Why is it that the ‘top 10 albums of the past year’ are almost always by bands which the author knew of already and wanted to check out beforehand? Perhaps because they’ve actually listened to them. ‘There were thousands of albums released this year, but fortunately enough eight of the best ten were released by bands which we already knew of and wanted to listen to.’ (‘It’s amazing how the Big 4 continue to release the best thrash [sp.] albums on a yearly basis!’) I doubt that most of us have sorted the wheat from the chaff in 1996, let alone 2011.
Still, the whole ‘top 10’ business is pretty perplexing. I can fully understand wanting to share some bands which seem promising from a given year, or who you’ve been listening to quite frequently, but I’m not certain how in less than one year you’d have gotten to know all of these albums well enough to not only state that they are quality, but quantify this quality in comparison with other good albums from the year. Perhaps if you haven’t listened to any other albums from the year, and have been very sparing with albums from earlier years, but in the first case it wouldn’t render the claim of being a yearly top 10 very convincing, while in the latter case it wouldn’t exactly say much for the value of your esteem for albums. Still, though, I suppose that 1-listen reviews are a common enough occurrence, so it shouldn’t be too surprising by this approach that 2 listens are enough for a precise ordering of albums in accordance with their inherent merit.
Nonetheless, as far as 2011 albums go, I… haven’t listened to that many? Of those which I have, there’s still only one or two which get regular circulation. That’s by no means going to be the final story, though, as generally the albums which I’ve listened to most from the years around 2008-2010 have only been discovered a few years or so after the fact. It probably has to do with my general band-seeking habits, which involve occasionally stumbling across a band somewhere in relation to a subject or style which I’m interested in, or just having them mentioned in an interesting context. There’s no real temporal tilt to it, is what I’m saying.
From what I have listened to, it’s mainly more or less established bands, or at least returning ones; Satan’s Host, Manilla Road, Arch/Matheos, that kind of thing. Satan’s Host don’t quite seem to have gained an ethos yet, so I’ll still have to wait for the album which illuminates to me their deep thoughts about Satan, while the Arch/Matheos hasn’t really done a lot for me as yet, though I’m still listening to it from time to time to try and see if it clicks. For now, it feels a bit like the two are still finding their feet with each other, and can definitely do better with time. I’m sure I’ve listened to a couple of the Portraits and Ghosts and the like, and this time could have been better spent. In any case, though, the point is that I haven’t listened to that much music from 2011, and most of it hasn’t quite impressed. You wouldn’t necessarily expect it to, however, given that these are basically just the albums which I’ve heard of, in other words the reunions and more hyped up bands, and neither hype nor reunion are generally good signs for a record’s quality. (But they are good signs for ubiquity on Top 10 lists.)
One album which did surprise me a fair bit, however, was ‘A Scarcity of Miracles,’ by Jakszyk, Fripp and Collins, known also as a King Crimson ProjeKct. Now, it’s definitely closer to the Crimson of ‘I Talk to the Wind’ than that of ‘Red,’ in other words on the softer side of things, but at the same time a lot more elaborate in style compared to the simplicity and minimalism of songs like ‘I Talk to the Wind’ or ‘Islands.’ It’s a pretty distinctive record, in a way, and does a lot of interesting things which I’d like to write a post about in the near future, such as in its use of silence. In addition, it features the vocals of Jakko Jakszyk, who is not only very good, but also often reminds me of Ray Alder both in terms of sound and the use of subtle tone changes, and that’s always a good thing. I’ve been listening to this one a fair bit since discovering it, and I think it may well have the compositional nuance to last a while longer, although ultimately we’ll just have to see.
So, have you found anything interesting in the last year, which you could see yourself liking for a while to come? If so, it’d be nice to know, so feel free to discuss what you’ve found interesting in recent times. It may even help me to stop being trapped in the Middle Ages.
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In any case, though, the end of 2011 also means the beginning of a new year of metal (and, well, prog), and it seems a pretty promising one. OSI’s album sounds like it should be solid, and they’ve commented that it feels like one of their most coherent efforts. Fates Warning probably won’t match them, but freed from the necessity of creating an album of shorter songs for live performance, they should be able to improve and make something pretty interesting. If Cyriis’ SETI project was somehow released this year, by some faint chance, that would form a pretty great addition to what we already have. More quirky speedthrashprog metal!
(Also a DVD!)
A release which could well give any of these a run for their money, however, is this. The band, Ions, seems to have uploaded some pretty extensive samples in 2004, and then disappeared. This is quite unfortunate, as the samples which they’ve given seem to testify to a very high level of prog metal songwriting, especially on songs like ‘Orca,’ ‘Morphos,’ and ‘Matter.’ The ‘lighter’ (ie. simpler, not less serious) songs like ‘Crying’ and ‘Away’ also seem pretty tightly composed, while I like the almost Synchestra-esque passage which opens ‘Beneath my Feet.’ Their website title is also fabulous. In case you don’t recognize the personnel, it’s basically a project of some of the former members of the APSoG-loving prog band Greyhaven, featuring members such as their vocalist Brian Francis, who seems to have strengthened even further since then. The other main solo project emerging from the remnants of that group was Ethan Matthews’ Echo Us, although I believe that there was also some interaction between the two, such as Brian Francis helping Echo Us with their album covers. (Their thematic content is very similar, as well.)
It wouldn’t really surprise me if a project like this had ceased to be in the early stages, but in this case they at least sounded like they had some pretty decent recordings of their songs already down, or at least knew quite well what they were doing, which makes one wonder where they went. If anyone knows what’s going on with these guys, it’d be nice to know. If these guys were to release an album, it sounds like they have all the ingredients to make something rather special.
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In any case, though, I have a new Vektor album to listen to. See you.
