Top Albums 2022 Part III 30 – 21

30. Kali Malone – Living Torch

More than just an addendum to 2019’s The Sacrificial Code, Living Torch sees Kali Malone completely eschew her trademark instrument for bass clarinet, trombone, and a huge array of electroacoustic instruments. The two tracks express a mindset of composition that channels music concrete with a refreshing neoclassical approach, something Kali Malone and her contemporaries of labels such as Ideologic Organ, XKatedral and here Portraits GRM herald throughout their work. Without the organ at the center, much like Malone’s first album, the soundscapes created exist in interrupted timespace. These drawn out and ever-evolving pieces feel decidedly different from what similar artist like Tim Hecker or Ben Frost would achieve. Other than externalities dictating the course and meaning of sound, Malone is a master of a singularly aural perspective, stacking drones and buzzes of synths for the sheer experience of the body in sound. Having had the opportunity to see her live in 2022, playing an organ only set in a church in Montreal, reinforced this notion of musicianship even further. This is music not meant to be cinematic as in enhancing any visuality, leaving one of Malone’s aural spaces reconfigures the ability to hear as a independent life-force.

 

29. Recondite – Taum

After a more abstract and lightweight sound on Dwell, Recondite doubles down on making hip-hop and trap beats in an acid drenched mindset. Eschewing tropes of soundtrack music and any larger swells and builds, Taum is a eleven track workhorse of short tracks which reach their impact and intent in a minute tops. Standouts like "Naif” could serves as hypnotic beats for a mixture MC between Ride and Q-Tip to flow over. The viscerality of driving bass, ice cold synths and heavy kicks mixed for a rapper would work well but shines in the utilization of Recondite’s growing oeuvre. Beyond the focus on nature many of his records hold and Daemmerlicht synergized with trap beatmaking, Taum reconciles nature and different environments not as backbone to percussive narratives, but as inspirations only. You cannot only hear this, but find it reflected in the track titled that speak of emotions and actions rather than places themselves. Title track and closer “Taum” a conflation of the German words for dream and daze (Traum und Taumel) is the only time the album takes a breather in form of a left-turn from its hard-hitting drive. A kind of call back to Recondite’s discography itself and quite literally a gentle reminder of reality and fiction working hand in hand to draw out these magnificent beats.

 

28. Cucina Povera & Ben Vince – There I See Everything

This is the first time an album by Cucina Povera caught my attention immediately and proved to contain the emotional staying power I badly wanted to feel throughout her previous work. This is most likely through the collaborative effort of Ben Vince, who grounds the soundscapes and vocal performances in enveloping, cosmic saxophone and reverberating mixture of electronic and acoustic instruments in general. Rossi as Cucina Povera charms with her angelic voice, intonating prayer like phrases in “Sumu Puistossa” or goes fully ethereal in “Pikku Muurahaiskeko”. Fitting the cover image chose for the release, this album conveys sleep/wake state, haunting meditations in the ambience of sound.

 

27. Jóhann Jóhannsson, Theatre of Voices, Paul Hillier, American Contemporary Music Ensemble – Drone Mass

This year saw another post-humous release of Johannsson extensive library of collaborations and commissions. Drone Mass encompasses many of the greatest chops Johannsson carried throughout his solo work and in his overall aesthetic. Theater of Voices shatter the airwaves with their choral work, ranging from intonating syllables, call and response schemes and hums ranging into shouts. The orchestra ensemble is offset by flourishes of electronics and noise. The typical melodies and circular phrases of Johannsson's music are complemented by the droning low-end of most tracks, either by cello or electronic means and in the spirit of a “drone mass” the pieces convey lament on a theatrical scale without narrating anything. Four years after Johannssons untimely and conflicted passing, the scale of his output and creativity continue to startle me. There was no one more capable of creating neo-classical music that truly deserved this genre-specification, no one more in command of the combinations of voice, orchestra, and electronic elements, melding them into monuments of life and loss.

 

26. COLD GAWD – God Get Me the Fuck Out of Here

Admittedly, I had never thought about blackness in shoegaze music before encountering COLD GAWD. A genre mostly devoid a discussion on race, the question of who is making these fuzzed out sounds appeared as a glaring omission in my thinking. Being black and making anything adjacent to rock music is often considered a non-starter, like the perceived incompatibility of being a metal fan of color. Cold Gawd tackle these notions not only in their spoken word interlude “Comfort Thug”, references to skin and purpose of making music make their way into the lyrical content as well. Between blown out guitars of the dreamscape of “Two Iris Prints” Matt Wainwright poses the melancholic lines “Dark Skin / Present Youth / That’s All I Can Do”. Making music and trying to gain success play as much a role as an ever-present vulnerability. The preposition of being alive dances with a nihilism of having to make it because music is the only thing to escape a meaningless life. While this may read like hip-hop at its core, this remains true to the act of music making beyond genres and rings true in solemn fuzz of COLD GAWD as well. With its place as a shoegaze album fronted and played by a black artist, God Get Me The Fuck Out of Here is a enveloping hell of finding your way out of your home town, transcending expectations and doing this in the language you know. The glittered face of Wainwright on the cover of the album plays with this theme of visual and aural “white facing” in magnificent ways, and the heft and rumble of saturated guitars paired with hushed and glassy vocals do work with a boastful preamble of “fuck what you’re listening too, it’s Cold Gawd”.

 

25. Jamal Moss – Thanks 4 The Tracks U Lost

Widely recognized as a major player in Chicago’s house music scene and even better known as Hieroglyphic Being, Jamal Moss released his first album under his name in five years. Apart from his awe-inspiring run of albums, EPs and other projects as Hieroglyphic, under his own name, Moss crafts some of the most playful house tunes in the whole genre. From the first beats of the hallowed-out kick drum on “The Lust With-IN”, the album bursts with tunes and melodies that evoke slow climb towards sun soaked atmospheres. Even tracks titled “rave bangers” retain shifts of melodies and driving grooves at their core. Taking his knack for experimentation as the ability to clash moods, repetition and varying tensions of elements as Hieroglyphic Being, these tracks glisten with restless, forward-facing energy. In clubs, each track would enhance the night, at varying hours and different sets, as a headphone experience, the minutes flash by in utter enjoyment.

 

24. Greet Death – New Low

This short ride of only five songs distills everything that is great about Greet Death’s approach to doomish folk and shoegaze. At times more acoustic and mellower than 2019’s New Hell, New Low doubles down on the existential dread of being alive. Every first line of the five tracks gives of the vibe of a deja-vu, with the song following a exploration of what has been nagging you about the everyday for a long time. Only for the next track to go on repeat, an endless cycling through of dread. New Low especially speaks on the ennui of a working life – working for money, to cling to an existence as a thing you are programmed to do. Dreams of a better life, panic attacks, love and even the experiences of reaching this new low, the inevitability of it all are sandwiched between having to work and being alive. This is the truest form of pessimism, doing the things you hate and dreading the next tomorrow in full knowledge that you have to get up and do it anyways. Maybe in the promise of making these magnificent songs, or the bitter conclusions of “I’m Not Okay, I Hate Everything”. For me, ending on the anthem that is “I Hate Everything” opens the perspective of these observations and emotional affects. The wheel keeps on turning and you hold on for days to come and the people you consider your loved ones.

It’s all the same

We fear what we can't change

We find our fix

Completely full of shit

 

23. 40 Watt Sun – Perfect Light

Six years ago, “Stages” as the first track of Wider Than The Sky blew me away in its passionate delivery of defeat. The music of 40 Watt Sun was a singular example of how doom and emotional weight could translate into acoustic music. There was no need for anything harsh to sound as metal as Wider Than The Sky could. On Perfect Light, Patrick Walker eschews even the metal parts for an album full of love and gentle sentiments. His signature writing style, full of wordy metaphors and twists and turns to reach conclusions of despair have changed towards addressals of devotion and explorations of love. “Reveal” catches you off guard in the well-intentioned sentiments of loved as rays of light and reaching your love in their darkest moments when its lines introduce the character of “Ophelia” and the conviction of “I’m strong enough to lift you up”. Knowledge of myth aside, Walker as a gentle bard burns up in the swells of this song to devastating heights, only to deliver the conviction of his words. It is jarring when listened to the first time and works as a great reminder why this is still 40 Watt Sun as a project and not simply Patrick Walker. Over the course of the album, Walker goes through different inflections of songs centering on love, companionship, and friendship, all within his unique perspective of affection on the crossroads of life, with sadness and grief as constant parameters of experience. Love as sound in Perfect Light is never starry-eyed, but convinced and realistic, something to behold, cherish and remain aware of in its brevity.

 

22. Thou – Norco / Thou & Mizmor – Myopia

Focusing on the portion of Thou’s contribution for the Norco soundtrack, the band delivers an array of new tracks, leaning heavily towards their best doom sounds and combining this with a few female fronted folkier cuts. I can imagine a few bands as fitting for a soundtrack as Thou. Not for anything that lends itself towards the cinematic or epic, but much rather for the essence of atmospheric storytelling in their deepest riffs and shifting vocal performances. Thou’s multi-movement tracks, ranging from utter destruction to subtle interludes is narrative and forceful enough, pair that with ludic elements and it’s a hit. While I completely missed the release of Myopia, a collaborative album with Mizmor in April and only listened to the whole thing in November, the album quickly rose in the ranks of what Thou as constant collaborators bring to the table. Myopia funnels death and black metal sentiments in the sludge of Thou’s style with harsher and faster movements added (courtesy of Mizmor, I would wager). The vocals added by Mizmor pair perfectly with the higher shrieks of Brian Funck, like how the body and Thou would complement each other for a holistic sensation of disgust. Myopia is a perfect progression of what Thou usually deliver with albums like Norco, Heathen and Magus. Like their last collaboration with Emma Ruth Rundle, the band reaches different heights in collaboration with similar artists working in the void of blackness. With Mizmor, this may be their most cataclysmic setup yet.

 

21. Felicia Atkinson – Image Language

Image Language recalls what is often described as the unique perdurance of music in our hearing and processing of sound. Sound as such is a unique event in time, short as waves and quickly changing, but enduring in our understanding of melodies and its temporal structure. Felicia Atkinson built her album as an aural house of discrete music and musings on the nature of moving and existing in a place. Like this concept, the drones, Atkinson’s voice and the usage of different instruments create a timespace of their own that can be treaded by us a listener’s. The album plays with out ability to make sense of discreet events as sounds and conglomerate these experiences to a sufficient whole. In other terms, this is an intriguing contemplation on sound and one’s own standpoint in time and sound while going moving through space. I get the same vibe as something David Toop or Brian Eno have created with their ambient music, but Image Language has a drive like compositions by Mono in capturing your attention, waiting for conclusions, twists, and cliff-hangers as flourishes of instruments or remarks by Atkinson that become audible and processed for the first time after listening to them several times as sounds alone.