Here is my list of the albums of the year 2024. I have stopped using streaming services almost completely but am more aware than ever of the channels through which music reaches me. Specific twitter users (tarotplane and funkentechno notably), labels like Leaving Records and Music from Memory, a local record shop that updates their site with new arrivals (Mount Analog), web sensations. What calls my attention to these dynamics most is all the records I missed which I hope to continue discovering in the coming months.
Many avoid ranking altogether for lists like this but I enjoyed drilling down on my own rubric. Expression, invention, and ambition outweighed slick execution in most cases.
This was a great year for textures. Great year for yearning, melancholy. Subdued but stirring. Emanant surfaces. I hope you find something to love.
1. A. G. Cook - Britpop
A shimmering expression of earnest optimism resting on a structure that makes the sprawling three discs feel like a comprehensible whole. A faceted gem refracting beams of pop, electronica, rock, and dance into a spectral display of music's past present and future.
2. Total Blue - Total Blue
A new vision of smooth jazz that pushes Benedek's vaporwave informed palette into a new dimension. Inexorably calls to mind Michael Mann's vision of LA in Heat, specifically the guitar stylings of Terje Rypdal, through the lens of the jazz, new age, and electronic explorations of Los Angeles' Leaving Records scene.
3. Loidis - One Day
A perfect slab of minimal house radiating emotional depth and overflowing with deep pocketed grooves.
4. Mietze Conte - Mietzee
One of our most exciting musicians arrives with a debut LP stretching out their signature delirious speed-pop into an exploration of time and memory.
5. MGMT - Loss of Life
A real grower. Mature and understated work emanating a message that is hard to parse, but demands repeat listens. Loop it twice.
6. NUG - Bong Boat
The fruit of a burbling alt-ambient scene redefining the contours of 'chilling out'
7. LSDXOXO - Dogma
An ambitious piece of Pop Dance that makes you feel like you struggled to unwrap the jewel case on the way home from Tower Records before popping the CD in your bedroom boombox and dancing around your room imagining the clubbing your future will hold.
8. ESP - Promise
Dazzling, hazy and uplifting, Promise delivers on the potential of Year001 while displaying a real understanding of the mechanics of Trance.
9. H.A.N.K. - The Big Melt
Alex Kassian continues his reign of evocative textural electronic this time alongside Nick Höppner in an LP bringing baleric euphoria to krautrock structures.
10. Skee Mask - Resort
Production mastery once again on display with impossible instruments gliding into and among one another in a hazy miasma. Held back by an aversion to expressing anything at all, the production dazzles nevertheless.
11. Milan W - Leave Another Day
Delicate constellations of acoustic and electronic instruments set a bed for top tier song writing and album craft. Stirring, evocative, anachronistic, and pure magic.
12. Ezra Feinberg - Soft Power
Jazz, electronica, ambient, and folk palettes foster a gentle, uplifting embrace.
13. Christopher Owens - I Wanna Run Barefoot Through Your Hair
Pure singer songwriter mastery in an old style. A reminder of what the form is capable of.
14. Bladee - Cold Visions
An undeniable presentation of the strengths of the Swedish sensation.
15. Cindy Lee - Diamond Jubilee
Indie success story of the decade. Burdened by the media cycle it generated, but shines nevertheless with the dim glow of wood paneled dive bars, somehow still functioning diner neon, and truck stop headlights. Heart seeps out from all the cracks in this sprawling masterpiece.
16. Patrick Holland - Infra
After a stretch of band focused material, Holland returns to dance music with a renewed understanding of sonics and structure to make for his strongest work to date. An instant car and preparty classic.
17. Fabiano do Nascimento & Sam Gendel - The Room
The classical guitar stylings of Nascimento prove the perfect pairing to the prolific and virtuosic sax of Gendel to make for one of the finest gems in the crown of the legendary Leaving Records catalog. As pleasant as it is stirring. Well suited for focused contemplation, soundtracking subdued gatherings, or evening cooking and dining sessions.
18. Peachlyfe - Permission to Roam
The new wave of the queer techno scene is beginning to bear LPs. Peachlyfe's murky, sensual, disorienting, undulating full length debut wriggles and writhes with unexpected rhythms, timbres, and structures that hypnotize without compromising consistency or heft.
19. upsammy - Strange Meridians
Relentless experimentations in timbre, arrangement, and composition here strike the perfect balance making for a work that is accessible while pushing against the boundaries of expectation. Emotional content emanates from glistening textures.
20. Rip Swirl - Perfectly Blue
In his best work yet, indie songstresses populate a world of hazed out guitar and mo' wax rhythms. Both modes shine on this slab of indie chill.
21. Funk Assault - Paces of Places
On their debut LP relentless techno beats take center stage absent the ambient and chill interludes which often spoil dance DJs daliances in the album format. Chlär and Alarico are the best of the oft maligned new wave of 'hardgroove', and show it clearly here with this display of deep pocketed grooves and banging sonics.
22. Vegyn - The Road to Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions
Electronic pop in an early 00s style, not stylisticly but spiritually. Another album that feels like it should have come in a jewel case. It really sings on the instrumental tracks but the awkward vocal pop is still bursting with charm, and a few tracks strike the perfect balance (like the album opener). Immaculate instrumentals cement its place as a classic.
23. Dummy - Free Energy
Rock bands doing dance music is one of my favorite recipes. Dummy radiates positive energy across this uplifting LP of lush, driving tracks.
24. SML - Small Medium Large
Another bright light in Los Angeles' vibrant Jazz scene, SML is at once deeply experimental and highly listenable. Conjuring pointillistic constellations of interlocking elements, SML displays traditional mastery informed by the technology and material that populates the contemporary musical landscape
25. 990x - Ruins
A hazy chamber of chill out atmospheres laced with trap accents, Ruins casually earns its place in heavy rotation with details unfurling on every repeat listen.
26. RINGGO - U SHOULDA LET GOD COOK
Mndsgn (pronounced mind design) put out this collection of unmastered loosies under his first name, and it's still one of the year's best. Transcendent beat scene transmissions that could pass for 'lofi beats' if they weren't so heartfelt. Laced throughout is a recording of an uber driver driving around Ringgo and co, which makes the whole thing feel like a kitchen hang.
27. Jonny From Space - back then I didn't but now I do
This Incienso release fills the Naples LP shaped void in my year with reliable contemporary chill out sure to cue a 'wait what is this' from your living room guests. Gently immaculate.
28. Priori - This but More
Priori's latest LP marks a departure from his previous pair, overflowing with features and carving out a distinctly high brow space in the neo-progressive bass scene of which he has been at the fore. Averse to dancefloor play, this work of brooding melancholy refuses to deliver exactly what I want from a Priori LP, but it is executed with such skill and finesse that its quality is undeniable.
29. Ramzi - Moon Tan
A new find for me. Ramzi's work populates chill out and downtempo structures with unexpected timbres and melodies which push into a more refined space that would be as at home on NPR as the chill out room. Suprisingly and endlessly delightful.
30. Fergus Jones - Ephemera
Creating a meeting point between hipster chill and uk dubstep, Jones presents a new afters classic.
31. sv1 - Splinter
This work of abstract ambient bass demands a system that can deliver on very low frequencies. Perfumed digital air punctuated by heavy bass blasts make for a psychedelic drift.
32. How to Dress Well - I Am Toward You
A demanding and ambitious piece that doesn't always work, but when it shines it dazzles. Cinema-like in its refusal to sit in the background, HTDW's latest begs repeat viewings and extended contemplation
33. Varg - Nordic Flora Pt 6: Outlaw Music
Another exemplar of the highly influential swedish electronic scene, Varg2tm's latest is maybe the most complete expression from the Year001 orbit to date.
Honor Roll
Babymorocco - Amour
Might have cracked the top 10 but without sufficient time to digest I put it here. Pop informed by blog house and indie dance with an art school crafted post dis magazine persona, executive produced (and mostly produced) by Frost Children. This LP is the first in the new wave of mid noughts referencing scenesters to have fully metabolized the sounds and feelings of the era it shamelessly regurgitates. Sexy, messy, blown out, and banging, this is a must listen.
Skee Mask - ISS010
A perfect dance EP. Four sides of techno mastery connecting Basic Channel to Ben Sims, Joris Voorn, Jeff Mills, Vince Watson, and mostly exceeding the works of even masters in the form. On the dancefloor Müller's aversion to expressing anything at all is a virtue as the rhythms occupy the body and mind allowing the spirit to stretch out.
Bombadil & Gerry Read - Love Can Go The Distance
A real oddity. Hard to describe. I actually didn't make it through all 2h15 of the 32 tracks, but what I heard channels peak soundcloud sample based experimentation complete with dodgy sonics. Some moments of real psychedelic transcendence show up here and there, like on 'Your Lovin' is Making Me High.' A lot of the masters of this form have cleaned up their acts (Koze, Bullion, FlyLo, Avalanches) leaving a void of off kilter rough around the edges sample based madness. Well worth a dig.