10 Mammal Hands – “Fallow Tide”
UK’s Mammal Hands nail that chill, vibe-y jazz I seem to favor on this site in spite of myself. For some reason, I chose a sort of interlude track for this list, “Fallow Tide”; a modest, two-minute selection that seems conceptual in its simplicity and quite textural, replete with grainy, barely-audible background synth.
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9 THE HORN – “MORIBUNDO”
UK DIY electronic weirdo The Horn delivers what might just be has magnum opus here, a collection of busy, well-developed dance tracks that always seem to conjure up emotion and feeling to make the memorable, like album opener “MORIBUNDO”; in all its glitcy, jungle-y glory.
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8 Chris Madsen – “Digital Harvest”
“Digital Harvest” is the album-opening reap of Chicago’s Chris Madsen and what Bandcamp reports to be the Grammy-garnering trio he furnishes for this performance. “Free jazz” would seem to be an apt label to apply to this meandering, almost aimless but invigorating and refreshing performance.
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7 Robber Robber – “New Year’s Eve”
I have to say that Burlington, Vermont was not the place of origin I expected for this strange and awesome electro-pop outfit that plays as roughly Bjork rubbing late-’90s shoulders with Jamiroquai and/or Girls against Boys, with a heartbreakingly ripe vocal tugging at your heartstrings.
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6 Cemento – “The Other Side of Sleep”
Cemento seems to be more or less a killer shoegaze act out of LA, doling us this year the full meal of Bad Dream Songs, on which the energy and emotion seem constant like a monsoon. “The Other Side of Sleep” comes late on the album and seems to posit the band as a funny sort of emotional underdog, despite their adorned songs and drum-heavy production.
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5 NABOU – “Light Blue Shawl (for Stijn)”
NABOU is the christening of this Belgian jazz quartet led, apparently, by someone who looks to be from Kenya or Somalia, and whose name implies as much too, the locale of Belgium made perhaps ironic by the undeniably worldly tone generated by this subtle, creeping masterpiece.
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4 Lord Funk – “I Need U”
Paris’ Lord Funk gets naughty on More Orgasms, his new beats-meets-soul LP, saving himself perhaps from “smut” territory with some stylistic authenticity (this record just SOUNDS like the guy spent a bunch of time listening to Parliament), and some creatively rendered basslines, treating the “1” like a dog on a leash by way of tenacity and variety.
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3 Ben Wendel – “Clouds”
Album opener “Clouds” sparks in the mind what almost approaches madness by way of a bevy of marimba strokes via Joel Ross, Wendel’s saxophone then balancing the whole thing out perfectly with some grating, grainy blues, expressed effortlessly and with fine virtuosity.
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2 Arlo Parks – “Blue Disco”
With pop catering well to London’s dance scene, crooning diva Arlo Parks delivers here an excellent love song designed for seedy night streets poised to explode into rapturous madness. Parks kind of looks like the rapper Eve but unleashes what I think is just an unbelievably gorgeous vocal, calling to mind Pearl Charles of last year’s supreme pop prowess.
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1 Flea – “Traffic Lights” feat. Thom Yorke
Honestly, I could give a flying fu** if the Yorke track is the best track on the new Flea album. And yes, this is Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers doing a solo jazz album. It just happens to be the best, hardly surprising as a jazz pianist, Robert Glasper, once covered the Radiohead song “Reckoner”; rendering it an instrumental and hence creating a jazz track while simultaneously just transcribing a Radiohead song, which is pretty mind-blowing, when you think about it.
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