Best Music of 2017: Charlie Moonbeam's Recommendations
I listen to at least an album a day. Every year I keep track of the new (or reissued) music that has come out and I listen to new stuff constantly. And I take note of the records that carried me through the year, the music that has floated through my ears and into my he(art). Of course, I want to share that music with the people I love, especially because I know everyone loves music but may not have the time or space or resources to find new music (although it's becoming increasingly easier with our ever-expanding internet). Since I wrote my first big Best of post on this website in 2014, I've intended to do it each year, but the sheer scale of the endeavor is incredibly intimidating and I have bailed on the project. But this year, something lit me up about it and I decided to go full steam ahead. I guess it'll just be an on again off again project :)
I've written deeply about 10 albums that really resonated with me this year which you will find first. I then have broken down other albums into sections with blurbs about what kinds of music I was into this year, with some simple descriptions of what you may find there.
Thank you so much for taking a look around. It's a big list, so please take your time and enjoy whatever strikes your fancy. If you find gold, please share with me what you found and why you love it, I love to talk about music :D
LOVE,
Charles
(Note: I am an avid user of Spotify and all of this music can be found there. I have compiled a playlist where you can find each of these albums. It can be found here.)
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Stand-Out Records (or Records I Won’t Forget) of 2017
Big Thief Capacity (Saddle Creek)
When a record makes me cry in my kitchen, I tend to remember it forever.
On Capacity, Big Thief accomplish a true feat of navigating the tragedies of life with a warm and expressive candor, weaving together a tapestry of heartbreak and resilience that I pulled up over my shoulders and drifted away with into a contemplative surrender. Adrianne Lenker is unquestionably one of the most deft and effective songwriters of her generation, and her meditations on her young mother, the inexpressible love for a best friend, and the way femininity can bind lovers in vulnerability and strength are all clear demonstrations of her ability to find poetic gold where so many others struggle for the words. And those melodies...
There at least 6 timeless songs on this record and the other 5 are simply excellent, but the one that got me was "Shark Smile." Lenker observes a reckless lover, obviously enamored and lost in a dream of infatuation and dotted highway lines as they hit 85 on a moonlit ride. She knows she's in danger, she likes it, and leans in for a kiss like oxygen, before the two go careening off the highway. Only Lenker survives. The song embodies everything great about this record: heart-stirring poetry exposing a perfectly tragic confluence of love and loss, a steady pulsing groove draped in folk rock bedding, and Lenker's butter-sweet voice spilling out a decadent confectionary hook that begs your he(art) to bleed...
And so I stood in my kitchen and I cried.
And I said "Woo, baby, take me too."
I first heard about Chuck Johnson in an extended search into the world of American primitive guitar music where I have found so many excellent contemporary guitar players like Robbie Basho, Harry Taussig and so many others. Johnson's A Struggle Not a Thought remains one of my favorite relics of this incredible realm where human fingers follow their curious inklings across stretched steel strings.
But this year, Chuck has put down his acoustic guitar in favor of a pedal steel and over a two week period, he recorded one of the year's most emotionally and spiritually potent volumes of ambient music. The pedal steel functions as the songbird in peaceful exploration of the warm skies above, as she is wrapped in a faded hazecloud of synthetic chords. Each of the 6 pieces on Balsams glides whimsically through the speakers and into your chest-space, beckoning forth deeper and deeper breaths.
This record pairs very well with a stick of incense, a soft cushion, closed eyes, and plenty of time to drift away...
Gabriel Garzon-Montano Jardín (Stones Throw)
I first heard about Gabriel Garzon-Montano when my brother Davis saw him play at the 2015 Sloss Fest in our hometown of Birmingham, Alabama. I honestly can't remember what he said about him other than that he was blown away and I had to check him out. I took mental note and set the thought aside.
That is until I saw he had dropped his debut LP at the beginning of the year, and I put it on right away. I was instantly grabbed by "Sour Mango," a fantastic introduction into the off-kilter supernatural grooves found throughout Jardín. With an soulful everyman vocal delivery, Garzon-Montano works his way through his compositions meticulously, but with plenty of space for the sort of odd touches a painter puts on a piece just as she is finishing it. A splatter of orange, a line of blue, something to reclaim whatever creative freedom was lost in the refinement process.
A student of minimalism, contemporary beat-making, and Sunday funk, Garzon-Montano uses juicy-fruit grooves to inspire my most oddball dance moves. I don't think anything made my sweetheart smile more this year than seeing me lose/find myself while getting down to "Crawl." This record is a promising glimpse into the face-painted mythos of GGM's musical garden.
Moses Sumney Aromanticism (Jagjaguwar)
After hearing his music on my favorite DJ Jeremy Sole's late night show on KCRW, my friends Rachel and Patrick went to see Moses Sumney live and were totally enamored with his performance. They bought a few of his CDs which he has burned and had drawn custom decorations on each one with a pen, and they sent one to me in Hawai'i. I didn't have a way to play CDs, but the energy of the record, the creative freedom was palpable and I knew he was special. I kept my eye out for him.
Last year, Jeremy Sole debuted a single he released called "Everlasting Sigh" which soared over me like a phoenix just learning her wings and had me breathless. I could hardly believe the fully realized composition was the studio production of the same song I'd seen him create with only his voice and a loop pedal a few years before. It was a clear indication of this incredible artist's ability to translate his inner world into decadent productions.
The record is filled with other-worldly compositions, translated through a filter of lush studio arrangements that take the emotional truth-kernel of Sumney's soul and expand it into the obscurity of a twilight sky. He coerces sounds from the electric guitar as if he were caressing a lover, his voice sinewy and smooth, calmly gliding to unimaginable heights as he pines of his pervasive yearnings for a love without a lover. Such is Sumney's quixotic paradox, and such is the course of one of the most mystical rides I took this year.
Martyn Heyne Electric Intervals (7K!)
It's almost exactly 50 miles to drive from our home in Hilo to Waipi'o Valley. The road crawls along the Hamakua Coast which features sprawling farmlands, dramatic cliffs, old sugar cane bridges overlooking a vast and infinite ocean. As you travel further north, you carve through 3 deep gulches that circulate your inner inertia before you the course evens out as you travel through an eerily monotonous forest of slender eucalyptus trees that shade the path until Honoka'a, the gateway to Waipi'o. That sacred storied valley.
Charlotte and I were on a pilgrimage to do our part to malama a farm in the Valley and we wanted something soft, something soothing, something contemplative to listen to. I don't know where Electric Intervals came from, but I put it on and we just coasted, quite literally, on our way to work the lo'is. And this record by Berliner Martyn Henne was the perfect backdrop to a journey with the pregnant loving silence that is unique to deep loving companionship.
Henne is a masterful minimalist. His compositions appear simple and playful, but come from a place of studied experimentation. The record unfolds like a timeless serenade, the warmth coming from tonal choices that give each guitar and piano sound a roundedness that invites us in, holds us in wakeful chill. Electric Intervals is a cave, the music is the map.
Charlotte still pleasure-moans when I play her "Carry."
Lushloss Asking/Bearing (Hush Hush Records)
On Asking, side A of Lushloss' debut LP, we hear songwriter Olive Jun in a Skype conversation with her mother in Korea. Jun tries to speak with her mother about the difficulty of dealing with her own mother's process of dying, and the pain of losing her father when she was only 13 years old. It's a tragically intimate view into a 25-year-old woman's flawed attempt to relate to her mother about her deep pain, to see if they can find each other in dark places and grow closer as a result. Paired with sparse and fragile songs of longing featuring Jun's distorted vocal poems, this is one of the most raw and heartbreaking 23-minutes of music I heard this year.
Side B is called Bearing and is a beat-tape of sorts, with Jun flexing her production skills in a sort of celebratory release of her yearnings for intimacy, like stripping off your funeral clothes and smile-crying through a joy ride into the night. The emotional journey works cohesively and was more than enough to fill the hole in my he(art) with an insatiable appetite for lo-fi bedroom masterpieces. This was this year's clear winner.
Mary Lattimore Collected Pieces (Ghostly International)
Oh thank God that children still study the harp. Perhaps one of the most ancient instruments (the first of which date back to 3500 BCE), the harp has given birth to an incredibly varied family tree of related string instruments that have taken a myriad of forms, the most recognizable of which is the pedal harp which has been used in the Western world to musically symbolize the heavenly realms for centuries. But in our modern world, it's value and implementation have seemed to decline. Which is why it's so amazing to hear music from modern harpists, who are keeping the gorgeous instrument alive into the 21st century.
Thus we find Mary Lattimore, a recent discovery on my musical radar whose music has been taking me to otherworldly places. Her 2016 record At the Dam was recorded on a road trip that was funded by a Fellowship she was awarded from the Pew Center of Arts and Heritage in Philadelphia. She took her harp to Joshua Tree, Marfa, and the Altadena Mountains and captured the attention of a much wider harp audience in the process.
With Collected Works, Lattimore's offering has a much simpler premise: these are pieces from the past 12 years, created completely out of context from the each other or a given record, and compiled to form a sort of patchwork quilt of memories and moments inspired by random life events. And yet, the record works as a prime introduction into the world of Lattimore's harpistry, each pieces a sprawling measured mini-masterpiece. The intimacy she has developed with her instrument begets a playful patience that allows for a fluid pixie-like netherworld to develop with each listen, her subtle usage of electronic filters giving us access to the sparkly places where dust can dance.
Bibio Phantom Brickworks (Warp)
It cannot be overstated how much I love beautiful ambient music. No matter how far-reaching my tastes can be at time, I find myself returning to the calming soothing musics that live in the calm, quiet places. Music that sounds like an attic with no one in it, dust drifting listlessly through a diagonal sunbeam. Music that evokes a feeling of space and wonder that my overactive mind can't always find in a day. So when I find something that hits me between the ears and vibrates through my whole spirit body like a tuning fork, I rejoice. Calmly.
This year, one of the albums that did that for me the most was this offering by Bibio. I've long been a fan of Bibio's glitchy folk atmospheres, having taken joy-swims through Fin, Ambivalence Avenue, and Vignetting the Compost during particularly gleeful journal sessions. And his tune "À tout à l'heure" has been a mainstay in our home for the past couple of years and is a perfect chocolate folk-pop morsel, of which he has delivered many. So when he released this album (his 9th) full of ambient tapestries, I wasted no time in going deep with this one.
And as a pure, patient exploration of atmospheric textures, Phantom Brickworks is perfect. Largely improvised (which is always a huge plus for me), this record finds Bibio in a rare mood, allowing each piece to billow out from itself as if the air itself is breathing life into each new note. It's a case study in the value of subtracting, letting the natural sounds of the room itself play along. It is subtle, nocturnal, spiritual music. It's wisps and whispers. And it ranks among Grouper's "Ruins" and William Basinski's "Disintegration Loops" as one of my favorite albums to find space in the darkness.
Julie Byrne Not Even Happiness (Basin Rock)
Some of the best musical experiences of my life have come in living rooms, on porches, around campfires. These are spaces whose inherent warmth and welcome allow songs to be heard with the heart, listened to with the presence of a relaxed mind and a contented soul. The right person with the right kind of mellow can take you so far beyond yourself that you melt completely into the moment and find yourself fully in your feelings.
I drove up the windy road to Kalōpā State Park for the first time a few months ago and I found myself listening to Not Even Happiness for the first time. I was alone, but somehow I had this person singing softly next to me. She told stories of travels to places of unspeakable majesty and the inherent sorrow of setting suns. She told me of endless desert skies and day-glow in the deep forest. And what it feels like to be a leaf instead of a root.
It's a feeling I cherished immensely. Without effort, my feet guided me into the trees of Kalōpā and I bathed there in the forest for a while. I felt their presence as they swirled around me. I asked them for permission, and they gave me a song. I thanked them. And I thought of all the stories this Earth wants us to tell. The plants just want us to sing.
James Holden & The Animal Spirits The Animal Spirits (Border Community)
I wish the word "pagan" wasn't such a trigger for so many people. Because I find the nature-worshipping, fire-spinning, rain-dancing, forest-bathing, plant-medicine-making, drum-beating corners of our wild humanity so integral to who we truly are. Of course, whatever beautiful rituals and practices of connecting to nature, spirits, Earth itself have long been cast aside from the imposed White Western society, but each time I glimpse one of these practices, or God forbid, participate in one, I am confronted with the wildness that lives within me. And I like it.
So when I find music that evokes that for me, I run towards it like a child into the ocean, fearless and and grinning ear to ear. Animal Collective is like that for me. I found my inner forest freak as a young boy in the feral flailing folk melodies of Sung Tongs as they drummed from my boombox speakers. I knew at once there was a world out there with forests and dancing and colors and experiences I couldn't fathom. And there were musicians making music for ceremony.
So when I put on The Animal Spirits, an album of sprawling "folk-trance" dirges from a new ensemble put together by James Holden, I knew I'd found a rabbit hole. From the "Incantation for Inanimate Object," there is a sort of radiant mana that is being built, like a swirling dead leaf dust devil beckoning the Animal Spirits from their obscurity. Each piece was recorded in a single take in studio with live instruments, a choice which inspires the edgy synth lines, shambling drum grooves, and skronking saxophones to leap out with an unbridled immediacy that makes want to jump scream and dance like a maniac.
It's music from Where The Wild Things Are.
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Transmissions from West Africa
As long as I've heard the music of Mali, I have been totally enamored with the array of styles and vibrations coming from the west African nation. I first fell in love with Amadou & Mariam, a blind couple whose collaboration with French singer Manu Chao called Dimanche á Bamako blew the door open to a world of African music I had not yet explored and still ranks among my lifelong favorite records. Then it was the looping desert guitar rock of Taureg bands like Tinariwen and Imarhan who I saw at the globalFEST 2014 SXSW showcase that transported into a trancelike sonic sandstorm. And then it was the kora of Toumani Diabaté and the roots guitar of Ali Farka Touré (seen collaborating here) that showed Mali's meditations and patient blues. And that is just scratching the surface.
These records from the wide-open world of West African music totally stole my he(art) this year. With endless crate-digging from folks like Florent Mazzoleni into the dusty archives and fresh sounds coming from contemporary artists that are working to reinvent an already ungraspable musical history, the wellspring of sounds from the Sahel will never run dry. Here are some of my favorites from 2017.
Les Filles de Illigahad Eghass Malan (Sahel Sounds)
Groundbreaking Taureg desert rock from the girls of Illigahad, a secluded commune on the edge of the Sahara.
Trio-Da-Kali & Kronos Quartet Ladilikan (World Circuit Records)
An incredibly moving and life-affirming collaboration of a trio of Malian griot musicians and a world famous American string quartet.
Various Artists Agrim Agadez: Musique Guitare de la République du Niger (Sahel Sounds)
Compiling field recordings of different guitar iterations found in Niger, this collection is full or wonder and character.
Massa Dembele Mezana Dounia (Izniz Records)
Burkina Faso musician Massa Dembele brings together thtraditional with a contemporary spin incorporating world-weary lyrics with joyous melodies on the kamele n'goni harp.
Vieux Farka Touré Samba (Six Degrees Records)
Son of Ali Farka Toureé, Vieux finds a strong sense of purpose on this live studio recording made in Saugerties, NY.
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Musical Sunshine (Or Records That Will Heal Your Soul)
We all have music we reach for on rainy days to meet our somber soul-search, or music we reach for when we feel stressed from one of life's storms to find our calm. And some days the sun is shining brightly and confidently in a theater of cloudless blue. And for days like that, I've always got an album loaded up, ready to shine like the yellow-orange tones of vitality that She shines upon us. These are some of my favorite choices this year.
Various Artists Oté Maloya: The Birth of Electric Maloya on Réunion Island 1975-1986 (Strut Records)
Fascinating collection of gems from the mid-70s Maloya musical movement on Réunion Island combining Malagasy, African, Indian and Western instruments in a fascinating groove.
Wildflower Wildflower (self-released)
Groovy spiritual jazz trio using a flute, a saxophone, a bass and drums in hypnotic meditations on form.
Quantic & Nidia Góngora Curao (Tru Thoughts)
Incredibly fun and powerful collaborative effort between a folklorist and indigenous music protector from Colombia and the man with the Midas touch, Quantic and Nidia Góngora unsurprisingly strike gold.
Aurelio Darandi (Real World Records)
A live set of favorite songs by the undisputed grand ambassador of Afro-Latino Garifuna music from Honduras, Aurelio, celebrating 30 years of sharing the infectious beauty of his people's music.
Omar Sosa & Seckou Keita Transparent Water (Otá Records)
A dreamy jazz record from the collaboration of cuban pianist Omar Sosa and Senegalese kora player Seckou Keita includes instrumental voices from Japan, China, and Korean and serves as a truly worldly ocean of musical goodness.
Penguin Café The Imperfect Sea (Erased Tapes)
Carrying the legacy of his father Simon Jeffes' British avant-pop outfit Penguin Café Orchestra, Arthur Jeffes and his collection of excellent music continue the tradition of glowing chamber jazz instrumentals that sound as timeless as his father's greatest works.
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Best Music for Moonring Pages (or Instrumental Soundscapes) of 2017
If I want to start my day off the right way, I journal. It started off as a challenge by my Art Guardian Angel Julia Cameron. She told me to write 3 pages every single morning so that I could clear all the gunk out of my head so that God could help guide me towards making more Art. I began in the summer of 2011 and I have been absolutely hooked ever since. Our shelf above our bed holds almost 30 (!) volumes of cover-to-cover mental gymnastics that have seen countless breakdowns, breakthroughs, pity parties, epiphanies, grievances, celebrations, and immeasurable gratitude. I love journaling and as far as I can tell, it loves me too.
So, naturally, I have honed in my ideal journaling scenario to include the following: a hot cup of well-made coffee, a college-ruled journal of some kind, at least one Pilot G-2 07 pen, and an instrumental record to take me deep into a focused flow-state. I recognize that many folks can't listen to music while doing almost anything, but for me, it seems to relax my brain and allow me to write even more clearly. Unless the music includes the English language in any way, I can listen to almost anything. And as a result, I end up listening to a lot of instrumental records each year. Some of them stand out more than the others.
These are some instrumental soundscapes that I loved painting with this year:
Photay Onism (Astro Nautico)
Brooklyn's Photay has released an LP that sounds like robots frolicking through deeply wooded forests, galavanting with wood sprites, and finding an intimacy with the natural world despite their cold metallic forms.
Kara-Lis Coverdale Grafts (Boomkat Editions)
The young composer from Montréal employs simplicity and electronic micro-manipulation on this expertly executed piece of ambient minimalism.
Hector Plimmer Sunshine (Albert's Favourites)
Progressive afro-drum'n'bass ideas from South London's Hector Plimmer provide hope and shine a light on an exciting new world for electronic music fans.
Botany Raw Light II (Western Vinyl)
Austin-based electro engineer Botany takes this companion to 2015's Dimming Awe, The Light is Raw beyond the level of pure beat-tape into a more mystical realm, one that is filled with beats.
Kamasi Washington Harmony of Difference (Young Turks)
Contemporary jazz juggernaut Kamasi Washington and his otherworldly collection of musical collaborators release an impeccable EP of lush arrangements that continue to solidify the legacy that began to build around the release of 2015's The Epic, a perfect record.
Makaya McCraven Highly Rare (International Anthem)
Drummer Makaya McCraven released this exciting display of improvised music recorded on a 4-track cassette at Danny's in Chicago, a live set he carefully touched up in the studio to crystallize this hi-fi lo-fi jazz funk opus.
Cut Copy January Tape (Cutters Records)
Taking a break from a year of recording a new album, Australian electro-pop outfit Cut Copy decided to spend 10 days making ambient music (rather than spending time laid out on the beach), and released this sampling of unedited highlights.
Kapela Maliszów Wiejski Dźez (Unzippéd Fly)
This passionate record of fiery Polish "village folk," made by a father-daughter-son trio from Męcina Mała, transported me to South Poland and held me in its dance time and time again.
Hermeto Pascoal & Grupo Vice Versa Viajando Com O Som: The Lost '76 Vice-Versa Studio Session (Far Out Recordings)
Recorded in a non-stop 2-day recording session in São Paulo in 1976, Far Out Recordings released this lost relic of pure spiritual jazz odyssey from legendary Brazilian composer and multi-instrumentalist Hermeto Pascoal, once described by Miles Davis as "the most impressive musician in the world.”
Hans-Joachim Roedelius & Arnold Kasar Einfluss (Deutsche Grammophone)
Effortlessly gorgeous collaboration of classical pianist Arnold Kasar and Hans-Joachim Roedelius (Cluster) brought me consistently into the clouds.
Mammal Hands Shadow Work (Gondwana Records)
Chamber jazz upstarts from Norwich make captivating and whole-bodied instrumental topographies.
Balmorhea Clear Language (Western Vinyl)
Hazy sonic paintings from Texas' Balmorhea that are propulsive and expansive.
Jlin Black Origami (Plant Mu)
Jlin is footwork's promising dark horse and dazzles with this LP of frenetic juke beats, which features a collaborations with found-sound ambient all-star William Basinski and fellow sound artist Holly Herndon.
Teen Daze Themes for a New Earth (FLORA)
Alternative ambient pop band Teen Daze collects extras from a recent recording session.
Josiah Steinbrick Meeting of Waters (Leaving Records)
An exercise in limitation, Meeting of Waters finds Josiah Steinbrick getting playful with pieces involving only 1 to 5 different elements each.
Jean-Michel Blais & CFCF Cascades (Arts & Crafts)
Pianist Jean-Michel Blais and electro-engineer CFCF team up for a morsel of ambient live piano dust dances.
Mo Kolours Meroe (22a Music)
British-Mauritian producer Mo Kolours get weird and wonderful on this short but potent EP.
Kondi Band Salone (Strut Records)
Infectious coalescence of a Sierra Leonian kondi thumb drum player and a Sierra Leonian-American producer and admirer.
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Best Guitarstrumentalisms of 2017
There's just something so captivating to me about hearing solo guitar music. Fingers making their way across steel or nylon strings. Melodies wandering or ambling, plucky or strum-founded. The guitar won't play itself, the human becomes the animator. And anyone that plays guitar well has spent countless hours alone in relationship with their instrument, and if the player is truly freed, there is an intimacy that breathes life into each piece of music the two of them create. It's a magic I dream of knowing for myself (if only I could get past that frustrating bar-chord hand pain...)
Each year, I feel blessed to enjoy some outstanding examples of what I call "guitarstrumentalism." It's a loose definition, it doesn't always mean just one person and a guitar. It could have some more instrumentation to it, it could be a banjo or an ukulele, but as long as a stringed instrument is the foreground and it is largely instrumental, it works for me.
Here are some of 2017's best:
Julian Lage World's Fair (Modern Lore)
Now 25-years old, the former child guitar prodigy released his first solo guitar record that is filled with dances and melodies that are all together antiquated and timeless,
Rick Deitrick River Sun River Moon (Tompkins Square)
Rick Deitrick's rich and solemn solo guitar compositions were written alone in the woods in the 70s, when he recorded them and left only a few copies to be discovered in public libraries and off the side of trails. Their beauty was finally released to the world in 2017.
Hayden Pedigo Greetings from Amarillo (Driftless Records)
A young guitarists musical ode to the sprawling flat desert-land of his hometown of Amarillo, Texas is hazy, heart-felt, and textured.
Elkhorn The Black River (Debacle Records)
Jesse Shepard's 12-string acoustic and Drew Gardner's electric have an engrossing and mystical 40-minute conversation on the storied path of the guitar throughout American history.
Toby Hay The Gathering (Cambrian Records)
Welsh guitar player Toby Hay's debut record is a sepia-toned poem of the mist and mysticism of his dear homeland.
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Albums That Helped Me Break It Down in 2017
I believe dancing is essential to a healthy life. Dancing does the work of enhancing whatever mood one happens to be carrying. If you feel full of joy, dancing gives you a way to express those feelings. If you feel stuck or sad or burdened, dancing gives you a way to move through the discomfort. It challenges you to find your inner spark and allow yourself to let go of judgment, fear, insecurity and it rewards you with revelations in self-discovery. The deeper you go, the more you learn about yourself. And sometimes, it just feels good to act like a total idiot.
Dance music has become a SoundCloud, singles, DJ mix culture over time, but as an album guy, these are the albums that helped me bump AND grind in 2017:
Clap! Clap! A Thousand Skies (Black Acre)
Heavy indigenous electronic music that feels like a wall-to-wall dance ceremony on an island in the middle of the starry sky.
Thornato Bennu (Wonder Wheel Recordings)
International bombast from New York's Thornato features unforgettable drops and breaks that your body will find irresistable.
Henry Wu Deep in the Mudd (Black Focus Records)
A clever and engrossing break-beat jazz EP from one half of the incredible and sadly disbanded Yussef Kamaal.
Ametsub Mbria Lights 1 EP (nothings66)
Japan's Ametsub explores tape-hiss textures and catwalk grooves to accompany and ambling mbira.
Four Tet New Energy (Text Records)
An instant classic to add to the catalog of legendary British electronic producer Four Tet.
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Brilliance in Ambience (or the Calm Amidst the Storm) in 2017
There's always a clear moment when we are no longer in the mood to hear any more music. It happens to the best of us, whether it's after a loooooong day of listening to or making music, or maybe you're feeling incredibly anxious or upset and it's just too much to deal with in the moment. We all have times like that. The silence can feel like a deep breath of fresh cool air to tired ears or an overactive mind. This is when meditation is so yummy.
But there are also those times when you feel like you want to listen to something, but you don't want to do any sort of active listening. Nothing too groovy or percussive or upbeat. This is when ambient music hits the spot. Putting on an ambient record, it slowly drifts into the space like a spiritual presence, like slow-motion cream in coffee. Paired with a stick of earthy incense, it gently clears away the kinetic energy and establishes a calm crawling lift that allows me to sink into my carpeted floor and melt into the core of the Earth. Usually I am joined by a cat.
These albums floated through our home and soothed our souls this year:
Hiroshi Yoshimura Music for Nine Post Cards (Light in the Attic Records)
Bing & Ruth No Home of the Mind (4AD)
Ryuchi Sakamoto async (Milan Records)
Eluvium Shuffle Drones (Temporary Residence Limited)
Brian Eno Reflection (Warp)
Christopher Willits The Art of Listening (Original Score Soundtrack) (Overlap Music)
Hammock Mysterium (Hammock Music)
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New Records by Old Favorites Released in 2017
The artists in this category are like my dear friends from childhood. For one reason or a thousand, we don't stay in touch all the time. Our lives have grown in different directions and we've grown a lot since being teenaged and confused. We made huge impacts on each others' lives but we can hardly find the time or the words to convey how much we love each other. So we just let each other keep on living life, trusting we'll meet again when the time is right.
And just like old friends, your old favorite bands keep doing awesome stuff, making awesome music. And when you hear it, you're flooded back with appreciation for who they are and why you love them. There were a few records like that for me this year:
Ian William Craig Slow Vessels (FatCat Records)
Spoon Hot Thoughts (Matador)
Sufjan Stevens The Greatest Gift: Outtakes, Remixes & Demos from 'Carrie & Lowell' (Asthmatic Kitty)
The War on Drugs A Deeper Understanding (Atlantic)
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Some More Strong Records
This list takes me an incredible amount of time for me and the only true reward is that potentially some folks will read it and listen to something that they fall in love with, and maybe they'll text me and tell me about it. That brings me a lot of joy. But this year, like each year, I just get overwhelmed by all the records I want to review and I just have to stop writing and get it out there.
The following records were amazing this year, I just didn't have time to write much about how awesome they are:
Juana Molina Halo (Crammed Discs)
Nai Palm Needle Paw (Sony)
Horse Lords Mixtape IV (Northern Spy Records)
Tonstartssbandht Sorceror (Mexican Summer)
Floating Action Is It Exquisite? (Baby Tooth)
Colleen A Flame My Love, A Frequency (Thrill Jockey)
Nick Hakim Green Twins (ATO)
Peter Broderick All Together Again (Erased Tapes)
Kendrick Lamar DAMN. (Top Dawg Entertainment)
Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith The Kid (Western Vinyl)
Valerie June The Order of Time (Concord Records)
Sylvan Esso Echo Mountain Sessions (Loma Vista)
Alsarah & The Nubatones Manara (Wonder Wheel Recordings)
Piers Faccini La Plus Belle Des Berceuses (Beating Drum)
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My musical exploration takes me all over the World Wide Web, but I am particularly indebted to Aquarium Drunkard, Tiny Mix Tapes, DJ Jeremy Sole, NPR Music, Pitchfork, Spotify, Songlines Magazine, all my music nerd friends, and a myriad of other sources for turning me on to a lot of really excellent music.
Thank you.