ihatemusic

What are your top 10 releases for 2022?

And also top 10 discoveries for 2022, old as new?

Most listened to, of what came out this year:

Anthéne -- Listening Air (Distant Bloom)
Boy Harsher -- The Runner (Original Soundtrack) (Nude Club Records)
Freddie Gibbs -- $oul $old $eparately (Warner Records)
Nick Hakim -- Cometa (ATO Records)
Honeyglaze -- s/t (Speedy Wunderground)
Horsegirl -- Versions Of Modern Performance (Matador)
King Hannah -- I'm Not Sorry, I Was Just Being Me (City Slang)
Horace Tapscott Quintet -- The Quintet (Mr Bongo)
The A's -- Fruit (Psychic Hotline)
Westside Gunn -– Peace "Fly" God (Griselda Records)

John Scofield: Solo, ECM … i’m playing more guitar again, the electric is all pedaled and amped up beside my desk always. so sco, the greatest living jazz and all-time dad rock guitarist has to come along and show me what i’d be trying to do if i had any sort of chops (this is not the first time either). doing funny wobbly sounds for accompaniment and even misstomping the looper. this record sounds almost tentative at times, you would think he’s out on a limb ... sco’s never really much evolved his style, but these days he plays a bit rawer and he’s at peak inspiration again. thank you, sir.

Aldous Harding: Warm Chris, 4AD … three great records in a row makes for a pretty select circle of songwriters? you can say this one loses a bit of steam around the middle, or you could say it ponders magnificently, because yay the funny (party-)voices are back again for added perspective. the set is full of lyrical earworms. all i want is an office in the country.

Vanessa Rossetto: The Actress, Erstwhile … it’s called the actress, but it’s firmly author-driven music, where found sounds, staged sounds, and played sounds are composed rather than collaged together from a pre-existing life of their own. this sits eloquently between hörspiel und konkrete musik and if i were german radio i’d commission the hell out of her.

Qasim Naqvi, Wadada Leo Smith, Andrew Cyrille: Two Centuries, Red Hook … smith and cyrille are going as strong as ever and have been involved in a lot of great music lately, naqvi is from dawn of midi and probably hasn’t recorded a single listenable note in his life but it doesn’t matter because he’s being masterfully engaged with, whether he does analog bubbles or ambient droney stuff, to the point where his contributions sound sharp and contemporary.

Josephine Foster: Godmother, Fire … this is by far my favorite record from her, i like the voice but the backing is usually non-descript. here the synths make all the difference. they are unabashed synths, shameless presets used enthusiastically but still it’s all really tasteful and light and that contradiction gives her a new punch.

Rirette, Tanzprocesz … this shouldn’t work. it begins abstract and then moves into a kind of post-industrial doom folk with drone and booming floor toms that make me afraid of somebody mentioning a band name as reference or of possible ideological baggage... but as the very french female singer puts her voice thru a heavy tremolo it’s clear this strikes an unusual balance. so maybe these are nice people? they quickly move through more shady genres, electronic film music, maybe asmr, then it’s over, a short poppy ep, perfect really.

Arturas Bumsteinas: So-Called Space, Sloow Tapes … more found sounds, this time clearly a collage dripping with history and there’s sufficient space to let the snippets of these (it says) theatrical recordings breathe enough that the cuts between them teleport listeners from one mood to the next. yet the title suggests heaps of meta-awareness and one hears that too. music is gone in the air and spaces are lost in the sounds staged within them.

Doug McCombs: VMAK..., Thrill Jockey … more guitar music. this just came out so my liking might still fluctuate. it’s both sparse and luscious sound-wise, adding guest elements to the music for a better narrative flow while the electric guitar rings out like a good amp and select boutique pedal and the playing is direct and free from an annoying amount of idiom, except in the end where it gets tortoisey only with more leisure and of course he’s allowed to do that.

Charles Mingus: The Lost Album from Ronnie Scott’s, Resonance … this album counts since the music’s not officially been released before. it’s not even top-tier mingus, i guess, though a different drummer (and pianist) work great and bring fresh tensions and sillinesses. there’s bad musical jokes and some noodling especially from faddis, but mostly there’s huge energy and depth of communication, they don’t make music like this anymore.

Angelo Bignamini: Anna, Staalplaat … kind of the higher-concept end of used tapes overdubbed with slices of life and practice sessions. no musique concrete here even where it sounds like it, because this guy blue-eyedly believes in whatever made the sounds. and the wonky tape (fifth generation dictaphone dub? how does one even get this lo-fi today) make for a rather nostalgic mood. as the liners say, all plans end up on the beach.

Here's what I listened to...

Vierne & Saint-Saens: Harmonium Vs Organ by Guilio Mercati
This is the album I listened to the most this year - every night for a while. It's a very addictive listen, very calming, very engrossing. I didn't know the composer Louis Vierne's music at all before this. He was organist at Notre Dame in the early 20th Century. It's odd music - sometimes cheesy, sometimes sentimental, but takes lots of odd twists and turns. In a funny kind of way it reminds me both of Tom Waits and Erik Satie. Anyway, it's brilliant.
https://open.spotify.com/album/1rJh1obUfnrt3uvrM50Q0h

Arrehar by Romain Baudoin
Frenchman improvising on top of historic field recordings of French folk singers. Folk brut, if you will. Very raw and moving.
https://romainbaudoin.bandcamp.com/album/arrehar

Recontorns by Francois Dumeaux
On the same label as the above - Pagans - this is another Frenchman doing interesting folk-adjacent things, only he's more of an analogue synthesizer gentilhomme. Basically it's synths and field recordings interspersed with unaccompanied French singing.
https://f-dumeaux.bandcamp.com/album/recontorns

Bald Eagle Over Food City by Bromp Treb
Experimental music at it's most stupid, dumb-ass fun. It puts a big smile on my face. "Bromp Treb is the solo project of noisemaker and filmmaker Neil ‘Cloaca’ Young, who has been performing and producing small-run releases under this moniker for some 20 years. For almost as long he’s been the percussionist for weirdo noise collective Fat Worm of Error, and collaborating in other units such as Carbus, Gloyd and Playbackers"
https://ikuisuus.bandcamp.com/album/bal ... -food-city

Ftarri's Harmonium Vol. 7: Live at Ftarri, December 4, 2021 by Masamichi Kinoshita
More harmonium! Compositions - rule-based, game-like, number-derived and fundamentally simple in concept - by Masamichi Kinoshita, played on trombones, harmonium and electronics. They sound kind of childlike.
https://ftarrilive.bandcamp.com/album/f ... ber-4-2021

Nick Hart Sings 10 English Folk Songs by Nick Hart
More folk music. Nick Hart expands from his first two albums of no-nonsense Martin Carthy-style singing and guitar-playing by adding a few influences derived from Africa and Central Europe. In his hands, this pick-n-mix cosmopolitanism still sounds dour and medieval. As John Peel once said of The Fall: "always the same, always different"
https://nickhartmusic.bandcamp.com/albu ... folk-songs

King Cobra by Infinity Knives & Brian Ennals
This one is fairly new to me, so not iistened that much, but it was the most interesting hip-hop I heard in 2022. Applies a lo-fi murky scree to electro, bass and drill type sounds.
https://phantomlimblabel.bandcamp.com/album/king-cobra

Bucked Up Space by Nik Colk Void
Clean, precise techno that air-dusts the insides of your head
https://nikcolkvoid.bandcamp.com/album/bucked-up-space

I listened a lot to the music of Yan Jun (https://yanjun.bandcamp.com/album/quartet-h-k) and Zhu Wenbo (https://zhuwenbo.bandcamp.com/), who I first heard on their duo album Twice on Erstwhile in 2021 (which I also listened to quite a bit in 2022).
Honorary mentions to the following, which caught my ear but I haven't really listened to enough yet...

Elvis Died and Everyone Is... by Posset https://crowversuscrow.bandcamp.com/alb ... veryone-is
Chasing the Phantom by Dewa Alit & Gamelan Salukat https://blacktruffle.bandcamp.com/album ... he-phantom
Junkan (2020) by Michiko Ogawa https://marginalfrequency.bandcamp.com/ ... unkan-2020
Kraftbalanse by Jan Martin Smørdal/Øystein Wyller Odden https://sofamusic.bandcamp.com/album/kraftbalanse
Common Metals by Staubitz and Waterhouse https://staubitzandwaterhouse.bandcamp. ... mon-metals

Plus I also listened a lot to the back catalogue of THF Drenching https://thfdrenching.bandcamp.com/
And quite a bit of music from the Kairos label, including their recordings of Olivier Messaien and the music of Berhnard Lang, who I hadn't heard of before this year, a very interesting contemporary composer.

I had a listen to Bandcamp's 'Best Club Music of 2022' selection and a lot of it sounds a lot more experimental than most so-called 'experimental' music - some excellent stuff to investigate there... https://daily.bandcamp.com/best-of-2022 ... ic-of-2022

Sam Gendel & Antonia Cytrynowicz - Live a Little (Psychic Hotline)

No Home - Young Professional (Hungry and Undervalued)

Yarn/Wire - Andrew McIntosh: Little Jimmy (Kairos)

Silvia Tarozzi & Deborah Walker - Canti gi guerra, di lavoro e d'amore (Unseen Worlds)

John Ondolo - Hypnotic Guitar of John Ondolo (Mississippi Records)

No Hay Banda - I Had a Dream About This Place (No Hay Discos)

V/A - Ghost Riders (Efficient Space)

Jake Xerxes Fussell - Good and Green Again (Paradise of Bachelors)

Anat Cohen - Quartetinho (Anzic Records)

Claire Rousay - Everything Perfect is Already Here (Shelter Press)


Also enjoyed: Aldous Harding Warm Chris, Dewa Alit & Gamelan Salukat Chasing the Phantom, Office Culture Big Time Things, Destroyer Labrynthitis, Anna Butterss Activities