Dead Rider: The Raw Dents (Tizona)

Dead Rider: "Mother's Meat"

A few years ago, the underground rock world was treated to a strange and refreshing new project called D. Rider. The group’s debut album was a delirious mixture of overlapping rhythms and quirks, blending dirty garage-rock licks with dark electronica and breathy, creepy vocal intonations.

Now the group is back, without the abbreviation, as Dead Rider. The Raw Dents, its sophomore album, again emphasizes its strength: shifting instrumentation and unusual progressions, with synthesizers playing a large and diverse role, shifting between thick, buzzing grooves and resonant bass sounds. Pulsating backdrops make way for those electric-guitar licks as well as plaintive acoustic guitar and stabbing trumpet and sax lines.

Haunting harmonica and eerie backing vocals round out the atmospherics, but not before listeners experience random handclaps, moans, and maniacal laughter. The Raw Dents continues an all-too-unheralded legacy for Dead Rider – and it should not be missed.

Xerath: II (Candlelight)

Xerath: "Unite to Defy"

In 2009, English symphonic-metal band Xerath delivered an emphatic debut that, according to Wikipedia, intended to "combine film-score composition with syncopated guitar rhythms and crushing metal grooves."

It's a spot-on description of an outstanding metal album, but the quartet's sophomore release, II, is a fuller realization of the band's potential.  Song development, melodic/harmonic interplay, and polyrhythms — each is even stronger than on Xerath's debut.

There are a few intermittent bursts of reverberated clean singing, but none succumbs to cheesy metal trappings.  The rest of II is full of Meshuggah-style "djent" intensity, careening single-note guitar riffs, furious drum fills and blast beats, and assailing screams — all joined by eerie symphonic accompaniments.  "Nuclear Self-Eradication," featuring a guest spot by Dääth guitarist Emil Werstler, is one of the album's most ferocious tracks — and a highlight of what should make many year-end metal lists.

Grand Pianoramax: Smooth Danger (Obliqsound)

Grand Pianoramax: "Roulette" (radio edit)

Conceived as a live piano-and-drums experiment, Grand Pianoramax is the principal project of pianist Leo Tardin. Once "a New Yorker from Switzerland" and now "a Berliner from America," Tardin uses a small arsenal of instruments — grand piano, Fender Rhodes, K-Station, harmonium, Phillichorda — to achieve a diversity of sounds for his duo's spacey, funky, classically infused music.

Smooth Danger, now available in the USA, is the duo's third and newest album. It cuts back a bit on guest vocalists, allowing the duo's music to better stand on its own. And it deserves to, thanks to its combination of killer melodies, synthesized grooves, and classical piano that overlay tight, rapid rock and boom-bap beats.

Blitz the Ambassador: Native Sun (Embassy MVMT / Fat Beats)

Blitz the Ambassador: "Dear Africa" (f. Les Nubians)

Having lived 20 years in Africa and 10 in the USA, Ghanaian-American songwriter and rapper Samuel Bazawule — known as Blitz the Ambassador — offers a unique perspective on hip hop.  His blend of funky Afrobeat and slinky Afro-rock (all played live) with beats and rhymes in uncommon here in the States, but more importantly, he provides firsthand narratives and opinions of life on two continents.

Native Sun is Bazawule's fifth album, and as usual, there are plenty of political overtones, such as on "Free Your Mind," which calls on African communities to rise up while calling out extortionist practices of the IMF.  But there also are personal reflections on Blitz's homeland and past, on tracks such as "Accra City Blues," and there are personal/political hybrids such as "Dear Africa."

Behind the rhymes — spoken and sung in English, West African Pidgin English, and the local Ghanaian language Twi — exists a tight lineup of horns, assorted percussion, rock instrumentation, and turntables (plus one appearance of a kora on the final track).  The album also features guest appearances by Shad, Les Nubians, and others (including a quick shout-out by Chuck D), but none overshadows the voice, emotional resonance, and political weight of Bazawule.

Honorable Mentions

Beastie Boys: Hot Sauce Committee Part Two (Capitol)

Danny Elfman & Tim Burton: 25th Anniversary Music Box (Warner Bros.)

Fleet Foxes: Helplessness Blues (Sub Pop)

The Fling: When the Madhouses Appear (Dangerbird)

Inzinzac: s/t (High Two)

Jackie O Motherfucker: Earth Sound System (Fire)

Mount Moriah: s/t (Holidays for Quince)

Nervecell: Psychogenesis (Lifeforce)

James Pants: s/t (Stones Throw)

Gruff Rhys: Hotel Shampoo (Wichita Records)

Taraf de Haïdouks & Kocani Orkestar: Band of Gypsies 2 (Crammed)

V/A: Dimmsummer Presents Subcontinental Bass (High Chai)

Kocani Orkestar: The Ravished Bride (Crammed Discs)

A vivacious Romani brass band, the Kocani Orkestar returns after its release of Alone at My Wedding, an album full of Gypsy wedding music.

The Ravished Bride finds the group as powerful as ever, combining wild instrumental runs with the crooning voice of Ajnur Azizov. The album contains a touch of surf influence while also including a Mexican number and a few traditional Macedonian pieces. Guitarist Uri Kinrot (Balkan Beat Box) makes a guest appearance.

Femi Kuti: Day by Day (Wrasse)

The eldest son of Afrobeat legend Fela Kuti, Femi furthers his own legacy with Day by Day, the newest installment in his 20-year career as a bandleader. Like much of his family's catalog, Day by Day targets the corruption of African politicians, but its soul-jazz influence takes Femi in a new direction — trading his saxophone for a piano and a trumpet, his original instrument.

Ocean: Pantheon of the Lesser (Important)

Two years in the making, Pantheon of the Lesser is Ocean's brutal new two-song full-length.

The album's opener, "The Beacon," is 41 minutes of über-slow doom – which consists of three movements and turns into more than an hour of material when played live. But the songs are more than distorted, minimalist dirges; melancholy chimes combine with clean-channel guitar to give "The Beacon" a downright deathly feel.

Ocean: "The Beacon" (excerpt)
Ocean: \"The Beacon\" (excerpt)

Kieran Hebden & Steve Reid: NYC (Domino)

Kieran Hebden (Four Tet) and Steve Reid (Steve Reid Ensemble) present another helping of atmospheric samples, dense sound collages, and jazz drumming. Influenced by New York City and its "infamous energies," the songs on NYC are time-tested structures — no longer the "instant compositions" that marked the duo's initial collaborations.

Spylacopa: s/t EP (Rising Pulse)

This five-song debut EP is a studio project from John LaMacchia (Candiria), Jeff Caxide (Isis), Greg Puciato (The Dillinger Escape Plan), and Julie Christmas (Made Out of Babies / Battle of Mice). The disc's primary style is one of modern metal, but it crosses into alternative sonic territory with the pretty piano work on "Together We Become Forever" and the Pink Floyd-sounding guitars of "I Should Have Known You Would."

Spylacopa: "Haunting a Ghost"
Spylacopa: \"Haunting a Ghost\"