A Winged Victory for the Sullen - A Winged Victory for the Sullen

(ambient)

Colin Stetson - New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges

(experimental / solo sax)

Corrupted - Garten der Unbewusstheit

(funeral doom)

Cyclo. - id

(glitch / noise)

Dale Cooper Quartet & The Dictaphones - Metamanoir

(jazz / ambient)

Devin Townsend Project - Deconstruction / Ghost

(progressive metal, progressive rock / ambient)

Kaya - Queen

(electronic / dance / darkwave(-ish))

Tim Hecker - Ravedeath, 1972 / Dropped Pianos

(ambient, piano / ambient)

The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble - In the Stairwell

(jazz / ambient)

Wolves in the Throne Room - Celestial Lineage

(black metal)

There are other albums from this year that I’ve enjoyed, of course - but these are those that stuck with me the most. Enjoy.

Ryoji Ikeda - 99 (1999) :: Variations For Modulated 440Hz Sinewaves :: / 20’ To 2000.March

      When I listen to music, it usually doesn’t get my undivided attention. I’ll chat with friends, read news, or browse pictures. Though my closed headphones make sure that music is the only thing reaching my ears, I normally can’t help but absorb information visually at the same time. It’s a rare piece of music indeed that will compel me to sit nearly motionless for twenty minutes, staring blankly into space. This is such a piece.

      Variations For Modulated 440Hz Sinewaves is exactly what its title states. The piece is built out of pure sinusoidal waves, at a single pitch – the A above middle C. 440Hz, a standard reference frequency.

      One might expect such a piece to be dull beyond measure. Yet, by effectively making pitch irrelevant, Ryoji Ikeda amplifies other characteristics of sound. Loudness, attack and release, rhythm, and position in the stereo field take over as primary focuses. Drones turn into pulses, which turn into blips. Rhythmic patterns, split between left and right, gradually slip in and out of phase with each other. At times, rapid modulations in volume even seem to suggest other pitches – an AM signal being decoded by your brain.

      A lot of music gets described as ‘hypnotic’ – often repetitive, dreamy, sonically rich pieces. But Variations is hypnotic largely because of its austerity. Absolutely nothing gets in between the piece and the listener. No reverb, no echoes, just left and right channels.

      Variations is obviously an exercise in extreme minimalism. But just as a detailed picture can be rendered with nothing but pure black and white pixels, Ikeda wrenches a stunning amount of variety out of a single pure tone.

Inexcusably, I had completely forgotten about this album when I was first assembling my list. I can’t bear to remove any, so I’m just appending it.

Gojira – From Mars to Sirius (2005)

Gojira could be (and often are) considered a death metal band, but their outlook is far less bleak than that label would imply. Their lyrics, especially on From Mars to Sirius, are often focused on deep ecology. The album follows a character who, seeing that the world is in danger, sets out to find the Flying Whales. The whales teach him to fly, and he flies to Sirius C, where the Master Race help him restore life to Earth. They’re French – it doesn’t have to make complete sense.

Powered by brothers Joe (guitar/vocals) and Mario (drums) Duplantier, Gojira have a gift for producing groovy, unorthodox riffs that sound like no other band. They combine death metal with complex song structures, unique atmospherics, and a few odd techniques. (those guitar pick scrapes!)

From the crushing The Heaviest Matter of the Universe, to the hypnotic, ultimately uplifting closer Global Warming, From Mars to Sirius is a unique experience not only sonically, but lyrically as well.

“I had this dream, our planet surviving
The guiding stars always growing
And all the worlds
The fates, all the countries
They’re all rebuilding at the same time
I never fell and always believed in
We could evolve and get older
Opened my eyes, and let all this flow in
Now see, a new hope is growing inside
…We will see our children growing”

Gojira – From Mars to Sirius (2005)

01 – Ocean Planet 5:33
02 – Backbone 4:18
03 – From The Sky 5:48
04 – Unicorn 2:09
05 – Where Dragons Dwell 6:54
06 – The Heaviest Matter of the Universe 3:58
07 – Flying Whales 7:44
08 – In The Wilderness 7:47
09 – World To Come 6:53
10 – From Mars 2:25
11 – To Sirius 5:38
12 – Global Warming 7:51

My twelve favorite albums of the past decade, in chronological order:

Isis - Oceanic (2002)

The Devin Townsend Band - Accelerated Evolution (2003)

Arsis - A Celebration of Guilt (2004)

Meshuggah - Catch Thirtythree (2005)

Imogen Heap - Speak For Yourself (2005)

Opeth - Ghost Reveries (2005)

Rosetta - The Galilean Satellites (2005)

Gojira - From Mars to Sirius (2005)

Katatonia - The Great Cold Distance (2006)

Kashiwa Daisuke - Program Music I (2007)

Ihsahn - angL (2008)

Sunn O))) - Monoliths & Dimensions (2009)

Kashiwa Daisuke – Program Music I (2007)

From the opening seconds of the thirty-six minute stella, Kashiwa Daisuke’s musical ethos is laid bare. A piano repeats a simple melody, and meanwhile a number of familiar sounds pass by – a babbling brook, a child laughing, a chugging train – but these glitch and falter. Lush, sweeping strings soon join the piano, but beneath them the drums remain disjunct. Beats stutter or are unexpectedly delayed, and tension grows, as themes are built then broken down.

There is an inherent difficulty in trying to briefly describe pieces of such breadth. They are program music, as the album’s title suggests – stella is based on a novel, Write once, run melos on a short story – and this underlying narrative structure is quite clear, even to someone unfamiliar with the stories.

More than twenty minutes through stella, a string melody descends through layers of distortion, only to be suddenly replaced by a dissonant piano. The stuttering rhythms give way, and out of the rubble, an orchestra is slowly constructed. The piece gradually builds to a breathtaking, climactic scene that, for me, evokes running through a spring meadow. As stella winds down, the opening piano melody reappears, giving the whole piece a dreamlike air.

The feel of Write once, run melos is quite different from stella, though the instrumentation is mostly the same – piano, strings, drums, the occasional guitar. For the first several minutes, melodies are ruthlessly interrupted and broken, before a grand theme emerges.

Even this theme then gives way to reveal a delicate piano section, which is later rejoined by the strings. Yet again, this is suddenly broken, replaced by an erratic crescendo. This leads, gradually – and through more tension-building stutters – to an unexpected, gorgeous waltz.

When this too comes to a close, the foreboding piano lines and synthesizers telegraph what’s coming – an astonishing, intensely powerful climax.

I’ve heard a lot of compelling music – some of which I’ve listed here – but I’ve never heard anything like this. It’s simultaneously challenging, wonderfully beautiful, and awesome in the truest sense of the word. If I’m being forced to choose, Kashiwa Daisuke’s Program Music I is my favorite album of the decade.

Kashiwa Daisuke – Program Music I (2007)

01 – stella 35:58
02 – Write once, run melos 25:57

Opeth – Ghost Reveries (2005)

Opeth’s brilliant 2001 album Blackwater Park nearly took this spot on my list, but in the end I’ve chosen Ghost Reveries for its exceptional cohesiveness. Opeth’s music, chiefly the product of vocalist/guitarist Mikael Åkerfeldt, has always been characterized by a combination of seemingly unrelated forms. The savage death metal that opens Ghost of Perdition soon gives way to a lone 12-string acoustic guitar, topped by gentle, melodic vocals – Åkerfeldt is a vocal chameleon if ever there was one.

The addition of keyboardist Per Wiberg lends Ghost Reveries an atmosphere that was not present on previous Opeth albums – subtle mellotron here, a touch of piano there – while not crowding the many-layered arrangements. A middle-Eastern flavor, enhanced by the keyboards, appears on the beautiful Atonement, before leading – through the short instrumental Reverie – into the awesome Harlequin Forest.

The beginning of Harlequin Forest experiments with a verse-chorus construction – something normally absent from Opeth’s music – before segueing into a stunningly beautiful acoustic section, highlighting Åkerfeldt’s rare lyrical talent. A snakelike riff carries the song to it’s rhythmic, trance-inducing conclusion.

Opeth’s work has always been, in a sense, cinematic. Scenes play themselves out, characters appear and disappear, all created by the layers of instrumentation and vocals. Sent off by the gorgeous epilogue Isolation Years, Ghost Reveries remains Opeth’s greatest work of the decade.

“The devil cracked the earthly shell, foretold she was the one
Blew hope into the room, and said:
“You have to live before you die young””

Opeth – Ghost Reveries (2005)

01 – Ghost of Perdition 10:29
02 – The Baying of the Hounds 10:41
03 – Beneath the Mire 7:57
04 – Atonement 6:28
05 – Reverie/Harlequin Forest 11:39
06 – Hours of Wealth 5:20
07 – The Grand Conjuration 10:21
08 – Isolation Years 3:51

Sunn O))) – Monoliths & Dimensions (2009)

Monoliths & Dimensions kicks off in typical Sunn O))) fashion, with an exceedingly dense blend of droning guitar and bass. The music of Sunn O))) (it’s just pronounced ‘sun’) is not about rhythm, or even individual notes, so much as it’s about texture. The duo of Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson – surrounded by a perpetually changing group of guest musicians – have described their music as ‘power ambient’, and this encapsulates their ethos well. Their goal is to create an unnerving, ritualistic atmosphere, and on Monoliths & Dimensions, they succeed mightily.

Midway through the nearly eighteen-minute Aghartha, the rumble of guitar and bass are joined by Attila Csihar’s guttural spoken word. A piano creeps in, as do sounds of creaking timbers and flowing water, followed by a group of dissonant horns – evoking, perhaps, bizarre last rites for a sinking ship.

Big Church (Megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért) sees the drone ritual joined by something new to Sunn O))) – a choir. Layers of eerie vocals come and go, repeating an impossibly long Hungarian word – I’ll let you guess what it is.

The glitchy, distorted intro of Hunting & Gathering (Cydonia) leads into a monumental guitar riff – graced by faint traces of percussion – before shifting the focus to horns, and later to sweeping synthesizers.

The unexpectedly beautiful closer Alice ends the album with a distinct ‘up’ feel – a wonderful contrast to the oppressive atmosphere of the opening Aghartha. Bowed double bass adds to the low-end weight, while above, gentle horns dance through major-key melodies.

Sunn O))) have created a number of compelling works – their 2006 collaboration with Boris, Altar, being particularly notable – but Monoliths & Dimensions is the apex of their output to date.

Sunn O))) – Monoliths & Dimensions (2009)

01 – Aghartha 17:34
02 – Big Church (Megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért) 9:43
03 – Hunting & Gathering (Cydonia) 10:02
04 – Alice 16:20

Ihsahn – angL (2008)

With angL, former Emperor frontman Ihsahn raised the bar that he had set for himself with his first solo album The Adversary. He draws not only on his black metal roots, but on his more progressive tendencies as well – utilizing both clean and harsh vocals, as well as his considerable talent as a guitarist.

From the epic, melodic black metal of Malediction, to the piano interlude in Scarab and the eerie acoustic guitar and soft vocals that open Threnody, Ihsahn shows his remarkable breadth as an artist.

Mikael Åkerfeldt of Opeth makes a guest appearance as well, providing lead vocals on the awesome Unhealer. The chorus, featuring a call and response between Mikael’s throaty growls and Ihsahn’s higher rasp, is a terrific example of the power of these vocal styles – as well as serving to highlight Ihsahn’s poetic lyrics.

“Your peace is not my peace (Where you redeem, I summon guilt)
Your fear is not my fear (I beckon the fire)
Your hell is not my hell (The life you shun is mine to live)
Your sins are not my sins (In me you find no heir)
Your lies are not my lies (Such grace, I do renounce)
Your god is not my god (Where he forgiveth, I will unheal)”

Ihsahn – angL (2008)

01 – Misanthrope 4:59
02 – Scarab 5:18
03 – Unhealer 6:18
04 – Emancipation 5:28
05 – Malediction 4:19
06 – Alchemist 4:20
07 – Elevator 5:07
08 – Threnody 5:08
09 – Monolith 6:27