Manafonistas

1. Low: Double Negative
2. Autechre: NTS Sessions 1-4
3. Damien Jurado: The Horizon Just Laughed
4. Actress & London Contemporary Orchestra: Lageos
5. Marianne Faithfull: Negative Capability
6. Idles: Joy as an Act of Resistance
7. Rival Consoles: Persona
8. Andy Sheppard Quartet: Romaria
9. Julia Holter: Aviary
10. Kira Skov: The Echo of You
11. Ancient Methods: The Jericho Records
12. Barre Phillips: End to End
13. Jon Hassell: Listening to Pictures
14. Ital Tek: Bodied
15. Alva Noto: Unieqav
16. Rosalía: El mal querer
17. Beach House: 7
18. Moon Relay: IMI
19. Charles Lloyd & The Marvels with Lucinda Williams: Vanished Gardens
20. Deena Abdelwahed: Khonnar
21. The Good, The Bad And The Queen: Merrie Land
22. Puce Mary: The Drought
23. Danish String Quartet: Prism I
24. Tuomo Väänänen: A Small Flood
25. Andris Nelsons & Boston Symphony Orchestra: Dmitri Shostakovich Sinfonien 4 & 11
26. Frode Haltli: Avant Folk
27. Die Nerven: Fake
28. DJ Richard: Dies Irae Xerox
29. Sonar with David Torn: Vortex
30. Amen Dunes: Freedom 
31. Anna Calvi: Hunter
32. Ah! Kosmos: Beautiful Swamp
33. Michael Gordon & Kronos Quartet: Clouded Yellow

Autechre’s NTS Sessions is the most convincing piece of world-building in music today. Its universe is one whose causal networks are as beautifully balanced and interconnected as our own. (…) comprising around eight hours of music (culminating in an hour-long track, „all end“), this is a magnum opus from one of electronic music’s most influential acts, and proof that, in the quarter century they’ve been making music, Rob Brown and Sean Booth have never stopped moving forward.  (Resident Advisor staff pick their favourite electronic albums from the last 12 months.)

You thought the Duluth trio’s 25 years of slow, minimalist indie rock was gloomy? Well, now it’s doubled down, triple distilled, quadruple concentrated, resulting in the masterpiece that their hugely impressive catalogue has been heading inexorably towards. (…) the rhythm section is closer to Mika Vainio or Thomas Köner than a rock group: shuddering blooms of static in place of snares, blurred whorls of noise for bass, sounds that are violence itself. The bass impact on Quorum and Always Trying to Work it Out is like an angry father beating a fist on the dinner table, the rest of each song shrinking away from him. (…)  

Indeed, the erosion of America and our wider ecosystem, and the psychic state of living amid that erosion, is the focus here, enacted in the very music as well as the lyrics. (…) Across the album, there’s a trudging, incantatory tone that feels almost pagan, like the last rites of a nation – even the planet – are being read out. This ranks alongside the likes of Anselm Kiefer and Cormac McCarthy as a document of contemporary social collapse, and as such is the most important, devastating album of the year.

(Double Negative review – the sound of the world unravelling)

favorite EP: SØS Gunver Ryberg: SOLFALD

music DVD: Ryuichi Sakamoto – Coda / async at the Park Avenue Armory

re-release: Belong: October Language (2006)

box release: Art Ensemble of Chicago and Associated Ensembles

archive release: Prince: Piano and a Microphone 1983

potential top 20 albums in 2017, but discovered only in 2018:

EMA: Exile in the Outer Ring / Wadada Leo Smith: Najwa / Niels Rønsholdt: Songs of Doubt

Other (Re-)Discoveries:

• Alice Coltrane: Journey in Satchidananda (1971)
• Herbie Hancock: Mwandishi (1971) / Crossings (1972)
• Moor Mother: Fetish Bones (2016)
• Curve: Doppelgänger (1992)
• Stephen Malkmus

„Buchanan Street is in central Glasgow and there is a Subway Station there. So sometimes when I’m walking on that street I try to imagine the trains traveling under ground beneath my feet and at a much faster pace. I was just thinking about if perhaps someone I know is making the same journey or that we’re going to meet up but are completely unaware of passing each other. So basically it’s an attempt to convey two (literally) parallel worlds happening simultaneously by having the same line sung one above the other.“ 

(Bill Wells)

Tomorrow´s Harvest kannte ich schon, aber erst Michaels Auswahl und Moderation zum Gesamtwerk von Boards of Canada in der Zeitreise seiner Augustausgabe der Klanghorizonte hat mich dazu gebracht, mir sämtliche verfügbare Alben von BoC zu kaufen und es ist diese Musik, die mich seit Sommer mitten ins Herz trifft, vielleicht noch mehr als Flying Saucer Attack, Bark Psychosis und Pan American. Trotzdem, klar, die Erde dreht sich weiter, ich spiele mit; hier ist meine Jahresliste:

1. Kammerflimmer Kollektief: There are Actions which we have neglected and which never cease to call us
2. Andy Shepphard Quartet: Romaria
3. Jacob Bro: Returnings
4. Jon Hassell: Listening To Pictures
5. Steve Tibbetts: Life of
6. Mueller & Roedelius: Imagori II
7. The Necks: Body
8. Sonar & David Torn: Vortex
9. Qluster: Elemente
10. Fire!: The Hands
11. Andrew Cyrille Trio: Lebroba
12. Joey Baron / Robyn Schulkowsky: Now You Hear Me