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28 December 2015

WTSH Favorite Albums of 2015.

ORIGINALLY, When The Sun Hits had no intention of releasing a “Best of 2015” list. Making a list of this scope is a serious undertaking. For genuine music nerds, the process is also self-inflicted mental torture of the highest masochistic order. The endless deliberations, debates, negotiations and mental stress – it hurts our brains. IT HURTS. And if making these lists in previous years has taught us anything, it’s that once we powered through the agony and sleepless nights, the end result would have been an anti-climactic and completely subjective catalog of albums, biased in ranking and chosen from a single-genre pool limited to only the records we were actually able to listen to in 2015 (because there is certainly no way that we could listen to and evaluate all of them).

Now is the winter of our discontent. The hardcore music geeks within us simply aren’t satisfied with that process or outcome. Instead, this year we present you with something much more authentic – an unranked, alphabetically ordered list of our FAVORITE releases from 2015. These are the records we truly loved and listened to repeatedly throughout the year; nothing more, nothing less.

While we tried to stay within the boundaries of shoegaze/dream pop, there are a few deviations. Some of these were included because the artists are inextricably linked to the genre in some way, making them relevant to the task at hand. Others were included because we love them too much not to mention them here – they are important to us. Genre limitations be damned! We do what we want.

Favorite LPs of 2015
800beloved – Some Kind of Distortion
Astrobrite – Deluxer
Backhomes, The – Tidal Wave
Black Ryder, The – The Door Behind The Door
Broken Water - Wrought
Chain of Flowers – Chain of Flowers
Cheatahs - Mythologies
Cold Beat – Into The Air
Cold Showers – Matter of Choice
Creepoid – Cemetery Highrise Slum
Double Echo – La Danza
Drab Majesty – Careless
Echo Lake – Era
Flavor Crystals – The Shiver of the Flavor Crystals
Flying Saucer Attack – Instrumentals
Föllakzoid – III
Future – Horizons
Ghost Lake – I Feel Everything
Girls Names – Arms Around A Vision
Gliss – Pale Reflections
Helen – The Original Faces
Infinity Girl – Harm
Josefin Öhrn + The Liberation – Horse Dance
Kill West – Smoke Beach
Lilies on Mars – Ago
Living Hour – Living Hour
Manhattan Love Suicides – More Heat! More Panic!
Maria False – When­
Marriages – Salome
­Novella – Land
Pinkshinyultrablast – Everything Else Matters
Presents for Sally – Colours & Changes
Radiation Flowers, The – The Radiation Flowers
Reina Republicana – El Despertar
Rule of Thirds – Rule of Thirds
Schonwald – Between Parallel Lights
Shad Shadow – Minor Blues
Soft Kill – Heresy
Soft Moon, The – Deeper
SPC ECO – Dark Matter
Spectres – Dying
Static Daydream – Static Daydream
Swervedriver – I Wasn’t Born To Lose You
Tamaryn – Cranekiss
Them Are Us Too – Remain
Widowspeak – All Yours
WildhoneySleep Through It
Winter – Supreme Blue Dream

Favorite EPs of 2015
Air Formation – Were We Ever Here
Appendixes – Every Day Use
Appendixes – Fantasy
Basic Nature – Circles & Lines
Blood Candy – Dead Moon
Brian Jonestown Massacre, The – Mini Album Thingy Wingy
Cat Hoch – Look What You Found
Femme Fantasm – Femme Fantasm
Flyying Colours – ROYGBIV
Force Publique - Bloom
FOREVR – Demonstration
Haste – I Carried Rocks From The Water
Is/Is – Return To Zero
Kindling - Galaxies
Lost Tapes – Lost In Youth
Machinedrift – Non-Places
Moas, The – Skid Fiction
No Honeymoon – I Wanna See Everything
Pearl Charles – Pearl Charles
Sinless – Ethereality
Sunflower Bean – Show Me Your Secrets
Surf Rock is Dead - SRiD
Trementina – Almost Reach the Sun
Wildhoney – Your Face Sideways