There was so much amazing fucking music this year, I had to put together not one, not two, but FOUR lists, this is the first of em, and it’s a fuckin doozy, since there were wayyyy too many killer drone records, I split it up and made a more niche list of drone collaborations, and as usual, this isn’t even all of em. My main rule for this list was that the collaborations had to be people working together for the first time, so the new From The Mouth Of The Sun was out. And since I didn’t review any of these originally, I can’t link you to the review which has a streaming song, which is why I decided to include a song for each of these.
Have fun. Thanks for reading/listening/appreciating.
UPDATE: I have no idea how I didn’t realize that EUS, Postdrome, & Saåad broke the only rule I had for this list. I didn’t even realize it when I was linking to my previous Top Drone list from 2012 that had their first record. So, oops. I’m an asshole and I’m sorry.
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Rvnes – Relief (Jehu & Chinaman)
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Rvnes is new, but Malte Cornelius Jantzen has been around for a bit as S N DY P RL RS, whose LP on Umor Rex is fantastic. But S N DY P RL RS is no more and Rvnes has risen in its place. Glory be to Rvnes, this debut is easily one of my favorite drone records this year, two side-long pieces of deeeeep minimalism that sounds like it’s nearly motionless but feels like it has an entire universe of detail (which is proven by the waveform that’s way more dynamic than you’d expect), it’s the subtle pulsing, the delicate shifts in tone, the silence hovering between moments of resignation & peace that take what could be nothing more than a simple sleep to a beautifully perfect transcendence, this is full of a dense & delicate precision, a softness that almost diverts attention from the intense melancholic sobriety, but fully embracing this allows for all intricacies to be teased out, the borderline bliss alongside the bittersweet void, this is absolutely fucking awesome and deserves way more praise than it’s likely to get. Only 30 tapes were made, so seriously do not waste any time picking this up. Also it was mastered by the master himself Nicholas Szczepanik. It doesn’t get much better than this.
