THE CHAIN: Best of 2017

Top 10 lists from The Chain and friends...

Justin Pearson (The Chain, Three One G, Retox, Dead Cross, Planet B, The Locust):

1) Panicker - s/t

2) Chelsea Wolfe (live at Belly Up in San Diego – specifically Fred Sablan's bass lines and tone)

3) Metz - Strange Peace

4) Organic gardening (City Farmers Nursery in San Diego)

5) The Festival of Dead Deer (live at Blonde in San Diego)

6) Micro-dosing (to rid of chronic migraines)

7) The Killing of a Sacred Deer (Dir. Yorgos Lanthimos)

8) Bastard Noise (live at Space in San Diego)

9) Uncle Grandpa: Odd-yssey (Cartoon Network)

10) Anal Trump - "If You Thought 6,000,000 Jews Was A Lot of People, You Should've Seen My Inauguration!" 5" EP 

Curran Reynolds (The Chain, Body Stuff):

1) TV Baby - Dignity Don't Dance

2) Code Orange - Forever

3) Martin Rev - Demolition 9
4) Jay-Z - 4:44
5) Analepsy - Atrocities from Beyond
6) Escape-ism - Introduction to Escape-ism

7) Succumb - s/t

8) Xiu Xiu - FORGET

9) Bhad Bhabie - "Hi Bich"

10) Quicksand - Interiors

Honorable mentions: Luis Fonsi, Collapsing Scenery, The Black Angels, Lecherous Gaze, Pyrrhon, Krallice, Uniform, Kelly Moran, and every band I worked with this year!

Brandon Gallagher (The Chain, Coarse):

1) Vince Staples - Big Fish Theory

2) Death from Above 1979 - Outrage! is Now

3) All Pigs Must Die - Hostage Animal

4) SZA - Ctrl

5) Eisley - I'm Only Dreaming

6) At The Drive In - in-ter-al-li-a

7) Employed To Serve - The Warmth of A Dying Sun

8) Incendiary - Thousand Mile Stare

9) Glassjaw - material control

10) Orthodox - Sounds of Loss

Kelly Moran (composer, pianist):

1) Oneohtrix Point Never - Good Time (Official Motion Picture Soundtrack)
2) Krallice - Go Be Forgotten
3) Kara-Lis Coverdale - Grafts
4) Future - HNDRXX

5) Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith - The Kid

6) Hauschka - What If?

7) SZA - CTRL

8) Bjork - Utopia

9) Jhene Aiko - Trip

10) 21 Savage, Offset & Metro Boomin - Without Warning

Geng (PTP):

In alphabetical order, and not including any releases from my own label:

1) Bell Witch - Mirror Reaper
2) GRID - s/t
3) Irreversible Entanglements - s/t
4) L'Rain - s/t

5) Lil Eto & V-Don Omerta: The Movie

6) Mach Hommy H.B.O. OR Dumpgawd: Hommy Edition

7) MIKE - May God Bless Your Hustle

8) Pharmakon - Contact

9) Phew - Light Sleeper

10) Roc Marciano - Rosebud's Revenge

Sonny Kay (Year Future, The VSS, Angelhair, GSL):

1) Tau Cross S/T - First album from a couple years back. Slept on this when it came out, not sleeping any more.

2) The Bug vs Earth "Concrete Desert" LP

3) Flowdan feat. Wiley "Original Ragamuffin" 12" - Flowdan's my favorite rapper, period, especially on Bug tracks. This isn't one, but still far above average.

4) Silent "A Century of Abuse" LP and live in Tijuana, March 2017 - Renewed my faith in shadowy post-punk. Ripping band and a great frontman.

5) Io/Echo TBA Sargent House album 

6) Tera Melos "Trash Generator" LP and live in Las Vegas, October 2017 

7) Psychic TV - Live at Psycho Fest Las Vegas. Haven't been moved by GPO for a long time, but this performance was incredible.

8) The Festival of Dead Deer Reunion show, Los Angeles, April 2017 - Who reforms 20 years later and are better than they were to begin with? These guys, apparently.

9) Thievery Corporation "The Temple of I & I" - Until Hash reforms Gogogo Airheart, I'll make do with this.

10) Echo & The Bunnymen "It's All Live Now" LP - 1985 bootleg officially released 32 years later. The last truly great thing they did.

Aaron Heard (Jesus Piece):
1) Tyler The Creator - Flower Boy 
2) A$AP Mob - Cozy Tapes Vol. 2
3) The Impalers - Cellar Dweller
4) King Krule - The Ooz
5) Kendrick Lamar - DAMN.
6) Vince Staples - Big Fish Theory
7) Full Of Hell - Trumpeting Ecstasy 
8) Drake - More Life
9) Migos - Culture
10) Death of Lovers - The Acrobat 

Justina Villanueva (photographer):

1) Gnaw - Cutting Pieces
2) Downtown Boys - Cost of Living
3) Depeche Mode - Spirit
4) Drab Majesty - The Demonstration

5) Bestial Mouths - (Still) Heartless

6) Winter Severity Index - Katabasis

7) Björk - Utopia

8) Wax Idols - American Tragic (tape release)

9) Lorde - Melodrama

10) Jay-Z - 4:44

Matt McAuley (TV Baby):

1) Escape-ism - Introduction to Escape-ism

2) Alan Vega - IT

3) TV Baby - Dignity Don't Dance

4) Brian Hill and the Noh Stars -  s/t

5) Slam Section - demo

6) Telepathic Alliances (Daniel Carter, Patrick Holmes, Matthew Pullman, Hilliard Greene, Federico Ughi)

7) Endless Boogie - Vibe Killer

8) Krallice- Loüm

9) Tinariwen - Elwan

10) Princess Nokia - 1992 Deluxe

Andee Blacksugar (KMFDM, Black Sugar Transmission):

1) Living Colour - Shade
2) Marty Friedman - Wall of Sound
3) Dead Cross - s/t
4) Panic Scenery - Exalted Voidstate

5) Sharon Needles - BattleAxe

6) V/A - Rave or Die Vol 8

7) KMFDM - Hell Yeah

8) Ben Frost - The Centre Cannot Hold

9) Loi Loi - Viva La Vulva

10) KXM - Scatterbrain

Jessica Pimentel (Orange Is the New Black, Alekhine's Gun, Brujeria):

1) Prayers - Baptism Of Theives

2) V▲LH▲LL - Stendhal

3) seven)suns - For The Hearts Still Beating 
4) Juanes - Mis Planes Son Amarte
5) Igorrr - Savage Sinusoid
6) Nytt Land - Fimbulvinter

7) Sorne - House Of Stone: Death V

8) Depeche Mode - Spirit

9) Fever Ray - Plunge

10) Vince Staples - Big Fish Theory

11) 3TEETH - Shutdown.exe

Doug Moore (Pyrrhon, Weeping Sores, Seputus):

1) Krallice - Loüm / Go Be Forgotten / Prelapsarian

2) Cleric - Retrocausal

3) Succumb - s/t

4) Verge - The Process Of Self-Becoming
5) Hell - Hell
6) Morbid Angel - Kingdoms Disdained

7) Artificial Brain - Infrared Horizon
8) Couch Slut - Contempt

9) Ingurgitating Oblivion - Visions Wallow In Symphonies Of Light

10) Dodecahedron - Kwintessens

Ava Farber (Netherlands):

1) Brian Charette - Kürrent
2) Tyler, the Creator - Scum Fuck Flower Boy
3) GWAR - The Blood of Gods
4) Jay Z - 4:44

5) Dälek - Endangered Philosophies

6) Spotlights - Seismic

7) Kendrick Lamar - Damn

8) The Necks - Unfold

9) Fever Ray - Plunge

10) Melvins - A Walk with Love and Death

Jose Palafox (Swing Kids, Struggle, Bread and Circuits, Yaphet Kotto):

1) Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary (Dir. John Scheinfeld)

2) I Called Him Morgan (Dir. Casper Collin)

3) Let It Fall: Los Angeles 1982-1992 (Dir. John Ridley)

4) Heroin(e) (Dir. Elaine McMillion Sheldon)

5) Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing et al., Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene 

6) Peter Cryle and Elizabeth Stephens, Normality: A Critical Genealogy

7) Gaye Theresa Johnson and Alex Lubin, eds., Futures of Black Radicalism

8) John Merriman, Ballad of the Anarchist Bandits: The Crime Spree That Gripped Belle Epoque Paris 

9) John Merriman, Ballad of the Anarchist Bandits: The Crime Spree That Gripped Belle Epoque Paris

10) Kimberly Mair, Guerrilla Aesthetics: Art, Memory, and the West German Urban Guerrilla

Kyle Rasmussen (Vitriol):

1) Death Like Mass - Jak zabija diabel
2) Sinister - Syncretism
3) Suffering Hour - In Passing Ascension
4) Immolation - Atonement

5) Ascended Dead - Abhorrent Manifestation

6) The Ominous Circle - Appalling Ascension

7) Daemusinem - Thy Ungodly Defiance

8) Morbid Angel - Kingdoms Disdained

9) Bell Witch - Mirror Reaper

10) Biesy - Noc lekkich obyczajow

Honorable mention: Cenotaph - Perverse Dehumanized Dysfunctions

Tommy Cantwell (Axis, Gouge Away):

1) Power Trip - Nightmare Logic 

2) Paramore - After Laughter 

3) Kendrick Lamar - DAMN.

4) Full of Hell - Trumpeting Ecstasy

5) Lorde - Melodrama

6) Land of Talk - Life After Youth 

7) Code Orange - Forever

8) Open City - s/t

9) SZA - Ctrl

10) Converge - The Dusk In Us

Honorable mentions: The National - Sleep Well Beast, Hound - Born Under 76, Unsane - Sterilized

Matthew Taylor (Monotrope, Bellini):

1) Anjou - Epithymía 

2) Big Brave - Ardor 

3) Charlotte Gainsbourg - Rest

4) Juana Molina – Halo

5) Institute - Subordination

6) Loincloth - Psalm of the Morbid Whore

7) The Poison Arrows - No Known Note 

8) Pontiak - Dialectic of Ignorance 

9) SAVAK - Cut-Ups 

10) Yowie - Synchromysticism

11) The New Year - Snow

Adam Gnade (author): 

1) Goin' linear here. "Top Ten Things that Happened When I was Back Home in San Diego During My Second 2017 Tour." I live on a farm in the rural Midwest these days and San Diego feels like it's a million light years away. So, that aside, choice #1 is standing at the shoreline of the beach neighborhood I grew up in for the first time in years with the huge, stormy Pacific Ocean booming out in front of me; feeling the heaviness and immensity of life and history and the coming future. Some Thomas Wolfe shit. Ah.
2) Day later I did a book reading at SD Zine Fest with a full room and nice people who asked thoughtful questions during the Q&A. Got interviewed by the SDSU newspaper afterward.
3) Same day as above: tabled with Justin and Becky, who were running the Three One G table. We were sat next to the legendary Alice Bag, who absolutely rules and has great hair. Drank the SHIT out of some Guayaki Yerba Mate. For this year's event, I was an "invited guest" or something so there was endless free cans of it all weekend. Yes and yes. This is how you win my heart. I didn't sleep for three days.
4) The next day I went on 91X radio to promote that night's show at Space Bar and felt very welcomed by the good Tim Pyles.

5) Couple hours later I played with Silent and Planet B and they killed. Silent's record, A Century of Abuse, is essential. When you get mad at certain shitmouthed dictators, throw that one on. Lookin' forward to that new Planet B, especially the Kool Keith collaboration. Hope the Depeche Mode cover makes it on there.

6) Was on the Cult and Culture podcast the day after the show which was really fun. We talked about Fahrenheit San Diego, the history of the so-called "Locust House," weird local music, my vicious hatred for spoken word, the Che Cafe... went deep on all fronts.

7) Verbatim Books right after the podcast recording session. Excellent shop, wonderful humans. Signed some books. Picked up some Proost, Gertrude Stein, Pasternak's Poems of Dr. Zhivaho, and a James Baldwin novel.

8) After stopping at Verbatim: Walking around in the sun in North Park. Felt like a proper homecoming. It was like Spiderman Homecoming only with me instead of Spiderman and burritos instead of Aunt May.

9) After that, went down to Barrio Logan and made a new record with my great friend Demetrius Francisco Antuña on the same block as a warehouse my family rented in the late 1970s. Easy takes. End-of-world drones. Bastard Noise vibes. New emperor blues. Whiskey flowing. Record announcement forthcoming.

10) San Diego Mexican food post-recording session in the after-afterhours. Yes. Etc. Yes. Sleepy drive back to Golden Hill. Then goodnight, San Diego, I love you always.