Jess Casebeer’s Top 10 Pacific Northwest Albums of 2015

2. EASTGHOST
Omniscient, They
STYLSS

STYLSS has been releasing one great electronic music record after another throughout all of 2015, but of all of its releases we’ve gotten this year, EASTGHOST’s Omniscient, They is by and large my favorite. While in a lot of ways, this album is pretty much what I’ve come to expect from STYLSS at this point, Omniscient, They is the sound of a particular style of music being elevated to a whole new level of grandiosity and brilliance.

Omniscient, They takes the familiar and just makes it better. The Portland producer’s take on trap and instrumental hip-hop music, which takes a murky, pitch-black approach to its synth tones and overall mood, could easily be likened to the aforementioned Blue Sky Black Death or even Shlohmo on that Laid Out EP, but Omniscient, They really takes things a step further, incorporating field recordings, unique samples of real life, subtly-implemented live instrumentation, and a weird inhuman spoken word section towards the back-end of the album, all of which compliment the album’s powerful mood, and you’ll still be finding small little details you never noticed in the mix before even 10 or 20 listens in.

There’s a beautiful, albeit uneasy atmosphere surrounding all of this record. This album is where I want to be. It excels at making you feel like you’re in a place; a cold, isolated, expansive place, perhaps on a different planet entirely.

Omniscient, They is an album that should be turning electronic music haters into electronic music diehards. It’s an album very much deserving of listening to until you hate it.