Top 10 Music Albums of 2014 by 
DriftingOrpheus 
- Chart updated: 03/02/2024 20:15
- (Created: 06/11/2020 13:08).
- Chart size: 10 albums.
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Throughout their extensive history, alternative rock pioneers Swans have made a habit of metamorphosing, trading in bone-crushing no-wave anthems for folk-inspired, religiously-tinged ballads. In 2010, Swans emerged once more with My Father will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky, another drastic change in form and direction, prioritizing prolonged excursions drenched in post-rock fueled repetition. This formula was the basis for 2014's To Be Kind, an album that championed the creative advantages of welding moments of ear-splitting fortissimo and hair-raising delicacy. Take A Little God in My Hands for example. Even the most well-traveled listeners have to be taken back by the atomic force of the horn-powered flurry that kicks off the middle of the track. To Be Kind showcases Swans not merely dabbling in a musical style unseen in their discography, but perfecting it.
The centerpiece is the 34 minute odyssey, Bring the Sun/Toussaint L'Ouverture. A track detailing a Haitian slave revolt with all the ferocity one could imagine. It carries guitar hits that resemble facial punches that only cease once the skull has caved in. Incorporating horse whinnies and tribal chanting, the track dares one to ponder the music's inspiration, or even the headspace of the men crafting it. The most "straight-forward" rocker on the album is Oxygen, a song detailing an asthma attack with inertia that never ceases until the horn-soaked climax.
Rarely has an album embodied both a densely visceral and well-realized existence. The frightening aspect behind it all is that it seems to flow through the band so effortlessly, almost as vessels for transcendent music powered by an unseen force. While it's not a record for the conventional listener, you'd be hard-pressed to find an audiophile not displaced by To Be Kind's translucent beauty, or not horrified by its unfettered explicity.
"May planets crash, may god rain ash, to sear our skin, to fold us in
Kneeling close, seeking hands, our blood is warm, but what comes next?"
-Kirsten Supine
Standout Tracks:
1. Oxygen
2. She Loves Us!
3. Bring the Sun/Toussaint L’Ouverture
100.4 [First added to this chart: 06/12/2020]
The centerpiece is the 34 minute odyssey, Bring the Sun/Toussaint L'Ouverture. A track detailing a Haitian slave revolt with all the ferocity one could imagine. It carries guitar hits that resemble facial punches that only cease once the skull has caved in. Incorporating horse whinnies and tribal chanting, the track dares one to ponder the music's inspiration, or even the headspace of the men crafting it. The most "straight-forward" rocker on the album is Oxygen, a song detailing an asthma attack with inertia that never ceases until the horn-soaked climax.
Rarely has an album embodied both a densely visceral and well-realized existence. The frightening aspect behind it all is that it seems to flow through the band so effortlessly, almost as vessels for transcendent music powered by an unseen force. While it's not a record for the conventional listener, you'd be hard-pressed to find an audiophile not displaced by To Be Kind's translucent beauty, or not horrified by its unfettered explicity.
"May planets crash, may god rain ash, to sear our skin, to fold us in
Kneeling close, seeking hands, our blood is warm, but what comes next?"
-Kirsten Supine
Standout Tracks:
1. Oxygen
2. She Loves Us!
3. Bring the Sun/Toussaint L’Ouverture
100.4 [First added to this chart: 06/12/2020]
Year of Release:
2014
Appears in:
Rank Score:
6,890
Rank in 2014:
Rank in 2010s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
100
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The Aphex Twin reddit community comes adorned with the tagline, "The Man, The Myth and the Pseudo-Transcendent Beats." All three aspects have their own exclusive rabbit holes. The story of the prodigal son of electronic music from the southwest of England comes fastened with as many legends and myths as one could fathom, almost equalling the astronomical size of the catalogue itself. One of these anecdotes implies that the "Twin" referenced in his moniker is an homage to his stillborn brother who arrived three years prior to the man himself, to which his mother maintained that "the next one will be him". Who could forget the testimony that at age 11, he designed a program that created music for a ZX81, a pre-historic home computer that was not capable of producing sound, for which he was paid 50 pounds for his trouble. Would we really be astonished if these tall tales were more veracious than what common sense would have us believe? When he's not embedding his own face into spectrograms of his music or dropping hundreds of tracks on Soundcloud coyly under the guise of his user18081971 pseudonym, he's enjoying a career renaissance nestled away in his home in Scotland. Cornwall's own Richard David James' latest album is a masterpiece and a stirring testament to his brilliance all these years later.
RDJ has adopted a slew of sobriquets throughout the years, names like AFX, Polygon Window, The Tuss, GAK, Power-Pill, Caustic Window and Bradley Strider just to name a few. However, for 2014's Syro, he stuck to the namesake by which we know him best. The sixth LP under the Aphex Twin umbrella is notably warm in timbre which comes as a stark deviation from his previous effort, 2001's Drukqs, which brandished prepared piano and dissonant drill 'n' bass passages. 13 years is an extensive amount of time to go between albums but RDJ's highly discernible refocusing is evident throughout Syro's hour-long runtime. Still, it's not like the beatsmith was entirely dormant during that time. Some of the bubbly, enveloping artifacts for Syro could be found in his 2007 release Rushup Edge, flying under the The Tuss flag. It's also important to grasp that James is an artist that is constantly curating his back catalogue for release at any given time, making his creative process impossible to timestamp and endlessly fascinating. RDJ solidified Syro's arrival by commissioning a zeppelin to fill the airways over London adorned with his logo. He always had a flair for the dramatic, or should that be the surreal?
The album commences with Minipops 67 (Source Field Mix), affectionately known by supporters as the "Manchester Track" due to its inclusion in a Manchester setlist in 2007. The official title certainly is fitting, as it's named after a line of drum machines produced by Korg in 1967. The music itself is bouncy, with careful weight applied behind each beat. This is no longer the face-melting acid and tribal drill 'n' bass more akin to a previous iteration of Richard. This is RDJ poking around with a scalpel producing surgical, sonic whimsy with a "kick-your-feet-up" sense of ease. The second track is the 10 minute Xmas_Evet10 (Thanaton3 Mix). It appears like a hissing fog and then combusts with soaked, waterlogged beats that lead into a gliding groove that shapes the track. This "Xmas" is comprised of several distinct sections, à la a Paranoid Android perhaps. What results is a cavernous journey and a surefire album highlight. Sixth track and album centerpiece Circlont6A (Syrobonkus Mix) is the most frenzied outing on Syro, announcing itself with a distorted, jarring vocal sample and traveling at a breakneck pace throughout its duration. It's a skittering, anxious soundscape while never losing the ability to be infinitely danceable across its six and half minute lifespan. As a culminating, tranquil reminder of RDJ's versatility, he bestows Aisatsana on his audience as the final track of the LP. A moving, minimalist piano piece that acts as a ray of sunlight that cuts through cloudy skies after a destructive storm of IDM and techno hysteria. Many have speculated that this is a dedication to his wife as the track is her name "Anastasia" in reverse. The piano is minutely reverbed and subdued as birds chirp in the distance and one can visualize the morning dew formed on the grass at your feet. A wholeheartedly beautiful way to end a record and a concrete monument to the talent of this wonderful artisan.
No matter what nom de plume, AFX or Aphex Twin, Polygon Window or Bradley Strider, there have been but a sparse few who have ever been more cutting edge and strikingly original than Richard David James. Between reinventing himself numerous times, going reclusive and plastering his grinning face throughout Chris Cunningham's nightmare fuel music videos, I'm quite secure in saying that RDJ has done it all. He's even had "Shakespeare" Kanye West try to steal his work and pass it as Yeezy's own. This is in fact the same artist who's had a single peak at number 16 on the UK Singles chart (Windowlicker) and also birthed an LP entitled Expert Knob Twiddlers. Save for maybe 1992's Selected Ambient Works 85-92, no album is more representative of the work of electronic music's most enigmatic personality than Syro. It's labyrinthian, inviting, warm, frightening and a scorching "fuck you" to those who questioned if RDJ still had it. It stands as nothing less than a modern masterpiece and a remnant of yesteryear in the exciting scope of current electronic music. "Let the old man show you how it's done," the record screams defiantly through wordless beats. It's a sound I'll never get tired of.
Richard has often shied away from interviews and recently even claimed that he will no longer partake in them at all, fueling the belief that we will never fully unravel and understand the phenom that he has been and continues to be. This addendum stands as one of my more personal verses. Richard's music has contorted my own personal definition of music and what sonic shapes it could embody. His melodic forays remain consistently alien to my ears and that's an indicator of a true innovator and pioneer. He wasn't the first to do it. He would surely credit the work of avant-garde legends like Brian Eno and John Cage as inspiration without hesitation. Still, despite subsequent imitators and spiritual legacy bearers, there's still no one who sounds quite like Aphex Twin. The man with the power to move you to tears with ambience or melt your speakers with his patented "Aphex Acid" will always be inherently special to me and my endless journey of musical exploration. Syro will forever be a key piece of that puzzle and Richard's work is an ever-evolving tapestry begging to be traversed. RDJ himself has never commanded praise of any kind. He's often self-deprecating, claiming to be "an irritating, lying ginger kid from Cornwall who should've been locked up in a juvenile detention center". A more appropriate description of the man would be a shimmering genius, musical mad-scientist the likes of which we may never see again. However, if it were up to Richard himself, he'd likely prefer an existence as a whisper that evolves into a subliminal wall of sound; An idea, in lieu of being human at all.
Standout Tracks:
1. Circlont6A (Syrobonkus Mix)
2. Xmas_Evet10 (Thanaton3 Mix)
3. Syro U473T8+E (Piezoluminescence Mix)
91.7 [First added to this chart: 06/12/2020]
RDJ has adopted a slew of sobriquets throughout the years, names like AFX, Polygon Window, The Tuss, GAK, Power-Pill, Caustic Window and Bradley Strider just to name a few. However, for 2014's Syro, he stuck to the namesake by which we know him best. The sixth LP under the Aphex Twin umbrella is notably warm in timbre which comes as a stark deviation from his previous effort, 2001's Drukqs, which brandished prepared piano and dissonant drill 'n' bass passages. 13 years is an extensive amount of time to go between albums but RDJ's highly discernible refocusing is evident throughout Syro's hour-long runtime. Still, it's not like the beatsmith was entirely dormant during that time. Some of the bubbly, enveloping artifacts for Syro could be found in his 2007 release Rushup Edge, flying under the The Tuss flag. It's also important to grasp that James is an artist that is constantly curating his back catalogue for release at any given time, making his creative process impossible to timestamp and endlessly fascinating. RDJ solidified Syro's arrival by commissioning a zeppelin to fill the airways over London adorned with his logo. He always had a flair for the dramatic, or should that be the surreal?
The album commences with Minipops 67 (Source Field Mix), affectionately known by supporters as the "Manchester Track" due to its inclusion in a Manchester setlist in 2007. The official title certainly is fitting, as it's named after a line of drum machines produced by Korg in 1967. The music itself is bouncy, with careful weight applied behind each beat. This is no longer the face-melting acid and tribal drill 'n' bass more akin to a previous iteration of Richard. This is RDJ poking around with a scalpel producing surgical, sonic whimsy with a "kick-your-feet-up" sense of ease. The second track is the 10 minute Xmas_Evet10 (Thanaton3 Mix). It appears like a hissing fog and then combusts with soaked, waterlogged beats that lead into a gliding groove that shapes the track. This "Xmas" is comprised of several distinct sections, à la a Paranoid Android perhaps. What results is a cavernous journey and a surefire album highlight. Sixth track and album centerpiece Circlont6A (Syrobonkus Mix) is the most frenzied outing on Syro, announcing itself with a distorted, jarring vocal sample and traveling at a breakneck pace throughout its duration. It's a skittering, anxious soundscape while never losing the ability to be infinitely danceable across its six and half minute lifespan. As a culminating, tranquil reminder of RDJ's versatility, he bestows Aisatsana on his audience as the final track of the LP. A moving, minimalist piano piece that acts as a ray of sunlight that cuts through cloudy skies after a destructive storm of IDM and techno hysteria. Many have speculated that this is a dedication to his wife as the track is her name "Anastasia" in reverse. The piano is minutely reverbed and subdued as birds chirp in the distance and one can visualize the morning dew formed on the grass at your feet. A wholeheartedly beautiful way to end a record and a concrete monument to the talent of this wonderful artisan.
No matter what nom de plume, AFX or Aphex Twin, Polygon Window or Bradley Strider, there have been but a sparse few who have ever been more cutting edge and strikingly original than Richard David James. Between reinventing himself numerous times, going reclusive and plastering his grinning face throughout Chris Cunningham's nightmare fuel music videos, I'm quite secure in saying that RDJ has done it all. He's even had "Shakespeare" Kanye West try to steal his work and pass it as Yeezy's own. This is in fact the same artist who's had a single peak at number 16 on the UK Singles chart (Windowlicker) and also birthed an LP entitled Expert Knob Twiddlers. Save for maybe 1992's Selected Ambient Works 85-92, no album is more representative of the work of electronic music's most enigmatic personality than Syro. It's labyrinthian, inviting, warm, frightening and a scorching "fuck you" to those who questioned if RDJ still had it. It stands as nothing less than a modern masterpiece and a remnant of yesteryear in the exciting scope of current electronic music. "Let the old man show you how it's done," the record screams defiantly through wordless beats. It's a sound I'll never get tired of.
Richard has often shied away from interviews and recently even claimed that he will no longer partake in them at all, fueling the belief that we will never fully unravel and understand the phenom that he has been and continues to be. This addendum stands as one of my more personal verses. Richard's music has contorted my own personal definition of music and what sonic shapes it could embody. His melodic forays remain consistently alien to my ears and that's an indicator of a true innovator and pioneer. He wasn't the first to do it. He would surely credit the work of avant-garde legends like Brian Eno and John Cage as inspiration without hesitation. Still, despite subsequent imitators and spiritual legacy bearers, there's still no one who sounds quite like Aphex Twin. The man with the power to move you to tears with ambience or melt your speakers with his patented "Aphex Acid" will always be inherently special to me and my endless journey of musical exploration. Syro will forever be a key piece of that puzzle and Richard's work is an ever-evolving tapestry begging to be traversed. RDJ himself has never commanded praise of any kind. He's often self-deprecating, claiming to be "an irritating, lying ginger kid from Cornwall who should've been locked up in a juvenile detention center". A more appropriate description of the man would be a shimmering genius, musical mad-scientist the likes of which we may never see again. However, if it were up to Richard himself, he'd likely prefer an existence as a whisper that evolves into a subliminal wall of sound; An idea, in lieu of being human at all.
Standout Tracks:
1. Circlont6A (Syrobonkus Mix)
2. Xmas_Evet10 (Thanaton3 Mix)
3. Syro U473T8+E (Piezoluminescence Mix)
91.7 [First added to this chart: 06/12/2020]
Year of Release:
2014
Appears in:
Rank Score:
2,097
Rank in 2014:
Rank in 2010s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
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86.2
[First added to this chart: 10/19/2021]
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85.8
[First added to this chart: 10/24/2020]
Year of Release:
2014
Appears in:
Rank Score:
4,232
Rank in 2014:
Rank in 2010s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
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85.5
[First added to this chart: 09/02/2021]
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84.1
[First added to this chart: 06/12/2020]
Year of Release:
2014
Appears in:
Rank Score:
9,527
Rank in 2014:
Rank in 2010s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
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81.5
[First added to this chart: 06/16/2020]
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74.2
[First added to this chart: 06/12/2020]
Year of Release:
2014
Appears in:
Rank Score:
568
Rank in 2014:
Rank in 2010s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
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70.4
[First added to this chart: 06/12/2020]
Year of Release:
2014
Appears in:
Rank Score:
902
Rank in 2014:
Rank in 2010s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
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68.9
[First added to this chart: 03/02/2024]
Total albums: 10. Page 1 of 1
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Top 10 Music Albums of 2014 composition
| Artist | Albums | % | |
|---|---|---|---|
 |
 |
|
|
| The Renfields | 1 | 10% | |
| Thom Yorke | 1 | 10% | |
| Interpol | 1 | 10% | |
| Caustic Window | 1 | 10% | |
| Swans | 1 | 10% | |
| Aphex Twin | 1 | 10% | |
| Ben Frost | 1 | 10% | |
| Show all | |||
Top 10 Music Albums of 2014 chart changes
| Biggest climbers |
|---|
 Up 1 from 11th to 10thCaustic Window LP by Caustic Window |
| Up 1 from 10th to 9th El Pintor by Interpol |
| Up 1 from 9th to 8th Tomorrow's Modern Boxes by Thom Yorke |
| Biggest fallers |
|---|
| Down 1 from 3rd to 4th Run The Jewels 2 by Run The Jewels |
| Down 1 from 5th to 6th Lost In The Dream by The War On Drugs |
| Leavers |
|---|
 The Jasonsby The Jasons |
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Other year charts by DriftingOrpheus
(from the 2010s)| Title | Source | Type | Published | Country |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Top 9 Music Albums of 2019 | DriftingOrpheus | 2019 year chart | 2024 | |
| Top 8 Music Albums of 2018 | DriftingOrpheus | 2018 year chart | 2024 | |
| Top 14 Music Albums of 2017 | DriftingOrpheus | 2017 year chart | 2024 | |
| Top 14 Music Albums of 2016 | DriftingOrpheus | 2016 year chart | 2024 | |
| Top 17 Music Albums of 2015 | DriftingOrpheus | 2015 year chart | 2024 | |
| Top 10 Music Albums of 2014 | DriftingOrpheus | 2014 year chart | 2024 | |
| Top 14 Music Albums of 2013 | DriftingOrpheus | 2013 year chart | 2024 | |
| Top 15 Music Albums of 2012 | DriftingOrpheus | 2012 year chart | 2024 | |
| Top 15 Music Albums of 2011 | DriftingOrpheus | 2011 year chart | 2024 | |
| Top 18 Music Albums of 2010 | DriftingOrpheus | 2010 year chart | 2024 | |
Top 10 Music Albums of 2014 ratings
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We work very hard to ensure our site is as fast (and FREE!) as possible, and we respect your privacy.