The List No One Other Than Me Wanted!
My top 3 albums from 2019
The number one slot was so easy to
pick. The number two and third picks were hard to select because, damn 2019
gave a lot of excellent music offerings!
Honorable Mention: Hawkestrel: The
Future is Us. How could I not
include an album that has William Shatner performing Sonic Attack?! Shat goes
full Shatner on Sonic Attack. It is incredible. Alan Davey really laid out a
great slab of music. More honorable mentions go to Nik Turner, and Tim
Mungenast & Eric Dahlman (I can’t really review their album as I’m biased
since I was in the audience while it was created). I’m going to stop with the
“honors” because there were so many other great albums out in 2019 that I could
drone on and on about.
Now to the top 3.
3. Third Ear Experience with Dr. Space: Ear to Space
This album rips space rock up, down, both sides, and to
beyond infinity. My discovery of the band Third Ear Experience came at the 2019
NASR show in Austin Texas. NASR (North American Space Ritual) wasn’t just a
show, it was a wild musical ride that deserves it’s own chronicle.
Screams of Eagle Bone is the
opening track, which clocks in at 14 engine churning minutes of space ship
rock. If you want to blast off, this is your song. If you don’t like this song,
then don’t bother to listen to the rest of the record because this is your
launch sequence. The album is full of slamming space rock synths, sax, sounds
and sun scorching guitars. I can’t wait to hear more by this band. I feel
really lucky to have seen them in concert. Hope to catch them again and again
and again. Dr. Space is a guest on this album.
Another stand out cut is Dreams of
a Caterpillar, which is a little over 20 minutes long. It starts off as piece
of synth bubbling ambience before becoming a delightful
trancey-dancey-spacey-jam then mellowing out again only to rise up on last
time.
2. Opeth: In Cauda Venenum
Freaking wow. Music that goes in so
many directions it almost gives me whiplash in the best possible way. German
80s synths, prog metal, “bowed instruments” and more collide all over the
place. This is what music should be, exploration! Amazing that so few of the
songs even have a chorus (do any of them? I should check). Opeth is not afraid
to defy song structure and make things new. This is a late arrival to my
collection, which is part of the reason it took me so long to compile this
list.
The opening track would fit more in
an early Tangerine Dream album rather than an album I bought in the Heavy Metal
section of a record store. I am so often struck by how to me, Opeth (in their
post death metal phase which they currently occupy) could be the modern version
of Queen. Great songs, amazing vocals, and heavy guitar attack. Another thing
that blows my mind about this release is that it’s recorded in English, which
is the second language for their incredible singer Mikael Akerfeldt. How does
someone sing so beautifully in their second language?! The second disc on this
set contains a Swedish language version of the album, which I am looking
forward to diving into.
1. Cat Temper: Henry
This isn’t just an album; this is a
landscape of sound. Henry is Cat Temper’s alternate soundtrack to the David
Lynch movie Eraser Head. Where as the movie has a more noise-based layer of
sound behind it, Cat Temper gives it a quirky diseased keyboard vibe that is
vaguely funny, but thoroughly strange.
Drums? Ah yes, the pounding pop
synth drums ringing with the right layering of dirge over them are fantastic.
You can watch the movie with this
amazing soundtrack and feel the vibe of the movie change, or you can listen to
the album by itself. I’ve listened to it on it’s own many times, so I honestly
feel it stands apart as its own piece of sonic art. It’s great to drive around
to, or to listen at home.
There are so many stand out tracks
on an album filled with thirty (yes thirty) great audio sculptures.
Opening track, Man in the Planet
sets the tone wonderfully with quirky 80s synths with an undercurrent of
chaotic menace. Darkly cute music? Maybe.
Those drum sounds I mentioned
earlier? They sound incredible on a good stereo with the volume up. Crank it
for maximum power!
The fifth track Mary has a haunting
piano-esque sound that sticks in my soul. Chilling yet compelling. A very short
song but so meaningful!
Track six, Meeting Mother is a
hysterical sounding grotesque of a song sounded like a psychotic kids ride at a
futuristic abandoned carnival.
Henry, like the movie Earserhead,
is a surrealist phantasm of synth tones, ambience, sequencers, and pure fun.
Moments of pop bliss, dance in the darkness.
When this album first lit up the
stereo there was no doubt that, Henry, by Cat Temper would be this person’s
favorite album of 2019.
Go forth and freak out
Yours in Music,
Count Robot
