Welcome back, everyone, to a very festive expedition, the season when bands and artists from all over the world battle it out for end-of-year blogosphere glory. Get your clicking fingers ready.
And, luckily for me, I am funded by my own lowly wage jobs I work, and not the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the newly fallen at the hands of our licentious president. Just the same, appropriately enough, most of the artists on this list, if not all, work side jobs, or else are of very humble means, doing what they do out of love for the craft and genuine dedication. I swear, I really don’t deliberately emphasize underground music over the mainstream. It just happens to be the stuff that inspires me the most, fitting, when you think about it, for its decreased association with currency and bigwig interests.
I have to give a quick thanks, first of all, to North Carolina rapper Illpo, for getting back to me on Bandcamp about who produced his album. Afterward, I realized I could have just looked up the information on Google, but it’s nice anyway interacting with the artists directly, who almost always prove to be intelligent, sharp, kind, awesome people to encounter.
Thank you to the London rave scene, one of the last true musical zeitgeists remaining active and auspicious on this planet. Thank you to Scandinavian jazz. No, I’m not kidding. Actually, I think some of that stuff might be funded publically, though to fruitful, gratifying results, no less. Thank you to Spotify for letting me embed the playlists, and to you, the reader and listener. Just as all the best movies have great soundtracks, our lives, themselves, should as well, and this avocation of mine is meant as fuel for yours, rather than any guidance or ruling to live by. Anyway, don’t do anything Pixel Grip wouldn’t do.
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Honorable Mention:
Matt Pond PA – The Ballad of the Natural Lines
Franz Ferdinand – The Human Fear
Anarchitact – Daddication (EP)
THE MELLOS – THEMELLOS PRESENT: Wst. Taylor TIED IN
The Main Squeeze – Panorama
HARLEM electronics – Cage
Yaya Bey – do it afraid
Butcher Brown – Letters from the Atlantic
Sarter Kit – What I Am and What I’m Not
Nicole McCabe – A Song to Sing
N NAO – Nouveau Language
Adam O’Farrill – For These Streets
Matt Ulery – MOTHER HARP
Kedr Livanskiy – Myrtus Myth
TOKiMONSTA – Eternal Reverie
Billy Mohler – The Eternal
Motman & Micall Parksun – The Revenge of the SiXth
The Out-Sect – Primitive Sound
Annie Hall – Practical Optimism (EP)
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50 Herbert & Momoko – Clay
A seemingly unlikely electronica/classical duo joins forces this year and gives us Clay, a full, ambient LP that comes across way smooth and unpretentious for being the work of something almost approaching a “supergroup.” To be sure, techno veteran Matthew Herbert seems especially adept at deterring artistic direction to the crooning visionary singer/drummer Momoko Gill, and so artistic originality aplenty is to be had, in the end result. Especially singular on this project, ultimately, is the refined gentility of the final mix, on a project which does feature live drums — the instruments still blend together as if it’s an album by Twin Shadow or Four Tet, with perhaps a little more warmth in vocals and emotion vitalizing the expedition.
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49 Hilary Woods – Night CRIU
I think it’s clear the British are winning the DD World Cup here — Miss Woods crashes the list party with not only something that’s the product of London, but also defiantly, boisterously different from anything else that seems to be germinating in the city these days, musically. Night CRIU (which refers to a technical acronym for “Checkpoint/Restore in Userspace,” apparently), crawls along with adamantly dark, somber vision, like an incarnation of chamber pop sure to make you down enough not to try to imitate the operation yourself, at least anytime soon after listening. One particularly enlivening facet of this LP is the element of background vocals on opener “Voce”; which sound like they’re emanating from some sort of youth or high school choir, kind of like the characters in Peanuts singing around that cartoon Christmas tree — ya know, in a good way.
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48 Von Pea & The Other Guys – Putcha Weight on it
I guess not having a Wikipedia page is 2025’s version of being “underground.” Von Pea, in general, comes across as a blue-collar, honest, moderately street-tough type of emcee, with pretty original lyrics, and he’s purported by his economic allies as being a “legend,” although that term is clearly bandied about pretty loosely. On the whole, anyway, this is a fairly enjoyable LP, with gritty guest appearances from Che Noir and Oddisee, a couple of fellow East Coast b-boys, and a collection of soulful beats courtesy of production team The Other Guys.
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47 Apollo Brown – Elevator Music
In the tradition of Detroit DJ’s, Apollo Brown takes things in way more laid-back, almost stoned direction from J Dilla, so just call it lounge music for the dispensary era. The energy is not lesser, here, though, just rendered in broader strokes, making room for an eclectic, orchestral genus of sounds to add their own unique flavors to these mixes — think DJ music that could play in a concert hall, if you will. “Shallow Breaths” is an amazingly smooth, almost ethereal session in textural IDM that reaches out to the jazz genre, in the general mode of The Detroit Experiment, perhaps, with some tense but placid piano runs taking the melodic helm, at about the midway point. Think, a 100-square-foot elevator with a Crown Royal depot and a rude, fat dude sitting there in a robe and sunglasses, more or less, and that’s your boogie.
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46 PremRock – Did You Enjoy Your Time Here…?
What better time than 2025 for a New York hip-hop revival? Finally, this year, you’re getting a lot of these emcees getting in the studio and hitting us with verbose street diction that sounds refreshingly humble, not catering to radio, as if being real with us is finally enough, once again. And if Rat King, Aesop Rock, etc., tend to come across a little more like posturing, attempts at “taking over the game,” then that further articulates what I’m talking about here, contrasting then with this low-profile but heady new breed. PremRock himself, perhaps, says it best: “You can’t apply lacquer to the void”, over a beat that it would take over a year to parse — like Pharrell souped up with a steady diet of Big Apple swanky, with subtle bass and lavish percussions sounds creating a surreal, distinct sonic canopy.
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45 Cahl Sel – Blue (EP)
It must be funny being a “producer and DJ based in… (your) hometown, San Francisco,” as Cahl Sel is listed on Bandcamp. On one hand, you’d think the crowded populace and the apparently loosened moral standards, as have generally been publicized, would make for the ideal, and fruitful, landscape for techno and club music. Yet, when you think of Bay Area lore, as pertains to music, it’s mostly hippies, Journey and E-40. Blue sounds like an EP the work of a musical mind who’s never really cared, and still doesn’t, about the lack of local notoriety his genre seems to gather. These songs are gorgeous, original, inspired and even strangely emotional, despite being instrumentals, with the opening title track harboring a sort of benevolent, hopeful vibe, typically associated with all things azure, no less, and, in general, this DJ commanding an amount of swagger which makes us think he’s gotten more props in his career than we noticed.
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44 Thread Heather – La Distance (EP)
A promising debut techno EP is always an exciting thing, as we get with Tokyo’s Thread Heather and this punctilious, detailed and refined paean at hand here. And in terms of all the 20-minute club sessions on this list, La Distance seems to live up to its name by providing a stylistic “distance” between one track and another, in stark contrast to the extendeds here which tend to sound the same from front to back. The title track here gallops along here with a house beat and also a back beat, the latter of which is so screwed and loaded with seemingly-accidental syncopation, by way of overdub, that it can’t help but come off fresh and original.
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43 Raul Monsalve & Los Forajidos – SOL
I feel like going full-on garb here like Mr. Peterman from Seinfeld, trekking it down to Venezuela and getting the inside “scoop” on the musical phenomena manifesting down there. To be honest, though, I’ve never been the type. First of all, it discredits the artist at hand. This stuff will always be an enterprise of anxiety and risk. Peter Tosh was assassinated and Bob Marley’s house got shot up, in Jamaica. Ultimately, SOL is very full of spirit, if nothing else, with the repeated mantras often associable with Latin music, beats that I think are programmed, but come across organic nonetheless, and a crazy, eccentric approach to instrumentation, including this Casio keyboard whose presence seems just funky enough, like the one on “Think for Yourself” by The Beatles.
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42 ZekeUltra – Babel Tower
On paper, Delaware emcee ZekeUltra would have no chance of making this list (and no, I don’t mean for the fact that he’s from Delaware). He’s got this kind of aw-shucks delivery, as if he thinks hip-hop is a joke, and the beat to album opener “Good Company” is so steeped in the sort of clichéd soul samples that have been popular in underground for the last 10 years that I should have been tempted to throw the whole thing on the fire. Upon a deeper listen, though, track two “No Bezel” does furnish a beat that’s way more original — almost ambient in its low-key, low-percussion slyness. And I don’t really know why Ultra assumes this sort of half-mocking vocal tone, but he does come off, on the whole, as having a lot to say, and to kind have a fresh, even rude, perspective on the streets, which is often rendered through terse, sharp observations and clever wordplay.
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41 xicada – ENGAGING ANIMAL EARTH
Toronto DJ xicada is certainly adept at truth in advertising — album opener “Bardo” actually sounds like a late night on a camping trip out in nature, full of chirping noises, rampant rustling and not much going on tonally. Things get a little more chordal on “INNERVAJRA”; a track which retains xicada’s busy, chaotic approach to rhythm, toward a jungle-y result not worlds removed from the great Gary, Indiana DJ Jlin. Things only continue down the ominous, relentless musical path for the title track, which incorporates more breakneck, erratic rhythm and peppers in a slight element of spoken-word sound bite, on which I think the woman is saying “To porous night”. It’s abundantly clear, at this point, xicada’s love/hate relationship with nighttime, and the drama playing out is an undeniably fun, rewarding listen.
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40 Pixel Grip – Percepticide: The Death of Reality
Chicago noir-pop weirdos and DD veterans Pixel Grip are back this year with a rhythmic, darkly conceptual LP that’s as progressive and musically precocious as it is spooky and foreboding. Right away, on opener “Crows Feast”; lead singer Rita Luka sings “I wish we’d never met / It turns out you’re one of them”. It’s not really clear what she means, but with her serious, urgent emotional tone, you’ll be more inclined to brace yourself and inspect for more catastrophe of the heart than you will to overanalyze. “Bet You Do” is a full-bodied, robust blend of Kylie Minogue pop and club techno, and “Stamina” is, well, a song you don’t want to hear at a wedding or with your grandparents around. He**, just call it a great awakening.
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39 D-CELL SOUND TEAM – unbeatable [ost]
The first time I listened to this 39-track “album,” which Bandcamp describes as “the complete score and soundtrack to UNBEATABLE, a game by D-CELL published by Playstack,” I had no idea it was video game music, which should measure as a compliment, I suppose. Interestingly, this four-person team on this project seems to be most or all women, just as Ikonika, a leading electronica musician originally proviso of video game music, goes by the real name of Sara Abdel-Hamid. In terms of this loose, erratic set of songs, the genre dynamic is undeniable, with some of it reduced almost entirely to melancholic acoustic guitar, while disorienting and weird, in a sense, but things start fomenting up toward some sort of J-Dilla “beats” territory with “CALL_HOME” and “‘bed,’” among others. Another standout is “homework soup,” hence alleviating fears of both artistic ennui and excessive seriousness, as well.
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38 Jaleel Shaw – Painter of the Invisible
Somewhat like New York’s answer to Kamasi Washington, Jaleel Hill takes his saxophone and soaks the mix in virtuosic noodling and improvisation, toward hypnotic, gratifying results. Painter of the Invisible is full of lengthy, robust jazz songs, of the sort of refreshingly unstructured DNA that used to be pretty much a prerequisite to the genre. Is it possible that the Price is Right theme song is objectively the perfect music? Somehow, when this jazz fare starts to be the most gratifying, something about the intervals often resembles the theme music to that show. Anyway, the final product is uplifting and distinct, if strangely familiar, and his reference to “Beantown”; along with the use of the nickname and not the city’s official term, exudes love and vitality, two things well potentiated in the music itself, too.
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37 FloFilz – Hagaki
Hagaki, according to Bandcamp, though the creation of a white DJ in Berlin, conceives itself as “a musical love letter to Japan,” hence all of the tracks having alternate titles in Japanese. Indeed, coming across a little too laid-back for Berlin, a town heralded worldwide for its late-night dance club depravity, Hagaki saunters about casually, but balanced, tonal and soothing, letting ambient percussion replace the impetus for booty-bumping, to authoritative results. “Setagaya Samba” makes strides, for itself, toward proving the eclecticism of this album, incorporating acoustic guitar tracking, above the stock, IDM “beat” territory, the result making for something like if a traditional musician stumbled into a stoned Four Tet session. This song also features a brief vocal track, bizarrely placed toward the end, sung in Japanese, apparently toward some inscrutable, unreachable truth, which I think was kind of the point anyway.
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36 Iona Zajac – Bang
The whole expedition of music must just be NURTURED to a greater extent in London than it is back in the States. As a result, we get all these wonderful divas crafting these deliberate, austere pop albums, full of music whose songwriting is expedited, but whose mood is dark, and real, like Sharon Van Etten, commensurate to the general emotional landscape in 2025 and completely authentic. Bang is dark, seemingly in fabric, ahead of so in subject matter or “focus,” like the months of September through December, when the sun seems lower and the cloudy days gradually becoming more plentiful. It’s music during which you won’t want to be too loud or sudden when you’re picking up that sock that’s been sitting in the corner of your office for the last six months. I’ll put it that way.
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35 Jimmy Greene – As We Are Now
The aesthetic here is absolutely gorgeous, with subtle Hammond organ whispers draping the quintessentially jazz landscape, Jimmy Greene’s saxophone doing stylish battle with textural keyboard on opener “Praises.” “Hypnotic” would be an apt word with to describe As We Are Now, like a reassuring voucher in favor of the present, or simple antidote to numb the listener of all his or her pains and worries. As seems to be the style, this album features a track-two with vocals, a la Javier Colon, the result a kind of playfully lilting fashion toward melancholy, too glib and light-on-its-feet, though, to bog down the operation, rather providing a dynamic that helps this LP go down smoothly as ever.
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34 Linda May Han Oh – Strange Heavens
Master of the upright bass and proud Australian, Linda May Han Oh lathers up here a double dose of tense, busy jazz music, a key catalyst in the advancement of the craft and lessonbook in disciplined chamber music. Overall, she’s got a precocious way of spotlighting herself, on bass, while also letting Ambrose Akinmusire take virtuosic hold of the average track, with verbose, unencumbered improvisation and sonic undulation. Again, she seems to want to spotlight the second track, slowing things down here conspicuously and drawing the listener’s attention in to her subtle, lightly mixed bass runs, like a quiet kid making an intriguing off-task doodle that catches everybody’s eye in the back of art class.
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33 Park Shadow – Altitudez (EP)
Altitudez finds Finnish DJ Park Shadow splashing a bath of cold water on our faces — a gritty, hard-hitting and texturally blunt techno EP taking a page from jungle for precocious rave festivity. In part incorporating vocal sample that plays like a relieving breath of fresh air, this is the type of collection which will reveal additional elements upon repeated listens, as these tracks are densely packed with multifarious, resonant sounds and techniques, with nothing sounding ordinary or conventional. The bass synth on “Ascension”; anyway, makes for a track aptly termed, taking this EP to the next level of musical synergy and force, and melting the mind of the listener, the way a dutiful rave is supposed to, of course.
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32 Mantra – Shades of Rave, Vol. 1 (EP)
Listening to Shades of Rave, Vol. 1 after slow, subdued jazz seems like the result of a journey made with Han Solo, in a sense. We now jettison to the opposite reach of the universe for some relentless, robust dance club techno, like, as in, the kind for smoking some laced cheeba to. London DJ mantra gets down to work without hesitation on the busy, house-leaning “Brenda Brenda”; and the results sound as invigorating and even dangerous as they do professional and crisp. Mantra is emerging as a key torch bearer in the London dance scene, perfecting the 20-minute EP in all its cultural sovereignty and mastering the rave vibe with an unsettling journey into the heart of the mind.
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31 Steven Lugerner – SLUGish Ensemble: Urban Crawl
Saxophonist Steven Lugerner, here, is so bold as to add to San Francisco’s auspicious music scene with a disciplined, almost-erratic but inspired LP, SLUGish Ensemble: Urban Crawl. The emphasis, I suppose, seems to be on slowing down, taking stock and enjoying the moment, as well as, of course, saving money in that incredibly expensive city. Anyway, Lugerner’s sax chops belt forth with worlds of stamina and style, the notes and intervals always seeming to chafe convention and direct things in their own way, toward a great confluence of tension and listenability. In fact, this music is so hypnotic that it’s easy not even to notice when the keyboardist takes the helm from Lugerner in the soloing. It’s just like this city slicker to operate like stealth in the night, I suppose.
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30 Welcome Strawberry – desperate flower
Keeping it in Cali here, we put on the incense and bust out the flowers for the blissed-out, dosed-out pop savant Welcome Strawberry, whose trippy, ethereal dirges remind me a little bit of the sampled-vocals tracks from fellow Californian DJ Nobody, to not regrettable results, of course. Opener “fragrance net” is absolutely otherworldly, sauntering along like a surreal, hazy day with synth baths, erratic percussion and, of course, treated vocals, in tow. Listening to the incredible textures and sound dynamics at work here, it’s hard to believe this artist is primarily a guitarist, as his Spotify photo would indicate. “doings of a wraith”; anyway, reasserts his allegiance to synthesizer and androgynous pop fabric, unleashing, in the meantime, more subdued, subtle vocals in the vein of Snow Patrol or twee pop bands like DD darling Blue Zero.
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29 CIVIC – Chrome Dipped
I guess rock isn’t extinct yet, thanks in part to this surfacing in Australia in the form of the four-piece, who let on very little info about themselves on their Bandcamp page, but pull the cup in the studio with some straight-ahead, punk-inspired rock in the vein of IDLES or Titus Andronicus, if you want to get historic about it. It’s when they take a key left stylistic turn and get melodic and poignant on the title track, unleashing a sort of Morrissey/glam-rock influence, that this band starts to make a name for themselves and hew out their niche in the industry.
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28 NZO – Come Alive
This glitchy IDM from the UK relies heavily on a dubstep influence and might come across too brainy to some. That is, it might be to sporadic and textural to really “bang” in a club, and anybody who put this stuff on at a party might be seen as pretentious. Still, it does make for an enjoyable enough solitary listen, with many lively, fresh kick, snare and hat sounds flooding the party, with almost a slight jungle leaning toward Jlin territory It is indeed a jungle of sounds, without question, and on “Rolling around”; the burps of bass synth even remind me of a tiger’s roar. This is electronica music with a vengeance, without question.
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27 Golden Apples – Shooting Star
Let’s face it, this is the time of year for sedate, nay ambient indie rock, and Philly’s Golden Apples hark back to the glory days of Snow Patrol, Midlake and Sufjan Stevens with some deliberate, hypnotic melodies and grooves to soundtrack your relaxed hot-cider exploits all across the land. A bit of terse whammy bar makes an entrance on “Noonday Demon”; which, true to indie form, comes across more like a joke between two people playing Magic: the Gathering than anything actually tactilely ominous or threatening. On track three “Mind”; Russell Edling beckons us with “I gotta get outta mind / You gotta get outta your mind too”; the type of thing registering as a potential stoner anthem designed more for 30-somethings plagued by everyday life than beach-bod teenagers, or any monetarily focused target audience. Yup, this music is about as indie as it gets.
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26 Pearl Charles – Desert Queen
Oh yeah, Taylor Swift knew this one was trouble when she walked in. So Cal’s Pearl Charles spices this whole LP with pop music that feels purposeful and soulful, calling to mind Motown, Carole King and others, all with the fantastic tool of a wonderful, celestially gorgeous singing voice. In lyrical themes, she’s approachable while not being corny or clichéd, an accomplishment that certainly seems rare in radio-ready pop these days, as if all of the ideas are things we’ve never thought of before as possible subjects for songs, but almost did, like the adjacent thought over. My favorite track is “Step Too Far”; a smooth, vaguely aching jam that could probably please a crowd at a party, or in a grocery store — He**, everywhere except a wedding, probably.
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25 Brad Mehldau – Ride into the Sun
The Dutch Brad Mehldau orchestrates on Ride into the Sun a sophisticated, world-weary brand of jazz, complete with lilting piano runs, broad song structures and undeniable purpose. By the time you hear the stupefying instrumentation on “Tomorrow Tomorrow”; anyway, the standout track featuring Grizzly Bear’s Daniel Rossen, it becomes as easy to categorize this music as classical as it does jazz. Either way, the whole thing plays as inspired as it does orchestral, on its complete own plane of originality from start to finish, and even features its own 20-piece “orchestra,” as is credited on Bandcamp. I’m not sure if the Dutch government funded this recording or what but you’ve gotta admit that’s pretty impressive.
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24 The Sorcerers – Other Worlds and Habitats
This Leeds jazz quartet makes the unique distinction of an “Ethio-inpsired” approach (referring to the country Ethiopia, that is), which apparently involves, in part, the use of “Jen 73 piano, Mellotron and Farfisa Compact Duo.” Well, if it may appease the listener any, this stuff sounds remarkably approachable and palatable, perhaps more geared for parties or swanky dinners than work or study, but still muscling out some solid grooves by way of virtuosic saxophone grooves to get everyone’s foot tapping, like a funky, Herbie-Hancock-approximating incarnation of the genre. It’s the way they can get tense and subtle, though, while remaining funky, on tracks like “Ancestral Machines”; that seals the deal.
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23 Rainy Miller – Joseph, What Have You Done?
We’re talking, THICK British accent, like Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Well, edgy pop DJ Rainy Miller is from the North country — Manchester, to be specific, a place with official buildings that still resemble castles, but that nonetheless seems to regularly pump out vital music, most notably rock from the 1908s and 1990s like The Stone Roses and Oasis. It’s also Morrissey’s original hometown. Right away, on Joseph, What Have You Done?, Rainy Miller sounds embittered and desperate, like the product of a locale that unscrupulously attempts to kill you, throw you under the bus, if you will. This album is dark, brooding and anatomically authentic, an apparent dying breed within today’s gaggle of autotuned pop and spraypainted optimism. “An Obsidian Lake Spews out of Me.” is an abrupt jolt into dubstep doodling, following a guitar track, and in general, keeping you off balance is one of Miller’s strengths, and part of what makes this album so meaningful and rewarding.
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22 Illpo – THELONIUS PAPERS
Greensboro, North Carolina emcee Illpo (ILLPO) is the administrator of a robust, effortless flow, with the kind of emphasis and inflections that just exude genuineness and real street diction. The beats are laid-back but eclectic, with Kevin Kaous on production, making a nice and innocuous backdrop for Illpo’s verbose delivery and copious personality. “HUNNIT BOOK” finds a way to be a standout, in a way, hitting a little bit darker, and finding the emcee’s disposition a little more serious and diction a little clearer: “And all the fallacies were forcefed / Like a boar’s head / Walking through your doorsteps”. On some tracks, he even gets as hype as Busta Rhymes, giving the album a strong dynamic, and contributing to a more fun, repeatable listen.
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21 Suzzallo – The Quiet Year
It’s funny hearing a Seattle band in 2025 that so resembles just straight-ahead, no-frills grunge sound. Suzzallo’s grooves and influence genus seem so basic that the listener might think they’re from a place so off the beaten path as my native Indiana, or Oklahoma, or something like that. Well, the circumstances speak for themselves — a fatal car crash which took the life of the son of lead singer Rocky Votolato. And this stuff is the work of a fighter, indeed — all over this LP, the emotion is genuine, the intensity thick and undeniable and the lyrical themes dark and unflagging. “The Destroyer” is in particular a standout, with its acrobatic guitar riff, and explosive, petulant guitar solo, which almost seems too defiant and steeped in staggering denial and grief to take the shape of a melody.
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20 Citric Dummies – Split with Turnstile
It doesn’t get much more punk than “I don’t like anything!”, the album-opener title and vocal exclamation issued in growl form by David Lunch, bassist/vocalist in burgeoning Minneapolis punk band the Citric Dummies. True to form, in general, this album just exudes authenticity — the anger, the disenchantment, the sense of urgency and of course the love for Bad Religion are all there in full force, helping to cement this as an important punk album within the 2020’s decade (actually, I had to check and see if this wasn’t like a re-release from 1983, which could certainly be interpreted as a compliment to the band). And yeah, Lunch still sounds angry singing the song that’s about a Chinese restaurant. Oh, the perils it administers to his waistline, I suppose.
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19 Added Dimensions – Jane from Preoccupied America
At some point, you knew some of these post-millennial girls who worship Nirvana, but are too embarrassed to admit they like the Backstreet Boys too, would start churning out some music. Enter Added Dimensions, the work of a pop-punk duo from Richmond, Virginia, fronted by Sarah Everton, and devoted to paring down song structure to its absolute bare necessities, with ample catchy hooks in place. Playing as fairly close to the territory of Cobain and company covering The Vaselines, with some pretty but charmingly, vaguely angry and urgent vocals at the fore, Jane from Preoccupied America is punk with a love for metal interval (think tri-tone, etc.), putting her unwitting subject of “America” on a leash and walking it down the street to simple but stalwart grooves.
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18 Mara Simpson – Living Matter
I love looking for music on Bandcamp, because it’s a quest which has the potential for turning up things like ambient IDM created “in response to a set of poems by JLM Morton,” something you’re probably not likely to find anywhere in Trump’s America. Sure enough, Mara Simpson is a DJ based in Stroud, UK, and the results of her toils are about as far from the base, booty-driven objectives of the mainstream as you can imagine. This is music mimicking nature, essentially, like Wilco’s “Muzzle of Bees” without guitar, instead favoring light, agile and erratic percussion and gentle but emphatic synth and piano draperies, very much in the vein of Julia Holter. Vocals finally surface midway through “Filaments” — subtle, slow and easy croons to guide the music, rather than direct it.
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17 BlackLiq & Dub Sonata – Much Given, Much Tested
BlackLiq is a funny kind of rapper, because the whole first track on this new album, “Mistaken”; is about how he sat down one time to write some rhymes, and couldn’t think of any, even on drugs, so he pimped a beat from New York’s Dub Sonata, and the rest was history. It’s especially amusing in that he sounds like Busta Rhymes’ homeless, drug addict brother — voice nasal, crackly, practically falling apart, but resting on this set of quirks and peculiarities for some key freshness, spicing his effortless flow and sense of rhythm. “Ordinary” hops along at a steady, brisk pace, with the beat calling to mind classic New Yorkers like Pete Rock, and a guest appearance from Nickelus F adding some cockiness and edgy street energy.
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16 Say Sue Me – Time is Not Yours (EP)
The comparisons to Shonen Knife would be obvious, I suppose, if you aren’t too sensitive to ethnic profiling. Really, the two are coming from their own islands: the songwriting, chord progressions and lyrics seem deeper here and more significant, like an increased sense of urgency is lording over the proceedings, yielding, nonetheless, that seminal twee vibe of innocence and devotion to traditional song structure. Anyway, for a 22-minute rock album to rank this highly on this list, the level of consistency would have to be just about perfect, and that’s just what I found Time is Not Yours to represent, with a killer riff governing “Vacation” over a stark, purposeful set of chords, and the delicious hooks and melodies seeming to flood closeur “Bone Pink” like a an uncontrollable strain. Yup, it’s par for the course.
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15 Fabia Mantwill Orchestra – IN.SIGHT
A look at the comely jazz diva Fabia Mantwill, along with the information that she’s based in the rather Babylonian sin-city of Berlin, might call to mind some base, booty-related objectives, as it were. Instead, what we get is pretty much the opposite — all instrumental songs, all lengthy and expansive, and no radio or apparent monetary objectives involved, it would seem. This is easy, Sunday-driving jazz music for the people ready to breathe out and take stock of the world’s beauty, with Mantwill’s saxophone vaguely coddling the helm, rather than conspicuously seizing it. All over this album, the mixes seems well balanced and bolstered by the supporting cast, making for a product that pays off consistently, and continues to morph stylistically toward worldly eclecticism.
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14 Sharon Mansur – Trigger
Wow, music from Israel… what a funny concept! I almost feel like rooting against it, on semantics, like I’m watching the World Cup. Mansur’s chops on piano, though, are the epitome of undefeated, and this album is full of busy, wildly impressive jazz music that incorporates local ethnicity and also broadens genre into funk, and maybe even classical. I also like looking at the Spotify video of her playing piano — the fun element is pronounced and even showy, with Mansur rocking back and forth with almost this maniacal smile, as if she’s taken her finger off the pulse of the world’s problems, something of course all the more impressive as executed in her current native country.
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13 Sharon Van Etten – Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory
Like a lot of artists seem to do after giving us really emotionally rich, meaningful radio rock songs (and, perhaps, not being sufficiently compensated for said documents, mind you), Van Etten takes things in the electro direction here, constructing an album that, while melodically robust and distinct, does rely much more heavily on electronic beats than any of her former material, which ranged from gripping, elite songwriting (“Don’t Do it”; “You Shadow”) to the anticlimactic bet-hedging present on her last album, We’ve Been Going about This All Wrong. “Afterlife” is a standout here, anyway, a pop song with a bright sense of hope and also a subtle darkness, as if Van Etten has channeled into some totally new emotion in music and rendered it with corresponding chords and lyrics, and “Idiot Box” further ensures her songwriting genius, to take on a concept so simple but infuse it with a swagger of so much purpose.
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12 Dean Wareham – That’s the Price of Loving Me
Frontman of the occult indie bands Galaxie 500 and Luna returns here with his second solo album, a followup to 2014’s pristine and gorgeous self-titled effort. Again, here, the guitars are very clear and sonically lithe, going down very easy, and the mix is complemented sporadic use of strings, giving the music a special sort of warmth you won’t find in most contemporary radio rock music. Of course, anybody familiar with Wareham would have expected this LP to be full of very deliberate, refreshingly self-contented sounds and songs, and that’s exactly what we get here, staying relatively simple, in terms of instrumentation, likely in order to showcase the undeniable heartiness and finesse in Wareham’s voice, with the sole exception of “New World Julie”; likely the one place where Wareham actually got to have fun fooling around on some unlikely musical gadgets.
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11 Shallowater – God’s Gonna Give You a Million Dollars
Officially, on Bandcamp, Shallowater is a Houston trio, but one which also advertises to have been “Born where the dust bowl never died… Raw West Texas dirtgaze.” Now, while I think we all agree this sounds attractive, the reality of “West Texas” is probably a little more aligned with the white trash culture of Trump support and corporately endorsed radio country music, with the band’s “other” hometown of Houston beholden to the great, mighty Khruangbin, and so no newbie to fostering meaningful bands, you might say. Anyway, what will disarm you about God’s Gonna Give You a Million Dollars is its apparently complete deafness to conventional song structure and typical musico-construction techniques. I mean, these guys make Slint sound like the Gin Blossoms, by comparison. “Untitled Cowboy”; for one, crawls along with idle, half-conscious oblivion, like a person metaphorically limping around after a fallen love, and Blake Skipper’s vocals undulating and replete with what sounds vaguely like dangerous emotion.
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10 Zar – Light Stain at Dawn
As has seemed to be the case a lot lately, the presence of London as a harbinger of cutting-edge techno and house is felt robustly and keenly on this list, and Zar just might be the exemplar of them all, doling us here a full-bodied, 39-minute album Light Stain at Dawn (which is listed as an “EP,” oddly enough) which really sinks its teeth into the genre, with full, elaborate eclecticism, and into time itself. I mean, the song “Slip” alone is more than half the length of a mini-album, in most cases, and hops along issuing gorgeous synth texture and rhythm, calling to mind venerable fellow Londoner Four Tet, in the process. This might not be music for raves, to be honest, as the beats tend to be a little more laid-back and syncopated, and the mixes a little more saturated with melody and sample, than, say, Park Shadow or Mantra. Well, if you’ve gotten through this list, you won’t be in any fear of the rave scene dying. That much is sure.
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9 Posthuman – The Mind is a Heavy Burden
Ok, UK, you win. Christ. It’s like a competition for what nation can produce the most Victorian novels. Well, all these albums are unique like snowflakes, really, with Posthuman, true to form, not even sauntering in in remotely akin fashion to anything else on this list, way more indulgent instead in dubstep and tense songs proviso of a lot of empty space and a “spider sense,” more or less. Things get orchestral and grand on “Doublethink” and “Vortac Beacon” probably features the coolest sounding bass synth of all time, taking on this funky, tense, melody, its own sound seeming to morph and undulate like a nervous person starting to speak. This is a promising young artist which it would seem has the potential to one day top this list, with a little more focus, muscle and urgency.
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8 Chip Wickham – The Eternal Now
This dude at work recently said I reminded him of an “undercover boss,” which I didn’t particularly appreciate. Anyway, as it happens, that’s kind of how Spanish jazz mastermind Chip Wickham struck me at first, with a very cerebral-looking face fashioning a serious, focused disposition. Anyway, this album sounds like the result of one of those residencies, or live-ins, that poets get when they win a competition — its got this blissed-out, celestial vibe that just obviates a certain deliberate ignorance of the hustle and bustle of everyday life, and the results follow suit in terms of taking the listener just there. And Wickham’s eyes are just so clear in his Spotify shots. He’s a spy. I’m convinced.
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7 Joe Morris – Some Kind of Paradise
Joe Morris is dispatching from Leeds, a rather low-profile but really pretty comely-looking city in North England, with some straight-ahead, confident techno music that almost comes across retro in its lack of extraneous ambition and comfort in its own skin. More than anything, though he sounds like he had fun making this album — “The Girl in the Dream” has got this crazy sound akin to a synthesizer with a whammy bar attached to it the plethora of keyed instruments, a la church organ, and more, help make this album supremely melodic, a music lover’s LP that happens to hop along with vaguely techno-ish beats.
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6 clipping. – Dead Channel Sky
Unbelievably, Bandcamp tried to tell me this underground rap group was British, a maneuver that almost sent me into epileptic seizure. The British are doing RAP better than us? Wikipedia brought be back home for Christmas, though — they’re from LA, which seems, at this point, to be sort of finally hacking away enough intrinsic cultural foliage to emerge as a decent hip-hop town, in spite of itself. clipping., for their own regard, seems futuristic in a refreshingly nerdy sort of way, not at all unlike the staggering genre multiplicity of JPEGMAFIA from last year’s list, letting glitchy, technology-sounding percussion blips rule the roost on “Dominator” before, you guessed, it a partial devolution into a world of nu metal. Christ, Limp Bizkit is getting so trendy these days.
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5 Tortoise – Touch
I mention in my last tracks list the fact of Touch being so artistically apart from this band’s former catalogue as to infuse it with what seems like, let’s face it, a much needed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. “Vexations”; the opener, trots in deliberately, but lithely, incorporating bona fide grunge guitar, like Everclear doing a sound check, roughly, juxtaposing it next to a drum beat that seems to split exact time between programming and live instrumentation. I literally didn’t even know it was a “beat” until one of the open-high-hat jabs. And sorry to sound corny, but “Layered Presence” really does offer more than it initially lets on (yuk, yuk), with synth plurality providing the sonic platform and a strange entrance of harpsichord approximation infusing the proceedings with some seriously academic musical grounding. I mean, would you expect anything else from Tortoise, and would you have it any other way?
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4 Panda Bear – Sinister Grift
Calling Sinister Grift more concise than Person Pitch would likely be an understatement — it’s like they went from unabashedly on drugs to touring musicians trying hurriedly to get to their next show and abide by a temporal itinerary. The results, though, in my opinion, make this the best album these guys have made, buddying up slightly, perhaps, to Merriweather Post Pavilion, with its newfound brevity finding a way to carry all the emotion, originality and quirk of the outfit’s former work. Opener “Praise” is droll, expedited and wonderful, featuring background vocals in the chorus worthy of the Beach Boys, and some boyish vocals that value repetition and enthusiasm over carefulness and ambition. Again, the song lengths themselves might be a bigger story here than anything else, but just as gratifying and awesome is the chamber pop brilliance of “Just as Well” in terms of a rhythmic complexity like a nod to Grizzly Bear, and, of course, a sort of indie-rock crossing of the Rubicon, ipso facto.
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3 L’Eclair – CLOUD DRIFTER
This seems to be a recurring theme in this list in recent years — the very upper material having this way of completely evading genre, as if the organizer were a plastic beaver popping up in a video game and the artist themselves angry, mallet-handed and ready to win a high score. Even right now, without me noticing, this music is taking me to absolutely celestial heights, somewhat calling to mind The Avalanches, for, again, the genre ambiguity combined with an uplifting approach to synth rhythm informed vaguely by jazz, and the nonchalant way the elements have of playing nice with each other so as to render the final mix a complete, agreeable and playable whole. This band is Swiss, according to Bandcamp, although there’s nothing “neutral” about the anthropomorphic emotion being dispatched on this gorgeous, indescribable and sometimes funky LP.
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2 Celestaphone & Dealers of God – Cult Subterranea
Celestaphone lists “California” on Bandcamp as his place of origin and the record label name of “Dismiss Yourself” and the crazy alien-looking dude on the album cover make me anything but inclined to research the issue further. Instead, I sit back and enjoy the flow of Celestaphone, who, per The Needle Drop, teamed up with Australian psych-rock band Dealers of God, for a result that’s urgent, crystal-clear, invigorating, and, perhaps most of all, properly refuting of genre specification. I guess The Roots would be a logical comparison point here, with this stuff just coming across way more West-Coast-y and weird, Celestaphone’s verbose, mischievous peppering this whole thing with pure party-ism, for lack of a better term. It’s time to smoke bud, or better yet grab a beer, give your best bud a hug, and get down to some of the most uplifting music put to wax this year, and maybe even in recent years.
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1 Tommy Crane & David Binney – The Isle
For at least the second time this decade, a jazz album tops this list. Without question, it’s been a trip just to watch the variety in genres active in my yearly champions, but, again, they all seem to, if not tactilely bend, blend and combine genres, at least create music which issues a sort of special aural space in which we can exist, like a supreme sort of artistic apex that acknowledges all corners and facets of music history, all zeitgeists, all movements and all inventions within the art form that have take place through the years.
Right away, on the Isle, the beauty of David Binney’s alto saxophone cloaks your mind in this soothing elixir, as if coming from some predestined pedestal always poised to represent a musical ideal. It’s hard to believe the incredibly complex, busy and stupefying drum beat from Tommy Crane is a real dude playing — it sounds like the work of an eight-armed octopus with the litheness of a cat and the finesse and musical sense of Stevie Wonder.
Like most of this album, “Immuable” is completely indescribable, sort of like Massive Attack teaming up with jazz studio dudes to create just the most unimpeachable musical result possible. And am I glad that this is an American project? Let’s face it folks: we’ve been through a lot this year. LOS ANGELES has been through a lot this year, to make an understatement. But rather than seeming to lash out against all the calamity going on in the world, or make light of it in a way of celebrity-hounding ambition, per se, The Isle seems to soothe and emotionally rectify as something that was always bound to be there, commenting on the future and past, all in one, and reminding us of music’s potential to deliver the mind state to the sublime.
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