Here's my final recommendations list of 2022. Things have been incredibly busy and hectic for me these last few months, so I've had very little time to listen to new music, never mind sit down and write about it...but thankfully things have slowed down a bit during the festive season, and I've had some time to collect my thoughts on a bunch of albums I've been enjoying lately.
I'm currently working on a plan which will hopefully allow me to dedicate more time and energy to writing about music in the near future. I'm not there yet, but hopefully sometime soon. Thank you to everyone who has read my blog, followed me on social media, shared my posts and/or sent me music this year.
Without further ado...
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Lyndsie Alguire - ...like butterfly wings (2022)
GENRE : downtempo electronica, ambient, chillwave
RECORD LABEL : Reflections
A delicate sprinkle of wistful piano notes shimmer and float gently over expansive serene soundscapes. Gorgeous fuzzy synth chords rise and fall as the listener is slowly drawn towards the soft glow of a distant horizon in a hazy nostalgic dream...
Lyndsie Alguire is a Montreal-based artist, musician, producer & model. This album is her 9th, and her first ever release on a record label (Reflections - the ambient imprint of dance label Anjunadeep).
Rooted in themes of nature and childhood innocence, this music breathes with deep yearning and melancholic wonder. Alguire expertly creates and produces these vast ethereal ambient dreamscapes, with flourishes of minimalistic piano that float on the breeze and tug at the heart strings. It's the sound of sadness and longing, but also of comfort and hope.
This is the first album of Alguire's that I've listened to, and I look forward to exploring more. Beautiful stuff. Highly recommended.
Stream/Download the album here...
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Kate Carr - making do Vol. 1 (2022)
GENRE : sound art, field recordings, drone, experimental
RECORD LABEL : Tool Use
Kate Carr is a London-based sound artist and field recordist whose practice is centered on investigating the relationship between the soundscapes we collectively create and how we experience our shared public spaces. ''making do'' is her series on monthly experiments involving limited numbers of everyday objects, and ''making do Vol.1'' collects the first and fourth installments onto a single cassette, which has been released on the Canadian tape label/imprint Tool Use.
This album is a strange and fascinating listening experience. Carr's absurd yet elegant audio manipulation techniques transforms the sounds of these everyday household items into lush ambient atmospheres of a serene yet eerie beauty.
In these recordings you will hear brushes bristling, marbles bouncing, steel bells jiggling, soft breaths echoing, wooden tubes crunching and creaking, lonesome whistles sighing and dying in the air, waters trickling through narrow vessels...and all other kinds of ordinary everyday noises coming alive and dancing through these ambiguous soundscapes with a strange fleeting grace, while dark ominous drones ripple and rumble in the background, making the entire thing seem surreal and haunted.
An excellent piece of immersive sound art. Highly recommended. If you like this album, you should definitely check out the rest of Carr's 'making do' series here.
Stream/Download the album here...
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The Lonely Bell - The Broken Heart of Man (2022)
GENRE : experimental, sound art, dark ambient, drone
RECORD LABEL : Somnimage
This eerily hypnotic and gorgeously spellbinding 2-song EP consists of two sound collages - two dark swirling whirlwinds of sorrowful choral singing, funereal drones, ominous field recordings, mournful classical music and haunted ambience.
The Lonely Bell is the music project of Scottish/Filipino artist & musician Ali Murray. This particular release leans more towards sound art than the dark ambient music The Lonely Bell is typically known for, but it's certainly no less powerful or evocative.
'The Broken Heart of Man' plays out like a mesmerizing 12-minute long movie - a dark broody drama perhaps, or a lonesome character study. It's a sweeping sonic exploration of the dark side of the human condition. And it has Murray's signature stamp all over it - the misty soundscapes, the dreamy melancholic surreality, the profound loneliness and the deep aching sense of loss.
A dark, painful and beautiful EP. Highly recommended.
Stream/Download the EP here...
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Sulk Rooms - Ceremony (2022)
GENRE : dark ambient, drone, electronica
RECORD LABEL : Decaying Spheres
Dark foreboding rumblings, sorrowful pulses and sinister eruptions of grainy rippling noise heralds the latest offering from Manchester-based artist/composer Sulk Rooms (a.k.a Thomas Ragsdale).
This album of his was inspired by the concept of secretive cults and hidden societies. Listening to it feels like being led against your will down ominous corridors, haunted passageways and eerie rooms full of masked onlookers who partake in ritualistic sacrifices and other kinds of sick depraved acts which are best left to the imagination. It's a nightmarish descent into dark labyrinths of a strange and daunting world of shadows.
But it's not all darkness and terror and gloom. There's actually some moments of beautiful warmth and mellow euphoria in there, making 'Ceremony' a well-rounded and wonderfully dynamic slab of cinematic ambience. And from my listening experience, it gets better with each listen. Brilliant album. Highly recommended.
Stream/Download the album here...
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M.A. Hồ-Kane - Scrapbook 22 (Here #8)
GENRE : sound collage, experimental, film music, field recordings, ambient
RECORD LABEL : Here Free Press
This album is a complex and beautiful audio scrapbook of film soundtrack fragments, snippets of radio recordings, tape hiss, cartoon voices, avant-garde ambience and fractured synthetic modern classical music. It's a surreal and whimsical sound journey through a year of the artist's life.
M.A. Hồ-Kane is a Brooklyn-based experimental artist/musician/designer, and is also the owner of the wonderful tape label Here Free Press. 'Scrapbook 22' is basically a lo-fi dreamscape of sonic abstractions and cutup orchestral film music. It aurally treads a delicate fine line between mundane reality and fantasyland. Every moment is fleeting, and nothing returns....just like life itself. Garbled voice samples, radio static, abstract rumbling and the rise and fall of modular synthesis make up these intriguing and sublime sound collages. Excellent album. Highly recommended.
Stream/Download the album here...
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Catherine Sikora - Winter Solos (2022)
GENRE : jazz, jazz improvisation, solo saxophone, avant-garde
RECORD LABEL : self-released
This is an album of constantly expanding and evolving improvised saxophone jams from the inimitable virtuosic avant-garde composer/musician Catherine Sikora.
Sikora's idea for 'Winter Solos' was simply to record one solo sax piece for every day of the month of December 22. A very ambitious yet wonderful idea for these cold winter days.
At the time of writing this, the album hasn't been completed yet...so I technically haven't heard every single song on it. Regardless, it's a magnificent collection of songs, and a poignant aural document of a certain time and place in the artist's life.
This album currently consists of 28 heartfelt saxophone solos. These performances are extremely minimalistic and bare, yet beautifully executed and so wonderfully heartfelt.
As I embark upon this wintry musical journey, I allow my thoughts to become calm and still, and let my mind drift and wander along the waves of blissful sound that emanate from Sikora's saxophone. The feel of the music is sometimes tender and contemplative, sometimes playful and joyous... and at other times mournful, or just plain weird.
These avant-jazz pieces are fleeting fragments of pure soulful expression. Sikora's powerful tones and distinctive timbre along with the bare lonesome atmosphere of the album makes for a rather meditative listening experience. Incredible stuff. Highly recommended.
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Coagulant - Archival Recordings For Paolo Monti (2022)
GENRE : sound art, musique concrete, experimental noise, drone
RECORD LABEL : Antenna Non Grata
This album consists of one 34-minute long-form noise composition from Coagulant. Coagulant is the conceptual sound project of Fabio Kubic who uses various microphones as his main instrument to capture, cutup and broadcast sound.
Through various electronic manipulation techniques and audio-feedback editing, Coagulant creates vast and immersive soundscapes and abstract audio sensory environments that are wonderfully fascinating, and entirely engulfing.
Listening to 'Archival Recordings For Paolo Monti' feels like I'm trapped within the internal mechanism of some powerful unmanned machine, surrounded by gears and levels, chugging and clanking away into oblivion...
This album is a bizarre amalgamation of ominous whooshing drones, swirling hiss, fluttering tones of abstract frequencies and modulating oblique feedback that rises and swells towards a furious cacophony of mesmerizing and engulfing noise.
I can't claim to be able to aurally identify the source material of these collated sounds, but they've been skillfully manipulated and wonderfully collaged to create this massive body of ever-moving and ever-evolving noise that makes up this album.
'Archival Recordings for Paolo Monti' is a dark and unsettling yet beautiful and exhilarating work of art. Highly recommended.
Stream/Download the album here...
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Blush To The Snow - Dream Triptych (2022)
GENRE : ambient, drone, electronic, sound art
RECORD LABEL : Not Yet Remembered Records
Blush To The Snow is an ambient catalogue well worth exploring if you're seeking minimalistic abstract drifting drones and dreamy synth atmospheres to lose yourself in. This music is more about textures than melodies, more about immersion than structure, more about feeling than meaning, more about atmosphere than any kind of storyline or progression.
Blush To The Snow is the musical moniker of William Creason. This latest album of his is a collection of singles that were previously released through his own personal Bandcamp page - now collated and sequenced together in one long delicious flow.
You should sit back and allow these sweeping soundscapes to completely envelope you and take you across vast empty plains and uninhabited expanses - all bathed in serene otherworldly hues. This music both freezes and warms with its ethereal glow. Wonderful stuff.
Stream/Download the album here...
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Autumna - The Third Half (2022)
GENRE : ambient, drone, electronica, soundscape
RECORD LABEL : Frosti
Here is one 18-minute long slice of shimmering ambient drift to immerse yourself within from Belgian musician/composer Autumna. Its beautiful resonance and haunting ethereality makes for a delightful dreamscape, and a compelling listen.
'The Third Half' is based upon the general idea of the coming-of-age not equaling getting older, and a musical and artistic reaction to the way society clings to unwritten rules and conventions. This piece of music suggests the embracing of freedom, and the individual struggle to find his/her place in the world where most people blindly follow like sheep. The sound is generally pretty lo-fi and murky, with some glitchy noise elements, and the subtle clanging of bells. This is glorious drone music. I love it.
Stream/Download the album here...
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Permanent Vacation - Shelf Life (2022)
GENRE : lo-fi pop, indie folk, bedroom pop
RECORD LABEL : Totally Real Records
Here's an album of gentle fuzzy lo-fi bedroom folk songs to lull your aching heart into a wonderful soft stillness. Dull (as in tone) acoustic guitars, dreamy wistful vocals and twinkling ambient synthesizers comprise this wonderfully intimate and beautiful album.
Permanent Vacation are the musical duo of Juliette Rapp (vocalist/writer/keyboardist) & Chris Marks (songwriter/guitarist) who are based in Mexico City.
'Shelf Life' is an admirably minimalistic and lovingly dreamy album - ideal for languishing about the house during long empty days of nothingness. It's like a hazy reverie, or a fuzzy pillow that you want to sink your head into. Simultaneously life-affirming and bittersweet, these quirky lo-fi songs will dig their way into your heart and warm you from within. And it gets better with repeated listens. Great stuff.
Stream/Download the album here...
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Joshua James Wittman - Orbital Patterns (2022)
GENRE : ambient, drone, abstract, soundscape, electronica
RECORD LABEL : Shady Ridge Records
This is an album of huge, rippling, pulsating soundscapes based on the theme of radio, satellite and wireless technology.
Joshua James Wittman is a Minnesotan guitar-based ambient musician, and one half of the dark electronica duo Kindly Spoken Thieves. In this album, Wittman transports the listener to strange and beautiful abstract dimensions...taking us on an intoxicating ethereal journey through chilled ambient dreamscapes using a unique mixture of effect-laden guitars and gorgeous synth pads. Sit back and allow wave upon wave of abstract guitar-driven electronica wash over you and leave you speechless and calm. Highly recommended
Stream/Download the album here...
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