1. JAMES HOLDEN - IMAGINE THIS IS A HIGH DIMENSIONAL SPACE OF ALL POSSIBILITIES
Quite, simply a throwback to rave culture - not trance as a few publications made out. The bloop-bloop-bloop of a Kombucha tea being brewed sounds like his modular synths at work; Holden splicing together an hour and four minutes of vintage electronic bliss. At the center of it all, the magnificent opus of ''In The End You'll Know'' - a six minute scurry of manipulated bassline that gets buried, beamed up, filtered and squeezed through the eye of a needle; it's quite simply one of the best electronic songs of all time. The twists and turns that happen on this record make it much larger than the summation of its partakings - the sum of its parts if you'd like a cliche.
2. YVES TUMOR - PRAISE A LORD WHO CHEWS BUT WHICH DOES NOT CONSUME (OR SIMPLY, HOT BETWEEN WORLDS)
This came out on St Patricks day - so it's another early spring release that did well here. I wasn't expecting Yves Tumor to get on this list at all, as I'd never quite taken to him. But with this record, he went all Prince and just gave himself completely to the tracks. There are absolute bangers on here, other numbers oozing with soul - and the production is out of this world too. A chameleon of a band and another long named album on this list by Spaghetti Blogonese. Leaving so soon Marcoooos? Yes, editor, I have to go to work at Indian Mango. But you're here for a reason Marcooooos.
3. SLOWDIVE - EVERYTHING IS ALIVE
Here's an album with a normal title. This one was out on September 1st, fresh for autumn and was a taste of spacey timelessness. I've lost my flair for writing about music, so need to practice more. This LP has 8 tracks of very differing quantities and themes. It's essentially the second act of Slowdive after their first three albums came out between 1991-1995 and then an 18 year gap made for their self-titled return in 2018 - a shoegaze masterpiece. This is like the gratis grateful sibling album to the previous; the previous the kestrel and this the dove. I dove right in.
4. BLUE LAKE - SUN ARCS
Meditative music. Could have won the crown but I say this almost every year about a bunch of records. Jason Dungan, based in Denmark, custom-built his own 48 string zither, layered with slide guitar, clarinet and pump organ to communicate his walks in nature. It draws one in, in a hypnotic way - one day in summer I was in a shopping mall, buying toys for babies and ignored all the crowds with this record on headphones. Another day I was cleaning my apartment and the shimmering strings of "Writing'' came on and transported me to a state of absolute exaltation.
5. NOURISHED BY TIME - EROTIC PROBIOTIC 2
Once in a while, along comes along an artist with a brand new sound - and this was it. Marcus Brown with scat singing, piping and rapping - gets compared to Frank Ocean, but sounds much more original. I was in a bar one night and banged on ''The Fields'' on headphones and played it to two friends. One said it was weird, and the other said it's the funkiest thing since sliced bread. I played this in my hotel room when I moved back to Vilnius in spring and it became clear that this one's an earworm.
6. SUFJAN STEVENS - JAVELIN
In which Sufjan consolidated all different sides of his career, Illinois-era big band mit backing singers, The Age Of Adz's scatty electronic production and keeping up the biblical thing, but thankfully as an undercurrent, as it's not exactly Bible-bashing music. As one of the best singer-songwriters of his generation, 48 years old, Sufjan delivered a warbly, autotuney doodly foodly - and as The Line of Best Fit aptly put it "A deeply personal, Earth-moving masterpiece exploring relationship tensions with the gravitas of an apocalypse and the simplicity of a melody passed down through generations.''
7. COMPLETE MOUNTAIN ALMANAC - COMPLETE MOUNTAIN ALMANAC
Chamber folk that is very, very delicate and supremely nuanced. Each track is named after a month of the year and it has a very natural cyclic feel. Rebekka Karijord and Jessica Dessner (sister of the twins from The National) have crafted a pastoral wonder that got better and better with each exploration. I used plenty of these cuts when making mixtapes for a special someone and I think she appreciated it in a tender way.
8. THE GOLDEN DREGS - ON GRACE AND DIGNITY
''Got to get away sometimes!'' croons Benjamin Woods on ''American Airlines'' and it becomes apparent that a major talent had arrived. In this age of listening to Spotify solo, sadly gems like this LP might not get unearthed by many, but on the plus side, why not enjoy the secret taste of these ''simmering barroom confessionals'' as Mojo superbly put it. I will be waiting with bated breath to see what their next move will be - but not with anxiety, with poise and G & D - as per the album title.
9. HEINALI - KYIV ETERNAL
Not just because of the war, - that just fasttracked it- rather played as a superb concept album of burnt-out electronica - lots of feedback and dissonance over samples that Oleh Shpudeiko captured with a handheld recorder from 2012 - here Kyiv Eternal acts as a loveletter to his city through these archived field recordings and in the mix crafts one of the best digital bodies of the year, decade, century. Yes, it's that fucking good.
10. LANKUM - FALSE LANKUM
Album of the year in five publications and getting its due credit here. Call it folk, avant-folk, drone, progressive folk or even doom-slumdog-of-a-funeral-chimney-potter - I'm down. This thing encompasses decades, centuries and eons of brutal human struggle through pure Irish conviction. The mettle and suffering underneath the surface here is certainly colossal.
Honorable mentions
everything but the girl
pj harvey
anohni
roisin murphy
sofia kourtesis
bonnie prince billy
dave okumu
jason isbell
romy
blonde redhead
david holmes
forest swords
lewsberg
home is where
witch
isolee
craven faults
fenne lily
index for working music
loscil
robert forster
john cale
