Shall we do this? Yes, let’s do it. So far, this is the very first time we’re actually referencing our absolute favourite labels of the year. And, for those naysayers who keep mumbling about there’s no good music these days, maybe this 12-spot list comes in a perfect moment to slap’em all on the cheek. Start digging, start bringing back that youthful eagerness, start craving for what is fresh; mind the classics always but please, please, learn that, out there, the underground is hiding and holding these greatest flails of inventiveness for you to seek and dive in. People are losing their spare time to run labels that, most often than not, bring them nothing but a warmth sense of an accomplished mission. Their banks accounts go through the motions, stress is taken in unhealthy doses, vinyl plant delays give room for alopecia to flourish. All of it for you to say that there’s no good music anymore? For fuck’s sake, stop being lackadaisical lazy.
Well, something might be wrong with you already if in 2015 Neurot Recordings is a non-familiar name. Their emotion-driven output bolstered this year with a sheaf of good releases once again, probably led by the new Kowloon Walled City. Finally some justice decreed for this noise-conscious pack by having their “Grievances” spread in the airwaves through the label’s trustful hands, coopted by Gilead. That’s an essential record if you dig to shroud yourself with abrasive guitar nerdism inspired by the whole 90s lot of direct-warfare rock sheerness, think Albini, think Fugazi.
And you have to love their regard for Europe, please. They keep betting on the always deep-solid Ufomammut and they detected Dark Buddha Rising‘s psycho-vitality as a glimpse of experimentation. It remains a gleeful task to check what Neurot has been putting out, as the old guys are still throwing darts as well – Steve Von Till released another unpretentious work of folk galore and Corrections House gather four mutating knights of heavy, who are these days keen to explore industrial-pop-libertarianism as a sort of voyage through spoken word and impulsive machinal beats.
The joker move: were you expecting to see Tad Doyle coming out of the shadows with a massive new band?