trips into idiot-shiver territory. Everything is annihilated: this week, the weak, just shit in general. The Pope is a fucker. Blackened, blasted and primitive. So filthy you'll dither on the oath to never wash your battlejacket.

Swans, The Seer

All the possibilities of a happy future have left our village. A bell tolls. We move back into the dark woods and clean the moss from granite altars. Old men twirl fervently with handfuls of snakes with tongues that stretch toward the infinite. We drone and beat ourselves into trances that uplift without hope. We breathe heavy and toast the void. Baptisms end in drownings. Tantric onanism is rediscovered. Semen spills at the feet of a cyclopean Venus of Willendorf. Christ returns with the legs of a goat. A baby is born with a tail. Ur. It's pretty Swans-y.

White Lung, Sorry

Failed and failing relationships. Petit larceny. Used needles in poutine. This is propulsive, ebullient punk with underlying sadness and desperation. Streamlined drums and bass constantly speeding, a guitarist that fills every second with skronky, choked noodling, and a lady tunefully yelling overcast lyrics are descriptors I'm using to review this album I really like. Over and done in under 20 and set on repeat.