50. Fennec – A Couple of Good Days
49. Let’s Eat Grandma – Two Ribbons
48. The Thousand Order – The Thousand Order
47. Sulk Rooms – Hymns for the Bone Horse
46. Only Now – Timeslave II
45. various artists – Air Texture VIII
44. Luca Lozano – Man of Science
43. The Bug – Absent Riddim
42. Slikback – TYPE_
41. various artists – HOA021
40. King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard – Omnium Gatherum
39. Moderat – MORE D4TA
38. Ethel Cain – Preacher’s Daughter
37. Kuedo – Infinite Window
36. Deepchild – Fathersong
35. DJ Sabrina the Teenage DJ – Bewitched!
34. KMRU & Aho Ssan – Limen
33. Gospel – The Loser
32. Caroline – Caroline
31. A+A – 060
30. Kiri No Mikito – Fever Dreams of a Floating Woman
29. Decius – Decius Vol. I
28. The Smile – A Light for Attracting Attention
27. Young Nudy – EA Monster
26. Kelly Lee Owens – LP.8
25. various artists – RE:DREAM
24. Kendrick Lamar – Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers
23. Tangerine Dream – Raum
22. Shinichi Atobe – Love of Plastic
21. Kangding Ray – Ultrachroma
20. Beach House – Once Twice Melody
19. Chat Pile – God’s Country
18. DJ Lag – Meeting With the King
17. Duster – Together
16. DJ R3LL & DJ Kiff – Cuff Yo Chick
Listening to Cuff Yo Chick is like opening a time capsule. It’s not just because the two-side, 70-minute, 42-track DJ mix, recorded in 2011 and finally released this year after major labels’ cease-and-desists forced it off SoundCloud years ago, is filled with samples from Lady Gaga’s “Alejandro,” LMFAO’s “Party Rock Anthem,” and a host of other turn-of-the-decade party hits from a wide range of pop genres. The mix is an excellent example of Jersey club during its peak era, mixed by two DJs who are as happy following all of the genre’s strict rules as they are with breaking them. Outside of reggaeton, few American genres have more rhythmic uniformity and immediate recognizability as Jersey club, with the bed-squeak sample entering the broader cultural lexicon long before it featured on Drake’s Honestly, Nevermind this year and the stuttering footwork beat that is the genre’s hallmark element continuing to fill dancefloors to this day. But as much as this mix could be considered something of a state of the union for the genre, those looking for a “greatest hits” would do best to look elsewhere: you won’t find tracks by Nadus, DJ Sliink, or Cashmere Cat in here, as DJ R3LL and DJ Kiff opt to fill their hour with recognizable pop songs bent into the genre’s rhythmic mold, embodying the genre’s playfulness and the way Jersey club artists so successfully generate energy from the repetition of carefully snipped samples. Opening with a good minute or so of Kanye West’s “get it” sample from Big Sean’s “Marvin & Chardonnay” as a piece of raw dance motivation and continuing through countless brief samples from songs of the era—“Party Rock Anthem” and Ashanti’s “Good Good” are two of the only samples that aren’t limited to a couple words—Cuff Yo Chick is not a mix that strives to be an esoteric selector but rather one that finds comfort in the familiar. When we finally hear the genre’s trademark “Jersey” sample at nearly the 16-minute mark of Side A, it’s a jubilation, and it’s a challenge to get your ass on the floor. Bandcamp
15. Boldy James & Real Bad Man – Killing Nothing
The heyday of gangsta rap may have been decades ago, but the prolific output of the Griselda Records roster has brought the genre back to the forefront of modern hip hop. Some may prefer the elusive surrealism of Mach-Hommy or the high energy of Westside Gunn (more on him later), but for my money, few rappers today can match the flow and lyrical brilliance of Boldy James, whose collaborations with The Alchemist and Real Bad Man have all ranked among the best albums of this young decade. On Killing Nothing, entirely produced by Real Bad Man, James is unrepentant about his life of violence and drug dealing, with little irony underlying its stories of crime and death. The album opens with “Water Under the Bridge,” warning its listener away from the lifestyle it embodies even as James opens his kimono to the realities of such a way of living. The song’s slow, sparse drum beat is paired with an echoing piano melody and a bass synth, giving a threatening aura that befits James’s morose vocal track. Real Bad Man’s production remains superb throughout the entire LP, the ominous beats patiently ceding attention to James’s rapping even as they threaten to steal the show themselves. Production highlights include “Game Time,” which has a wailing sound that almost sounds like a slowed-down siren underlying James’s discussion of crime exploits, and “Hundred Ninety Bands,” whose sample could have been taken from an old spy or superhero TV show and thus recalls the late, great MF DOOM. “Hundred Ninety Bands” also has some of the album’s best lyricism (I’ve always been a sucker for obituary songs, and the second half of this one is especially haunting), but “Sig Sauer” takes the cake, James’s flow really hitting a groove on the album’s most fast-paced track. Spotify
Best Track: “Sig Sauer”
14. various artists – Samurai Hannya II
Berlin-based label Samurai Music consistently releases some of the heaviest jungle being produced today, and new compilation Samurai Hannya II is a testament to its roster’s consistency, intensity, and quality. The album has an almost uncannily uniform sound, each track having a similarly threatening aura and rapid pace, differing from each other primarily in the complexity of the drumline and the specific synths used. This threat manifests itself in different ways: Sam KDC’s “Maelstrom” sounds like the blaring of a storm warning as the winds start to pick up, while Homemade Weapons’ “Open Water” is closer to an insect’s buzzing, each track’s forceful rhythm pushing these antagonists to the foreground. This is not a concept album—the cheesy soundbites of brostep are nowhere to be found across Samurai Hannya II’s 16 tracks—but the specificity of the mental imagery that the album inspires would make this a compelling soundtrack to a video game or genre film. “Wolfsbane,” a collaboration between Homemade Weapons and Dailiv, is especially suggestive; you can easily picture the chase scene through a Southeast Asian market for which this track could have been made, not only because of its frenetic tempo (it is one of the album’s fastest tracks) but also because of its higher-pitched percussion. Label founder Presha contributes one of the more interesting tracks in “Syndrome,” featuring a drumline that sounds like an improvisational loss of control; on the flip side, closing track “Oneness (of Being)” by Torn and Hoji has a plodding determination so controlled that it seems to be a reggaeton track before it picks up in earnest. In a time when bass music increasingly seems to be looking backward toward the genre’s roots, Samurai Music continues to push forward, upping the intensity without sacrificing sonic variation. Bandcamp
Best Track: “Wolfsbane” (Homemade Weapons & Dailiv)
13. various artists – Strega Musica
In early 2021, Make Noise Music released the Strega, a synthesizer designed in collaboration with Alessandro Cortini. The instrument was inspired by Cortini’s musical sound, which tends to gravitate toward the more melodic side of today’s ambient music landscape, and its ethereal, mysterious timbres are as reminiscent of the Roland TB-303’s acid squelches as they are of Spacemen 3’s tremulous guitars. To celebrate the synth, Make Noise released Strega Musica, a 13-track compilation curated by Cortini and featuring tracks by left-field artists like Daniel Avery, Julianna Barwick, Caterina Barbieri, and Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe. The Strega features heavily on every track, of course, and the rather wide range of music featured speaks to the synth’s versatility across the broader ambient landscape. The album opens with Abul Mogard’s “Like Water” and Cortini’s “ERA”, the two longest tracks (at 10 minutes and 16 minutes, respectively), which serve as epic introductions to the Strega’s sound. “ERA” in particular is something of a mission statement for the instrument’s existence, opening as an ostensibly calming ambient track but with heavy, rumbling bass early in the track’s runtime. Roughly halfway through, staticky sounds crescendo while higher-pitched wails enter to lend the track a heavenly aura, which continues to augment as the song reaches skyward. While this feeling of cosmic power seems endemic to the Strega’s range of sounds, other tracks on the album are a bit more pointed in their aims. Daniel Avery and Manni Dee’s “Meanwhile the Night Gets Darker” is the album’s lone straightforward dance track (it could have fit well on Avery’s 2013 masterpiece Drone Logic), taking the same sounds we have heard in an ambient context earlier in the album and retaining the sense of cosmic shadow while transforming them into a veritable banger. Julianna Barwick’s “Fly” meshes the artist’s lilting, wordless voice with the instrument’s mysterious, exploratory energy, and Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe’s “All of Them” is perhaps the most unique track on the album, featuring sparser sounds reminiscent of an orchestra tuning its instruments before it congeals into a song that could be playing in an outer space saloon in a sci-fi Western. More sonically uniform than most compilations while retaining the individual sounds of each of its contributors, Strega Musica is at once a calming and daring work by some of electronic music’s most exciting voices. Bandcamp
Best Track: “ERA” (Alessandro Cortini)
12. Persher – Man With the Magic Soap
Few fans of Karenn would have predicted that the duo’s next release would be a metal project, but the genre is clearly a natural fit for Arthur Cayzer (aka Pariah) and Jamie Roberts (aka Blawan), both of whom are self-proclaimed fans of hardcore. The throbbing rhythms, pounding bass, and heavy synth melodies of “On Request,” easily one of the best dance tracks of the last decade and the lead track on Karenn’s most recent release (two-track EP Music Sounds Better With Shoe), continue on Man With the Magic Soap, released under the duo’s new moniker Persher, although the album’s reliance on the electric guitar (courtesy of Cayzer), gnarling vocals (courtesy of Roberts), and simpler drum programming are new territory for the pair. “Man With the Magic Soap,” the album’s best track, is a rolling, growling track with a punk simplicity to its melody but an incredibly rich sound nonetheless. Even if few lyrics are intelligible outside of the repeated “fuck you,” its biting vocals meet its head-bopping rock and roll (as heard through feedback-heavy synths) to create a coursing, compelling opener. Some songs on the album are closer to dance music, like “Mother Hen,” which retains the growling vocals but has a more dance-friendly beat that might soundtrack a sci-fi film’s robot-populated rave, while others sound far more like live-performed metal, like closing track “Patch of Wet Ground,” which features indistinct screaming with no lyrics at all that makes the song one final cry of energy to finish the album. While Man With the Magic Soap’s brief runtime and radical break from its creators’ earlier work may make it seem more like a proof of concept at first blush, its careful composition and the fullness of its synth harmonies make it a forceful coup in its own right and hopefully bode well for the future of Persher. Bandcamp
Best Track: “Man With the Magic Soap”
11. Leftfield – This Is What We Do
British duo Leftfield, most known for their 1995 debut album Leftism, had released only one studio album in this millennium before dropping This Is What We Do in December 2022. As with many older electronic acts releasing a surprising late-career work, they form rhythms and melodies common during their heyday using synths that weren’t around at the time; unlike many older electronic acts releasing a surprising late-career work, they succeed in bridging the gap between the eras, creating an album that recalls the raves of yesteryear while still sounding fresh enough for a modern dancefloor. This Is What We Do swings with four-on-the-floor energy, but its general shape is more indebted to EBM and even industrial music, with sinister loops and growling bass that give the feeling of dancing in a dark, smoky warehouse. Leftfield isn’t phoning it in: the rich synth loops pay homage to the duo’s progressive electronic roots, the varying tempos and rhythms jump from trip hop to breakbeat to acid house, and the few vocal tracks exhibit similarities to musical moments as diverse as Underworld’s aggressive breakbeat in the mid-1990s and modern-day UK grime. “Accumulator” might be the best single example of the album’s strengths, using tropical drums inspired by Latin or African folk music and a synth that could fit in 2010s future or electro house to make a breakbeat melody the likes of which barely gets produced today. None of this is new, but it’s never sounded like this before, and Leftfield deftly shows us that it can. Spotify
Best Track: “Full Way Round”
10. Alex G – God Save the Animals
On paper, God Save the Animals seems like a straightforward indie folk album by bedroom pop artist Alex G. Its prevalent use of acoustic guitar, piano, and strings give the project an unplugged sound, and though Alex G did work with various sound engineers throughout the Northeast United States, it is not hard to tell that the album was written by the Philadelphia artist in the solitude of his home rather than through collaborative iteration. But there is something of the unheimlich on much of the album, as the analog instrumentation frequently meets with obviously autotuned vocals, looped samples, and other electronically manipulated sounds that create a sense of the uncanny valley when matched with the lilt of a piano and the soft echo of live recording. The album exists at these intersections: “Cross the Sea” has a vocal track that would fit in on much of today’s hyperpop with a more welcoming instrumental, “No Bitterness” has hymn-like singing with a more energetic guitar performance, “Headroom Piano” has the mouthfeel of post-rock but is structured like a jam track, and “Mission” features Molly Germer’s conventionally beautiful voice in the chorus while Alex G’s singing is a lot closer to the emo wails of Brand New and The Brave Little Abacus. That the melding of these dichotomies does not result in a messy, confused work is a testament to Alex G’s firm grasp of how different sounds work with each other; even from the first seconds of the album, the beautiful polymelodic passage that opens “After All,” the man takes sonic risks that pay off wonderfully. So many songs on God Save the Animals could have been the show-stopping climax of any great folk rock album—most of all, the vaguely self-pitying “Runner,” which rightfully seems to be one of the consensus best songs of the year—but with such an embarrassment of riches, they are all but steps on this wondrous musical journey. Bandcamp
Best Track: “Runner”
9. Westside Gunn – 10
The final installment in Westside Gunn’s Hitler Wears Hermes mixtape series is an exhilarating blend of hip hop’s history and its present. By featuring guest verses by hip hop royalty from Black Star to Busta Rhymes, 10 makes the bold claim that Gunn and his Griselda label-mates can go toe to toe with legends of the genre, and they succeed masterfully. After the RZA-produced intro track, the album opens in earnest with “FlyGod Jr,” whose stripped-down drum beat and slow, brooding melody provide an ominous backing for Gunn’s methodical rapping that highlights both the luxury and violence involved in drug dealing. Much like the opening track on Killing Nothing by fellow Griselda rapper Boldy James and production team Real Bad Man, “FlyGod Jr” feels equally soul-baring and threatening, and the featured verse by Doe Boy, whose energetic rapping is clearly inspired by the late Drakeo the Ruler, makes him seem like the triggerman to Westside Gunn’s don. (As early evidence that this album is meant to be something of a family affair, the track is named after its producer, who happens to be Westside Gunn’s son.) Over the next several tracks, the album situates Gunn firmly within the ranks inhabited by those legendary rappers who the album features, not only because he raps alongside the likes of Raekwon, Ghostface Killah, and more recent icons like A$AP Rocky and Run the Jewels, but also because songs like “Shootouts in Soho” have beats that feel pulled from 1990s boom bap. Outside of “FlyGod Jr,” the album’s two highlights are “Science Class,” whose amazing sample from baroque pop artist Margo Guryan (“We used to be good friends a long time ago”) punctuates each verse with a sense of melancholy, and 10-minute closing track “Red Death,” whose bevy of Griselda features might serve as the mixtape’s raison d’être. DJ Drama’s first interlude might be the track’s thesis statement (“When y’all tell the tale / Make sure you tell that nobody did it like Griselda did it / … / The culture was never the same after they got there”), but Benny the Butcher’s verse may be the best on the whole album, conveying Benny’s own confidence in his prowess as well as building up his colleagues and family members (Benny is Gunn’s cousin). On an album that sees relatively young rappers insert themselves in the annals of gangsta rap, “Red Death” is a fitting conclusion, a celebratory song that still retains the genre’s horror and aggression. Bandcamp
Best Track: “Red Death”
8. Hudson Mohawke – Cry Sugar
Few records wear their influences on their sleeves as much as Hudson Mohawke’s Cry Sugar does, and yet few sound so unique, so utterly original. Every track on the album is at once a dance music history lesson and a practically futuristic tune, resplendent and full in a way that so few of today’s electronic music is while featuring sounds, rhythms, or melodies that could have fit in on, say, a 1990s Squarepusher track or a late 2000s Chris Brown radio hit. After intro track “Ingle Nook,” the album kicks off in earnest with “Intentions,” a richly happy song that features an excited synth melody with high-pitched bell sounds and frenetic bass squelches to underscore choir vocals. Each of these elements contributes to the track’s energy, which bursts with a vibrancy that would light up any dancefloor. As the album progresses, it maintains this energy, albeit in a wide range of ways. “Bicstan” has clear breakbeat influence, but the tempo of its melody and the cutesy female voice keep the track closer to modern EDM and even TikTok hyperpop territory. “Dance Forever” has elements of modern trap and contemporary R&B, but its use of loops and its interstitial sounds make the song unlike anything normally heard in either of those two genres, and “Bow” is experimental hip hop with a stuttering beat that sounds like a creaky basement door opening and closing to maintain its off-kilter tempo. The album’s best track, “Is It Supposed,” is a celebratory melody delivered by high-pitched electronic piano, surrounded by a lighter drum beat and a happily buzzing synth aura. By the time Cry Sugar reaches its final third, it already seems to be in a victory lap, with arrogant pop beats equally brilliant to the earlier songs but with a confident swagger that feels more jubilant than ecstatic. The triumphant energy is well-deserved. Bandcamp
Best Track: “Is It Supposed”
7. Sunfear – Octopus
Listening to Octopus is like waking up on a lazy Saturday morning an hour before your alarm, feeling the warmth of the sun on your face, and holding the person you love as they continue to sleep. The album is filled with peaceful synthesizer drones and simple, echoing guitar melodies, providing a backbone of hazy post-rock and reverb-heavy ambient for Eylül Deniz’s dream pop vocals. Sunfear is Deniz’s new solo project, and though the album’s Bandcamp notes describe Octopus as “a rumination on loneliness, memory, and Deniz’s childhood,” the album’s tranquility feels more immediate and tangible than those words may suggest. Maybe it is the waterfall sounds that open “Dokun” or the heady drum beat on “Octopus,” or maybe it is the fact that each and every song on the album contains an intensity hidden deep beneath their slow, droning instrumentals and Deniz’s soprano emanation speech, but even as the album seems to dissolve into the ether, it vibrates with a sense of blurry presence that recalls the edge of sleep and wakefulness and hits with vibrant emotion that can only be felt in a lucid dream. At times, the album even approaches something like atmospheric sludge metal, albeit slower, and the growling electric guitar in songs like “Fuck You” make this so much more than just a Hope Sandoval knock-off, as much as Deniz’s gorgeous voice reminds me of the Mazzy Star frontwoman. It is a malleable, uncategorizable work that remains elusive even when its presence is fully felt. Bandcamp
Best Track: “Wake Up Song”
6. TSHA – Capricorn Sun
It would be easy to brush Capricorn Sun off as treacle. After all, it borrows heavily from tropical house, an insipid genre, and its optimistic vocal tracks position TSHA’s music much closer to festival EDM than any other contributor to the fabric presents mix series tends to operate. But if you can get past its cheesiness, the album’s sincerity and contentedness come as a breath of fresh air in an electronic music landscape that still trends toward moody darkness. Rarely does music this light and happy have melodies this interesting and synths this unique. Take “OnlyL,” one of the album’s first singles, as an example: after NIMMO’s repeated “Only love is, only love is playing” chorus, a refrain that would be annoying if it weren’t so joyfully danceable, comes a bubblegum-flavored footwork loop. It’s an unexpected touch whose primary effect is adding some head-shaking to the rest of the track’s head-bopping, and it is hard to picture a dancefloor that wouldn’t eat it up. On “Water,” even if the steel drum is a bit much, the dissolving synth piano gives the track some heft while also keeping it bubbly and airy. This gets to TSHA’s greatest strength on Capricorn Sun: finding power in lightness, and making complex compositions that are still refreshing and approachable. Whether it is using acid bleeps, South Asian folk strings, field recordings, or the Amen break, Capricorn Sun is always as bristling as it is plaintive, as poppy as it is heady, and as celebratory as it is wistful. Bandcamp
Best Track: “Time”
5. Foxtails – Fawn
A recurring sonic motif in Fawn is dual, layered tracks of Foxtails lead singer Blue Luno Solaz’s voice, one in a conventionally beautiful (though frequently downcast) tone and one in a high-pitched shriek, both saying the same words. This technique appears throughout Fawn and typifies the project as a whole; this is an album that serves up gorgeous melodies and poetic lyrics while using them to bash the listener to a pulp. In a year filled with fascinating takes on American folk music—Alex G’s God Save the Animals and (spoiler alert) Big Thief’s Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You both also made my top ten—Foxtails’ folk screamo may have been the most novel. This is anger-fueled music, but Solaz’s screams are just as sad as they are furious, and Jared Schidt’s ubiquitous violin is just as distraught as it is plaintive. Fawn is the band’s evocation of a dissatisfaction with the society into which they are expected to integrate (all four band members are non-binary, which surely informs their insights), and as irate as their music sounds, the lyrics remain perfectly level-headed. Take the climactic third stanza of “Ego Death” as example: “Is this what it’s like to grow up? / To realize everything’s fucked up? / To realize dreams are delusions of youth?” Pulling no punches, Foxtails kicks off their album with the plainly stated claim that the world is full of pain and that it bludgeons its inhabitants into submission rather than fostering love and creativity. Later in the album, on “Catalyst,” they argue that simply succeeding in one’s personal endeavors is an act of revenge against evil power structures: “Circumventing surrender, ascend / Rip the covers from off of this deathbed / Broken cycles pave ways to restitution / To blossom is revolution.” The album’s Bandcamp notes explain that its title is not an ironic reference to a baby deer but rather the verb form of the word, and the included quotation from Pete Walker’s Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving discusses a child’s act of fawning as ignoring one’s own self and appeasing an abusive parent by eschewing self-assertion. Fawn, then, should be read as a rebellion against the forced assimilation of marginalized people and an agitated claim that individuality is a criminal act. Bandcamp
Best Track: “Ego Death”
4. Soul Glo – Diaspora Problems
It is tough to imagine a better opening track for Diaspora Problems than “Gold Chain Punk (whogonbeatmyass?),” a song that sees its singer wondering whether he has the right to simply exist. Backgrounded by punk instrumentals that are on the precipice of death metal, the track shares punk’s concern with not feeling at home in mainstream society as well as hip hop’s interrogation of the experience of being Black in the United States, setting up an album that straddles the two genres in a fascinating manner. There may not have been an angrier American artwork in 2022, in any medium, than Diaspora Problems, as Soul Glo’s frequent calls for violent revolution and lucid claims that peaceful protest is incapable of reforming a system that enables and perpetuates the disenfranchisement of Black people are as radical as they are common-sensical. When lead singer Pierce Jordan discusses his history of abuse and depression, singing about how he feels guilty for being a burden on others in his life and about how he could have saved money on therapy had he been able to open up to his mother, the context of the surrounding tracks indicates that these are personal demons impelled by social issues that prevented him from coping and seeking help in the ways that he needed. Jordan’s vulnerability may feel unorthodox for both punk and rap, but the implications point toward the very social issues that both genres arose to combat. Soul Glo’s harnessing of trends both within rock and hip hop’s hardcore corners as well as outside of them (“Thumbsucker” is more of a grebo track with heavier drumming, “Driponomics” has a Death Grips-esque experimental hip hop beat and a Mother Maryrose feature that feels inspired by Megan Thee Stallion, and “Jump!! (Or Get Jumped!!!)((by the future))” name-drops the late pop rap artists Juice WRLD and Pop Smoke) situates their album within a cultural legacy and uses this social context as a launching pad for a gut-wrenching exploration of personal and societal struggles. Bandcamp
Best Track: “Gold Chain Punk (whogonbeatmyass?)”
3. Awe Kid – Body Logic
Welcome to the future of dance music. The presence of field recordings and nature-inspired synths on the dancefloor has ballooned thanks to Four Tet and other microhouse artists, but to date, this organic sound has minimal presence in dance genres outside of house and techno. Enter Awe Kid, whose debut LP Body Logic is a breakbeat masterpiece that combines the best of modern ambient and drum & bass to a shockingly proficient degree. Throughout its 10 tracks, Body Logic flows seamlessly between peaceful evocations of cosmic or elemental energy to stunning breakbeat rhythms, which tend to be muffled but aggressive. The album takes on different sonic contexts over its course—the song “Atavistic Paths” features chimes and synths that resemble whale calls, while “Planar” is more of a space age track with atmospheric squelches and drums that come in and out of focus—but the general schematic sees Awe Kid create a palpable energy field with ambient sounds and then pummel it into submission with aggressive drumlines. The title song is a heady, morose drum & bass track that still has a glimmer of hope as it suggests the feeling of happily dancing alone at a rave. Awe Kid may not do much more than what Jon Hassell and Squarepusher did decades ago, but by doing them at the same time, he pushes each respective genre into untrod territory. Bandcamp
Best Track: “Body Logic”
2. Big Thief – Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You
Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You is an overwhelming work, from its run-on sentence title to its length (the double LP runs 80 minutes) to its actual sound, which sees the quartet cover a vast range of genres in service of what amounts to a rock-oriented neo-folk album. The album’s Bandcamp notes indicate that it was recorded over the course of four sessions in four different locations (upstate New York, Topanga Canyon, the Rocky Mountains, and Tucson), and this heterogeneity is apparent in DNWMIBIY’s varied production and composition. Big Thief is a folk band at its core, but they use the folk genre as a launchpad rather than as the end result: note how “Heavy Bend” practically turns the harp into a hip hop beat, or how “Blue Lightning” makes brilliant use of both acoustic and electric guitars to create a compelling blend of timbres. This experimentation around the confinements of their usual sound allows for new revelations about the band’s talents to come out. Who knew that they could make a crooning rock song as intense as “Love Love Love” or a pop rock track as dissonant as “Time Escaping”? For all DNWMIBIY’s surprises, though, it is perhaps fitting that the album’s best moment sees Big Thief at its most prototypically folksy. Opening track “Change,” as simple as its acoustic melody might be, has a heartbreaking, haunting chorus that I still can’t get out of my head: “Would you live forever, never die / While everything around passes? / Would you smile forever, never cry / While everything you know passes?” Bandcamp
Best Track: “Change”
1. various artists – Weavings
It is unlikely that any musical work will typify the COVID era more than Weavings does. Not because of its lyrics (most of the vocals are wordless), or its atmosphere (emotional resonances abound, but the work generally deals in abstraction), or even the specific locations of its recording (bedroom pop has been a thing for far longer than the virus confined us to our homes). Recorded over Zoom by 14 artists as part of an performance for Unsound’s online festival in 2020, Weavings is the embodiment of improvisation: the artists recorded the work in one sitting, responding to each other with temporal lags attributable to their various Internet connections, and Nicolás Jaar (who conceived the project and co-curated the artist roster) mixed the recordings into a coherent work before its international live stream from his laptop opened the festival the next day. The resulting mix was released as an album in February 2022, unaltered other than subsequent mastering and splicing into unnamed tracks. Jaar is probably the best musician alive, and though he is only credited on three of the nine tracks, his influence is felt throughout the album, as its unplaceable instrumentals act in conversation with each other even if they all clearly have a mind of their own. Specific tunes are generally impossible to trace back to individual artists, but there is a melody in the final track that I am confident was Jaar’s contribution, as its mysterious rhythm and catchy melody are Jaar’s exact brand of dance-adjacent modern classical music. Elsewhere in the project, tranquil improvisation (like instruments tuning) gives way to increased energy that sounds like an electrical storm; insect clicks and human breathing give additional organic power to the music’s abstract spontaneity; acoustic guitars break through the lilting of unknowable instruments; static clangs, synth drones, spoken word poetry, and Laraaji’s wistful singing combine to form a beautifully rich sonic blanket. Weavings is the kind of work that could never have been composed by a single artist and could probably not have been planned out by 14 of them, and its remote, improvised recording leads to a wonderfully imbalanced mix that pulsates in real time. Nothing else released in 2022 was as resplendent or as enigmatic. Bandcamp