By Chris Richards
As the record biz slows down its release schedule over the holidays, we use the lull to highlight Lost Tracks, recordings that have gone largely overlooked in the past 12 months. It’s also our annual excuse to do the thing that all music scribes love to do: babble about what the world should be listening to.
So here are my favourite underloved albums of 2012:
Ice Cold Perm
by 100s
Cloud rap — that new-ish strand of hip-hop defined by the smeared, diaphanous quality of its backing beats — might as well be a reference to the cloud that Wired readers talk about. As more rappers forge their identities online, the genre’s regional characteristics turn hazy.
This teenage rap rookie from Berkeley, California, is emblematic of the blur. As he aspires to eclipse the cool of West Coast legends Too $hort and Snoop Dogg, you can hear him repurposing the cadences of Southern greats Pimp C and Lil Boosie.
He also has an expert partner in Joe Wax, a young producer whose otherworldly tracks for Cali duo Main Attrakionz have made that group’s moniker feel like false advertising. Together, Wax and 100s prove that no matter where it originates, rap music is ultimately about the sparks that fly when a voice grinds up against a beat.
Kings and Them
by Evian Christ
And now a quick round of applause for Tri Angle Records, the remarkably consistent electronic music label that scours the Internet for nerds making innovative music in the comfort of their bedrooms. This year, the label’s big find was Joshua Leary, a 22-year-old Brit who was uploading music to YouTube as Evian Christ while he spent his days studying to become a schoolteacher.
Listening to the guy’s eight-track instrumental debut feels like navigating the charred ruins of a hip-hop album, as smoky synth textures curl around an 808 drum machine’s indestructible pulse. Leary says he’d like to produce tracks for rappers in the future, but for now he’s given us some spacious, stylish, contemplative music that needn’t be clogged with too many words.
Pacific Standard Time
by Poolside
Does the 21st century need its own lounge music? This Los Angeles duo answers a question that nobody was really asking with 16 brainless, toe-tappy dance tracks. There are juicy synthesizers and cute falsettos, all locked to a mid-tempo grid, plus the most adorable Neil Young cover you could ever hope to hear (Harvest Moon).
Poolside’s only crime is that they’ve coined a silly genre tag for all this: “daytime disco.” Pffft. Even at 3am in December, these songs still retain all of their colour and cool.
Believe You Me
by OMBRE
This collaboration from electronic musician Helado Negro and ambient vocalist Julianna Barwick is haunted by the ghost of Brazilian tropicalia in all of the best ways — chords are strummed on nylon-stringed guitars, and vocal melodies are quick to dissolve in reverb. (He sings in Spanish, she sings in vowels.)
Yeah, the whole dreamy-blurry-muffled-indie thing has been done to death, but there’s still a lovely dialogue taking place at the heart of this album. Listening for it feels like pressing your ear to a wall, trying to make out conversation in the next room.WP-Bloomberg
