#mnestic pressure

[iamlisteningto]

Lee Gamble’s Mnestic Pressure

[supersmashtv]

Getting inspired by more weird shit...

[one-track-daily]

Lee Gamble Ignition Lockoff (2017)

From the album: Mnestic Pressure (Hyperdub)

[nicealbumcovers]

Mnestic Pressure by Lee Gamble

[uselessidea]

Lee Gamble: Mnestic Pressure, Short Film

[battletorn]

SELF KNOWLEDGE QUESTIONNAIRE

INDEPENDENCE.

You don’t set out to be different for its own sake; you are more easily guided by what interests and moves you. You are more concerned about what is right for you than about the pressure to fit in. In sex you are more aware than others of impulses which are not entirely conventional. You know the value of selective irresponsibility, of forgetting occasionally about being ‘good’.

AGGRESSION.

One part of your character is anger in all its forms: frustration, outrage – and when anger is suppressed – bitterness, grumpiness, and bodily aches. Fundamentally, frustration comes from hope: you get upset because you expect your life will be more than a valley of tears. One way to deny aggression is to direct it inwards, as self-criticism. But you’re at your best when you acknowledge anger, and act it out clearly and in a focused way, with honour.

RESILIENCE.

You have a tendency, after a setback, to turn your emotions towards restriving. What attracts you is the idea of wiping out a humiliation by resumed action – overcoming weakness, repressing your fear. Because part of your motive is pride, you can sometimes be unwilling to admit weakness or to receive aid. But at heart, your insistence on coming back and never folding has taught you a valuable pessimism: you know that important journeys are never easy.

Tagged by: @stiillness​ , thank you !! 

Tagging: @starsabered / @martyrix / @mnestics / @elataan & feel free to steal ! 

[huahsu]

YEAR OF WHAT HAPPENS ON EARTH STAYS ON EARTH

[longer version of what I contributed to the new yorker’s year-end package. you can read that here, and listen to the accompanying megamix the video team made! links to previous year’s lists at bottom.] I did not grow up going to church, and I am not a particularly religious person. A few days after the inauguration, I wandered into a nearby church and took a seat in the back pews. I’d gone there right after the election. There was some time for anyone with anything on their mind to stand up and speak. If you need others to pray for you, just let us know. A middle-aged black man in a leather jacket got up and began telling us about an argument he was having with a friend on Facebook. It was about the election, but it was actually about the intractability of racism. He was getting frustrated while describing it to us, in part because he seemed to value being the cool and level-headed one. Plus he was describing the kind of argument millions of people were having on the Internet. “I just hope he finds peace,” the guy said. He paused, then put his hands on his chest. “On a lighter note, today would have been Jimi Hendrix’s seventy-fourth birthday.” He opened up his leather jacket to show everyone his Hendrix t-shirt. “I just wanted to say that, because he was just awesome.” So I returned here, the day after marching through Manhattan with a poster that said “HOLD ON, BE STRONG.” I needed to be in a room that was powered by something other than hate--to be reminded of vision and purpose, even if they weren’t mine to claim. To listen to wisdom gleaned from a book I’ve never read, and pick and choose what I wanted. To hear others pour themselves into songs I never, ever sing along to. I wanted to steal their vibes.  Instead of a hymn, they passed out small pieces of paper with the lyrics of John Lennon’s “Imagine.” This is not the type of church people come to for the music. The pianist started playing, and I remember thinking about how it felt like magic when I learned how to play those chords as a kid. I couldn’t believe we were doing this. We sang, tentatively at first, as though we could not believe these words in this space. Picture it: singing of “no heaven” and “no religion, too,” with humility and hope, inside a house of worship. It was like an admission that faith was inadequate. All we had was one another. “Imagine” is a song I’ve heard millions of times, the type of song that is so ubiquitous that we rarely bother scrutinizing its words, its vantage point, the possibility that someone wrote these words because he actually believed them. I sang along with a room of strangers, and we looked at one another, and, for the first time in months, I began to cry.   TWO LYRICS THAT REMINDED ME OF POLITICS EVEN IF THEY HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH POLITICS "Wrote this shit January 21″ “Take me back to November / Take me back to November” “I’M AN ANGRY TEENAGER” Novelist, “Street Politician” ONCE THEY START, I HAVE TO LISTEN TO THE END Jim O’Rourke’s recently unearthed cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” Kanye’s sitcom-length remix of “Bed” THURSDAY NIGHTS ON NBC Ross from Friends’ very Madchester guitar-y Boiler Room set DJ Seinfeld, Time Spent Away from U Nino Man, Jadakiss and Styles P, “Friends”

IN ANOTHER YEAR FULL OF NIRVANA/KURT COBAIN REFERENCES (DID YOU SEE JAY:Z’S JACKET?) MY FAVORITE SONG, PROBABLY: this Trippie Redd snippet

SOME VERSIONS OF THE NINETIES THAT WILL NEVER COME BACK THE WAY GRUNGE ENNUI HAS, BUT WERE SO POSSIBILITY-RICH TO ME BACK THEN Kicking Giant, This Being the Ballad of Kicking Giant, Halo: NYC/Olympia 1989-1993 Helium, The Dirt of Luck/The Magic City LIKE MANY WHO LOVED “A STORM IN HEAVEN,” I OVERLOOKED THEM AT THE TIME Acetone, 1992-2001 A REALLY GOOD BOOK ABOUT ACETONE, LOS ANGELES, DREAMS OF GREATNESS Sam Sweet, Hadley Lee Lightcap WOULD HAVE LOVED THIS IN 1994, 2002 OR 2017 Big Thief, Capacity CREDIBLE AND DOPE EARLY NINETIES R&B HOMAGE, SAX AND ALL Joyce Wrice, “Good Morning” SPEAKING OF THE NINETIES, LEECH MADE A MIXTAPE OF JUST THE FLOATY/DREAMY PARTS TAKEN FROM CLASSIC GOOD LOOKING/MOVING SHADOW SINGLES Leech, “Just the Liquid” FOR THE COMEDOWN, DARK-ASS STUFF ASSEMBLED EXCLUSIVELY FROM SLIPKNOT SAMPLES Croww, Prosthetics NOSTALGIA, ULTRA (UK GARAGE/BASSLINE EDITION) tqd, ukg SUMMERTIME ‘SECOND SUMMER OF LOVE’ VIBE Opus III, “It’s a Fine Day (Burt Fox remix)” UNEXPECTED BURIAL SUMMERTIME VIBES Monic, “Deep Summer (Burial remix)” NO REISSUE OR  tk ANNIVERSARY TIE-IN, JUST SOME OLD SONGS I RE/DISCOVERED THIS YEAR Active Minds, “Hobson’s Choice” El-B, “El-Brand” Kamal Abdul Alim, “Brotherhood” Spiritualized in Reykjavik  U2, “Numb (Soul Assassins remix)” U2, “Mysterious Ways (Massive Attack remix)”

SAME, BUT TAIWANESE INDIE ROCK EDITION Chocolate Tiger, “Piecing Together” REISSUES, OR: PEOPLE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN WEIRD AND SPACY#, OBSESSED WITH NATURAL BEAUTY## # Planetary Peace, Synthesis # Pauline Anna Strom, Trans-Millennia Music ## Pep Llopis, Poiemusia La Nau Dels Argonaut REISSUES, OR: WHEN I WAS A CHILD THERE WERE NO BETTER SONGS THAN THE ONES THAT PLAYED THROUGH TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE AND FOR SOME REASON THIS JOYOUS EP REMIND ME OF THAT SHEEN, THOSE HOOKS, THE PERFECT, THEATER-SIZED ECHO Om Alec Khaoli, Say You Love Me BEST ALBUM-LENGTH METAPHOR FOR THE CITY, ITS LIMITATIONS AND POSSIBILITIES Wiki, No Mountains In Manhattan SOUNDS EXACTLY LIKE IT WAS DESCRIBED, JAMAICA VIA OUTER SPACE Equiknoxx, Colon Man I NEED TO GO OUT MORE Jex Opolis, “Mt. Belzoni” KH, “Question”

I LISTENED TO THIS ABOUT TEN TIMES, MY SENSE OF ENCHANTMENT GROWING AND GROWING EACH TIME, BEFORE REALIZING THERE WERE BARELY ANY DRUMS ON IT Mr. Mitch, Devout SERIOUSLY THE MR. MITCH ALBUM WAS REALLY MOVING AND FANTASTIC Mr. Mitch f/ Denai Moore, “Fate” CRAZY WISDOM MASTER Vince Staples, Big Fish Theory C’MON AND RAISE UP Rapsody f/ Kendrick, Lance Skiiwalker, “Power” SO ICEY Zomby, Mercury’s Rainbow ECHO PARTY Demen, Nektyr Evy Jane, “Give Me Love” THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST Vic Mensa, The Autobiography DUNGEON FAMILY, EVEN IN DARKNESS Earthgang f/ J.I.D., “Meditate” FUNNY HOW TIME SLIPS AWAY Lee Gamble, Mnestic Pressure Pessimist, s/t NOT SURE HOW THIS BECAME THE DIWALI OF 2017 BUT OKAY French Montana f/ Mariah, Rae Sremmurd, PNB Rock, Belly, Elephant Man, Vybz Kartel, J Balvin, NORE, Wizkid, “Unforgettable” HOW ARE THIS MANY PEOPLE ON A FOUR MINUTE SONG? GOOD VIDEO THOUGH A$AP Mob f/ A$AP Rocky, Playboi Carti, Quavo, Lil Uzi Vert and Frank Ocean, “RAF” I LIKE IT WHEN FERG’S VOICE GETS ALL NAGGY Ferg, “Plain Jane” METRO BOOMIN MADE A BEAT THAT REMINDED ME OF RADIOHEAD Post Malone f/ Quavo, “Congratulations” THE MARIACHI VERSION IS PRETTY SWEET Brian Imanuel, “How I surprised Post Malone with a mariachi band” ”IF YOU’RE LOOKING FOR LYRICS, IF YOU’RE LOOKING TO CRY, IF YOU’RE LOOKING TO THINK ABOUT LIFE...” JonWayne, Rap Album Two CORNBALL PIANOS AND THEN THAT SYNTH DRAGS, AND THEN THE DRUMS KICK Tee Grizzley, “First Day Out” “BUT WILD/WITH MY MONOTONE STYLE” 21 Savage, “Bankroll” Kodak Black, “Candy Paint” Rich Chigga, “Glow Like Dat” ANNUAL SPOT RESERVED FOR LA MUSICA DE HARRY FRAUD French Montana f/ Pharrell, “Bring Dem Things” WHEN LAETITIA SAYS HER OWN NAME ON “EMBERS” Vagabon, Infinite Worlds WHEN JESSIE LEANS INTO THE WORD “FUCK” Jessie Reyez, “Figures” THAT LIGHT MISTING, THAT CASUAL SPRITZ OF SYNTHS Lanark Artefax, “Touch Absence” A GOOD ANTI-DJT THING THAT CAME OUT EARLY THIS YEAR, WHICH FEELS LIKE EONS AGO Lushlife + friends, My Idols are Dead + My Enemies are in Power THE BABY, THE FLUTES, PIERRE’S OBNOXIOUSLY LONG TAG, THE JESSE LINGARD DANCE Playboi Carti, “Magnolia” ILLEST SHIT I SAW THIS YEAR, BABY-RELATED A child at a restaurant watching an iPad and an iPhone at the same damn time “[FREE] PLAYBOI CARTI TYPE BEAT” YBN Nahmir, “Rubbin off the Paint” GUNS N ROSES, BEFORE ONE OF THE WEIRDEST BEEFS OF THE YEAR Trippie Redd f/ 6IX9INE, “POLES1469″ SOMETIMES YOU JUST HAVE TO BELIEVE YOU CAN SING, AND DO IT WITH CONVICTION, AND I WILL LISTEN Trippie Redd, “Rack City/Love Scars 2″ ALL THE BACKGROUND NOISE/ECHOED-OUT ADLIBS MAKE THIS BlocBoy JB, “No Chorus Pt 10″ SMERZ HAS FUN DESPITE THE AWKWARD OF IT ALL Smerz on NTS IT SEEMS REALLY EASY TO MAKE A GOOD-SOUNDING SONG THESE DAYS Global Dan, “Off White” OF ALL THE DOPE SHIT THAT FUTURE APPEARED ON THIS YEAR, THE MOMENT I WILL REMEMBER IS That tiny pause before he sings “I need fresh air,” when he seems happy and content IS THAT A GEORGE MICHAEL SAMPLE? Mozzy, “Prayed for This” THE FIX C Struggs, “Go to Jesus” "IT’S COOL, BUT IT’S NOT...END ZONE” Lil Uzi Vert, “XO TOUR Llif3″ AN ALBUM BOOKENDED BY TOTALLY DIFFERENT KINDS OF COLIN KAEPERNICK/TAKE A KNEE REFERENCES Miguel, War and Leisure IT WAS A VERY GOOD YEAR Brockhampton, Saturation I-III SZA, Ctrl SPEAKING OF SZA: WHAT A GREAT TITLE, BESIDES IT BEING ONE OF MY FAVORITE ALBUMS OF THE YEAR Kingdom, Tears in the Club THE KELELA ALBUM WAS LOVELY, AS ARE THESE Kelela x Bok Bok, Dub Me Apart A RANDOM YOUTUBE COVER THAT I ALSO LIKED, BECAUSE IT CAPTURED HOW MELODIC THE ORIGINAL ACTUALLY IS Kathleen Nguyen covering Kendrick and Zacari’s “Love.” DAMN. WAS GOOD Almost as good as “The Heart Part 4″ LIKE A DE LA SOUL ALBUM, SOMETHING THAT I KNOW I WILL CONTINUE ENJOYING/UNDERSTANDING ANEW FOR YEARS TO COME Tyler, the Creator, Flower Boy ”BLONDED RADIO” MADE ME JOIN APPLE MUSIC Frank Ocean, “Chanel” Frank Ocean, “Biking (solo)” Tyler and Frank, “Where This Flower Blooms” MACH HOMMY MAKES GOOD MUSIC THAT’S HARD TO ACCESS “x Earl Sweatshirt” EP ty Soundcloud IT’S A WEIRD TIME B/W THIS BEAT IS SO DEMENTED Tay-K, “The Race” PROBABLY MY FAVORITE PHARRELL BEAT Kap G f/ Pharrell, “Icha Gicha” MAYBE THE GREATEST MUSIC EVER MADE, REISSUED Pharoah Sanders

REMINDED ME OF PHAROAH, WHEN IT WASN’T REMINDING ME OF BON IVER Joseph Shabason, Aytche AND I ENJOYED AYTCHE FOR SIMILAR REASONS I LIKED ZONING OUT TO Tom Rogerson and Brian Eno, Finding Shore ANNUAL SLOT RESERVED FOR MUSIC I LOVED THAT FEATURED HARP Alice Coltrane, World Spirituality Classics Vol 1

SAME, BUT FOR HARP STUFF THAT ALSO SHOUTS OUT WAWA Mary Lattimore, Collected Pieces ANNUAL SLOT RESERVED FOR TASTEFUL VIBRAPHONE Jenifa Mayanja, “Warrior Strutt” YOU TRYING TO GET THE PIPE, TO PLAY IT, OF COURSE, AS PART OF AN EXPERIMENTAL COMPOSITION? Mary Jane Leach, Pipe Dreams THERE’S A MOMENT DURING THAT BAD BOY DOCUMENTARY CAN’T STOP WON’T STOP WHERE IT BECOMES CLEAR THAT EVERYONE WHO WORKS CLOSELY WITH DIDDY EVENTUALLY TURNS TO GOD, AND IT WAS LIKE THE STRANGE OBVERSE OF Jay Z et al, 4:44 footnotes 2016, BUT I SAT IN THE MET BREUER AND WATCHED THIS OVER AND OVER FOR ABOUT AN HOUR Arthur Jafa, “Love is the Message, The Message is Death” I WANT TO WATCH THE FULL FOUR HOURS OF THIS Dev Hynes talking to Philip Glass TRICKSTERY BUT KINDA MESMERIZING! Klein, Tommy Lolina, Lolita EP Hype Williams, Rainbow Edition “NOT ANOTHER GOT MORE SEOUL, UNLESS YOU KOREAN” (CHILLWAVE REMIX) Mogwaa, Deja Vu “THE TING GOES SKRRRAHH, PAP, PAP, KA-KA-KA/SKIDIKI-PAP-PAP, AND A PU-PU-PUDRRRR-BOOM/SKYA, DU-DU-KU-KU-DUN-DUN/POOM, POOM, YOU DON’ KNOW” Big Shaq, “Mans Not Hot” IBID., BUT “PERKY” Drake, More Life I WANTED TO LIKE THE WIZKID ALBUM MORE, BUT THIS WAS AWESOME Tiwa Savage f/ Wizkid and Spellz, “Ma Lo” LISTENED TO THIS QUITE A FEW TIMES SIMPLY BECAUSE ”BREAKING NEWS: WILD GOAT ON THE LOOSE” IS A WEIRD LINE Lancey Foux f/ AJ Tracey, Kojey Radical and Jevon, “Wild Goat” UNITED TIL I DIE BUT AJ TRACEY’S TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR KIT LAUNCH FREESTYLE HAD ME BUZZZZZZIN AJ Tracey, “False 9″ DIFFERENT TIME OF DAY, KINDA LEFT ME SPEECHLESS Grouper, “Children” Colleen, A Flame my love, a frequency Kara Lis Coverdale, Grafts Ryuichi Sakamoto, async LEFT RYUICHI SAKAMOTO ENVIOUS Metaphors: Selected Soundworks from the Cinema of Apichatpong Weerasethakul FROM OMNI TRIO TO THIS, A PRETTY VISIONARY CAREER Robert Haigh, Creatures of the Deep A SONG THAT FEATURED TWO PEOPLE WHO SHOULD BE PRETTY BIG IN THE NEXT COUPLE OF YEARS DJDS f/ Amber Mark and Marco McKinnis, “Trees on Fire” LIKE, THIS IS GREAT Amber Mark, “Lose My Cool” AWESOME YEAR FOR POTIONS Social Lovers, “Drop Me a Line” Boss, “Song for Gods” WHISKED ME BACK TO MEMORIES OF the enormous room Joakim, “Samurai” Calvin Harris f/ Frank Ocean and Migos, “Slide” Amp Fiddler, “I’m Feeling You” Chaos in the CBD, Accidental Meetings LIKE FALLING ASLEEP ON THE SUBWAY, OR A TRUCK HITTING A POTHOLE AND SPITTING OUT A RECORD COLLECTION, OR HEARING A NANOSECOND OF BRAND NUBIAN THROUGH SOMEONE’S HEADPHONES AS YOU PASS THEM ON THE STREET, IT’S A VIBE Standing on the Corner, Red Burns MIKE’S A SAVIOR Mike 1. I SPENT A LOT OF TIME THIS YEAR THINKING ABOUT THE STRENGTH, ELASTICITY, FRAGILITY, GRAIN OF THE HUMAN VOICE AND SOME OF THIS WAS TOTALLY NECESSARY AND SUBLIME Deep Throat Choir, Be Ok Diamanda Galas, All the Way Moses Sumney, Aromanticism 2. SO ACHINGLY GOOD AND INTIMATE, ESPECIALLY THAT FAINT CROAK IN THE FIRST CHORUS Rostam f/ Kelly Zutrau, “Half-Light” 3. OF COURSE THESE WORLD-MAKERS TOO Bjork, Utopia Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, The Kid Valerie June, “Astral Plane” 3a. A STRANGE PROPOSITION THAT I ENDED UP ADORING KAS covering Sade’s "By Your Side" THE BAY AREA IS JUST DIFFERENT Droop-E, Trillionaire Thoughts Lil B, Black Ken THE “BUILD YOU UP” VIDEO WAS FUN AND ALL BUT I’M REALLY GLAD THIS WASN’T THAT Kamiayah, Before I Wake THE BAY TO L.A. AND BACK AGAIN Mozzy f/ G Perico, “Blammatory” G Perico f/ Mozzy, “What’s Real” GYEAH MC Eiht, Which Way Iz West OUTRUN THE BEAT SOB x RBE, “Lane Changing 2″ BANDS THAT ALWAYS SOUND LIKE THEMSELVES, IN WAYS THAT I FIND COMFORTING the xx, I See You King Krule, The Ooz SAME AS ABOVE, MIDDLE-AGED DIVISION The Feelies, In Between Slowdive, “Star Roving” SOMEONE WHO SOUNDS LIKE NO ONE ELSE Jlin, Black Origami THE NEW NATIONAL ANTHEM Dreezy f/ 6LACK and Kodak Black, “Spar” I LOOKED UP EACH TIME THIS CAME ON THE SHUFFLE Shanti Celeste, “Loop One/Selector”

PROBABLY MY FAVORITE SONG GoldLink f/ Brent Faiyaz and Shy Glizzy, “Crew” OR MAYBE Jorja Smith x Preditah, “On My Mind” THIS WAS SICK TOO GoldLink & Co. covering Outkast’s “Roses” MAYBE THE BEST SONG J Hus, “Did You See”

ANOTHER YEAR, ANOTHER YEAR WHERE MY FAVORITE RELEASE WAS PROBABLY FROM YAEJI, THE “GLASSES FOGGING UP” LINE WAS VERY RELATABLE Yaeji, EP2 THE SONG OF THE SPRING, SUMMER, WINTER   I MEAN, IT’S WAYNE’S WORLD, WE JUST LIVE IN IT ### SIKH DEVOTIONAL MUSIC :: 2016 SPOOKY BLACK :: 2015

[postambientlux]

BEST AMBIENT OF 2017

the 100 BEST AMBIENT ALBUMS of 2017 curated by @holsgr​

#100 : Visible Cloaks • Reassemblage

#99 : Marcus Fjellström • Skelektikon

#98 : GAS • Narkopop

#97 : Samuel Regan • Ides

#96 : Gilder/Bilín Wake • Gold to Gold

#95 : Euglossine • Sharp Time

#94 : poemme • Arboretum

#93 : Christoph Berg • Conversations

#92 : Federico Mosconi • Colonne di Fumo

#91 : High Plains • Cinderland

#90 : dramavinile • 7

#89 : Bing & Ruth • No Home of the Mind

#88 : Siavash Amini • TAR

#87 : Kate Carr • The Story Surrounds Us

#86 : Jefre Cantu-Ledesma • On The Echoing Green

#85 : Simon Fisher Turner • Giraffe

#84 : V/A • Twin Peaks (Limited Event Series Soundtrack)

#83 : Taylor Deupree & Marcus Fischer • Lowlands

#82 : Dmitry Evgrafov • Comprehension of Light

#81 : From the Mouth of the Sun • Hymn Binding

#80 : Valgeir Sigurðsson • Dissonance

#79 : thisquietarmy • Democracy of Dust

#78 : Jake Muir • Acclimation

#77 : FIS & Rob Thorne • Clear Sones

#76 : Hakobune • Torch

#75 : Dag Rosenqvist & Matthew Collings • Hello Darkness

#74 : Leyland Kirby • We, so tired of all the darkness in our lives

#73 : Snufmumriko • This Tide Will Bring You Home

#72 : Joshua Sabin • Terminus Drift

#71 : The Greatest Hoax • Expiration Compositions

#70 : Karl Fousek • Two Pieces for a Temporary Connection

#69 : Lee Gamble • Mnestic Pressure

#68 : Toàn • Histós Lusis

#67 : Cygni • Gesto

#66 : Warmth • Home

#65 : Dino Spiluttini • To Be A Beast

#64 : Lawrence English • Cruel Optimism

#63 : Yoyu • Ordinary Moon

#62 : Gregg Kowalsky • L'Orange, L'Orange

#61 : Max Richter • Three Worlds: Music from Woolf Works

#60 : Darren McClure & Arovane • nest

#59 : Enchanted Lands • Feed Goals

#58 : Marcus Fischer • Loss

#57 : Loke Rahbek & Frederik Valentin • Buy Corals Online

#56 : Ryuichi Sakamoto • async

#55 : Porya Hatami • Monads

#54 : Hannah Peel • Mary Casio: Journey to Cassiopeia

#53 :  Jonny Nash & Suzanne Kraft • Passive Aggressive

#52 : Sarah Davachi • All My Circles Run

#51 : Manos Milonakis • Festen

#50 : Soundwalk Collective • Before Music There Is Blood

#49 : Ben Frost • The Centre Cannot Hold

#48 : Bibio • Phantom Brickworks

#47 : Arash Akbari • The Rest Is Silence

#46 : Taylor Deupree • Somi

#45 : kj • Spells

#44 : Japan Blues • Sells His Record Collection

#43 : Pleq • Re:composition

#42 : bvdub • Heartless

#41 : Oneohtrix Point Never • Good Time

#40 : Anthéne • Orchid

#39 : Mark Templeton • Gentle Heart

#38 : Giulio Aldinucci • Borders and Ruins

#37 : Yamaneko • Spa Commissions

#36 : William Basinski • A Shadow In Time

#35 : Andrea Belfi • Ore

#34 : ASC • Trans-Neptunian Objects

#33 : Tomoko Sauvage • Musique Hydromantique

#32 : Ascendant • Particle Horizon

#31 : Aris Kindt • Swann and Odette

#30 : Jacek Doroszenko • Wide Grey

#29 : Christoph Berg & Henning Schmiedt • bei

#28 : Mattewdavid's Mindflight • Ophiuchus

#27 : Ed Carlsen • Elusive Frames

#26 : Benoit Pioulard • Slow Spark, Soft Spoke

#25 : Jason van Wyk • Opacity

#24 : Tegh • Downfall

#23 : Net • HS

#22 : Sugai Ken • UkabazUmorezU

#21 : Janek Schaefer • Glitter In My Tears

#20 : Olan Mill  • Orient

#19 : Evan Caminiti • Toxic City Music

#18 : Kara-Lis Coverdale • Grafts

#17 : Dean Hurley • Anthology Resource Vol. I: △△

#16 : Hotel Neon • Context

#15 : Eluvium • Shuffle Drones

#14 : Mary Lattimore • Collected Pieces

#13 : Pausal • Avifaunal

#12 : Arjen Schat • 一人 (Hitori)

#11 : Otto A Totland • The Lost

#10 : Yair Elazar Glotman • Compound

#9 : Hecq • Chansons de Geste

#8 : Alessandro Cortini • Avanti

#7 : Leandro Fresco & Rafael Anton Irisarri • La Equidistancia

#6 : Daigo Hanada • Ichiru

#5 : Ben Lukas Boysen & Sebastian Plano • Everything

#4 : The Caretaker • Everywhere at the end of time (Stage 3)

#3 : Hammock • Mysterium

#2 : Brian Eno • Reflection

#1 : Rafael Anton Irisarri  • The Shameless Years

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Giulio Aldinucci & Francis M.Gri • Segmenti Arovane & Hior Chronik • Into My Own Olivia Summer • Landings Pulse Emitter • Outside Sessions Vol.2 Miguel Isaza • Mayopama Penguin Cafe • The Imperfect Sea bvdub • Epilogues for the End of the Sky Félicia Atkinson • Hand In Hand Slow Meadow • Costero Bruno Sanfilippo • Lost & Found Julien Marchal • Insight III Leandro Fresco & Rafael Anton Irisarri • La Espera Jacaszek • KWIATY Byron Westbrook • Body Consonance Fabrizio Paterlini • Secret Book Alder & Ash • Clutched in the Maw of the World Yair Elazar Glotman & Mats Erlandsson • Negative Chambers Noveller • A Pink Sunset For No One Aidan Baker & Karen Willems • Nonland Hilyard • Repose Eraldo Bernocchi & Netherworld • Himuro The Star Pillow • Invisible Summer Mike Lazarev • Dislodged Forest Swords • Compassion Anthéne • Warmth Ana & Ina • On Dockweiler Beach Brett Naucke • Operator Voices Jameson Nathan Jones • What Dreams May Come Symon Pyke • Slow Glow Two Symon Pyke • Slow Glow Three Curved Light • Channel View Francesco Giannico & Giulio Aldinucci • Reframing Jonny Jewel • Windswept Toni Dimitrov & Jared Sagar • Maieutic Koeosaeme • Sonorant Jonas Reinhardt & Jürgen Muller • The Encyclopedia of Civilizations vol. 1: Egypt Acronym • Malm Loke Rahbek • City of Women IJO • Melancholika Vol.2 Keith Berry • Simulacra Saltland • A Commom Truth Roel Funcken • Balaklavskiy Prospex Anjou • Epythimia Gimu • Senses Belief Defect • Decadent Yet Depraved nthng • It Never Ends Benjamin Finger • For Those About To Love Yann Novak • Surroundings Thaniel Ion Lee • Only Death Is Free Chihei Hatakeyama • Mirage Monty Adkins • A Year at Usher's Hill Anthony Linell • Emerald Fluorescents Ghost and Tape • Vár Mayforest • Mayforest V/A • Air Texture Volume V Hior Chronik • Faraway Land Celer • Alcoves Jonas Kopp • Photon Belt Richard Chartier • Removed Steve Pacheco • Constellate Karen Gwyer • Rembo Hans Appelqvist • Swimming Pool Forest Management • The Elevated Quiet Philippe Hallais • An American Hero Fabio Perletta • Ichinen 一念 Internazionale • The Pale and the Colorful Steve Roach • Nostalgia for the Future Leigh Toro • Layers of Ash Fousek/Hansen/Tellier-Craig • No Image In Particular Secret Pyramid • Two Shadows Collide Luzon • Lithograph Markus Mehr • Dyschronia Simon Whetam • Watering the Piano Robert Farrugia • Slow Morning Sana Obruent • August Unsichtbar • Erlebnis James Murray • Heavenly Waters Eternell • Weightless Luna & Tarnovski • Luna & Tarnovski Jean Michel Blais & CFCF • Cascades Robert Haigh • Creatures of the Deep Golden Retriever • Rotations Curved Grooves • Rivera Maymind • Illumina Nicholas Mohanna • Chroma Steve Gibs • Adrift Item Caligo & Orrorin Daydream • Blue Letters Christopher Willits • Horizon

Experimental electronic & Ambient music blog made by Hermann Holsgr. linktr.ee/postambientlux

[jgthirlwell]

playlist 12.02.17

Claude Speeed Infinity Ultra LP / Sun Czar Temple EP (Planet MU) CM Von Hausswolff  Still Life / Requiem (Touch) Lost World Band Of Things And Beings  (Bandcamp) Sparks Hippopotamus (BMG) Fever Ray Plunge (Rabid) Toi Toi Toi Hollow Earth Hippies (GhostBox) Pierre Vassiliu  Master Serie (Polygram) deaccssn  deaccssn (Bandcamp) Lee Gamble Mnestic Pressure (Hyperdub) Robert Haigh Creatures Of The Deep (Unseen Worlds) M.E.S.H. Hesaitix (Pan) Hafdis Bjarnadottir Ja  (Bandcamp) Jessica Moss Pools Of Light (Constellation) Cardiacs The Seaside / On Land and In The Sea (Alphabet Business Concern) Khôra Dust Remains to Speak (Bandcamp) Gideon Lewensohn Odradeck (ECM)

[chloe-seviche]

2017

Finally i can make my chart of my favorite music of this year.

Tbh I enjoyed more R&B music than other years. Also some of my faves released some shit this year.

Anyways, I can´t only choose 10 or even 20 albums so I divided it like:

Albums I enjoyed it:

• Actress - AZD • Alexandria Savior - Belladona of Sadness • Alice Glass - Alice Glass EP • Annie Hardy - Rules • Beck - Colors • Bob Dylan - Triplicate • Café Tacvba - Jei Beibi • Chicano Batman - Freedom is Free • Cults - Offering • Deafmute - sundowner • Dua Lipa - Dua Lipa • Fleet Foxes - Crack-Up • Future Islands - The Far Field • Gorillaz  - Humanz • Harry Styles - Harry Styles • Jacques Greene - Feel Infinite • Kasabian - For Crying Out Loud • Kelela - Take me Apart • Lee Gamble - Mnestic Pressure • Morrissey - Low in High School • Portugal. The Man - Woodstock • Ray Davies - Americana • Ryuichi Sakamoto - async • Sarah Davachi - All my Circles Run • Taylor Swift - reputation • The Darkness - Pinewood Smile • U2 - Songs of Experience • Wire - Silver/Lead • Woods - Love is Love 

 Albums I REALLY LIKED:

• Airhead - Shaded • Arca - Arca • Arcade Fire - Everything Now • Ariel Pink - Dedicated to Bobby Jameson • Belle & Sebastian - How to Solve Our Human Problems • Blue Hawaii - Tenderness • Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah - The Emancipation Procrastination • Foo Fighters - Concrete and Gold • Haim - Something to Tell You • Ibeyi - Ash • Jim James - Tribute to (Reissue) / Tribute to 2 • Kelly Lee Owens - Kelly Lee Owens • Lana del Rey - Lust for Life • Liam Gallagher - As You Were • Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds - Who Built the Moon? • Queens of the Stone Age - Villians • Songhoy Blues - Resistance • Stars - There Is No Love in Fluorescent Light • Tara Jane O'Neil - Tara Jane O'Neil • The Beatles - Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band (2017 MIX) • The Horrors - V • The National -  Sleep Well Beast • The War on Drugs - A Deeper Understanding • The xx - I See You • Thurston Moore - Rock n Roll Consciousness • Torres - Three Futures • Yumi Zouma - Willowbank

 Albums I LOVED WITH ALL MY HEART:

• Ambrose Akinmusire - A Rift in Decorum: Live at the Village Vanguard • Bob Dylan - Trouble No More The Bootleg Series Vol. 13 / 1979-1981 • Chelsea Wolfe - Hiss Spun • Courtney Barnett & Kurt Vile - Lotta Sea Lice • Fever Ray - Plunge • Japanese Breakfast - Soft Sounds from Another Planet • Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith - The Kid • Karen Elson - Double Roses • Kendrick Lamar - DAMN • Kesha - Rainbow • King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard - Flying Microtonal Banana • King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard - Polygondwanaland • King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard - Murder of the Universe • LCD Soundsystem - american dream • Mount Kimbie - Love What Survives • Niia - I • Nine Inch Nails - Add Violence • Paramore - After Laughter • Robert Plant - Carry Fire • Sheer Mag - Need to Feel Your Love • Slowdive - Slowdive • St. Vincent - MASSEDUCTION • Sufjan Stevens - The Greatest Gift • The Doors  - The Doors 50th Anniversary Edition • The Doors - Strange Days 50th Anniversary Edition • Thundercat - Drunk • Tyler, the Creator - Flower Boy • Vince Staples - Big Fish Theory • Wolf Alice - Visions of a Life

 MY ABSOLUTE FAVORITES, THE BEST OF THE BEST

• Angel Olsen - Phases • Bully - Losing • Cécile McLorin Salvant - Dreams and Daggers • Charlotte Gainsbourg - Rest • David Bowie - Lodger (Visconti 2017 Mix) • Father John Misty - Pure Comedy • Feist - Pleasure • Grizzly Bear - Painted Ruins • Julien Baker - Turn Out the Lights • K. Michelle - Kimberly: The People I Used to Know • King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard - Sketches of Brunswick East • King Krule - The OOZ • Lorde - Melodrama • Margo Price - All American Made • Marika Hackman - I'm Not Your Man • Moses Sumney - Aromanticism • Nazoranai - Beginning to Fall in Line Before Me, So Decorously, the Nature of All That Must Be Transformed • Perfume Genius - No Shape • Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings - Soul of a Woman • Steven Wilson - To the Bone • The Beach Boys  - 1967 - Sunshine Tomorrow • Vijay Iyer Sextet - Far From Over • Waxahatchee - Out in the Storm

EDITED:

• Björk – Utopia IN THE BEST OF THE BEST (thanks @shayminisbae)

2017 was a good year in music, and as always I want to listen to more, please tell me your faves from this year and I’m gonna check them!!!

[dustedmagazine]

Joseph Burnett 2017 Review: Nostalgia for the Light

Back in days of yore (well, the 19th century), nostalgia was believed to be an illness so debilitating it could compromise the fate of an army were too many soldiers “infected.” One Russian general even threatened to bury his troops alive if they came down with nostalgia. It’s hard to imagine what the clearly charming general would make of our current times, so steeped are we in waves of competing nostalgia.  

I’m one to talk, of course. The below list of albums shows that retrenchment into the past has at times been a great escape for me, musically, as 2017 quickly resolved itself into a right shitter of a year both personally and in the grander scheme of things. I’ve found myself actually nostalgic for the tiny, damp and claustrophobic apartment my ex and I used to rent because we were at least — in my mind — happy then. But that’s the thing about nostalgia: it doesn’t allow for a very nuanced image of what reality was. We certainly did have some good times in said bolthole, but surely the problems that swam into heartbreaking focus only a year or so later (and in a much nicer flat) were already there?

In politics — and this doesn’t get mentioned enough — nostalgia seems to have become a driving force. Trump vows to make America great again, without really elaborating on when it was that America was great in the first place. If one is to believe Roy Moore, it was that glorious period when slavery was a reality and you could still kill gays. But at least there was cholera and high levels of infant mortality to offset the troublesome fact that people were owned as goods and chattel. A similar vein of nostalgia has animated the Brexit debate on this side of the pond, as right-wing Brexiters hit out at “political correctness” and the European Court of Justice’s human rights laws along the road to the UK leaving the EU. Again, one can’t help but feel that the glorious past they pine for mainly revolved around being able to use ethnic slurs and homophobic insults on their way to a packed church on the edge of the village green armed with a blue passport. As with my domestic situation and Trump’s supporters, this nostalgia conveniently ignores unpalatable truths: the fifties right-wing nostalgics dream of actually included polio, rationing and the threat of nuclear annihilation. So it’s not really that different to today, except the polio bit. In that context, I’d say a bit of opprobrium directed towards racism, homophobia, transphobia and antisemitism represents progress.  

So once again, as a wave of distorted nostalgia in part propels us towards an uncertain, even scary future, music has felt like a refuge. It’s becoming a tiresome leitmotiv, really. But the past is threaded through the below list, either as a nostalgic signpost or as a fictionalized unreality. Richard Dawson, on his superlative Peasant, reimagines medieval life in a series of epic, unfathomable and beautiful songs. The folk resurgence remains steady, despite the best attempts of lacklustre Mumford & Sons-like mainstream acts to dilute its potency. June Tabor’s Quercus released Nightfall, the most authentically “folk” album to have emerged in 2017, despite its jazz flourishes, with classic traditional songs echoing through the ages like ghosts. Similar phantasms crop up on Sarah Angliss’s Ealing Feeder to tell the hidden, murky story of London. Like the camera movements in John Sayles’ Lone Star, the past swirls around us listeners on these records, as well as on the crystalline chamber jazz of Tarkovsky Quartet’s Nuit Blanche whilst Elodie’s pair of superb instrumental albums are suffused with the nostalgic atmosphere of Proust. And there have been few more haunted albums of late than Áine O’Dwyer’s Gallarais.  

Over on the dance floor, experimentation remains a vibrant way to concoct new sounds, with some of the most exciting producers around taking their already impressive music to new levels. Lee Gamble, Jlin, Actress, Laurel Halo, Shackleton, Arca: all released superb albums in 2017 that dragged the field of electronic music forwards, even those that looked into the past (the Ghost Box label continues to fascinate as it mines old TV music, computer game imagery and found sounds, with ToiToiToi’s Im Hag successfully reinventing the label’s perpetual motion wheel).

 But in a world of Trump and rising right-wing populism, defiance has resonated most powerfully for me as an emotion. Irreversible Entanglements channeled the spirit of Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite and Jeanne Lee’s majestic invective on Conspiracy to deliver a monumental invective against white privilege and the mistreatment of African Americans throughout time. Jlin’s Black Origami maintained the politically-charged, hyperactive energy of her debut Dark Energy and Mhysa contorted notions of gender and sexuality with an inventive form of r’n’b.  

Even in such illustrious company, one voice seemed to soar out of the abyss most forcefully. A strain of disillusionment has always run through Gary Mundy’s work in Ramleh or other projects, but on his latest solo outing as Kleistwahr he has hit new heights of despondency and despair. Determined to champion his own outsider status, Mundy baptized his album  —a wondrous swarm of haunted guitar and seething electronics — Music for Zeitgeist Fighters. It’s a beautiful cry of rejection as the zeitgeist becomes the plaything Trump and Spencer, Farage and Murdoch, a call to arms for all who abhor the views seeping into the mainstream to scream “not in my name!.”  

The great Chilean documentary director Patricio Guzmán’s most celebrated film is called Nostalgia for the Light and it traces that country’s traumatic history through the prism of the Atacama desert being one of the best places on earth to observe the stars. In that context, nostalgia becomes a way to reconcile oneself with the past and, perhaps, start looking for new light in the future. Maybe all who oppose the rise of right-wing demagoguery, be they musicians, activists, politicians and even lowly journalists, can find ways to look backwards to build a better tomorrow. If the world is going to be swallowed by pernicious nostalgia, it must be fought with a hopeful variety of that Russian general’s bugbear in turn.  

Kleistwahr — Music for Zeitgeist Fighters (Nashazphone)

Jlin — Black Origami (Planet Mu)

Nadah El Shazly — Ahwar (Nawa Recordings)

Richard Dawson — Peasant (Weird World)

Áine O’Dwyer — Gallarais (MIE Music)

Elodie — Vieux Silence (Ideologic Organ)

Actress — AZD (Ninja Tune)

Tarkovsky Quartet — Nuit Blanche (ECM)

Irreversible Entanglements — Irreversible Entanglements (International Anthem)

Laurel Halo — Dust (Hyperdub)

Shackleton & Vengeance Tenfold — Sferic Ghost Transmits (Honest Jon’s)

ToiToiToi — Im Hag (Ghost Box)

Forest Swords — Compassion (Ninja Tune)

Félicia Atkinson — Hand in Hand (Shelter Press)

Saz’iso — At Least Wave Your Handkerchief at Me: The Joys and Sorrows of Southern Albanian Song (Glitterbeat)

Colin Vallon — Danse (ECM)

Lee Gamble — Mnestic Pressure (Hyperdub)

Elodie — La Porte Ouverte (Faraway Press)

Skullflower — The Black Iron that Fell from the Sky, to Dwell Within (Bear It or Be It) (Nashazphone)

Pan Daijing — Lack (PAN)

Arca — Arca (XL)

Quercus — Nightfall (ECM)

Dopplereffekt — Cellular Automata (Leisure System)

Aaron Dilloway — The Gag File (Dais)

Yair Elazar Glotman & Mats Erlandson — Negative Chambers (Miasmah)

Maleem Mahmoud Ghania — Colours of the Night (Hive Mind Records)

The Necks — Unfold (Ideologic Organ)

The Belbury Circle — Outward Journeys (Ghost Box)

Sarah Angliss — Ealing Feeder (self released)

Mhysa — fantasii (Halcyon Veil)

Reissues 

Tony Conrad — Ten Years Alive on the Infinite Plain (Superior Viaduct)

Anne Briggs — The Time Has Come (Earth

Lal & Mike Waterson — Bright Phoebus (Domino)

Henry Flynt — You Are My Everlovin’ (Superior Viaduct)

The Belbury Poly — The Owl’s Map (Ghost Box)

Battiato — Fetus (Superior Viaduct)

Akira Rabelais — Spellewauerynsherde (Boomkat Editions)

Luc Ferrari — Hétérozygote / Petite symphonie… (Recollections GRM)

Zos Kia/Coil — Transparent (Cold Spring)

Jon Gibson — Two Solo Pieces (Superior Viaduct)

[jasondillisdead]

JDID’s Favourite records 2017

50. Brian Eno - Reflection   Although not the definitive version of Eno’s generative music, the permanent and impermanent formats of the most labored over conceptual kick of his career are both vital listens.This was the first record I heard in 2017 and was almost relieved how untenable it was, Eno’s been defending this position for years. Reflection is not the result, nor last chapter, just a tiny fragment.  

49. Godflesh - Post Self Post self is a flattened charred industrial record as all Godflesh records are but built on an idea that they had transcended what they had become. It succeeds - Post Self relies on a guitar sprawl so unique the way the ear navigates these tracks is indescribably different. It becomes a suffocating evil cousin of their ambient project Jesu.

48.  Aaron Dilloway - The Gag File  In 2017 Dilloway graced me with a track called “Karaoke with Cal” - anyone that knows or works with me know s the significance of that. If you don’t then all you need to know is that this record is the only one that legitimately creeped me out last year.

47. Tinariwen - Elwan

Elwan is little more than a beautiful extension of the middle eastern band’s meditative rounds they perfected on 2014's Emmaar but in current times it feels potent. Despite the band actually not being able to return to mali after being directly targeted by militants  Elwan is not as urgent, political or anything a band from the region with a strong western following could be. It makes a far more confronting point, this magic that is under threat from the current dangerous political and cultural climate closer to our increasingly nationalist western homes.

46. Talaboman - The Night Land  Perhaps deliberately designed not to overshadow the solo work work of either John Talabot or Axel Bowman, this collaborative album feels relaxed and Jam-session-like at face value which as a concept sounds appealing anyway. The pair have made an album that is so overtly welcoming to the point where spending copious amounts of time within it to discover each of the artist's sneaky signatures is really easy. When Talabot has been making us wait for years for a Fin follow-up there are plenty of moments here that tease what that could sound-like.

45. The Necks - Unfold   I first listened to the Australian improvisers expansive 19th (!) record whilst stuck in the Grampians preparing for a music festival whilst exhausted and sleeping in a tent. It seems to stretch on forever, Tony Bucks’ percussion refusing to stay still. It was one of those perfect place and time moments to experience a record. 

44. Tom Rogerson with Brian Eno - Finding Shore  High drama plays out the second you read that Eno has a second billing, yet alone when he starts to play with the composers piano shapes with lasers.

43. Chuck Johnson - Balsams  The pedal steel guitar has been a point of many emotive musical moments for me. It’s an instrument that seems to deal only in longing beauty. Chuck transformed that often fleeting feeling into an entire album of indulgent ambience.

42. Jenny Lin - Philip Glass: Complete Etudes for Piano  Glass wrote these classical vignettes to challenge him to learn, he later admitted the structure of some of them, especially the 11-20 movements, were beyond his grasp. Lin’s technical experience has injected new life into them via their most competent delivery yet.

41. Matthew Hayes - Indigo      Indigo is at first very disarming, a series of patient, calming exhales. Soon interwoven moments of intricacy, a voice here, a trickle of water there shape it into something that culminates explosively and joyously in relative terms by the final track. It’s a journey record that resets you and perfectly balances between melancholy and the quest for a more patient world. I listened to it a lot on my repeated plane rides from Melbourne to Adelaide. During the most capitalist points of my existence in 2017 it politely re-positioned my perspective on things.

40. Bicep - Bicep  The Field re purposed trance in a way that felt inexplicably sophisticated, in the same way these Bicep must be in on a joke, because they take the muscularity out of prog house and make it ephemeral.

39. Yves Tumor - Experiencing The Deposit of Faith The first track I heard in 2017 moments after midnight on new year's eve was Yves’ “Limerence” one that wasn’t on his acclaimed Serpent Music, my introduction to him a few months earlier. It blew me away. “Limerence” went on to be the centrepiece of PAN’s Mono No Aware and one of 2017’s most vital pieces of music. Yves has made the most of it. Experiencing the Deposit of Faith rides the feeling of that seminal track in varying directions.

38.  Khotin - New Tab A few years ago everyone either realised Macs were overpriced paper weights and acknowledged that functionalism is the future or became nostalgic for Window's 95. Although I hope it's the former I suspect it's the later fascinatingly, 22 years later windows operates not that differently but still looks like the future. You could say the same about the best mid 90's IDM I love so dearly and Khotin.

37. Visible Cloaks - Reassemblage The critical darling of experimental music in 2017, possibly with thanks to the hard work of their lauded mixes that landed a few years ago. I’m not sure it it actually re purposes Hiroshi Yoshimura’s music but it’s nod to it is convincing enough to be be received as sincere and at times beautiful homage to it.

36. Golden Retriever- Rotations  There’s an alluring bass clarinet (I think?!) that populates Rotations -an unusual instrument to use prolifically especially in a Neoclassical leaning piece of experimentalism but it codes rotations with its own unique sound. It’s a new language that is rooted in emotion, although very different it wants to be felt by as many people as possible. 

35. Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement - Ambient Black Magic

At the very least  Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement as a project wins best bullshit back story, a bunch of cassettes found in Port Moresby believed to be from missing christian missionaries, reissued in all their terror. I was a fan from the get go but possibly due to Fernow’s prolific 2017 workflow this is the best shape the project has been in since its inception. 

34. Actress - AZD

Due to his bizarrely complex modes of operation every time I listen to a new Actress album I wonder if it actually is him or an imitator, it takes a few spins for things to line up again.  This didn't happen with AZD, a capital B Black afro futurist techno record that is the true spiritual successor to 2012's rightly lauded  R.I.P. - a record he threatened never to make.

33. Shabazz Palaces - Quazarz vs. The Jealous Machines/Born On a Gangster Star This epic double album streamlines Ishmael's sound into a distilled, aggressive but typically cosmic assault on America. Although this might be the easiest Shabazz Palaces album to digest, the music still forms a wonderfully alien ELM laced world where emotionless voices become percussive ghosts dancing around swamps of alien synths. 

32. Lee Gamble - Mnestic Pressure Apparently political, Mnestic Pressure’s finest point is the maze like way you need to train yourself to listen to it and extract full reward. It’s more psychological than political to me but maybe the point is they’re not so far apart.

31. Four Tet - New Energy   The insane popularity Kieran Hebden experienced at the turn of last decade seemed to throw him. New Energy finally scratched an itch for his magic I hadn’t had satisfied since Rounds. 

30. Moon Diagrams - Lifetime of Love  Lifetime of Love is a particularly weird, aching piece of ambient electronica.  Torn between a hypnotic ambiguous drawl of his Geographic North peers and his band's early ambient psych pop monuments, Deerhunter's Moses John Archuleta has made something here that is a rhythmic buffer from the catharsis of his day job. 

29. Forest Swords - Compassion  Barnes's latest offering as Forest Swords creates a vibrant maximalist voyage by narrowing the occasional kitsch musings of his previous album and blasting the important and unique aspects of his project into full scale widescreen stuff.

28. Cologne Tape - Welt Magazine's finest assemble for a homage to German music that although oddly eclectic is full of purpose and resolve. Magazine once again proves a safe haven for artists like Jens-Uwe Beyer and The Field to experiment outside their comfort zones, making me very happy.

27. Rafael Anton Irisarri - The Shameless Years  Although not his finest, Irisarri’s latest is a real grower by one of the ambient masters that rewards repeated listens and like his best can still suspend a Sunday afternoon in pure weightlessness.

26. Japanese Breakfast - Soft Sounds From Another Planet  Michelle Zauner's smoldering sophomore record was originally intended as a science fiction concept album. It never quite became that but a strange dystopian shade is cast over it. It's as if she made it 50 years in the future in mid western America, past its prime remembering its past. 

25. Strategy - The Infinity File  

Jefre Cantu Ledesma's excellent 2016 release on Geographic North meant more people than usual pointed their heads at the direction of the label. They didn’t waste the opportunity to capitalise on the attention, TIF is a genre hugging tape loop record running in the lineage of Basinski that beatlessly flirts with idea that this is music that can make you move.   

24. Shannhet - So Numb

Bordering on classical in its grandeur, So Numb is the ambient metal titans at full wingspan. An austere and almost comically epic record, they understand like few others the grace and beauty required to pull something like this off.

23. Avey Tare - Eucalyptus  Anco’s Meeting of the Waters was the return of a sound I felt had long cease to exist, an early 2000's ambient record with folk-pop song gems hidden inside. Eucalyptus is  the realization of those songs in broad daylight. Its stunning lucid dream state at its best it sounds like a sister album to Deakin's Sleep Cycle, or even Spirit. 

22. Juju and Jordash - Sis - Boom- Bah  The idea of improvisation in techno normally lends to a sloppiness but these two have worked together so closely over the last decade that this record scans as each predicting the other’s next move. Impulsive yet perfectly refined.

21.  Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever - The French Press Quite possibly the most unfathomably fully formed guitar band since The Walkmen and about the only indie rock record I cared about this year.

20. Jefre Cantu Ledesma - On The Echoing Green  For the third year running the noise maniac has outdone himself. This ventures closer to shoegaze and song structure than anything he's released before and wonderfully for noise heads and MBV fans alike, pulls it off.  

19. Richard Dawson - Peasant  Peasant is sort of halfway between the absurdity of modern day Scott Walker and the somber beauty of prime time Nick Drake. It’s the most confounding record I heard all year. He plays the guitar like a 7 year old snapping at a nylon string but does it so intricately that it feels like there’s no other way to play the instrument. It also simply must be noted that for me there was also no better song than “Beggar” in 2017. 

18. Call Super -  Arpo I heavily underappreciated the depths that Joe could mine, he’s always been able to flick his music around just enough that it becomes genreless but the LP format give it time to crystallize in a way that is a lot less messy and much more rewarding. 

17. Just Neighbors - Being where I Thought I'd Be 

Being where I thought I'd be could be the best math album since Mutiny on the bounty's IMAX epic, Digital Tropics. Just Neighbors is the counterpoint to the record that out battlesd battles, a patient neighborhood band that know their limitations millimeter perfectly and simply coast through a near perfect suburban album like a  lost cousin of American Football. 

16. Kettenkarussell - Insecurity Guard  Giegling may be the first label to become a glorified electronic music meme. Insecurity Guard is virtually impossible to get a hold of digitally and if you want a physical copy you have to pay, big. The problem that seems to encourage this ostentatious behaviour is the music is somehow gorgeous enough to justify at least some of it. That last track is on some serious BOC shit. 

15. Forest Walker - UV Sea  Constilation Tatsu have always had an astoundingly consistent output of soundcloud ambience  but this tape from Oakland's Forest Walker is the next step above. UV Sea is an enveloping wave of humming machines and perfectly measured, piano that melt together. Ambient bliss of the finest order.

14. Ahnnu- Special Forces  I’ve been a massive Ahnnu fan since Battered Sphinx but always seem to overlook the LA surrealist when writing these dumb lists, his music is timelessly expressive and fascinating, Special Forces is yet another record to ad to his ludicrously high standards of experimentation. 

13. Mount Kimbie - Love What Survives Mount Kimbie were once ambassadors for a sound I really loved that only seemed to really exist in 2010-11 before it was consumed by pop culture and somehow became something different. James Blake is a pub singer playing stadiums now. Love What Survives rescues some of that sound but also offers a nerdist offering of their fascination with the MS-20 - one of my favourite synths.

12. William Basinski - A Shadow In Time Many debate the legitimacy of the connection between Basinski's Disintegration Loops to 9/11. On his first work that has actively engaged with the same technique since that career defining legacy, he crafts music that shifts over essentially large scales with new techniques to further unravel his difficult relationship with tragedy. It further homes in (and perhaps justifies) the most lauded conceptual framework of the his career. The two pieces introduce violent acts around the 6 minute mark, like a real marked event, by the distant end of the track's twentieth minute it's hard to remember what the pieces were like before fate reared its head.

11. Varg - Nordic Flora Series Pt. 3: Gore-Tex City   Varg takes contemporary popular music culture, purist independent ambient techno and our self perception in the digital age, irony and steely purpose and compresses it to a dense singular point. Then he boasts on instagram about how easy it was to make on his ipad. This is your reality, are you flying business class?

10. Albrecht La'Brooy - Escape Velocity  As with much of the Melbourne duo’s work Escape Velocity is yet another place making exercise but this time one that is interpretive and cosmic bound. Their previous records relied on personal experiences and recordings to supplement their sometimes astoundingly intricate soundscapes, this proved that they can project that same romance to places they could only dream of going without diminishing any of their music’s power. 

9. PAN - Mono No Aware Mono No Aware strikes a balance that few label comps could ever dream of, and feels as important as Artificial Intelligence must have. The record is an incredible distilled snapshot of the way ambient music operates within the music of today, eclectic enough to keep you on your toes and yet captures a beautiful static and very specific mood. The thought that has gone into this is immeasurable, it doesn't read as a collection as much as a modern ambient classic.

8. Baths - Romaplasm 

Born from the 2010’s era where poptimism and independent music were still distinctly separated, Bath’s masterful third full length gave me hope that there is still a pop utopia hiding in the queer underground.

7. Bing and Ruth - No Home Of The Mind Composer David Moore's neoclassical drone opus is waves upon waves of arpeggiated chords and shuddering, gut wrenching bass tones executed with mathematical, classical and emotional precision. Very few can do this type of thing.

6. Bjork - Utopia Utopia has been unfairly labelled Bjork’s “Happy Album,” unsurprisingly it’s far more complex than that. Bjork has become the perfect catalyst to bring out the best in Arca, strangely she grounds him but also manages to paint these surreal collages that are both “happy” and also somehow skin crawlingly weird. Their second meeting has resulted in my favourite Bjork album since Vespertine.

5. Shinichi Atobe - From the Heart, It's A Start, A Work Of Art The mysterious chain reaction expat has been pulled out of hiding revealing a plethora of stunning technoscapes, Atobe crafts three dimensional loops that weave in and out of each other with no beginning nor end. His distinctly Japanese sensibility puts him squarely in a lineage of greats like Rei Harakami Susumu Yokota and the beyond legendary Hiroshi Yoshimura who plucked the impossible out of the most simple of electronic constructions. There is something desperately elemental about it, as though he's trying to expose what it means to be human.

4. King Krule - The Ooz One hailed as the new voice of our generation, I never saw Archy as more than a modest fad, an english kid with a guitar and a deep voice. I’m very happy to be wrong, The Ooz is an incredible jazz fused odyssey and nothing sounds quite like it. Marshall plays with perception of the English language, bone shattering bass and quirky and brash areas of a lengthy album that open up into gorgeous interludes. His voice is one thing - and still notable - but his abilities as a producer and a lyricist are where things have become incredibly interesting. He’s getting a lot of attention right now and he deserves every bit of it and you don’t need me to tell you. 

3. Bibio - Phantom Brickworks  Phantom Brickworks borrows from just about every corner of modern ambient you could imagine. Basinski’s disintegration techniques, Glass’s repetition, GAS’s hiss, Eno’s placemaking melodies, this list goes on. What’s so absolutely remarkable about this is how an established artist who has never operated in this field has made such a convincing and beautiful masterpiece out of recycled ideas.

2. Skee Mask - Skee Series - ISS001 - 2012 / ISS002 After last year's already canonical Shred, The peerless German returns with a series gorgeously realised, ungodly pieces of ambiguous IDM. Both EP’s were razor sharp, bold statements from a producer with absolutely nothing to prove at this point. He has an LP on the way in 2018, repent sins, the messiah might be here.  

1. GAS - Narkopop Full disclaimer: I regularly regard GAS’s 2000 record Pop as my favourite of all time to the point where I once wrote an entire book about it. Wolfgang Voigt has done a lot since then including building one of the most important techno labels ever in Kompakt and continued to explore ambient avenues, but never returned under the GAS name. Myself and others started to loudly wonder if he ever would, or more importantly if he still could make this music. Pop perfected the formula he had been testing in the mid nineties, it sounded like the universe breathing, it gave new meaning to existing. The conclusion was always simple: Why would he?

Eyes fixed on the future, when Wolfgang brought back GAS for a fleeting remix of The Field a few years ago it felt unimportant but also opened up the possibility that he may not be done with the name. He had ever so slightly tarnished Pop’s perfect full stop. 17 years after Pop he’s exhaled another opus over the decades that does the GAS name justice and reinstates his god given right to walk away from it. One thing to readily note here is this record is certainly not Pop 2.0 as the title may suggest. Narkopop's new unstable nature brings fascinating, readily consumable answers to the question of where he planned to take us as well as obligatory nods to Konigsfrost and Zauberberg in overwhelming ecstatic waves of classical music. Narkopop is anything but nostalgia, it presents itself as a stunning individual entry into this once seemingly sealed vault. Gone are the naturalistic running streams of Pop’s opening three tracks, replaced by human voices on 3, horrifying militaristic drums on 5 and most strikingly, blindingly gorgeous piano fills, clear as day on 6. Its meaning was quickly clear.   Narkopop feels heavier than Pop ever did. It’s a velvety record, luxurious even but where Pop felt like it could have been accidentally made by the forest, Narkopop is undeniably the result of fingers on buttons and keys. Pop would never have let a human made piano fill enter the frame yet alone a voice. 17 years later perhaps Voigt can no longer achieve such feats, what’s more likely is he is trying to tell us that the world has gotten to the point where it won’t let him. Once a vision into the surreal side of nature, Narkopop seems to point the project somewhere it has never faced, nor needed to - the human condition required to program it. Not so strangely 2017 felt like the right year for him to do it and for me it was the best record of the strange year by a mile. 

[nickneyland]

2017, in no particular order.

Visible Cloaks - Reassemblage

Jlin - Black Origami

Bing & Ruth - No Home of the Mind

Various - Mono No Aware

Ryuichi Sakamoto - async

Pauline Anna Strom - Trans-Millenia Music

Children of Alice - Children of Alice

Dean Hurley - Anthology Resource 1

Alice Coltrane - World Spirituality Classics 1

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith - The Kid

Various - Outro Tempo: Electronic And Contemporary Music From Brazil 1978-1992

Circuit Des Yeux - Reaching for Indigo

Man Forever - Play What They Want

Horse Lords - Mixtape IV

Bitchin Bajas - Baja Fresh

Eric Copeland - Goofballs

Actress - AZD

Equiknoxx - Colón Man

Dustin Wong & Takako Minekawa - Are Euphoria

Lee Gamble - Mnestic Pressure

Colin Stetson - All This I Do For Glory

Yoko Ono - Fly

Various - Sensate Silk

Laurel Halo - Dust

James Holden - The Animal Spirits

The Focus Group - Stop-Motion Happening

Peaking Lights - The Fifth State of Consciousness

Neil Young - Hitchhiker

Flying Saucer Attack - New Lands

Fever Ray - Plunge

Look Blue Go Purple - Still Bewitched

Sparks - Hippopotamus

Four Tet - New Energy

LCD Soundsystem - american dream

EMA - Exile In The Outer Ring

Björk - Utopia

Oneohtrix Point Never - Good Time OST

Kendrick Lamar - DAMN

Can - The Singles

Delia Gonzalez - Horse Follows Darkness

Ben Frost - The Centre Cannot Hold

Tod Dockstader - Eight Electronic Pieces

[something-higher]

Top Albums and EPs of 2017

Ellen Arkbro – For Organ And Brass (Subtext)

Mountain of Air

Kara-Lis Coverdale – Grafts (Boomkat Editions)

Grafts

Circuit Des Yeux – Reaching For Indigo (Drag City)

Black Fly

Sarah Davachi - All My Circles Run (Students of Decay)

For Piano

Mr. Mitch - Devout (Planet Mu)

Priority

Bing & Ruth - No Home of the Mind (4AD)

The How of it Sped

Félicia Atkinson – Hand In Hand (Shelter Press)

I'm Following You

Helm – World In Action (The Trilogy Tapes)

Blue Scene

Laurel Halo - Dust (Hyperdub)

Do u ever happen

Luka Productions – Fasokan (Sahel Sounds)

Terriya

PLO Man – Powerline (Acting Press )

TX-i

Love Theme - Love Theme (Alter)

Docklands / Yaumatei / Plum Garden

TG Gondard - Le Château (Le Syndicat Des Scorpions)

Quand tu t'endors

Le Château by TG GONDARD

Porn Sword Tobacco – 2017 (Acido)

Untitled B1

Karen Gwyer – Rembo (Don't Be Afraid )

Why Does Your Father Look so Nervous?

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - On The Echoing Green (Mexican Summer )

A Song Of Summer

Coby Sey – Whities 010 (Whities)

Seed (Our Cells Meet)

Davy Kehoe – Short Passing Game (Wah Wah Wino )

Going Machine

The Necks – Unfold (Ideologic Organ)

Blue Mountain

Rotations - Golden Retriever (Thrill Jockey)

Pelagic Tremor

Accelera - Surplus (Acting Press )

Accelera - Tour Garden Segway

Actress - AZD (Ninja Tune )

Fantasynth

Ahnnu - Special Forces (NNA Tapes )

Return of Junkman

Ariel Pink - Dedicated To Bobby Jameson (Mexican Summer )

Another Weekend

Children of Alice - Children of Alice (Warp Records )

Cultivation - First Edition (Cultivation )

Arthur Colvin - The Lowlands

CULTIVATION - First Edition by Various Artists: WINDY & CARL, MAZRI / IMZRA, BLAIR FRENCH & ARTHUR COLVIN

Dopplereffekt - Cellular Automata (Leisure System )

Cellular Automata

Josiah Steinbrick - Meeting of Waters (Leaving Records )

(Vibraphone, Marimbaphone, Malleted Wood, Two Synthesizers)

Khotin - New Tab

Fever Loop

Pascäal – Plastic (Ways Inner Pass )

Dream Apes

Buttechno - Super Siziy King (Trilogy Tapes )

Poleva

IVVVO - Prince of Grunge (Nyx Unchained )

Prince of Grunge

Lee Gamble - Mnestic Pressure (Hyperdub )

A Tergo Real

Visible Cloaks - Reassemblage (Rvng Intl. )

Mask

The Focus Groop - Stop-Motion Happening With The Focus (Ghost Box )

Arpington Main

Various - Sounds of Sisso (Nyege Nyege Tapes )

Dogo Niga - Polisi

Sounds of Sisso by Dogo Niga

The Caretaker - Everywhere at the end of time - Stage 2 (History Always Favours The Winners )

The Caretaker - Everywhere at the end of time - Stage 2

[jacq0003]

2017

Age Coin ‎- Performance (Posh Isolation)

Alessandro Cortini And Merzbow (Important Records)

Alocasia Garden - A Double Life (Holy Geometry)

Ancestral Voices ‎- Divination (Horo)

Andrea Belfi - Ore (Float)

Angeles & Internazionale ‎– Vigilance (Janushoved)

Assel - This Will Not Stand (Where To Now?)

Basses-Terres - Counting Pulsations (BFDM)

Ben Frost - The Centre Cannot Hold (Mute)

Biosphere - The Petrified Forest (Biophon Records)

Blanck Mass - World Eater (Sacred Bones)

Bloom Offering - Unmasking The Wound (Clan Destine)

Boy Harsher - Country Girl (Self Released)

Carla Dal Forno - The Garden (Blackest Ever Black)

Chino Amobi - Paradiso (NON)

Coil - Time Machines (Dais Records) *

Coucou Chloe - Erika Jane (NUXXE)

De-Bons-en-Pierre ‎- Crepes (Dark Entries)

Dedekind Cut ‎- The Expanding Domain (Self Released)

Demdike Stare ‎- Circulation (DDS)

Drab Majesty ‎- The Demonstration (Dais Records)

Drew McDowall ‎- Unnatural Channel (Dais Records)

Dufwa - Fältinspelningar från Terres de l'Ebre (XKatedral)

éntha - Vuidur​/​Lyfíd (Strange Rules)

Equiknoxx - Colon Man (DDS)

F Ingers - Akwardly Blissing Out (Blackest Ever Black)

Felicia Atkinson - Hand In Hand (Shelter Press)

Fis and Rob Thorne - Clear Stones (Subtext)

Foreign - Redemption (Eye For An Eye Recordings)

Foudre! ‎- Earth (Gizeh Records)

Gonçalo Salgado - Vulcão da Cólera (Eye For An Eye Recordings)

Goner - Yogascum (Hospital Productions)

group A - group A (Mannequin)

Heavenly Music Corporation ‎- Lunar Phase (Astral Industries) *

Hypnobeat - Prototech (Dark Entries)

Horoscope - Nature will grow even after you have lost everything (Ascetic House)

Internazionale - The Pale And The Colourful (Posh Isolation)

JASSS - Weightless (iDeal Recordings)

JS Aurelius - Emergency Contact Ringtone (Joy De Vivre)

Kara-Lis Coverdale - Grafts (Boomkat Editions)

Kedr Livanskiy - Ariadna (2MR)

Konrad Sprenger - Stack Music (PAN)

Krikor Kouchian ‎- Pacific Alley (L.I.E.S.)

Kyo - I Musik (Posh Isolation)

KӢR - Mramorje (Yerevan Tapes)

Lakker - Eris Harmonia (Eotrax)

Laurel Halo - Dust (Hyperdub)

Lee Gamble - Mnestic Pressure (Hyperdub)

Luka Productions - Fasokan (Sahel Sounds)

M.E.S.H. - Hesaitix (PAN)

Machinery Attack Vol. 1 (Smashing Tape)

Maurizio Bianchi / Abul Mogard ‎- Nervous Hydra / All This Has (Ecstatic)

Mika Vainio - Reat (Elektro Music Department)

Mondkopf ‎- They Fall, But You Don't (In Paradisum)

Morteza Hannaneh - Tchashm-E-Del (Collapsing Market) *

Nene Hatun ‎- Metacommunication (Bedouin Records)

Nico Niquo ‎- In A Silent Way (Orange Milk)

Noveller - A Pink Sunset For No One (Fire Records)

Nuances - Punctuations Of Joy And Despair (Bastakiya Tapes)

OAKE ‎- Sentiment Of Callousness (SNTS)

Oiseaux-Tempête ‎- Al-'An! الآن (And Your Night Is Your Shadow - A Fairy-tale Piece Of Land To Make Our Dreams) (Sub Rosa)

Oto Hiax ‎- Oto Hiax (Editions Mego)

Pact Infernal - Infernality (Horo)

Pan Daijing - Lack (PAN)

Penelope's fiance - Farasan Racer (Detriti Records)

Pessimist - Pessimist (Blackest Ever Black)

Petit Singe - Akash Ganga (Haunter Records)

Pharmakon - Contact (Sacred Bones Records)

Philippe Hallais - An American Hero (Modern Love)

Pye Corner Audio - The Spiral (Mondo Tones)

Rabit - Les Fleurs Du Mal (Halcyon Veil)

Raime - Our Versions Of Their Versions (Reel Torque)

Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement ‎- Ambient Black Magic (Hospital Productions)

RAMZi - Pèze​-​Piton (12th Isle)

Rosen & Spyddet ‎- Fantasia (Janushoved)

Ryuichi Sakamoto ‎- Async (Milan)

Shit And Shine - Some People Really Know How To Live (Editions Mego)

Sixth June ‎- Virgo Rising (aufnahme + wiedergabe)

Smersh - M Appeal EP (Knekelhuis)

Sofia Ozdravovna - Housewife At The End Of The World (AVA)

Soho Rezanejad - Uplifter (Janushoved)

Somali Extract - Pareidolia (Ascetic House)

Sote ‎- Sacred Horror In Design (Opal Tapes)

Still - I (PAN)

Sully - Escape (Keysound)

The Bug Vs Earth - Concrete Desert (Ninja Tune)

The Sprawl ‎- Reel Torque: Volume 17 (According To Bananenbrood)

Tomoko Sauvage - Musique Hydromantique (Shelter Press)

Tourist Gaze - To Grow Across Meetings (AVA)

VA - 80s Underground Cassette Culture Volume 1 (Contort Yourself)

VA - BFDM015 (BFDM x LIES)

VA - Farewell (Atrium)

VA - Mono No Aware (PAN)

Varg - Nordic Flora Series Pt. 3: Gore​-​Tex City (Northern Electronics)

Visible Cloaks ‎- Reassemblage (Rvng Intl.)

Visionist - Value (Big Dada)

Why Be & Backtearer - dc (Janus)

Wolf Eyes - Undertow (Low Floor Music)

Yair Elazar Glotman & Mats Erlandsson - Negative Chambers (Miasmah)

Yves Tumor ‎- Experiencing The Deposit Of Faith (Self Released)