For us, 2011 was another year of taking in as much as we could and sharing the best with you. Next year, however, will be a homecoming of sorts, a return to rock-'n'-roll roots. We'll soon be able to share the projects that we have in store — across multiple mediums — but for now, dig into this rock-focused list of must-own albums.

And for more, revisit (or simply visit) our lists from 2010 and 2009:

100 Unheralded Albums from 2010
50 Unheralded Albums from 2009

Steven Drozd: The Heart Is A Drum Machine (The Score) (Twinkle Cash Co., 1/18/11)

Steven Drozd: "Born"

A multi-instrumentalist and the third-most-tenured member of The Flaming Lips, Steven Drozd marked his first official solo release early this year with the nearly instrumental accompaniment to the documentary The Heart is a Drum Machine.

The music shares a lot of characteristics with the Flaming Lips of the past dozen years – synthesized grooves, big rock beats, fuzz bass, airy keyboards, and different instrumental flourishes weaving in and out. But listeners are unlikely to confuse the two, and the score succeeds as a standalone album as well as a film accompaniment.

…And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead: Tao of the Dead (Richter Scale Records / Superball Music, 2/8/11)

…And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead: "Weight of the Sun"

There has been no shortage of grand themes and allegories in the canon of Austin post-punk quintet …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead. The band’s newest album, however, better matches its ambitious themes with its music, presenting an epic pair of pieces for Tao of the Dead.

The album recalls progressive albums of yore, from the likes of Rush and King Crimson, but channels them into easily digested movements. Stretches of heavy distortion and drum thrashing will appeal to the more metal-minded Trail of Dead fans, but there’s also plenty of hook-laden, radio-ready alternative rock.

Wires Under Tension: Light Science (Western Vinyl, 2/8/11)

Wires Under Tension: "Electricity Turns Them On"

Light Science is the exciting debut from Wires Under Tension, a duo comprised of violinist/multi-instrumentalist Christopher Tignor and drummer Theo Metz. With help from a few friends, including Jared Bell of Lymbyc Systym, the two combine live performance with electronic manipulation, sounding something like a progressive Dirty Three with horns, hip-hop beats, and post-rock guitar swells.

This seven-track release is a dense, fluid collection that retains consistency thanks to Metz’s steady rhythms. Electro-mechanical piano, clavinet, and synthesizers mesh with loops and samples to round out an impressive first release.

Pitom: Blasphemy and Other Serious Crimes (Tzadik, 2/22/11)

Pitom: "Head in the Ground"

Combining heavy, fuzzy rock jams with Jewish melodies, Pitom is one of many projects from guitarist, bassist, and composer Yoshie Fruchter. Blasphemy and Other Serious Crimes, the quartet's second release on Tzadik, follows the same path as its predecessor, but it does so with a bit more cohesion and restraint.

Built from the ground up with distorted bass and violin, the band's music carries similarities to that of Skeletonbreath and Miasma & The Carousel of Headless Horses. Whether driving a song with an infectious melody, commingling with the violin in the high end, or simply taking over a track with raw ability, Fruchter knows when to go full throttle (the punk power of "An Epic Encounter") or pull back (the dark slow jam of "A Resentful Repentance").

The Psychic Paramount: II (No Quarter, 2/22/11)

The Psychic Paramount: "RW"

Though relatively silent for the past six years, New York noise-rock trio The Psychic Paramount returned in February to release its first full-length since 2005. Effected guitar loops, devastating low-end grooves, and bashing rhythms again form the core of the band's sound, but II is a direct yet dynamic rock explosion.

Between the guitar, the cymbals, and the effects, the mid-range gets a constant workout. Those who are turned off by this kind of music may find it to be an exercise in patience, but the lengthier durations are a testament to the trio's skills at climax and denouement.

DeVotchKa: 100 Lovers (Anti-, 3/1/11)

DeVotchKa: "100 Other Lovers"

Following the fame from its Oscar-winning soundtrack for Little Miss Sunshine in 2006, Denver multi-instrumental quartet DeVotchKa has playfully tinkered with its sweeping, emotive sound. Though it already tossed together elements of folk, rock, Mexican, and Gypsy music, it remained united by the sullen croons and songwriting of frontman Nick Urata.

That unifying factor remains, but its newest album, 100 Lovers – its second post-Sunshine full-length – continues to expand the band’s scope. The material adds new and often subtle flavors to DeVotchKa’s repertoire. Uninitiated listeners might hear more of the same, but 100 Lovers is perfect for content fans – moving in new directions without a radical departure.

Stateless: Matilda (Ninja Tune, 3/1/11)

Stateless: "Ariel"

Matilda, Stateless' second full-length, showcases the British electro-rock group's continued maturity. Lead singer Chris James hits an impressive range of notes, from reverb-cloaked backing croons to soulful leads, atop an amalgamated mix of styles, sounds, and beats.

With contributions from The Balanescu Quartet, DJ Shadow, and Shara Worden (of My Brightest Diamond), Matilda is stylistically inventive, with familiar worldly touchstones reworked into new contexts.

Grails: Deep Politics (Temporary Residence, 3/8/11)

Grails: "I Led Three Lives"

With cinematic soundscapes, Westernized Indian melodies, film-noir mystique, 1960s psychedelia, and crushing heaviness, Grails is an instrumental rarity. The Portland band's newest offering, Deep Politics, is an engaging and epic mix of acoustic intonations, indigenous sounds and melodies, spaghetti-western motifs, somber piano balladry, and more doom-filled, Eastern-infused stylistic transcendence.

And thanks in part to arrangements by Timba Harris, the mighty violinist from unparalleled genre annihilators Estradasphere and Secret Chiefs 3, Deep Politics vies to be Grails’ best album yet.

Parts & Labor: Constant Future (Jagjaguwar, 3/8/11)

Parts & Labor: "Constant Future"

After establishing itself early last decade as an interesting new name in noise rock, Parts & Labor delivered a flurry of releases over the span of just a few years. Since then, the band has scaled back to a trio built around the fuzzed guitar, bass, keyboard hooks, and tight rock rhythms.

Featuring some of the band's sturdiest songs yet, Constant Future is direct, potent, and catchy. Behind Dan Friel and BJ Warshaw's echoing, harmonized vocals are dirty, thick grooves that power the overlaid electronic freak-outs.

Adebisi Shank: This is the Second Album from a Band Called Adebisi Shank (Sargent House, 3/15/11)

Adebisi Shank: "Micro Machines"

Released to European acclaim in 2010, the aptly titled second album from Irish electro/math rockers Adebisi Shank achieved North American release this year thanks to the peerless Sargent House.

The management company / record label describes the trio as a blend of Fang Island’s shredding riffs with Battles’ electronic quirkiness and rhythmic playfulness. That description isn’t off the mark, but readers won’t get a sense of the band’s real abilities until they hear its hyper-melodic, polyrhythmic, and — most importantly — jubilant songs in full.

Second Album delivers a maelstrom of zany electronics, unusual distortions, and triumphant, rapidly ascending scales mixed with vintage synths, marimba, horns, and other accoutrements. This is all packaged between and around gloriously catchy and powerful rock riffs, resulting in a manic and buoyant sophomore effort.

Amid a geometric configuration of cubes, upon which colorful, dynamic visuals were projected, Tobin worked from a laptop station. The music, composed primarily of manipulated, non-instrumental field recordings, paired with the projection mapping to create a mesmerizing synthesis of sound and light. You can read all about Tobin, his latest album, and the ISAM tour in our recent feature story. Design studio Leviathan has a full list of credits on its website, so you can see who was responsible for the killer visuals. Photographer Wallo Villacorta captured these images at the Congress.

Named after synth pioneer Dr. Robert Moog, Moogfest gathers some of the biggest and most exciting names in electronic music and beyond. In addition to the copious amounts of music being offered, there will also be panel discussions, Q&As, interactive experiences with Moog instruments, art installations, and film screenings.

Some ALARM favorites include Amon Tobin, Battles, Flying Lotus, Holy Fuck, Tobacco, The Flaming Lips, Brandt Brauer Frick, St. Vincent, M83, Causing a Tiger, and Shahzad Ismaily. A full lineup and schedule can be found here.

To enter to win, fill out the form below. By entering your information, you’ll also be signed up to receive ALARM’s biweekly E-mail newsletter, The ALARMIST.

Update: Contest has ended.

[Chromatic, our 400-page exploration of musicians and color, is out now. Order here!]

Mastodon: The Hunter (Warner Bros. / Reprise)

Mastodon: "Curl of the Burl"

Since forming in 1999, Mastodon has grown from cult sensation to preeminent poster-child of metal’s next generation. Along the way, its crushing, complex brand of melodic sludge has absorbed elements of thrash, prog, and Southern rock, all complemented by earthen mythology, literary ambition, and serious chops.

On The Hunter, an album that breaks the band's concept-album streak, vocal melodies are at an all-time high, imbuing tracks such as "Curl of the Burl," "All the Heavy Lifting," and "Creature Lives" with genuine pop catchy-ness that, at times, approaches the intonations of Alice in Chains. But grizzly screams and up-tempo sludge riffs have not gone the way of the band's namesake; "Blasteroid" and "Black Tongue" have plenty of head-bashing fury.

A few spacey and horror-esque elements, musically and lyrically, give the album an interesting wrinkle here and there, such as on "Stargasm" and "Creature Lives," the latter of which uses pitch-shifting synths to set an alien mood. "The Sparrow" then closes the album with touches of lap-steel guitar, setting the tone for some of the airiest Mastodon vocals yet.

In all, The Hunter is a fun, riff-filled album, but it's destined to alienate more Mastodon "purists." The bottom line, however, is that the band continues to crank out killer riffs and turn on a new generation to metal — even if it has a softer edge.

Boom Bip: Zig Zaj (Lex)

Boom Bip: "All Hands"

Ever since his loop-based beginnings, Bryan Charles Hollan — known better as experimental hip-hop artist Boom Bip — has been on the search for his optimal live-band incarnation. With his latest, Zig Zaj, he seems to have found it.

In 2002, Seed to Sun demonstrated Hollan's ability to make compelling organic and instrumental hip hop. On his recordings since that time, nearly everything has been performed by hand, and the results have been admirable — but nothing has clicked quite like this.

Now Hollan is armed with a permanent live band, consisting of Josh Klinghoffer (Red Hot Chili Peppers), Eric Gardner (Gnarls Barkley, Charlotte Gainsbourg), and Josiah Steinbrick. Their chemistry is immediately evident on Zig Zaj, which also sports standout guest spots from Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand (for one very Depeche Mode track), Money Mark, Luke Steele (Empire of the Sun), Cate Le Bon, and Mikey Noyce (Bon Iver).

Partly because of the guests, the new material takes a poppier and more rock-driven direction. But there's still plenty of the old Bip underneath, as synths and electronics commingle with the bass grooves and delicate acoustic riffs. It's a catchy, beautiful, and well-balanced blend, perfect for first-time Bip listeners. Pick this up now.

Welder: Florescence (Ancestor)

Welder: "Run"

Brendan Angelides is a San Francisco-based electronic producer best known as Eskmo, an IDM/electronica project that has come to focus more on atmospherics and on writing songs than on its early roots of making dance tracks. He has found a like-minded collaborator in the incomparable Amon Tobin, with whom he operated as Eskamon for a 2010 single, but for his latest release, Angelides has retraced his roots as Welder for another self-released gem.

Welder began as one of Angelides' first and most introspective projects. Living alone in a lakeside house in Connecticut for two years, he created soft, internal music, a more “chilled” version of electronica, under the alias . But it wasn’t only the remote locale that inspired the quiet sounds, as Angelides pored over documents and papers about the dark underside of American society and government and conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11.

Florescence is almost a rebirth for Welder. The IDM elements remain, but the music is more organic than ever. Gone are the bass-heavy dubstep rumblings of his self-titled Eskmo release, and the worldly elements of the earlier Welder material have been replaced by interwoven grooves, stirring melodies, and diverse timbres.

The emphasis here is on Angelides' musicianship, including his talents on the piano and bass. From the start, Florescence is highly active, intertwining feisty and bubbly melodies of faux cello and glockenspiel. Piano, guitars, synths, and strings surround those other elements, and whether they're real or library samples, they create a sound that's simultaneously lifelike and dreamy.

- Text by Marla Seidell and Scott Morrow. Read the feature story on Eskmo here.

Zechs Marquise: Getting Paid (Sargent House / Rodriguez Lopez Productions)

Zechs Marquise: "Static Lovers"

El Paso-based psych-prog five-piece Zechs Marquise is three-fifths Rodriguez Lopez — brothers Marcel, Rikardo, and Marfred — a surname that gained music-industry notoriety from Omar, the prolific Mars Volta guitarist (and head of Zechs Marquise's label). Together, the siblings have followed in the progressive footsteps of their older brother, but Zechs Marquise has blazed its own trail over its eight years as a band.

Its official debut album, the 2009 effort Our Delicate Stranded Nightmare, was a much more experimental and atmospheric work, patching together songs with eerie intros, funky keys, and jazz-tinged ambience. Getting Paid, however, fully focuses on the groove. Each of the album's nine tracks moves at its own pace, venturing into an alternate sonic universe at a moment's notice. Abrupt tempo shifts, an inexhaustible junk drawer of textures, and a healthy obsession with '70s prog fusion culminate in a truly shape-shifting record, albeit one that consistently rocks. Zechs Marquise knows when to give into its sweaty, twisted vision-quest dalliances and when to let a groove ride.

- Text by Kyle Gilkeson.

Evidence: Cats & Dogs (Rhymesayers)

Evidence: "You"

Los Angeles MC Michael Perretta (better known as Evidence) is one third of the hip-hop trio Dilated Peoples. Over the past four years, with Dilated on hiatus, Evidence has focused on his solo career, and Cats & Dogs marks his move to Rhymesayers Entertainment.

Here Perretta delivers a crisp flow that is complemented by guest vocalists such as Slug (Atmosphere), Aesop Rock, Raekwon, and Aloe Blacc. With samples anchored in soul and pop, the album lays a pliable backdrop for topics that range from the recession to distorted concepts of love. Skits between tracks bear an early-’90s influence, and with shout-outs to KRS-One and De La Soul, it’s clear that the time period remains a strong influence on Cats & Dogs.

- Text by Portia Medina.

Plaid: Scintilli (Warp)

Plaid: "35 Summers"

Despite an eight-year layoff between "official" full-lengths, London electronic/film-scoring duo Plaid certainly has not lost its touch. Initially announcing the news of their sixth studio album back in 2008 and taking as long as an entire day to produce a single beat, Andrew Turner and Ed Handley have used their tedious perfectionism to make Scintilli worth the wait.

Plaid's first non-film-related release since 2003, Scintilli is a dreamy, hyper-melodic mélange from the get-go, as ethereal female vocals glide over the first track’s delicate chimes and synths. Each of the album’s 13 tracks, however, adds an entirely new rhythmical sequence and mood to the mix. With a vast array of layered sound effects, Scintilli has a captivating range. Its infectious loops and spliced styles – hazy pop, acid house, dubstep, glitch – fade in and out in a confused muddle. Yet the mingling of these divergent electronic sounds creates a pleasant disconnect, perfect for eclectic IDM fans.

- Text by Lauren Zens.

Honorable Mentions

Apparat: The Devil’s Walk (Mute)

Bonnie "Prince" Billy / Phantom Family Halo: Mindeater (Knitting Factory)

Brutal Truth: End Time (Relapse)

Extreme Noise Terror: Holocaust In My Head (Candlelight)

Bill Frisell: All We Are Saying (Savoy Jazz)

Itsnotyouitsme: Everybody’s Pain is Magnificent (New Amsterdam)

The Janks: Hands of Time (Sprouted Records)

Junius / Rosetta: Split (Translation Loss)

Rudresh Mahanthappa: Samdhi (ACT Music & Vision)

Jono McCleery: There Is (Counter)

Rwake: Rest (Relapse)

Matt Stevens: Relic

Tom Vek: Leisure Seizure (Downtown / CO-OP USA / Island)

Craig Wedren: Wand (Nerveland)

Wilco: The Whole Love (dBpm Records)

yMusic: Beautiful Mechanical (New Amsterdam)

World’s End Girlfriend: Seven Idiots (Erased Tapes)

World's End Girlfriend: "Teenage Ziggy"

World’s End Girlfriend is the wild, hyper-melodic project of Japanese composer Katsuhiko Maeda, whose vivid arrangements have created a following in his homeland and been used in critically acclaimed films. Originally released last year in Japan, Seven Idiots is his tenth studio album.

The music is a dense, larger-than-life blend of post-rock, classical music, and electronica, and within just the first minute of Seven Idiots, the listener is hit with a beautiful union of Battles-esque guitar lines, funky bass slaps, classical melodies, glitch beats, and squiggly synth lines. As the album progresses, it delves into polyrhythms, improvisation, and other complexities — particularly during the “Bohemian Purgatory” triptych — but a robust sense of melody and an opportunity for head-nodding are almost always at its core.

Helms Alee: Weatherhead (Hydra Head)

Helms Alee: "8/16"

With its 2008 debut album, Seattle trio Helms Alee forged a sound all its own — part metal, part post-punk, part melody-driven rock, and all abandon.

If it was Isis joining up with The Breeders for a quick outing into the wilderness, then the band's sophomore effort, Weatherhead, returns to the woods to find our friends older, craftier, and better bonded.

As a trio, the band's personal contributions are easier to discern: the driving, effected guitar and guttural screams of Ben Verellen, the distorted low end and breathy, light-weight vocals of bassist Dana James, and the steady, pounding aggression of Hozoji Matheson-Margullis.

On top of alternately punishing and pulchritudinous riffage, Verellen and James again are paired for vocal harmonies.  But this time around, they're joined by the assertive vocals of Matheson-Margullis, who leads a call-and-response exchange with the two in the standout single "8/16" and who adds screams to the title track.  James, however, takes the lead at other points, and she frequently harmonizes with Verellen's clean vocals to produce some of the album's most hypnotic tracks.

The egalitarianism of the vocals is nearly matched by the diversity of the music — albeit music that nearly always rocks.  But the soft moments are pronounced, and the acoustic interlude of "Anemone of the Wound" is a welcome change of pace.  This contrast and disparity makes Weatherhead just as compelling as its predecessor, while featuring additional growth as a trio.

3:33: The First Thousand Days (Parallel Thought Ltd.)

Stream the entire album here.

Just two months ago, the mysterious, experimental electronic group 3:33 released its debut album, 333LP1. Its follow-up has an uncharacteristically communicative title — The First Thousand Days (Bandcamp) — but the group's mechanical, idiosyncratic number/letter combinations are still present in the track list.

If it weren't so amorphous and downright sinister, The First Thousand Days would fall somewhere in the experimental electro-hop territory typified by musicians like Prefuse 73. It is set apart by a rawness of texture that recalls Amon Tobin's field-recording-style compositions, where the line between digital and analog is scuffed beyond recognition.

The mystery of the music, and of the artists themselves, is compounded by spare, muffled vocals and crunchy, textured instrumentation. The group's ability to simultaneously plod and pulsate, to move swiftly from tribal percussion to glacial ambience, is unmatched — and unsettling.

- Text by Kyle Gilkeson.

Seun Anikulapo Kuti: From Africa With Fury: Rise (Knitting Factory)

Seun Anikulapo Kuti: "Rise"

The youngest son of Afrobeat legend and political dissident Fela Kuti, saxophonist and singer Seun Anikulapo Kuti is the latest to continue the cherished legacy of his last name.  Similarly to Femi Kuti, Fela's eldest son, Seun maintains his family's tradition of activism and rump-shaking funk, both of which are prevalent on his sophomore album, Rise.

For the second time, Seun is joined by his famous father's Egypt 80 ensemble, a group that played with Fela 30 years ago.  The music, though not treading new ground, is chock full of tightly wound horn harmonies and dance-inducing rhythms, as filtered through the one-of-a-kind sounding board that is co-producer Brian Eno.

As per the album's title, there's plenty of political fury: "African Soldiers" addresses the cyclical nature of military governments throughout modern African history, and "You Can Run" dissects the cowardice of brutal dictators who flee when the prospect of justice is threatened.  "Rise," meanwhile, emphasizes tribal heritage, rejecting the imposed demarcations placed upon Africa by the Western world.

The fact that the music doesn't delineate from the Afrobeat legacy is irrelevant.  Africa, perhaps as much as ever, needs a messenger like Seun Kuti.

Honorable Mentions

Bon Iver: s/t (Jagjaguwar)

Cassettes Won’t Listen: Evinspacey (Daylight Curfew)

The Devin Townsend Project: Ghost (Century Media / Inside Out)

Elitist: Fear in a Handful of Dust (Season of Mist)

Father’s Children: s/t (Numero Group)

Grieves: Together/Apart (Rhymesayers)

Laurel Halo: Hour Logic (Hippos in Tanks)

Mark Wingfield & Kevin Kastning: I Walked into the Silver Darkness (Greydisc)

Painted Palms: Canopy EP (Secretly Canadian)

Ty Segall: Goodbye Bread (Drag City)

So Hideous, My Love…: To Clasp A Fallen Wish With Broken Fingers (Play The Assassin)

Viva Voce: The Future Will Destroy You (Vanguard)

White Hills: H-p1 (Thrill Jockey)

Amon Tobin: "Lost and Found"

At the beginning of a track-by-track commentary that accompanies a preview stream for his new album ISAM, DJ and electronic artist Amon Tobin states, "Anyone looking for jazzy breaks should look elsewhere at this point. It's 2011, folks. Welcome to the future."

That may be so, but given his dramatic shift in direction with his 2007 album, Foley Room, Tobin's followers shouldn't be surprised by the challenges that lie in wait for them on ISAM, a dense, elaborately constructed work that doesn't necessarily reveal itself to casual listening. Like Foley Room, ISAM (pronounced "eye sam," an acronym for "invented sounds applied to music") consists mainly of sounds that Tobin recorded and later manipulated, in many cases beyond recognition. But if Foley Room represented an inquisitive step into unfamiliar creative terrain, ISAM may come to be regarded as a firm declaration from an artist who has not only mastered that terrain but is now unequivocal about the sense of purpose that he picked up along the way.

Longtime BBC Radio 1 DJ and electronica advocate Mary Anne Hobbes once said of Tobin that "there's virtually no one on the face of this planet who achieves sonically what he's doing." That was at a time when Tobin, for most of his career, had relied exclusively on vinyl samples and flirted with the dance floor via the aforementioned jazz breakbeats (albeit in a more impressionistic way). Critically acclaimed, widely recognized albums like Bricolage and Supermodified made Tobin something of a household name, at least on a modest scale. Now, though, there's nary a dance-friendly moment to be found on ISAM's rugged, perhaps even inhospitable, thicket of sounds. And this time around, the music's nooks, crannies, and shaded corners are inhabited by menacing, skeletal fairies courtesy of Saatchi Collection artist Tessa Farmer, who created a series of pieces based specifically on ISAM's individual tracks.

Whereas Tobin's back catalog allowed listeners to supply their own visuals, the packaging for the limited-edition physical release of ISAM — an elegant, oversized hardbound book with vivid color prints of Farmer's works commissioned for the album — provides ample material to fuel the imagination. Yes, those tiny skeleton creatures on the cover art are in the process of causing grievous harm to the butterfly over which they're swarming. In fact, Farmer's fairies are, by her own description, a murderous bunch. Like Tobin, Farmer appropriates details from nature and shapes them into intricate new structures: rib cages out of tiny twigs, wings out of decayed leaves, etc. And, befitting of Tobin's methods, Farmer also blurs the distinction between the natural and the synthetic.

"It just happened," Tobin says, "that her work really fitted well with the whole idea of using natural things and constructing unnatural creations out of them, which is very much where the album is going — trying to imagine things and make them out of familiar pieces."

Tobin describes ISAM as the product of a "personal quest for control over nature." In fact, Control Over Nature is the subtitle of the Farmer-Tobin joint installation that opens at London's Crypt Gallery on May 26 and tours the USA later this year.

"Neither of us is trying to be god or have some sort of say in what happens naturally," Tobin laughs. "It's more to do with adapting natural things into a form that you can work with and taking something you imagine and trying to realize it. The word 'control' is maybe a bit over-emphasized. It's maybe more to do with organizing and adapting natural things to do what you want them to do."
 

"The process is all about different kinds of synthesis, algorithms, and computer stuff — nerdy stuff, which I love — but at the end of the day, I respond to music in an emotional, physical way."

Tobin's decision to go from vinyl sampling to original, field-recording-styled sound sources (that he captured by working the microphone and directing himself) is well documented in the short making-of film that comes with the Foley Room release. For ISAM, Tobin has ventured further into a live approach that reflects his newfound working methods. In the past, Tobin's live show consisted of a more (or less) traditional DJ set. With ISAM, it's only fitting that he would feel compelled to go further out on a limb before live audiences.

"Of course, if you listen to the record," Tobin says," it's not going to work as a DJ set, or as a live set with a band. We needed to figure out a way of presenting this music to people in a way that would be engaging. The approach was to try and make a loose visual narrative. It's a very different kind of a show from what I normally do. People know what they're going to hear when they come to a DJ set, at least to some degree. I know they're going to dance at some point anyway. With this show, it's much less focused on making people sweat. Although there are definitely points in the show that might do that, it's a much more personal performance. It's more of a 'This is what I've been doing, and I want to share it with you' kind of thing."

The show, which debuts in Montréal on June 1, features a 25 x 14 x 8-foot 3-D installation that changes shape in sync to the music via various high-tech mechanisms.  Visuals were co-developed by Vello, founder of V Squared Labs (a firm that has supplied live 3-D imagery for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Black Eyed Peas, Jay-Z, and others), and a set was built by Alex Lazarus (Coachella, Massive Attack, Lady Gaga, Snoop Dogg).  For Tobin and everyone else involved, the show is a labor-intensive labor of love, and — for now, at least — finances dictate its short-term run.

"Absolutely nobody involved with this show — including myself — is making any money from it," Tobin says. "In fact, everyone's losing a great deal of money. We can do that for a certain amount of time, but then after that, we have to think about where to go from there. It's not a practical approach by any means, but it's something that keeps us all excited about working."

"I have to say," he adds, "that I can't complain, because this approach has worked for me so far. I do commercial work to subsidize what I do, because I know that the music I make isn't, strictly speaking, commercial. It's not built to appeal to the widest possible audience. But I've been very lucky, because when I get approached to do a soundtrack or something along those lines, it tends to be on the basis that people already want what I do."

With the music for the Sony video game Infamous, for example, Tobin worked with Chuck Doud and Jonathan Mayer, the music team for Sony Computer Entertainment America. Doud and Mayer sought to mold music out of non-musical found sounds and vice versa, extracting non-musical sounds from traditional instruments. For obvious reasons, this resonated with Tobin, who already had worked that way on Foley Room. It also says a lot, for example, about how much Tobin is in his element with video-game scoring that his label, Ninja Tune, released his work for Splinter Cell 3 as an actual album, titled Chaos Theory, in 2005.

Just as it's difficult to draw a hard line between Tobin's "commercial" and "artistic" output, there are commonalities between his breakbeat-heavy back catalog and his more recent work. His last two albums are more pointedly challenging offerings, but it's telling that certain rhythmic and harmonic preferences recur throughout his entire catalog, regardless of the source material. Likewise, the character of how his music builds remains strikingly consistent across the board. Tobin also, thus far, has taken his time, exploring possibilities within one working method over several releases before moving onto a new angle. Still, his strong drive to keep evolving dictates that change is an unavoidable aspect of his future too.

"There will always be people who are going to be like, 'Oh fuck, I wanted to get my rave on!'" he says. "But it was the same when I started deejaying. I got shit thrown at me for the first year. I mean, people hated what I was doing. It took a long, long time before anybody accepted my tastes on the dance floor. And, even though that was uncomfortable, I felt like it was very important because it helped establish something for me that was quite particular. I guess it's the same with making albums as well. It's very easy to fall into a comfort zone that is perpetuated by your fan base, which expects certain things. And when you deliver those things, there's a comfort to that. But I think that's a very unfortunate thing to do, given how much there is to explore in the world, and in music in particular. It would be very sad just to say, 'Well, I know how to do this, and I know they're going to like this, so I'm just going to keep doing this again and again.' The downside to not doing that is that you always meet a degree of resistance."

When all is said and done, though, Tobin would prefer that people not focus on the nuts and bolts of his process so much as the results.

"I want the focus to be emotionally driven, and not so much about the technical aspects of it," he says. "I feel like there's been a lot of focus on that, particularly with this record, because it is such a technical thing. The process is all about different kinds of synthesis, algorithms, and computer stuff — nerdy stuff, which I love — but at the end of the day, I respond to music in an emotional, physical way. And I hope that people will be given a chance to respond to my music in that way, and not be too sidetracked by what goes on behind the scenes."

Cave In: White Silence (Hydra Head)

Cave In: "Sing My Loves"

When Cave In returned from hiatus with its Planets of Old EP in 2009, it marked a true full-circle moment — from metalcore mastery to pop-rock faltering back to thrashing, effects-driven hardcore.  It was an exclamation that the quartet had plenty of heavy riffs left in the tank, but better than that, it seemed to be the band's best coalescence of its members' influences.

Now Cave In is back with White Silence, its first full-length since Perfect Pitch Black, the 2005 transition back to heaviness that featured trance-inducing grooves as well as acoustic balladry care of guitarist/singer Stephen Brodsky.

White Silence is nearly as much a melting pot as Planets of Old.  Though tracks such as "Serpeants" lean on bassist Caleb Scofield's searing screams and Old Man Gloom-esque riffs, and the final three tracks are built around Brodsky's singer/songwriter abilities, the members always complement each other in a way that keeps the band treading new ground.

The guitar effects of Brodsky and Adam McGrath are especially crucial, as a celestial or shrieking texture often pairs with the pure riffing.  They make as much of an impact on the tracks that Brodsky leads, making his first ("Heartbreaks, Earthquakes") sound like if John Lennon fronted a psych-sludge band.  This fusion may be best exemplified on the album's opus, the eight-minute "Sing My Loves," where all elements come together for a killer jam.

It's been a strange trip for Cave In, but White Silence finds the Boston band in a sort of "second prime."  Hopefully, it won't be another six years between long players.

Amon Tobin: ISAM (Ninja Tune)

Amon Tobin: "Lost and Found"

During his 15-year career, DJ and electronic artist Amon Tobin has transitioned from expert sampler and breakbeat artist to field-recording guru and sound designer.  ISAM, his first full-length album in four years, completes this move to synthesized and manipulated original samples, turning otherwise atonal sounds into instruments.

Tobin's last few albums have been as heavy on ambience and abstraction as on piecemeal beats, and ISAM is no different.  Melodies are interwoven into unsettling mixtures of timbre, which often come together to sound like one gigantic, mechanized alien insect wielding a lightsaber.  There are cuts of recognizable instruments, such as guitar or bells, but they're often just a layer in a greater sea of sound.

Interestingly, ISAM marks the first time that Tobin has recorded his own vocals for an album, and at times they're manipulated to sound like a woman or a young boy.  As one might imagine, they're rarely used in a traditional manner — except for the weird falsetto harmonies of "Kitty Cat," which might just foreshadow an Amon Tobin "pop" album.

Tobin's live plans for ISAM are just as unconventional as his style, as he's planning to tour with a "multidimensional / shape-shifting 3-D art installation" to complement his music.  The album also is being released as a limited-edition art book that includes images of the collaborative installation between Tobin and visual artist Tessa Farmer, whose miniature insect-versus-humanoid creations adorn the album.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Boris: Attention Please + Heavy Rocks (2011) (Sargent House)

Boris: "Hope" (Attention Please)

Boris: "Riot Sugar" (Heavy Rocks)

The prolific output and stylistic convergence of Boris has been difficult enough to track over the past 15 years, so fittingly, the Japanese post-metal trio has made things more confusing and released two brand-new albums at once — one of which shares the same name (and same art with a different color scheme) as a previous album but that has entirely new music.

Attention Please is the first of the two releases, and it highlights Boris' softer side, showcasing guitarist Wata's delicate vocals against an alt-rock, art-rock, and dance-infused backdrop.  Ambient, echoing soundscapes transition to moments of soft electronic/acoustic rumination ("You"), psychedelic solos ("Tokyo Wonder Land"), and classical guitar ("Aileron," which gets a long drone-sludge reprise on Heavy Rocks).  It's up and down but shows a potentially exciting new direction for the band.

The new Heavy Rocks, however, makes this worth the price of admission.  Sharing a name with the band's 2002 album, it highlights Boris' recent strength: mixing sludgy, down-tuned riffage with psych effects, punk beats, and soft vocal harmonies.  But it also combines plenty of the other elements that Boris has incorporated over the years, and these two albums are much more than a soft/heavy dichotomy.

(For the record, Boris actually has a third new album — titled, naturally, New Album.  It shares most of its songs with Attention Please and the 2011 version of Heavy Rocks but only has been released in Japan.)

Venetian Snares: Cubist Reggae EP (Planet Mu)

Venetian Snares: "The Identification Circles Levitate"

Tireless breakcore artist Venetian Snares (a.k.a. Aaron Funk) is a master at keeping listeners guessing, and his latest EP explores more new territory: reggae.

This, however, is reggae as only Funk could produce, as referenced by the album's title.  Guitar samples are chopped, warped, and mangled into oddly metered IDM.  Certain moments, unless you're listening closely for the samples, can sound devoid of Jamaican influence all together, resembling something more like the darker orchestral moments of My Downfall (Original Soundtrack).

Though the EP is brief — and contains a rather misleading first track with creepy spoken-word vocals — it's another notable release by one of electronic music's most adventurous explorers.

Honorable Mentions

Alpinist: Lichtlaern / Minus.Mensch (Southern Lord)

David Bazan: Strange Negotiations (Barsuk)

Dels: Gob (Big Dada)

Face Candy: Waste-Age Teenland (Rhymesayers)

Friendly Fires: Pala (XL)

Inevitable End: The Oculus (Relapse)

King Creosote & Jon Hopkins: Diamond Mine (Domino)

Efrim Manuel Menuck: High Gospel (Constellation)

Nicole Mitchell: Awakening (Delmark)

Thurston Moore: Demolished Thoughts (Matador)

Vieux Farka Touré: The Secret (Six Degrees)

Eskmo: "Cloudlight"

Brendan Angelides, the San Francisco-based electronic producer known as Eskmo, is not holding back anymore. With the release of his Hypercolor EP in 2009, he focused on writing “songs” instead of “dance tracks.” Because smaller dance labels tend to expect a specific track structure (intros, outros, breakdowns, etc.) on vinyl, Angelides was confined within a tight box of creation. But with tracks like the hypnotic, introspective “Harmony,” he was able to distance himself from the tired conventions of dance music. “I started to release exactly what I wanted without thinking about labels or what anyone else wanted,” he says.

Angelides has created music since 1999, when he took his moniker from Eskimo, the 1979 album by San Francisco avant-garde group The Residents. He first used the moniker as his alias on a full-length album that he created for a high-school graduation project. In place of the final paper that he needed to write to graduate high school, Angelides wrote and produced a complete album. “Then I knew I could make something,” he recalls. As to why he dropped the “I” in Eskimo, Angelides offers no explanation. “It just made sense to me at the time; there’s no other reason than that,” he says. “Now I joke [about it] and say that it's not about ‘I’; it's about ‘U.’”

He is equally mysterious when asked about his creative process, preferring to let the music speak for itself. “In terms of what feels right to me, I just dive deep into an idea, step back, modify, dive in again, step back,” Angelides says. “I Dream I’m Flying,” from Hypercolor, is a good example of the artist’s swirling, crunchy brand of dance-friendly electronica. The song forgoes any discernible intro and outro, while a military-march beat and rhythmic cascades of sound propel the listener from one uplifting sonic height to another. In typical understated fashion, Angelides says, “It’s weirder than your typical dance electronic.”

“Weird” is one way to put it, but “more innovative” and “more interesting” are a bit closer to the truth. These are meticulous compositions that reject predictability in favor of a consistently progressive and complex soundscape. On each track, Angelides develops a base layer of restrained polyrhythmic discord. Grimy dubstep beats are coupled with textured percussion that, instead of boring into your ear canals with bass-heavy brawn, seems to expand and take root. Found sounds are re-purposed in audio collages and become a part of Eskmo’s unique musical language.

On his eponymous full-length, released on Ninja Tune in October of 2010, track titles like “Cloudlight,” “Color Dropping,” and “Moving Glowstream” point to the highly visual characteristics of Eskmo’s music. His songs develop an unmistakable tone quality that begs for colorful descriptions like “warm” and “bright.” His album covers are similarly expressive, drawing from the same aesthetic wellspring that is the music. The art for Eskmo is blanketed in soft, glowing pastels, with an alien-like Angelides floating in ethereal repose. The layers of daubs, scratches, and drips — like the fragments that form the music — aren’t immediately apparent, but they make the sort of unheralded contributions that are necessary for an appropriately cryptic and beautiful cover.
 

“I finally wrote what I really wanted to write and broke through my own barriers.”

It makes sense that such colorful, visual music comes from a musician who learned the piano by ear. Angelides learned through experience, developing an acute sense of tone and pitch. In ninth grade, he was inspired by the English electronic dance band Prodigy and rock band Primus, prompting his decision to learn bass. While forming bands, he was further influenced by ambient-glitch artist Aphex Twin, house and techno godfather Frankie Bones, and Moby.

Following graduation, Angelides produced music that was born in seclusion and isolated thoughts. Living alone in a lakeside house in Connecticut for two years, he created soft, internal music, a more “chilled” version of electronica, under the alias Welder. But it wasn’t only the remote locale that inspired the quiet sounds. Poring over documents and papers about the dark underside of American society and government and conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11, Angelides got caught up in an introspective phase. “9/11 struck some serious chords for me in numerous ways, and my music started to reflect that shadow part of myself,” Angelides explains.

But ultimately, he grew tired of obsessing about the past. “I found that it was only separating me from those I cared about,” he says. For the past five years, Angelides has refrained from fixating on conspiracy documents. He started exploring a more jubilant side of himself that eventually spilled into his music. “I finally wrote what I really wanted to write,” Angelides says, “and broke through my own barriers.”

In the years following, he released a dozen singles and EPs while touring in North America and Europe, opening for producers like Brazilian electronic and hip-hop-fusion producer Amon Tobin and California experimental laptop musician Flying Lotus. He has remixed music by Bibio, Spor, STS9, and Bar 9 and also runs the record label Ancestor, which released Hypercolor.

With Eskmo, however, Angelides’ growth reaches another milestone. Whereas Welder was soft and introspective, Eskmo is open and sprawling, reflecting his emotional growth. The track “Siblings” communicates his experiences with family. With eight brothers and sisters from various marriages, Angelides finds joy in family visits. “Every time I see them, I always feel inspired to write music, and I put them in the songs,” Angelides says. The song “We Have Invisible Friends” is a reference to his spiritual side. “It’s the idea of tapping into the spirit realm — that remote viewing — and the overall concept that we all have a guardian angel watching over us,” he says.

In addition to family and spirituality, Angelides is passionate about working in the studio, and one particularly famous fan proved to be the perfect partner: Amon Tobin. Angelides opened for Tobin at Yuri’s Night, the annual worldwide party to celebrate Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s first flight into space, and the two hit it off.

Finding an equally laid-back yet focused artist in Tobin, the two collaborated as Eskamon on “Fine Objects,” a found-sound-laden drum-and-bass track released in April of 2010 on Eskmo’s Ancestor label. “[The collaboration] just came about because we both enjoy fiddling with field recordings and are both into the idea of sound for the sake of it,” Angelides says. “We both have the clear understanding that we know we’re going to get something down and we’re not going to stop until we do. Tobin really loves the sound and not the rock-star element of music; he’s not trying to write a track to make it cool.” Though he doesn’t say it, Angelides is also describing himself.

As for Eskmo, Angelides’ best and newest effort also finds him returning to his early musical origins. “It marks a full cycle of the character that I created back in 1999,” he explains. And now, with a clearer sense of the music that he wants to make, Angelides has been able to shed traditional electronic-music trappings. “I really let go of that [boxed-in] mentality,” he says. And, in a true return to form, he’s working on more Welder material — “slowly but surely.”