I think it's about time I shared my own top five tracks of this year. Before starting off though, let's start with an honorary mention of my late love, Forest Swords.
This track keeps blowing me away with its mixture of metallic and warm sounds. The way the industrial banging gives way to a mellow synthie-track and slight metallic scuffling in the background. Then suddenly everything disappears, a grainy melody starts, the sun rises over a valley covered in dew. It's incredible how he manages to turn the atmosphere by 180° degrees so fluidly. Describing this track this way, this actually has to be #1.
The following list is of course just a small selection and is not supposed to take away from the tracks I posted before. Click on a track to see a description, my reasoning behind the choice and of course a link to listen to it.
James Blake - Life Round Here (ft. Chance the Rapper)
Listen - Cold production still capable of waking emotions made this track stick out on a great album. This version takes the cake though. The previously silent passages are filled with Chance's raps that turn Blake's song about failure and a relationship of convenience into a track about racism and lack of solidarity. An unexpected but incredible collaboration.
Disclosure - You & Me (Flume-Remix)
Listen - Disclosure, manifested wet dream of the union of house and pop in the 21st century. Flume, product of the possibilities of the internet who fuses dance, hip hop and post-dubstep. That sounds exaggerated, but if you listen to this COMPLETE BANGER you will understand, why this almost-collab is so amazing. Synths like rollercoasters, hip-hop-beats and dubstep-drops in one great package.
Griz - Keep The Dream Alive
Listen - 9 minutes full of atmospheric electronica, instrumental hip hop, funk, pan flutes, psychedelic guitars, seething synths, dubstep bass and glitch. For free.
Big Sean - Control (ft. Kendrick Lamar & Jay Electronica)
Listen - I never understood how Big Sean managed to label this track with his name. Kendrick makes Big Sean look like flow-failure Pitbull. If Kendrick wasn't on top of his game with his sophomore album, he was on this track. His flow is flawless, his ambition is burning. Great stuff.
Jai Paul - Str8 Outta Mumbai
Listen - Volatile, mysterious. This is Jai Paul, celebrating a mixture of funk, r&b and electronica close to the mainstream, but somehow far away from it. Glitch, vocal cuts, spaced out synths. To Jai Paul, music and pop are an experiment. And lord, he is a one of a kind scientist.
Forest Swords
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