I’m not trying to update this chart every single month if it isn’t necessary, but not long after making the last one I realized I’d missed a couple of important things.
Firstly, Is Survived By, by Touche Amore. I think I expected this album to hit less as I grow up, and instead it actually just keeps hitting harder and harder. I know I love Stage 4 enough that it should probably be on here, too, but that album is so hard to listen to that I’ve only done it a few times, and I fear to do so again. This band makes me cry a lot of the time.
Even higher on the chart, I added Velocity: Design: Comfort, by Sweet Trip. This album is so out-there I can hardly ever call it to mind besides DSCO (which is the song I’ve played the most on Spotify ever because I never skip it when it comes on); and yet whenever I listen to the whole album, I am constantly remembering that I love almost every part of it.
Recently when I put together my ADHD playlist, I was having a hard time calming my mind back down to normal speed and processing slower music again. I have never needed this Sweet Trip more than then, as they combine soothing, beautifully-produced soundscapes with an endless amount of weird, unpredictable noise—which, while I can hardly even notice all of it happening when I’ve got the album on in the background, is able to rip apart the part of my brain that obsessively tries to keep track of and memorize all of what’s going on in the music with the sheer madness of all that’s going on sonically when I pay attention.
I had also forgotten Ootsuki Kenji and the Zetsubou Girls on that Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei tie-in album which also has immaculate production—but more importantly, hangs in a unique sonic space which few other projects ever have. Coaltar of the Deepers is the closest thing (since they did the music here), but Ootsuki Kenji’s incredibly distinct voice, as well as those of the voice actresses singing in-character, along with all of the super-unique structural stuff that’s done with those vocals on this album, is just way above-and-beyond the inventiveness you’d ever expect from a whole CD of anime tie-in music.
In order to make room for these three albums, I funnily-enough removed two experimental hip-hop albums with titles I have to be wary about saying out-loud (Negro Necro Nekros, by Dalek, and Niggas on the Moon, by Death Grips), as well as Machine by Static X; the first two being great albums which I don’t listen to as much as the stuff that’s on the chart, and the third being an album that’s just barely good enough to be a contender, but which I have some nostalgia for (it just can’t cut the mustard the same way that The Sickness by Disturbed can). I also adjusted the order of the list somewhat, since I’d been pretty haphazard about placement the first time. If anything else changes by next month, I’ll make another post to update about it.