We invited artists, labels and publicists to tell us which records or artists they’ve personally enjoyed over the last twelve months. Eugene S. Robinson‘s picks below. Oxbow will release their brand new album next year, You’ve been warned.
Note that not every record listed below was released in 2015. Nevertheless you should listen to Eugene’s words of wisdom.
“TOP TEN 2015 ALBUMS THAT SAY FUCK YOU TOO
Coarseness has become a kind of common currency these days and while I should know better than most that it makes the most amount of sense to follow Sinatra’s dictum to keep the party polite sometimes you just can’t.
I mean anyone who would care about this list has the experience of either being sniffed at or sniffing at the musical picks of others like we’ve been able to glimpse deeply into their souls and uncovered their most painful personal secrets, secrets that have them wanting and you feeling just a little bit better about yourself.
But one of the benefits of being beyond all of that is very precisely being beyond all of that. OXBOW has existed since the prehistoric days of 1989, the pre-OXBOW band Whipping Boy was playing shows, punching people in the face and running from the cops in 1981, well before many of you were born.
That is to say, to quote Coach Leopoldo “DreamCrusher” Serao, we “don’ fuck care”. Like it or try to lump it, these were my favorite records this past year. Did they have to come out in the last 365 days? In my book? Nope (though I tried to keep it close)….
DIG IT”
10. Micachu & The Shapes – Good Sad Happy Bad (Rough Trade)
“SURPRISE! Not too twee for me at all. How and why do you explain something so self-consciously arty that still manages to crawl up your pant leg, your back and into your brain pain? You don’t that’s all. As I write this I have a very high fever and am puking in a bucket….not figuratively, LITERALLY. But sick or not this record is great as is Mica Levi who is a gnome of greatness.”
9. Bohren & der Club of Gore – Piano Nights (PIAS)
“Despite the fact that at the Supersonic Festival in Birmingham, England a few years ago when Niko Wenner and I played with Merzbow right after them and they came off of the stage to discover I had moved their clothes on a couch that I was then laying on and they were irked and probably thought of beating my head in, I still love these guys. In all of their murky gloom.”
8. Death Grips – The Powers That B (Caroline International)
“This is one of those bands that I was made to listen to in the same way that if you have a Japanese friend coming to visit from Japan you take them to a sushi restaurant as soon as the plane lands. It’s not so much that you’re stupid but that you’re just not thinking and so it goes that tattoo’d negro Stefan Burnett made people think that I, a tattoo’d negro, might find common cause with his noise and as luck would have it they were right this time around.”
7. Xiu Xiu – Angel Guts: Red Classroom (Bella Union)
“Try not sing Black Dick. Try. Now try to sing it and not think of me. Sure Jamie Stewart and clan are friends but this doesn’t make any difference since that alone wouldn’t have compelled me to put this on my list if I didn’t believe it to be so. And their Twin Peaks live set? Something I am dying to see.”
6. High On Fire – Luminiferous (Century Media)
“If you don’t know, now you know. I love them. Absolutely and without apology.”
5. Lydia Lunch Retrovirus – Urge To Kill (Rustblade)
“Another friend and another so what. Saw them play a few months ago and they crushed it better, more thoroughly and with a knife-sharp edge that makes them almost critic proof. You might not like this but you also might not like things that are good for you. Even the very, very bad things that are good for you.”
4. Nicki Minaj – The Pinkprint (Universal Music)
“Because of the song ONLY if for nothing else. Ignore the first cheeseball video, don’t ignore the second National Socialist inspired video. Hilariously amusing. Either intentionally or not.”
3. Ghostface Killah – Twelve Reasons To Die (Soul Temple)
“Not a friend and as far as I know doesn’t know that I am alive but how could you not love a vocalist that threatens the lives of other vocalists for real or perceived slights?”
2. Everything I Did in 2015:
“I am prolific. I sleep only about 4 hours a night. I am obsessed with saying what needs to be said and using my voice in different ways and though I am going to largely curtail doing so many outside projects to focus on a few and the necessary video/film that makes them make sense to me I love all of the ones that came out this year.
To wit:
a] The First Will + Testament: me with L’Enfance Rouge
b] 202 Morningside
c] Hidden Album Volume 2: Kruzenshtern I Parohod: Hiddem
d] Exit: LAS vegas
e] Success: KEN Mode: specifically the song “Blessed” that I got to sing on and add the lyric “with a mouthful of mud and an ass full of blood” to.
However, my favorite record of 2015 is also one I worked on.
Not, A Resting Place for Strangers: BUNUEL, which comes out in 2016 and is an Italian supergroup I sing for and will be touring with end of January and February.
And not the THIN BLACK DUKE, the absolute magnum monster opus by OXBOW, mid-to-late 2016 release for SURE now, followed by a tour as well.
But….”
1. ZU + Eugene S. Robinson – The Left Hand Path (Trost Records)
“From the single live show at the Freakshow Festival in France this past summer to the six years it took to finish this, this record, originally birthed as a real soundtrack for a real movie before the film’s producers realized that the record was creepier than their movie, is not to be listened to alone, in the dark, with guns in the house or while you’ve drinking or drugging. Which is just another way to say listen to it alone, in the dark with your gun while you’re drunk or high since even if you don’t do that it will feel very much like you had done exactly that.”
“So fucking good I can’t believe I had anything to do with it.
So there you go. Might help, can’t hurt. Actually…probably the other way around.”