Best Albums of 2013 : 5-1

5. Watain - The Wild Hunt

We've all experienced musical epiphanies, the moments where you suddenly hear a certain genre for the first time and fall instantly in love. If Metal ever piqued your interest then chances are you'll remember being thrilled and slightly frightened by it on first encounter, the spellbinding nightscapes of 'Master of Puppets' or the caustic occult menace of 'Legion' or 'De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas' sending shivers down your spine and opening up a world of illicit pleasures to explore. Senses may dull over prolonged exposure to blastbeats and shrieking but occasionally a band turns up to bring you right back to the first date awakening you felt back then, one that suddenly turns everything else into stilted irrelevance and takes over your schedule completely. Watain are the only metal band I'll take time to introduce to friends on the grounds that they NEED them in their life, a blackened band of crusaders whose message should be spread far and wide so nobody misses out on their unholy genius. 'The Wild Hunt' is another fine entry in an already spellbinding canon and sees them evolve and diversify into new areas of menace, the scorching Black Metal assault tempered in places with 'Black Album' epic romance and tantalising forays into dark experimentation - the stylistic changes may serve as potential inroads for newcomers to the genre but their incorporation takes nothing away from the raging black flame at the heart of the album and purists will come away smarting from the rabid menace on show here across another bevy of devilish delights. If you're in any way drawn to the murkier end of the musical spectrum then this is one album you cannot afford to ignore in your quest for fulfilment.

4. The Range - Nonfiction

Techno seems to have supplanted indie as the young musicians' go to genre, a lifetime's stylistic history now freely available to all online enabling teenagers born in the 90s to pore over the creative debuts of Derrick May, Richie Hawtin and Carl Craig as they forge their own identities and pick up the mantle for themselves. There's no shortage of studio noodlers out there producing music for the Pitchfork generation, kids already young enough to have bypassed the noughties guitar boom to instead come of age in the post Fuck Buttons/Animal Collective utopia of the last five years where loops and drumbeats superseded riffs and lyrics to create a musical culture for the new era. Exactly how many of the electronic records produced in this wave will stand up to the passing of time is yet to be fully established, the Witch House/Dubstep booms of yesteryear now sounding somewhat hollow but we are in the privileged position of having a surfeit of fascinating releases to choose from and The Range's intriguing debut was the one that stood out for me at the end of a year whose harvest was particularly rich. 'Nonfiction' isn't built around floor fillers nor is it spread across a universe of abstract electronic dreamscapes, the tracks are typically trimmed to bite size chunks and no idea is overcooked but what's served up is a tantalising introduction into a sonic dimension worthy of much future exploration - shades of Detroit Techno, Madchester Acid House, late 90s Trance and noughties Urban Bass Music all filter  seamlessly into the melting pot and different memories of rave culture bubble to the surface of each enthralling track as we take in a museum tour of electronica past and present. 'Nonfiction' resists nailing its colours to any particular mast and as such acts as the doorway into a realm sure to yield bigger and better thrills in years to come - its charms are subtle but run deep enough to keep you picking new favourites on every repeated listen and the passing of time may well reveal this to be the first chapter in an epic musical journey.

3. My Bloody Valentine - MBV

2013 was a year of comebacks largely welcomed by the music press, the recently issued best album lists creaking under the weight of familiar faces back in the ring for one more round. I've been leafing through said lists and pulling faces at the lack of new bands on the receiving end of the highest accolades but it's becoming an increasingly harsh environment for new music, one where artists are perceived as naive to expect even the smallest return on their endeavours against a tidal wave of indulgent nostalgia and vapid middle age complacency suffocating the creative spark that should be shining through modern music. My Bloody Valentine's long-awaited return in the midst of all that could easily have been chalked up as yet another exercise in 90s revivalist box-ticking but they were never a band to do things the easy way and 'MBV' did its level best to avoid over-exposure and flatulent media hype, surfacing almost invisibly early in the year to suddenly envelope everything like an overnight onset of impenetrable velvet fog. Those looking for a return to the lysergic love rush of the 'Loveless' era were catered for with a gorgeous triptych composed in those halcyon days but this was no mere exercise in regurgitation and the main body of the album saw them drift even further into abstract waters, shedding skin after skin to morph into enthralling new shapes informed by the catalogue of musical genres to have come and gone since their last release. Their return to the spotlight was warmly welcomed and handled with consummate grace for a band whose creative void outstrips even the gestation period of 'Chinese Democracy', self-releasing the album on their own website to avoid label interference and involving streaming services without the crotchety self-righteousness of Thom Yorke and co, leaving the record up on YouTube for free whilst politely pointing out that a better quality version was available for purchase if you wanted to hear the real deal. There was nothing calculated about their re-emergence as a creative force but in a way it couldn't have been better timed, 2013 having signalled a shift from song to soundscape that provided the perfect backdrop for a new rush of compositions from the one band you can cite in arguments for guitar music's status as genuine art. 'MBV' was like going back to sleep and reliving the best dream you've ever had with a new director's cut ending - Kevin Shields and co are still out there in there own category, timeless and untouchable forever more.

2. White Poppy - s/t

Where've we got to now with the whole chillwave thing? Is it officially dead? Has post-chillwave established itself as a genre now? I'll admit I've kind of lost track over the last year or so - the glut of effects pedal reliant bands of the late noughties have by and large ceased to arouse interest and the 'maturing' process of the school of 2010 saw bands like Beach House return with pleasantly subdued follow-ups that were probably best suited to an afternoon wandering aimlessly around your local Ikea. The public taste for ethereal soundscapes seems to have waned to the point where artists can paddle in the warm waters of feedback and fuzz without being pigeonholed into some none-existent scene, free to indulge their fixation with sensory displacement and hypnotic dream weaving in creative isolation. In that sense the genre has packed its bags and gone back to live in the forest in terms of mainstream exposure but that might just be the trigger for some even more fascinating releases to creep in from the leftfield. There's not a great deal online about the pulsating brain behind White Poppy (although internet research will lead you to the greatly undervalued peace symbol from which the band takes its name), what's available indicating that one reclusive chick from British Columbia is responsible for this perplexing brain bath of sublime soundscapes. 'White Poppy' is dream pop for the sleep deprived, music for the sort of numbing headspace you enter after fighting off fatigue for a day and a half and resort to powering down your sensory reflexes to the bare minimum, the cotton wool embrace of total rest shimmering before you like a mirage in the middle distance. There's echoes of Slowdive's majestic 'Pygmalion' on here, reverberations from a melodic planet only slightly out of focus to the human eye - the band describe their sound as 'experimental therapeutic pop' and there's more than a shade of Jason Spaceman's medicated high points as they glide through ten memorable slabs of gilt-edged cloud pop. Instruments and vocals remain low in the mix but there's consummate pop songwriting at the heart of each morsel to keep you coming back for repeated listens, be they first thing in the morning or last thing at night. This might take a few spins to get under your skin but like the finest slow release medicine it'll floor you once its effects fully permeate and prolonged exposure to this intoxicating debut might well see you craving a follow up dose before too long. Mesmeric and utterly gorgeous.

1. Deafheaven - Sunbather

How do you pick one record above everything else? Why reserve special praise for any one particular release when there are so many that have made the year more bearable? Should we even realistically expect to be stunned this late in our musical lifetimes? Folks, truth is that there's always a new sensory thrill lurking round the corner to remind you why music takes up so much of your life, dominating conversations and greedily devouring time and energy like a malevolent spirit hellbent on keeping you prisoner in protracted adolescence. Music can still come along and encapsulate a feeling you've never truly put your finger on before, a state of mind that somehow eludes definition suddenly pinned down through sound to be confronted and processed like never before. The emotional momentum of Shoegaze's most cacophonous moments and the scorched earth catharsis of Black Metal's peaks of venomous nihilism seem to be only fractions apart from each other on the dial but the distance between them has always been like the Beiring Strait, a chasm separating two continents facing opposite directions frozen in perpetual self-denial. Deafheaven's mission to sail down this central channel was pinned as pompous hipster posturing by many and decried by pillars of both the Indie and Metal communities but 'Sunbather' proved to be a voyage worth taking, drawing on the subdued emotional release of 'Dreams Burn Down' era Ride and the desolate rage of Darkthrone at their most waspish for an end product that offered both empathy and resolution in one exhausting rally. The bright pink cover was deliberate, not just as an antidote to the black and white DIY fetishism of BM but almost as a tribute to daydreaming itself, the warm glow of the sun shining through your closed eyelids as you isolate your mind for a moment of pure reflection - love and hate wage a bitter war as the record unfolds, giving voice to frustration, disappointment and the frantic search for meaning but still offering solace and hope in passages of fragile intimacy. The dry throat rasp and stone chisel guitar screech of cult BM spews forth like the roar of a wounded animal but it flits intermittently into focus amidst a cloud of numbing fuzz, the swathes of effects pedal almost consoling the venom and bringing what could turn to overkill back into the realms of solace and redemption. There are three calmer passages to sooth the tension but it's over the course of four ten-minute frescos that they achieve true splendour, each track offering a soundtrack to falling in and out of love over a relentless barrage of joy, pain and unfiltered emotional catharsis. 'Sunbather' is a record that courts pretentiousness at times but channels enough true blood and guts feeling to rise above all potential slights and emerge as the only record this year to grab you by the throat and demanded your undivided attention - listening to this will leave you psychologically exhausted and potentially close to tears but it is worth every second. Lay your cynicism aside and immerse yourself in the year's most gracefully savage journey through the pinnacles of human emotion.