8. DWN Blackheart
While Kelela's CUT 4 ME was a landmark release in relation to fusing club experiments with R&B's slinky sexiness, one record emerged this year that somehow topped that album's achievements while simultaneously sounding like the most futuristic album in recent memory: Blackheart. It came from former Danity Kane member and P. Diddy associate Dawn Richard (now known as DWN), which may surprise those that are unfamiliar with her solo work - but it came as no surprise to those that had heard her masterful previous record Goldenheart. Goldenheart was a fascinating piece of conceptual R&B, drawing on a mixture of string sections, synths, club styles, odd percussion, science-fiction references and medieval lyrics that made DWN a critical success. Blackheart, though, is a whole different animal. It takes the club aesthetics and experimental electronic textures that were hinted at on its predecessor and makes them even more explicit, with the album ultimately sounding like a contemporary cyborgian creature, simultaneously intimately organic and digitally mechanical. Richard co-produced the album with Noisecastle III, and the soundscapes of the two artists meld as the record develops. Album opener Noir is effectively an intro track, but it is the most aggressively confrontational opening to any album this year. Richard's heavily-processed voice stands alone, singing "I thought I had it all" in a way that is truly posthuman. It's a vocal technique that is repeatedly and increasingly exaggeratedly employed throughout the album. Calypso is the best dance track you'll hear this year, with weird textures and androgynous distorted vocals floating in and out of a wonderfully propulsive beat. There is so much going on, and the vocals are so utterly odd and inhuman, that the track could easily descend into a mess. That it doesn't is testament to Richard's highly emotional vocals and the technical achievements of the producers working in tandem. On Blow, a slower number which immediately follows the one-two opener of Noir/Calypso, repetition and even stranger layered vocals are employed. There are strange miniatures and experiments dotted around the album: Swim Free is like Steve Reich producing a hip-hop track, with Richard's gorgeous vocals sitting delicately above the minimal soundscape, and Titans is like the harmonies of Destiny's Child if that group had been more interested in avant-garde electronica than soulful R&B. Even interludes like Choices are equal parts utterly strange and totally gorgeous, with the repeated vocal "I choose me" being an excellent summation of how singular and self-defined this album this. The album's centrepiece, Adderall/Sold (Outerlude), is also its absolute highlight, taking on the themes and aesthetics employed elsewhere - odd but virtuosic posthuman vocals, expansive panning effects, experimental textures, rapid shifts in tempo - and rendering a stunning sculpture from them. Blackheart is like nothing else out there. It is proof that much of the best electronic experimentation is occurring in the soulful, sexy world of R&B, and you owe it to yourself to hear this album.