Top 10 Albums Of The Year
10:Invictus Hi-Fi – The Vanishing (Arklive)
This anonymous UK producer and modular synth wiz channels decades of weird outsider music to create a unique and stunning brand of experimental electronica. Music to enchant you and draw you deep into a strange web of interwoven narratives: The Voyager spacecrafts, the 'cloudbuster' Wilhelm Reich, abandoned British seaside towns, the Russian art of propaganda… trust me, you’re in for a ride.
Read my interview with Invictus Hi-Fi
09: Patricia Wolf – The Secret Lives of Birds (Nite Hive)
Patricia Wolf’s fascination for bird-watching began alongside her field recording practice. Trying to identify the birds she recorded by their songs, she started researching wildlife in the Pacific Northwest and getting involved with its protection and conservation. This tape is a musical dedication to these activities – a summery, dreamy ambient collage of birdsong and other field recordings, overdubbed with airy synthesizers and electronics.
Read Patricia Wolf’s exclusive liner notes
08: Olivia Block – The Mountains Pass (Black Truffle)
For the first time in over 25 years, the renowned electroacoustic composer – now in her mid-50s – actually sung on The Mountains Pass. Recorded at Steve Albini’s Electrical Audio studio in Chicago, the album also features the experimental drummer Jon Mueller, while the base layer consists of Block’s trademark warped organ and piano tones. Informed by listening to Italian prog composers and reading Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, this is one of Block’s most emotionally captivating records.
Read my interview with Olivia Block
07: Ezra Feinberg – Soft Power (Tonal Union)
Motorik drum pulses meet Balearic textures and TNT-era Tortoise vibes: Soft Power is an irresistibly joyous album but difficult to categorize – somewhere between ambient, minimalism, psychedelic krautrock and outsider pop. Its rich sound palette derives from analog synths, organs, acoustic guitars and wind instruments. I love losing myself in the wondrous world it creates; an album like a childhood daydream.
Read my interview with Ezra Feinberg
06: Cavalier – Different Type Time (Backwoodz)
Cavalier is the type of MC that can switch from bragging about his unique dressing style to denunciating police brutality to dropping vaguely spiritual references within the blink of an eye, and make it sound fresh. For a decade, the New York-bred, New Orleans-based rapper was hailed as an outsized talent that never managed to record his definitive body of work. In 2024, that would change –unexpectedly, he dropped my favourite hip-hop album of the year, trading laid-back flows over jazzy, playful post-lo-fi beats.
Read my full article on Cavalier
05: Poppy H – Grave Era (Cruel Nature)
The anonymous UK musician Poppy H produces a staggering amount of pitch-black ambient tunes on his smartphone, layering warped pianos, found sounds, broken guitars and ghostly voices. Listening to these unsettling sketches, I feel reminded of the ‘Isolationism’ movement, a dark antidote to all feel-good coffeehouse ambient. This gem of an album remains the perfect place to discover the sprawling catalogue of an artist that has just started on his public journey a bit more than a year ago.
Read my interview with Poppy H
04: Félicia Atkinson – Space As An Instrument (Shelter Press)
Since the late 2000s, this French musician and visual artist has been releasing collages of field recordings, midi instrumentation and her own hushed vocals, performing abstract poems and stories – in her native French and in English – over ambient clouds of sound. Her most recent album Space As An Instrument comes equipped with everything a great Félicia Atkinson record needs, while not deviating wildly from her proven recipe. This was my comforting go-to headphone soundtrack during fall and early winter.
Read my interview with Félicia Atkinson
03: Astrid Sonne – Great Doubt (Escho)
On her third solo album, the Danish artist, composer and violist celebrated a breakthrough. Just like her friend ML Buch’s 2023 masterpiece Suntub, Great Doubt represents a contemporary Scandinavian sound that is influencing young artists around the globe. With its unpretentious girl-next-door vocals, lo-fi production techniques and trip-hop influence, it’s definitely Astrid Sonne’s most satisfying, personal and courageous work to date – a distinctive Nordic take on Tirzah’s quirky art school pop.
02: Wadada Leo Smith, Amina Claudine Myers – Central Park’s Mosaic of Reservoir, Lake, Paths and Gardens (Red Hook)
Recorded in 2021 and released this year on former ECM producer Sun Chung’s Red Hook label, this stunning duo album is a homage to New York City’s most popular green area, evoking slow motion images of tranquility and timeless beauty. The two ageing AACM musicians (trumpeter Smith is 83, pianist Myers two years his junior) reach the highest levels of emotional expression by absolute restraint. You will not find a single superfluous note on this recording.
01: Sophia Jani, Teresa Allgaier – Six Pieces for Solo Violin (Squama)
Sophia Jani’s main inspiration for this cycle were J.S. Bach’s violin sonatas and partitas. While formally filed under ‘contemporary classical’, Six Pieces for Solo Violin feels more like a pop record to me – her neo-baroque post-minimalism is very suitable for repeated, even daily listening. This gorgeous, addictive recording has soundtracked my whole summer in the countryside, when Teresa Allgaier’s violin mixed with the birdsong and the sound of agricultural engines through open windows.
Read my interview with Sophia Jani and Teresa Allgaier
Top 10 Songs of the Year
10: Bogdan Raczynski –Newdiv (Disciples)
The return of the original “IDM” trickster sounded quite unspectacular at first, yet still I ended up rinsing “Newdiv” on repeat for weeks. Here’s proof it doesn’t take more than a strong drum groove and some infectious analog synth melodies to produce an instantly rewarding piece of electronic non-dance music. The very reverse of pretentious art.
Read my interview with Bogdan Raczynski
09: Earthball –A Need to Cool Down (Upset The Rhythm)
Most of Earthball’s members live in Nanaimo, a remote town in the southwest of Canada. They play noise rock with an instant composition approach, inspired by trailblazing bands like Sonic Youth and Wolf Eyes, but also free jazz explorers like Kaoru Abe and Eric Dolphy. Whenever I found myself upset with the state of the world (which happened frequently in 2024), I listened to this song – and instantly felt more relaxed.
Read my interview with Earthball
08: Elucid feat. Billy Woods –Bad Pollen (Fat Possum)
Armand Hammer reunited on this deep cut from Elucid’s recent solo album Revelator. I love almost everything these guys are doing, but I wasn’t prepared to hear them rap circles around a murky beat by Iranian-Canadian experimentalists Saint Abdullah which samples the 1970s song “Sepideh Dam” by the Tehran street singer Javad Yasari. What more can I say?
07: Still House Plants–M M M (bison)
The lead single off their third album if i don’t make it, i love u represents the essence of the Scottish experimental rock band’s approach: Angular guitars, loose and jazz-inspired drums, and the distinctive, soulful voice of singer Jess Hickie-Kallenbach. I love how they really sound like no one else out there right now.
06: Meredi – Double Sky (Deutsche Grammophon)
On this dreamy, romantic piece built around a repeating synth arpeggio from her EP Flourish, neoclassical composer Meredi Arakelian sings in Armenian with a slight German accent, mirroring her multicultural roots in the most charming way. The monologue is inspired by Byzantine orthodox chants; it beautifully channels disappointment, longing and pain.
Read my portrait of Meredi on grainsmusic.com
05: Martha Skye Murphy feat. Roy Montgomery – Need (AD 93)
Um is London-based artist Martha Skye Murphy’s proper debut album after a strong series of EPs, loosies and collaborations. The compositions, more song-oriented than her previous material, are built around Murphy’s vulnerable voice and piano, adding layers of instrumentation and field recordings. This dramatic collaboration with New Zealand guitar wizard Roy Montgomery is the standout tune I kept returning to.
04: Martyna Basta – Flame After Flame (Stroom)
Polish sound artist Martyna Basta’s past work mostly classified as ‘ambient/experimental’. On this standalone track, the trained classical guitarist moves away from abstract textures into actual song territory. The press blurb aptly references Caroline Polachek, Eartheater and HTRK, but the tune’s ethereal dreampop vibe also reminds me of Cocteau Twins and Mazzy Star. This actually marks a huge step forward for Basta –though I’d love to see her keep up her electroacoustic composition practice too.
03: Jonnine – Southside Girl (Modern Love)
On her fourth solo album, Jonnine Standish of long-running Australian post-punk duo HTRK delivers wistful vocals over sparse guitars, piano and percussion, recorded on a portable 6-track. Recalling a childhood summer spent by the sea, the music sounds distant, while field ambience takes center stage. The song feels raw and unfinished, capturing the melancholy of the fleeting moment. File under: Summertime sadness.
02: Mabe Fratti –Oidos (Unheard of Hope)
2024 was Mabe’s year. I had the opportunity to see the Guatemalan cellist, composer and singer play live twice – at Roskilde festival on an open plan stage, with a summer thunderstorm raging around us, and then again at Berlin’s Silent Green venue. Fratti’s fourth album Sentir Que No Sabes came out in June, and while it’s a strong body of work, it’s hard to properly follow up a record as outstandingly brillant as Se Ve Desde Aqui. On the standout song “Oidos”, Mabe’s fragile, husky soprano floats over Gibrán Andrade’s dusty post-rock drums to bone-chilling effect.
01: Able Noise – Violence (World of Echo)
It hit me first on a crowded train, feeling slightly drained and sick, trying to drown out the traffic noise by turning up the music in my headphones.
As a pre-single for Able Noise’s debut album High Tide, “Violence” seems like an odd choice. Still, I could listen to it on repeat forever. I actually did.
This is five and a half minutes of layered detuned guitar, overdubbed with violins (hence the title) and loose, free-form drums. It’s not “about” anything, it doesn’t “mean” anything. In Alan Watts’ words, it’s just about its very “suchness” –the essence of sound itself.
“There isn't that much, if any, of an interesting back story to it”, the Dutch-Greek experimental rock duo confirms over email when I reach out to them. “No concept, no meaning, just music.”
Pressed on how the tune was conceived, they go into a bit more detail:
“Initially it was just the guitar and drums, played as such live a few times at the end of our set, until we decided to try and convert it in to something for the album, for which we thought it would benefit from an extra melodic layer. We had the sense we wanted violins for it, so we contacted our pals Magdalena McLean and Oliver Hamilton who both play in the London band caroline, made a date for recording, and then wrote their lines by humming the melody into our recorder. They recommended we stick to the hummed version instead of adding violins, which we wisely decided against. The recorded violin tracks were pitched down and then subjected to increasing levels of distortion and chorus as the piece developed, resulting in that John Cale/Tony Conrad, Oliver Coates-like bowed string sound, that we were both very obsessed with.”
Read my interview with Able Noise
