The best music of October proved to be like a Halloween grab bag. Pardon the pun, but it was filled with so much good stuff, how could we choose one sweet confection over another? Also like our favorite holiday, it was a month filled with dystopian imagery; from Protomartyr’s bleak intellectual outlook; to EMA’s confrontational video exposing the immature entitlement of gun owners; to dd elle’s introspective look at suicidal thoughts; to Gag’s unviewable record cover, it was a month of contemplation as we enter the dark quarter of the lunar year (at least we had Beach Music to get us through). It wasn’t so much that we enjoyed one piece of candy more than rest, but these were the selections we found reaching for the most when offered the plastic jack-o-lantern of treats. One we chose more than others:
The Best Album of October 2015
Rabit, Communion (Tri Angle)
Communion, the debut album by Houston producer Eric Burton as Rabit, is alternately assaultive and unnerving. Vocal samples are rendered as clipped yelps; the moment of forced disappearance suspended for minutes at a time. “Flesh Covers the Bone” is chilled and clinical. And “Pandemic”, with its closing salvo of gunfire, conveys merciless oppression like nothing in recent memory. Intended as a meditation on the state, media, and identity, Burton pulls from various schools of downcast electronic music to articulate contemporary society as a site of violent stratification.
Here are the rest of our favorites for October 2015, in no particular order.
