Mafiascum.net

30. Can't Do Without You - Caribou.
29. Devil Come Take This Town - David Ford.
28. Inside Out - Spoon.
27. Solar System - Screaming Maldini.
26. Who Killed the Moonlight? - Nicole Atkins.

25. My Sad Captains - Elbow.
24. Outlier - Spoon.
23. Carousel Ride - Rubblebucket.
22. Meet Me There - Nick Mulvey.
21. Angola - Sam Roberts Band.

20. The Troubles - U2.
19. Toumast Tincha - Tinariwen.
18. Ride - TV on the Radio.
17. Last Bayou - Wolf Gang.
16. A Dream of You and Me - Future Islands.

15. We Wait Too Long - Nicole Atkins.
14. Cut Your Teeth - Kyla La Grange.
13. Yellow & Blue - Megan Washington.
12. Cucurucu - Nick Mulvey.
11. Cocoon - Catfish and the Bottlemen.

10. Spirit - Future Islands.
9. Swimming Pool - Emmy the Great ft. Tom Fleming.
8. Skyline - Megan Washington.
7. Careful You - TV on the Radio.
6. My Favourite Faded Fantasy - Damien Rice.

5. Consolation Prize - Megan Washington.
4. Dangerous - Big Data ft. Joywave.
3. My Heart is a Wheel - Megan Washington.
2. Fever to the Form - Nick Mulvey.
1. Seasons (Waiting on You) - Future Islands.

5. Seeds - TV on the Radio
4. Slow Phaser - Nicole Atkins
3. First Mind - Nick Mulvey
2. Singles - Future Islands
1. There There - Megan Washington

I think we got three genuine classics this year.

The name for this track is taken from a VST I wrote that forces all audio passing through it to the same amplitude, i.e. it completely erases dynamic range. This has some interesting results: reverbs can’t decay, allowing you to hear parts of the tail that aren’t normally heard; filtered delays dissolve into harmonics normally too quiet to hear; field recordings are flattened so that quiet rustles and loud bangs are equally pronounced.

The track spawned from experiments with this effect and is divided into 4 rough sections.

The track starts with a drilling engine-like sound that came from playing with a delay that was kept alive by the cuntpressor. The single sub-bass hit that punctures through the other sounds I added as a premonition of the later parts of the track. The rumble between the first and second section is the raw sound of the cuntpressor working its charms on a reverb; notice the crackles toward the end when the reverb desperately wants to die but the cuntpressor is keeping it unnaturally alive.

The second section builds on the first by tightening the rhythm into a more shuffley mode, punctuated with bass stabs and little snippets of voice. I often add fragments of unintelligible voice to music, it makes me think of how language might sound to someone with speech agnosia (word-deafness). Here the sub-bass hits that define the following section are introduced as high pitched blips in a syncopated rhythm that morph into their later form by lowering in pitch and slowing the tempo, so that the gap between them lengthens into full bars. This gives an effect of slowing-without-slowing, similar in concept to Shepard tones or strange loops.
The third section takes this bass hit and gives it a context with an awkward minimal beat that slowly expands into a more driving 4-to-the-floor rhythm. This builds until a pause when the piano is introduced. I recorded this at home using the shitty mic in my laptop, because I didn’t have any equipment with me. I approximated a stereo recording by recording the same riff with the laptop in several different positions around the room and blending them with different pans. I couldn’t completely get rid of the tinny timbre to them but I quite liked it anyway, so emphasized it with erratic filter changes.
The outro boils the rhythm of the 3rd section down to its basic no-frills constituent – a repetitive technoish loop. This morphs into two other styles before the track glitches itself to pieces.