Dark, Silent, Radiant Radian

Austrian instrumental trio Radian play Cafe OTO tomorrow night...so I thought I would let you know why this is going to be a stellar show. Their latest record On Dark Silent Off (through Thrill Jockey) plays with the machinations of minimal rock, somewhere between the dark brutalism of My Disco, the lurking groove state of Holy Fuck (when bled of their hypercolour exuberance, that is), the static sheet electronics of Fennesz - hell, the hypnotic fried circularity of Loop. It's a bit of a remove from the static nature of previous records, and while I have always loved the discombobulated, rigid textures that held this band at a distant remove, there is something more electric, organic, alive on On Dark Silent Off - it grows on you, in you, around you. Grab the LP here, grab tickets for tomorrow's show here, and prepare to enter a breathing chrysalis of urgent, euphoric tension.

PREMIERE - half/cut's New Single 'Martin Was A Diver'

We have a few premieres coming up over the next few weeks, and first cab off the rank is this incredible number from Melbourne dream pop outfit, half/cut. From their forthcoming debut album Ecco Locale, 'Martin Was A Diver' is a silky, sinuous movement, with Jessie's exquisite vocals stretching and overshadowing, a delicate Siren of confidence. The description of the band's sound as "Cocteau Twins meets American Football" is perfectly balanced here. Their sound shimmers, a mixture of the moddish New Wave pop of The The with more earnest, cinematic mores - pretty incredible seeing the band have barely stepped out into the live arena since their inception a couple years ago. The production may help - the album was recorded by Neil Thomason (Augie March, My Disco) and mastered by Harris Newman (Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Arcade Fire) - but half/cut arrive fully-formed. Listen to 'Martin Was A Diver' below, as well as other cuts 'Coming Of Age' and 'Your Shadow Builds A City I Can Never Visit'.

Phasing Out Exhaustion

Nothing like some exhaustion to start a Black Friday... Melbourne noise heads Exhaustion present new EP Phased Out following on from their Biker LP and their collaboration with Kris Wanders over the past 12 months. The four tracks exhibited here continues the gnarled noise in an inexorable centrifugal free fall, with added industrial destruction from Mark Barrage. The title track is the soundtrack to subterranean tribal law, pagan horror made out of metal and glass, sepulchral figures of feedback fury. Unhinged? Not really; the propulsive metronomic nature of the drums/machine underscore the moans and howls. 'Colleague' offers more abhorrent synthetic scree and anodyne mantras - it fits in with the blackened minimal maximalism that My Disco have taken to their aesthetic on current album Severe, or Perth's Snowman at their basest. These scorched rhythm onslaughts are dissected in the B-side of the EP, with wunderkinds Mikey Young and Stacey Wilson (in Rites Wild mode) taking the reins. Young's 'Phased Out' is laid out like some of the Europunk leather techno that has been entrancing the Australian gutters of recent years (think Multiple Man or Pleasure Symbols, actually cold in Berlin, more earnest, less grimy, more creepy). Rites Wild takes Exhaustion into darker waves, sounding like the techno drone of Yaws or the darkest, desirous regions of Not Not Fun. Put out by Austin label 12XU, Phased Out is yet another transformative experience from one of the best bands in Australia.

New Housewives Dance

A fortnight ago there was a noisy festival in Dalston called Wyrdout. I heard it was great. I only got to see two bands on the Friday. I finally saw Gnod (they were so loud they made me feel physically ill and I put toilet paper in my ears to stop from being put in an iron lung - so they were great) and local band Housewives. I had heard of them around the traps recently and thought they were the Sydney band of the same name. But these guys are an entirely different beast, as their EP out through Faux Discx last year and new 7" out on new local label Blank Editions attests. An NME review compared them to Pixies or Gang of Four. And while I might say there is a proclivity for Wire-esque militaristic precision, the four-piece are more in line with My Disco in their motorik rhythms and barked vocals, while embracing chaotic auxiliary percussion and atonal drones into what is already a blood-pulsing caterwaul.


'New Dance' represents the more cathartic mayhem the band can procure, while 'Time She Stopped' is a slowburn spiral into madness, starting in an ambient slipstream before tension breaks in a maniacal cataclysm of noise before breaking back into a no wave stutter...then silence. There is an album on the way - I hold high hopes for it. Expect to see Housewives on a Sonic Masala showcase before the year's out. Buy the 7" here, and listen to last year's EP below.

My Severe King Disco

THEY ARE BACK...

One of my all time favourite bands, My Disco, are preparing to release Severe, their 4th LP and first record since Little Joy back in 2011. And first cut 'King Sound' sounds so much darker than I was anticipating! They have never been a joy and light band by any stretch of the imagination, but the almost industrial edge this minimalist marching dirge holds is a colder shade of black. I guess the album is called Severe for a reason, right? Their tightly-coiled precision and roiling mantras are blasted out into a darker space here - rather than controlled aggression, we have something more abject, more uncomfortable, more disturbing. I'm reminded of the creeping unease that I felt when watching the victims' demise in the great film Under The Skin last year - but something baser, more nihilistic is at play here. In short - I'm fucking excited for this record.



Pre-order Severe from Temporary Residence here - first 200 copies are clear with black smoke swirl - NICE.

Hellish Highlife Made

I have to say I am a little confused by Making... I was pretty sure the Sydney trio were breaking up. But seems I was (thankfully) entirely wrong, as they release their new LP Highlife next month through Trait Records. I have been a fan of theirs since hearing their excellent self titled EP and this lives up to the long expectations. The first track that really grabs me is the fourth track on the album, 'Come To Me' - it has that My Disco brooding pendulum rhythm and clipped/barked monosyllabic vocal approach, but then it explodes into something altogether more gnarled and corrosive. 'Zs' also fits into this vein, although there is a heavier metallic expulsion here that pushes them into noisier terrain. 'Dream Job' lurches forth, a metallic monster, deliberately unsettled and unsettling, serrated and scabrous, forcing the bile into the back of the throat. Then 'Amazon' has a more sinuous groove inherent, something Battles might produce without all the theatrics; 'Pascal' has moments of reflection in the middle third that allows for the pummelling bookends to smash forth with more controlled venom; and the psychotropic freneticism of the closing title track is the weirdest yet most cathartic song on the album. It does take the foot off the neck a bit, so to speak, and it is essentially what enlivens Highlife and makes those moments of black tension and white-hot release so potent. The production is powerful and precise too, thanks to Ivan Lisyak (Narrow Lands, Tanned Christ) and Lawrence English.


Preorder Highlife here - it's a corker. Making hit the road in Australia to launch the album on these dates (which also features Sonic Masala Records band Danyl Jesu in the mix!):

5th September - Crowbar Brisbane

w/Sewers, Danyl Jesu vs Pale Earth + Nature Trails 

11th September - Black Wire Records, Sydney 

w/Marcus Whale (LIVE), Mere Women + BV (connect the dots)

12th September - The Public Bar, Melbourne 

w/Diecut, CAMP COPE + JAALA

Brighter Gods Carve Out A Mathematical Future

One of the most intimate and exciting venues to rise up in Brisbane over the last decade, The Waiting Room, sadly closed its doors last year. In a city renowned for closing venues before they really get a chance to flourish, the three years it had been open is something of a miracle – a glorified house party a few nights a week in West End, albeit with a good sound system and PA, a caring and passionate management and staff, BYO sensibilities and communal goodwill permeated every show. And there were some stellar shows – from Mt. Eerie making a pleasantly unexpected visit to many great local and interstate acts getting in on the love. Two of my favourite shows ever that took place in that 80-person venue involved Auckland three-piece God Bows To Math, one of the most underrated bands in the Southern Hemisphere. Their serrated buzzsaw of a self-titled album blew the membranes out of the inner linings of my mind back in 2011 - the engine room of Thomas Morrison (drums) and Sam Cussen (bass) pounding incessantly and Martin Phillips’ barked, acerbic lyrics and dessicated guitar melts.

I have been extremely lucky to have a penultimate master of their follow up Brighter Futures on my laptop for the past few months, and FINALLY I have the final version and the album is hitting the world with a sledgehammer subtlety and cathartic charm. The thing is, it is when there is a measured stasis, a crawl, a breath taken, that the atmosphere and intensity is ratcheted up tenfold – the sample and two minute intro to ‘1999 Doomsday’ and the tempered vocals and skeletal instrumentation that eats its own tail in ‘Moral Prophylaxis’ are anxiety eaters, so that when the impending doom and destruction finally hit it is gargantuan in scope and precision. Even the brutally succinct ‘Munchausen’, which barely cracks a minute in length, opens with a quarter minute of near silence. The Sonic Youth and Shellac comparison I initially held with the trio still holds some weight, but Brighter Futures showcases a rougher hewn angularity, emotional expulsion and exorcism. ‘High Strings’ for some reason reminded me of My Disco, Jakob and a more unwound Unwound simultaneously – the insidious bass, the gravelly vocals that bleed into something more ephemeral, the instrumental groove, pummelling drums… All of which comes to an end on ‘Oil of Vitriol’, a strange track that brings back all these through lines and balls them up into a compacted whole.

Grab Brighter Futures (out through Muzai Records) here. Support these guys, stat.

Celebrate The End With Danyl Jesu

Here is a band that will be huge. I guarantee it. Danyl Jesu is an electronic metal outfit comprised of members of Brisbane acts O, Roku Music and The Rational Academy, and whilst it marries some of the dire spirals of darkness that the former band reside in, the four track EP Celebration is a new, blackened beast of a creation altogether. The brutality of 'Abandon' is the epoch of fury, and the synthetic whirr that winds things up to a coiled tension is a bubble that refuses to burst. The tension continues in 'Gathering' where the drums hold a metronomic death-call akin to My Disco's relentless meticulousness, and whilst the sonic squall at the halfway mark lets the air seep into the void for some much need catharsis, the vocals remain tortured and stressed. There are no guitars here - I repeat, no guitars. The distorted wave of noise is an electronic maelstrom, a melange of tapes and effects that inexorably bleed and bash into and through one another, becoming a transmogrified black mess of unadulterated id. Aptly titled closer 'Exhaustion' is a slow grind into the cracked earth, all efforts rendered useless. There is definitely a sense that the duo are still at the fledgling stages of their powers; still toying with the capabilities of the destruction at their disposal. They travel to the US in 2015 to record their album with Phil Elverum (Mt Eerie, The Microphones), a master at sonic tape manipulation - expect Danyl Jesu to fuse solid, liquid and vapour into one after that collaboration bears brutal fruit.

Belated Miles Brown Electrics

This release, the first for newly minted Australian label It Records, came out at the beginning of the year and I meant to give it some lip service then. Then Miles Brown's "day job", The Night Terrors, released Spiral Vortex and that took my attention away from his solo 7" Electrics, which is pretty damn fun I must say. It came up on my peripheral vision again when I tried to book both Brown and his band for the Gazar Strips tour of Melbourne in May but to no avail... Anyway, no more excuses! Let's talk about Electrics, a small-player that shows the more aggressively playful side of Brown. Still using theremin (he is a theremin musician after all), Brown has included more febrile synth pop compositions here. Nothing ever veers to far from the darkened corners of The Night Terrors, but with 'Electrics' there is a lilting synth line that feels graphically driven, a cel-coloured flicker through the digital landscape of a forever-night megacity, whilst Brown's hushed vocals drip silken androgyny; whilst the B-side 'Night Time' is even more visceral, a widescreen synthetic freakout fuelling the best kind of futurist noir. Not as nihilistic or silly as Multiple Man (remembering that therein holds that band's infinite charm), yet Brown's sepulchral segues are exciting deluges in multilayered electrics - hence the name...


You can buy Electrics here. There is also an amazing remix compilation of Electrics that features twelve - yes, TWELVE - remixes of the single, from the likes of Kangaroo Skull (of My Disco), Prolife (ex-Slug Guts members), Justin Fuller (of ZOND) and more. As you know I am often wary of such things, but this one is incredible. Get it here.

Tense Men Are Neither Dull Nor Forgotten

I’ve always had an unhealthy affinity for minimalist, repetitive, cold, spiky post punk. I can’t remember which particular band turned me onto this. I do remember the first time I heard the Language of Numbers EP and rightly realised that My Disco were gods. Or hearing Unknown Pleasures for the first time and not known what planet I was on. Or why the cold bastards of Iceage, Holograms and Lower energise and excite. The intermingling of cold, stark guitar lines with motorik drums and deep drawled/chanted lyrics seems hardwired into my loins. So it’s a no brainer that I am a massive fan of new band Tense Men, which is a project for Oliver Fischer (Cold Pumas) and Rich Phoenix (Sauna Youth), and their EP Where Dull Care Is Forgotten. Opener ‘Stages of Boredom’ hovers with burly indecision, wanting to burst forth but not ready to give in; but it’s ‘RNRFON’ where the restraint comes in full form. There is no indecision here – Tense Men want to lead you on, light the fires under your soul, have you writhe around in agony and ecstasy – and never extinguish those tetchy flames. The band is now a trio, having gleaned a drummer on the way (from Omi Palone, who are releasing a self-titled album through the ever excellent Faux Discx who are responsible for this EP too), and the looped transgressions displayed here stresses how more claustrophobic and constricting these guys could be in a live arena. It’s still a band experimenting with the form – I like ‘Lie Heavy’ without being enamoured with it (except when the sketchiness is relieved as the toms are left alone for a more free flowing rhythm in the final third), but the last two tracks 'Nonentities' and especially 'Opiate Glow' are stone cold killers. Where Dull Care Is Forgotten is a great brooding entrée – bring on the piece a la resistance…

You can get Tense Men’s EP from here.

Getting Boned, Just To Feel Something

I know next to nothing about Melbourne band Bone. I was sent a couple tracks from their forthcoming album For Want Of Feeling by a friend from the band Nikko. And holy shit. I know I gushed about Batpiss' debut LP Nuclear Winter (and I still think its a stellar release - with an interview to come, we here at Sonic Masala HQ will be harping on about it for some time), and these tracks immediately had me reaching those teeth-gnashing heights. This is dirge, gruelling, bulldozer-relentless. Jesus Lizard/My Disco/Kong - repetition, bottom end, bottom fed. Depressive yet undeniably powerful - moving mountains under great duress and monotonous chagrin, only to move them back again, ad infinitum. I really need to know what grit these boys are huffing down; we all need a little metronomic evil in our lives.

I was going to post about For Want Of Feeling yesterday, but as luck would have it Shaun Tenzenmen sent me a line to tell me that Bone is wrapped up in the Tenzenmen fold  - it'll be out in August at any rate. Any and all info to add to this, please comment below - I needs to get more Bone. Hopefully they make it up here in the next month or so.



Here is an excellent EP they released in 2009. How Face Prison didn't kill a few thousand men on its way to the top of the body-strewn top is beyond me.

Beijing's White (K)Nights

Tenzenmen have some more quality releases from China out, with White Night being one of the best. The four-piece from Beijing noise travellers Chui Wan (named after Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi’s “Qi Wu Lun”, a mystical work on the relationship between nature and human life - the spirit of Zhuangzi’s thought is reflected in the modern Chinese idiom “When the wind blows, every sound may be heard therein”), their debut LP is filled with that mantra - quite often a song's hook or melody becomes buried in ephemeral sound, exotic sonics, and abrasive noise. It's not hodgepodge instrumentation either; instead careful composition that provides this layering, and creates a voice that seems to echo out of the ether, a spirit with mischievous, irascible intent. 'Swimming' could be a languid pop song but for the tinnitus-level whine and woozy delay; 'Berber' resides in My Disco terrain, but with bubblings and sonic touchstones that psych frontiersmen like Hear Hums incorporate colouring in the gaps; 'Another Kind Of Love' has all the markings of Deerhunter; and eleven-minute closer 'Tomorrow Never Knows' feels like a cross-section of Boris, Clinic, The Black Angels and the theme tune to The Burbs. Suffice to say, I fucking love this record.

A strident statement of intent, White Night leaves nothing in the back pocket, and is all the better for it. You can get White Night here - it really is great.

Chui Wan - Another Kind Of Love 
Chui Wan - Tomorrow Never Knows

Double Discipline Is Electric

 

There aren’t many bands out there sound as frenetically intricate and cryptic as Battles, yet French trio Electric Electric come damn close on their latest LP Discipline (out through Africantape). Weaving looped and live guitars, drums and electronics into a heaving, tightly coiled whole, the band have crafted eleven feverish songs of breathtaking complexity. The trio like to see their music as electronica or dance music – even “pop”. Discipline is anything but.

However the album title is incredibly close to the bone – the rigour taken in the repetition, the metronomic swings in these angular sojourns into the darker regions of the unknown proffers precision and dexterity that most bands could only dream of. Like the more vicious step-brother of Errors, Electric Electric are so scintillating they have to repeat their name twice – and with good reason. This kind of instrumental music will infuriate, perplex, hyperventilate, but above all else arouse. If this were the future of guitar music, Id be a willing drone to the cause.

 

Discipline can be bought here – this is a highly original album that takes what the aforementioned Battles are renowned for and hybridises it with the aesthetics of Holy Fuck, !!!, The Faint and My Disco. A shitstorm ensues. Make sure you get stuck in it.

Electric Electric –La Centrale
Electric Electric – xx2

A Double Dose Of Urinary Confection

It's not often that you get excited about the act of urination - well, I DON'T, I can't speak for you - but today I have been listening to not one but TWO albums by bands enamoured with pissing.

 

Pissed Jeans have lain a bit quiet for a while, which isn't like those misogynist bastards (although the Sam Kinison Woman 7" with 'The L Word' featuring Brendan Suppression was awesome). Yet 2013 promises to be all about the Philly four-piece as they release the nihilistic Honeys on Subpop. It could very well be the best album they have put out - there is the gnashing of teeth, Jesus Lizard-whisperer 'You're Different (In Person)', the laconic crawl of 'Cafeteria Food' or the breakneck nihilism of ‘Bathroom Laughter’. Brad Fry is in scintillating form on guitar duties here, and vocal shredder Matt Korvette is in brilliant lyrical mode too. It all adds up to another demonic ball-tearer that inexplicably infused with killer hooks amongst the dirge and debris. No one know how this works, or why – just be thankful it does.

 

If you preorder now, you can get a T-shirt bundle and go into the running to get the record in orange vinyl AND a 7" of some of their long-lost first demos!

Pissed Jeans - Bathroom Laughter
Pissed Jeans - Cathouse

 

Now I thought the name Pissed Jeans was disconcerting - that is until Benjii from MUZAI Records sent me the second LP from Auckland band Girls Pissing On Girls Pissing. Their music fits their moniker too - offputting, disturbing, morbid, perverse, and (for some) extremely attractive. Eeling is the kind of record that crawls inside your every pore, lays eggs and hatches inside you. Painful and horrifying, yet indelibly a part of you from that point on. Cronenberg for the aural masses. This four-piece (two boys and two girls, just so that you know gender plays no part in these depravities) weave nightmarish visions at a funereal pace. You might hear some primitive post-punk in there; some subliminal hardcore; some hypnotic rhythms of unease a la My Disco; some feverish rails a la the defunct Snowman. Eeling is a dark wonder, a disturbed revelation, a manifesto for the people under the stairs, gimp suit and all.

Dose yourself in piss.

Girls Pissing On Girls Pissing - Fingers Down The Throat Of Love

These Patterns Create A New Species

Melbourne trio These Patterns brought out this darkwave moodpiece Species last year. Its an EP that revels in its strung out, murky instrumentation, a meditation on sustenance and evolution. 'Begin' is the shortest track yet the screeching warbles that punctuate the last sixty seconds bleed into mammoth 'Forestry And Furniture', effectively throwing you down the rabbit hole, a nightmare and a migraine meeting in the eye of a hurricane. The title track is a metronomic exercise that echoes some of My Disco's more languid moments, deviating into elongated elements of echoed despair. The vocals are a nice touch here. 'Visionary' explodes in comparison, a shattered prism refracting all that came before in a myriad different colours and volumes.


Species is an ace release, I guess is what I'm getting at. You can grab it here for the grand total of nada. Thanks guys - come to Brisbane soon, yeah?

Species - Visionary

Making It In Barcelona

I stumbled across this band when scouring Bandcamp last month, and have been suitably blown away. Sure there will be some apparent My Disco comparisons, but on their self-titled EP Sydney band Making really own their territory here. Its hard to find much out about a band called Making, but suffice to say the music talks for them. Muscular yet spare, repetitive yet adventurous, these six tracks really resonate. This kind of fever-pitched tension doesn't come around every day, especially when it is sustained across an entire record. Again, the My Disco allusions will come across here, but so what? My Disco are one of the most innovative rock bands on the planet. There is plenty of room on that plateau for some other upstarts to bring their angry nihilistic minimalism to the fray.


Grab the EP here.

Making - AB
Making - Boy


NB - Since stalling and screwing about in getting this post done, Making have released a new single, 'Barcelona'. It still follows in the same vein as the EP, but is somewhat warmer in texture. A great track. Can't wait to see what coalesces out of this excellent beginning.

Making - Barcelona

Iowa Is Flooding The Gasometer!

We here have been big fans of Melbourne slacker noise pop band Iowa for some time now. And whilst they may not be travelling up north today (the bastards...), they are playing a show at the Gasometer Hotel in Collingwood tonight. Why am I bothering to tell y'all this? Because it will be their last show before they head into the studio with Neil Thomason (My Disco, Ricane) to record their debut LP! Exciting times indeed.

Now if you live in Melbourne but you have not been to the Gasometer before, its an incredible new bar with great drinks, vibe and has an American style menu complete with shaker fries! Im all up for that. Iowa wil be supported by Tall Buildings (which includes members of ace band Gersey) and Slow Ocean Mind. Its $5, with copies of their red and green 7" being sold for $10 - you can't go wrong!

Iowa - Lose Yourself
Iowa - Gaps In Conversation

Tall Buildings - Tenderness

Slow Ocean Mind - Mixed Lollies (demo)

Wreck And Reference Wreak Dark Irreverence

Wreck and Reference brought out an excellent cassette earlier this year, simply called the Black Cassette. Ive been meaning to write about this for some time (like so many other bits and pieces that hovers over me at the moment). Anyway, Wreck and Reference proclaim to be from the howling waste of California, and the six slices of doom and gloom on offer here certainly helps to back up their claims. There are elements of Shellac in the dark stylings of these tracks, added to the metronomic rumbles that evokes a darker, more deranged My Disco. This release was recorded directly to tape, which lends itself to the thought that we are hearing the sounds of madmen locked in a bunker somewhere in the sun-scorched desert, away from light, water, nourishment of any kind. I know Ive mentioned the darkness a few times, but there is something invigorating in the outpouring of such unbridled vitriol that I can help but be swayed by the black bile...

Wreck And Reference - Evening Redness

Wreck And Reference - In Chains, Awakening

Sonic Masala Becomes Acolytes To Zond

Warning - this review has been done by a person whose head has been totally blown...

Zond are an Australian band that I didnt even know existed until about a month ago. Admittedly I have been out of the country for about three years, and a lot can spring up and die away in that time. Nevertheless I was surprised when I heard their debut, self-titled LP. Why? Because its a fucking brilliant aural assault, all aggression, squalling distorted guitars and distanced vocals. Its not new, but it does sound fresh - as if the early Blonde Redhead maintained the Simone Pace vocals and Sonic Youth no wave leanings, then stole Kevin Shields' amplifiers and hooked them up to an imploding power plant. Zond opens ubiquitously - 'Io' spend half of its five minute duration meandering through an ambient, grey soundscape - before we are hit with bolts of sonic blasts barely reined in by guitarists Marney Macleod and Justin Fuller, as if the track had a mind of its own - and this continues with tracks like 'Choam' and 'Blue Haze'. The engine room - anchoring bassist Stephen Thomas and eight-limbed drummer Tym Krasevac - could let this all become a reverb-drenched mess, but it is their manic yet measured interplay that pins down the Zond sound, thus rendering it irresistible. There are more pop-sensible song structures in songs like 'Stupid Gods' and 'Dunvegan Castle', whilst the coalescing phoenix that is 7 minute 'Blind' places all of these elements together into a prolonged schizophrenic orgasm.

This is the dark, dirty, dirgey kind of shoegaze that I am particularly fond of - and is not expected from the island continent. The fact that these guys excel is an even greater admirable feat.

So if, like me, you hadnt heard of Zond before, become very acquainted. This album is just their stepping stone. Furthermore, in June last year Lou Reed himself invited the band to join him at the Vivid Live Festival at Sydney Opera House (yes, that's right, Bardo Pond were there too...). I can see the connection - laconic, wasted, acerbic, austere, nihilistic, nebulous. If My Disco, another amazing Melbourne band, were to do the opposite of their intensely reined in minimalist miasmas, Zond would be the result.

Im a convert - join me.

Zond is out now on RIP Society Records.

Zond - Choam

Zond - Stupid Gods

Sonic Masala's Top Ten LPs of 2010

So this is what it all comes down to, the most important list of them all, Sonic Masala's Top Ten LPs of 2010. So in reverse order...

10. Oneohtrix Point Never - Returnal

This album took time to grow on me, in fact I think Brooklyn based Daniel Lopatin's beautiful drone masterpiece is still growing on Brendan, but in time I'm sure he'll be won over. From the chaotic noise opening of Nil Admirari to the dense shimmer of Describing Bodies and even its blissed out drone wanderings of Stress Waves - this is a sublimely gorgeous abstract work.

Oneohtrix Point Never - Stress Waves

9. The Young - Voyagers of Legend

Out on Mexican Summer, this Austin rock four-piece seems to have been overlooked by many this year - but not Sonic Masala. The most considered raucous pop-punk album of 2010, jagged and rough but touched with a solemn emotive mood, this is like fighting with tears in your eyes.

The Young - Bird In The Bush

8. Emeralds - Does It Look Like I'm Here?

Simply this years most beautiful album. The Cleveland trio really have captured something timeless in Does It Look Like I'm Here? With its delicate variations of mood and intensity each track seems to build its own momentum. Something I'm sure this album's reputation will do also, building momentum to be regarded as a modern classic.

Emeralds - Double Helix

7. Drum Eyes - Gira Gira

If there is one album this year that relentlessly pushes the totally insane card, then Drum Eyes' Gira Gira has to be it. Brooding, maximalist sonic expressions of the most warped minds. One minute sci-fi futurisms, the next driving trash insanity. A scarily fun riot of epic soundscapes.

Drum Eyes - 13 Magician

6. My Disco - Little Joy

My Disco is yet another band from Australia I wouldn't have found without Brendan's guidance. Criminally overlooked this year, Little Joy is the Melbourne trio's third LP. Pounding but calm, it is a work of rhythmic subtlety and relentless drive.

My Disco - Sunray

5. Swans - My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky

Right from the start Brendan has been telling me that My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky is one of the albums of the year, and just like the 13 year long road its taken Swans to reach this point, it took me a little while to see the true genius of this album. More approachable than the Swans' earlier brutal work but no less uncompromising. Swans with humanity and beauty? Maybe. Epic? Yes.

Swans - You Fucking People Make Me Sick

4. Liars - Sisterworld

Even with its early release Sisterworld was always going to be up there for Sonic Masala. The fifth Liars album is relentlessly tense, full of surreal imagery and anxiety. Strangely it didn't make the impact on the year we thought it would, but for us its the Liars at their most contagious.

Liars - Scissor

3. Zach Hill - Face Tat

Zach Hill is a sticksmith genius, that can't be denied. But Face Tat, his second full solo LP, underlines his credentials as a truly innovative musician. Astrological Straits was truly a bizarre and mesmerizing album, but Face Tat really takes Zach's solo work to a new level with the ferocious style with which he assaults his drums underpinning it all. Intense, deceptive, challenging, Face Tat sounds disorienting and alien at first, thanks partly to Hill's bizarre sound sources - but the more you delve into this 40 minute frenzy the more you are rewarded.

Zach Hill - Memo to the Man

2. Rangda - False Flag

Super groups are a strange thing. Whilst the depth of talent that makes up the Rangda trio is eye wateringly impressive - guitarists Sir Richard Bishop (Sun City Girls) and Ben Chasny (Six Organs of Admittance) and drummer Chris Corsano - it can be hard for the end result to be greater than the sum of the parts. However, Rangda's False Flag so is. An uncompromising beast of a record, it is simultaneously brutal and dynamic, subtle and beautiful. Rangda landed and took our breath away.

Rangda - Serrated Edges

1. Women - Public Strain

So here it is, the Sonic Masala best LP of 2010. Surprised? Maybe, but its not a compromise. In fact we really didn't want our end of year first to be just what we agreed upon, this choice has got conviction behind it. Some may have dismissed this album at first listen. In fact I almost did, such was my love of Woman's self titled debut. But give Public Strain repeated listens and its infectious off key claws and howls work their way into your soul. We're not calling Public Strain a grower - oh no, it much more deadly than that.

At first Public Strain's sunny rhythms might come to the fore, but as the drone driven aesthetics build from behind the scenes it becomes a different beast, sweet but sour, bleak but beautiful, crisp but soaked in reverb. Those chirpy tempos hiding its dark noise underbelly waiting to leak into your consciousness. With Women's first outing pop sweetness was kept separate from dark drone noise, but here Women have spawned something of frightening beauty. Public Strain is Sonic Masala's record of the year and its been quality gaining ground since August - now we can't let it go.

Woman - Drag Open

So there you have it, we left the list late so we knew we had everything. There's nothing more annoying than an end of list that drops in early November, we're the polar opposite. So what do you think? Have we missed anything? Is there a gem you'd push to the top? Let us know.