Before I get started on my own stuff, I am going to talk about some of the music that made me happy, or at least emotionally satisfied. 2024 was crap in so many ways: I mean, just look out the window. But there were a lot of good things I heard this year.
Other people’s music
Actress’ Statik has rarely left my earphones. It’s excellent ambient and dark in places, but consistently strikes a certain mood, not wholly positive, but not wholly negative either. Get it!
Viki Steiri’s Balm – just wow. Great beats, and excellent use of cello. I hate chamber music-type use of strings, but this is great, skillful, atonality but that you can still get a groove on to in places.
Kleis by Somaticae and Surface Tension by aircode were great things to discover. Off-kilter breaks that remind me of the spirit of drill and bass, but without retreading the sounds. If you buy Kleis, get the cassette if there are any left, because ‘Kleis III’, the cassette only track is the best track. There’s still tuneful stuff in there, but rewards those who revel in texture. Also the aircode album goes drum n’ bass-ish in a couple of places. Also on the same label, Ludwig Wandinger’s Spiritual Decay was something I bought and spent a long time with.
I did a bit of digging into James Holden this year, who I hadn’t heard much about since The Idiots Are Winning, because I don’t really read the dance music press. But I follow him on Mastodon now, and this led me to his collaboration with Waclaw Zimpel, Long Weekend, and in turn led me to Zimpel’s Japanese Journal Vol. 1, which contains the best electronic, clarinet and bread(!) track you’ll ever hear.
Other than that Aube – an artist that I found out about through a Jim O’Rourke interview has been so rewarding to listen to. Noise, yes, but without being edgelord. It’s actually quite relaxing in places.
Manja Ristic is an artist I’ve also found out about this year, lots of field recording, often with hydrophones, but also some noise and instruments. She has a great album, Dew, on Okla Records, which is on my wishlist, but I’ve been listening a lot to Tape and Fields. Okla also released Plasticene by Wound – a sort of docu-drama ambient album about the plastic apocalypse. Much better than it sounds.
Øy put out the only ambient/downtempo techno album with tapdancing as a lead instrument that I have ever heard. My description doesn’t do it justice. It’s a live album, and is actually my album of the year. Love it so much. Great textures and great use of the tapdancing to trigger other electronic events.
Honorary mentions
- Caterina Barbieri – Myuthafoo – new album to me this year.
- Hiroshi Yoshimura – Music For Nine Postcards (Wave Notation) – again new to me.
- Terry Riley – A Rainbow in Curved Air
- Ether Diver – Psychedelic Ghost Stories
- The Liquid Clear – None
- Various Iannis Xenakis and Ligeti works, which I left at my office by mistake.
- Éliane Radigue & Frédéric Blondy – Occam XXV
- Aphex Twin – Selected Ambient Works 2 Expanded edition
- M. U. R. O. – RoAD E.P.
- Soft Generator – ack.now.ledge – also new to me.
- Guru Guru – Hinten
- Uma parede de ouvidos – Algorithms of Anipathy
My music
At the start of 2024, Rusty and I put out the first EP from our Prompt Engineer project, the idea behind which was “harsh noise but not aggressive”. We even have some slow-to-medium breakbeats in there. put out a noise experiment, Tape Music, several standalone tracks, two standalone singles with B-sides (Confiture and Shigin), the technoey post-rock album Reundo, my ambient album on tape Unbalanced Humours and the other day I banged out a compilation of some YouTube jams to download for free. Some of those YouTube jams are actually quite nice (in my opinion); all are improvised or semi-improvised.
Quite prolific, I think, and that’s only about half of the stuff I recorded this year. Music has been a major release for me emotionally, instead of stressing out about my PhD and some bereavement, and aging family, and attempting to raise a teenager. So, yeah, some good things to balance out the garbage world.
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