The Underachievers
On the basis of their debut album Cellar Door: Terminus Ut Exordium that dropped in August of this year, despite their group name, AK and Issa Gold are far from underachievers when it comes to their music. Having grown up a few blocks from each other Flatbush, Brooklyn the two met in 2007 and were soon bonding over psychedelic drugs, having just clicked instantly when introduced.
A lot of LSD and magic mushrooms later the pair had started rapping with intent come 2011, before you know it 2012 sees them signed to Flying Lotus’s label Brainfeeder, two mixtapes and an EP later, and we arrive at this year’s debut album that blurs the lines between old school New York hip and psychedelic rap behind a thick multicoloured haze. Cellar Door showed off the duo’s insane flows and lyricism fresh from ambidextrous brains, so to strike while the iron is psychedelic the pair will be releasing their follow up album, Allusions, in 2015.
Krokodil
What more can I say about the sextet of hardcore and metal noisemakers, Krokodil, than they already have said themselves?
‘It’s mostly beards and riffs.’
Well, I suppose I could mention that they released their debut album Nachash in November of this year. Oh, and that those aren’t just and beards and providers of riffs; the six piece are comprised of members of SikTh, Gallows, Hexes, Cry For Silence, and Liber Necris. So, I guess that’d be a rather accomplished and pedigreed sextet of hardcore and metal noisemakers, then.
However, it’s not just about the who’s who of progressive metal, punk, hardcore, and metalcore that make up the band, it’s the fact they’ve been able to cohesively create an album that brings the more hardcore end of metal crashing limbs flailing into the concentrated progressive end of metal.
GoGo Penguin
If releasing a critically acclaimed debut album called Fanfares in 2012, and then having its follow up v2.0 be named as one of the Mercury Prizes Albums of the Year of 2014 – being nominated for the prize outright – and having the fucking awesome name of GoGo Penguin doesn’t get a hot slice of 2015, I don’t know what will.
GoGo Penguin are Manchester trio that keep it simple, almost exclusively making use of piano, double bass, and drums/percussion in their music. Their music, though, GoGo Penguin do not keep it simple; this threesome play jazz and it’s complex, intricate, spontaneous, crazy, and beautiful, serene, peaceful, melancholic, and heartfelt. That’s the reason 2015 is theirs, not that other stuff – though it sure helps.
Mysteries
The band Mysteries is a three piece, its three members are mysteries themselves, even to their own record label who allegedly only know the three as Mystery Man 1, Mystery Man 2, Mystery Man 3, and only know the trio to look at from the faceless, mask wearing, cult-like photos they have received from the band.
Is the intention to let the music be the focus for these three and nothing more, so they can remain anonymous and have their art be purely detached and all that is discussed; to let the music do the talking not personalities? Perhaps, but I mean it does kind of contradict itself in the fact everyone bloody talks about how mysterious and anonymous they are all the time; maybe that’s the intention.
Whatever, whichever, whoever, 2015 will be a year of Mysteries because they debut from the blue they released this year, New Age Music Is Here, is cluttered, chaotic, organised, concise; futuristic, dark, dated, uplifting; warm, natural, cold, synthetic;it’s an album of contradictions and it works as perfectly as a mystery as the members that make it.
Coasts
Having first formed in 2011, or at least been conceived way back when, it’s a genuine surprise that Coasts are not bigger than they are already. However, that may have something to do with them having kept things as independent as possible, but whilst you might not have heard of them yet (of course you might have though), their relentless touring and exquisite songwriting has seen them continue to build and build upon their fanbase.
November this year saw them release A Rush of Blood, their latest EP, which sees the band at an absolute peak of songwriting, bringing together layered intricate melodies and huge, and I mean fucking huge, choruses. This will see them touring continuously into 2015, and the songs will spread as fast as the shows. It’s there for the taking, without a doubt.
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