best music of 2024

Now that the year is almost over, with few new releases coming out in the remainder of December, I've posted my top 10 list to my website. It also includes runners-up, favorite songs and archival releases/reissues.

Speaking for myself, I'd put Arooj Aftab's album in my top 5. What an amazing singer and artist. That album is her attempt at crossing over, and somehow that just made it more beautiful.

Kudos for mentioning Blood Incantation's Absolute Elsewhere. I just saw them perform that album a couple of weeks ago. I don't listen to death metal much anymore, but that band is always interesting, even if they're crazy as loons (assuming we can take their mythology seriously).

The only top 10 list I do anymore is for the Arts Fuse jazz list; Mary Halvorson and Vijay Iyer are both on it. Hell, Iyer is #1. (I know a lot of folks put Aftab in the jazz bucket, but I think she's pretty genre-defiant.)

Months after Blood Incantation's second album came out, it dawned on me they're not being ironic about the ANCIENT ALIENS/"psychedelics allow you to encounter interdimensional beings" imagery.

Not at all. I've heard stories about the singer getting mad at people who assume they don't take it seriously.

I gotta say, my favorite record by them is Timewave Zero, their instrumental electronic album/tribute to Tangerine Dream and John Carpenter.

My friends Kevin and Eduardo named Blood Incantation their #1 for the year.

[www.discologist.com]

I just realized I missed a couple of cool records on your list: Mary Timony's Untame the Tiger and the Paranoid Style's Interrogator. More music that proves rock is not dead. And I missed Oranssi Pazuzu - I didn't realize they had a new record out. What a strange and amazing band - the only extreme metal band to successfully incorporate psychedelic rock, in my opinion.

I am listening to the Mary Timony record right now, as it turns out!

It's damn good. She's an underestimated talent, in my opinion.

I listened to the OP record this morning - it's like black metal crossed with Portishead's Third. Amazing.

According to Spotify, the song I played the most this year was "Economies of Scale" by Steven Wilson. It was released in 2023, so I guess not that relevant to a "best of 2024 list."

As for 2024, other than The Cure, I didn't purchase an album released this year. These are the only others I listened to more than once on Spotify, meaning I found them at least somewhat interesting:

Bolts of Melody - Film Noir
Field Music - Limits of Language
Elbow - Audio Vertigo
Warrington Runcorn New Town Development Plan - Your Community Hub

Looking forward to a couple of new releases in the first quarter of 2025:
Steven Wilson
Doves

I like that Field Music album a lot, after being lukewarm on the last couple.

According to Spotify*, the artist I listened to the most this year is Steve Gunn, who didn't release an album this year. But I spent a lot of time with his catalog. The songs I played the most are Gunn's "Ancient Jules," "Modul 58" by Nik Bartsch's Ronin, which came out in 2018, and the Necks' "Signal," which came out last year. Another album I played the heck out of is Billy Harper's Black Saint, which came out in 1975. Everything's always new to someone, no matter what year it came out.

The non-jazz album I was most obsessed with this year is Beth Gibbons' Lives Outgrown and its single "Floating On a Moment." Indeed, while I've listened to it sporadically since it came out, it's been in the past month where it's become one of my go-tos. I love albums that reveal new things with every spin. Arooj Aftab's Night Reign is another one from 2024 in that vein - it pulls back a new layer every time I listen.

Best straight up rock & roll record for me: Lions in the Street's Moving Along.

Biggest disappointment for me: Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds' Wild God. I haven't been able to truly get into anything he's done since Skeleton Tree. Maybe my tastes have changed in my old age?

Here's the list I turned in to Arts Fuse. It'll appear on the site when the poll is published in January (if history repeats, one, maybe two, of my picks will be in the top 10 of the poll, and the rest will be at the bottom), but it'll be buried, so this is easier.

10 best New Releases:

Vijay Iyer, Compassion (ECM)
Mary Halvorson, Cloudward (Nonesuch)
Frank London/The Elders, Spirit Stronger Than Blood (ESP-Disk’)
Matt Mitchell, Zealous Angles (Pi Recordings)
Tarbaby, You Think This America (Giant Steps Arts)
Immanuel Wilkins, Blues Blood (Blue Note)
The Bad Plus, Complex Emotions (Mack Avenue)
Oded Tzur, My Prophet (ECM)
Darius Jones, Legend of e’Boi (The Hypervigilant Eye) (AUM Fidelity)
Ghost Trees, Intercept Method (self-released)

Top-three Reissues or Historical albums (I'm not sure why there's five - either I can't read or we were told in the newsletter that we could do five - I don't remember):

John Abercrombie/Dave Holland/Jack DeJohnette, Gateway (ECM)
Charles Tolliver & Music Inc., Live at the Captain’s Cabin (Reel to Real)
Emily Remler, Cookin’ at the Queens: Live in Las Vegas 1984 & 1988 (Resonance)
Pat Metheny, Bright Size Life (ECM)
Phil Ranelin, The Found Tapes: 1968-1971 (ORG Music)

Best Vocal album (I don't listen to jazz singers much, so I usually pick something that happened to have a lot of vocals on it):

Orrin Evans & the Captain Black Big Band - Walk a Mile in My Shoe (Imani)

Best Debut album:

Andrew Wilcox, Dear Mr. Hill (Truth Revolution Recording Collective)
(My actual choice was Tomorrowland by Lux Quartet, which is something of a supergroup. But the administrator thinks we shouldn't count new groups made up of veteran musicians as true debuts. Never fear, Wilcox is very talented.)

Best Latin jazz album (holy shit, am I ignorant of this style - but I did like this one, and it's on Dave Douglas' Greenleaf label, which means it gets an automatic listen from me):

Rodrigo Recabarren/Pablo Menares/Yago Vazquez, Familia (Greenleaf)


*While I was legitimately obsessed with all of those artists, I will admit I was also trying to manipulate Spotify's algorithm so my end of year thing would be stuff I know I actually listened to a lot, rather than something I spun for professional reasons (like a print piece). It worked for the most part, but I noticed the Billy Harper song it says I played the most was "Call of the Wild and Peaceful Heart," when I know my main repeat stream from that album was "Dance, Eternal Spirits, Dance!"

This year, it was jazz that made the deepest impression on me. It was the music I went to see the most, partly because I made the effort to see a whole lot of artists that I had never seen before, from Andrew Cyrille to Gary Bartz to Wadada Leo Smith to Amina Claudine Myers to William Parker to Ron Carter and this weekend Kenny Barron...all of them now in their 80s and still going strong! But a lot of it had to do with current events, and without going into too much detail, pop music was especially disappointing in this regard, delivering what ultimately played out as hollow optimism or, in the case of the most feted album of the year, wallowed so often in self-absorption and celebrity culture that it made too much of its stylistic and technical virtuosity feel like a disappointing waste. From the survivors mentioned above to those who have come into their own (like Immanuel Wilkins, Vijay Iyer, Mary Halvorson...) to those who continue to mentor younger artists (like David Murray with his current quartet), jazz became a much needed salve at a time when my faith in humanity may have been at its lowest.

I saw William Parker with Ava Mendoza and Gerald Cleaver just recently, and have seen Ron Carter and Andrew Cyrille before. Great stuff, all of it, and I had to ask myself: when was the last time I saw an eighty-plus year old rocker kicking out the jams as well as these folks?

You are the fourth or fifth person I've seen mention David Murray and his new record. I really need to check that out. I'm a longtime fan, but somehow missed this one. I saw Murray last year in a duo setting with the percussionist/singer Kahil El'Zabar, and it was just magical.

And I know what you mean about renewing faith in humanity. With jazz, I feel like it's just pure music, without the performative and "look at me" aspects. (I'm well aware that's my perception, and not necessarily reality.) When I'm surrounded by folks from all walks who are there just to grok the music and performances, it reminds me that people aren't all assholes.

Yow! We saw Nik Baertsch's Ronin at the Big Ears Festival in 2019 and they blew the top of our heads clean off! When Richard Thompson ended at 3:30 that day, we had two options. I was still potentially interested in seeing some Bill Frisell music that I might like, and he was playing with Harmony at The Mill + Mine at 4:00, all the way across town. Or we could walk over to the Tennessee Theatre immediately [200 yards away] and see Nik Bärtsch’s RONIN, also on our schedule. There was no line outside of the venue so we opted for the easy way out. We easily entered the theater and got our seats and within 3 minutes were watching the band playing. This was undoubtedly the best move we had ever made!

The band launched into a complex structure that the four members defined, redefined, then expanded upon. With Bärtsch on piano/synths and his team on sax, bass, and drums holding down multiple time signatures within the trance structures of their jazz for the next 20 minutes as the music [Modul 58] unfolded like a lotus flower of dazzling and inordinate intricacy! To hear this music felt like I was moving at high velocities in my seat. I had to remind myself to breathe. Next to me, my wife seemed stunned. At first I thought that she might be put off by the performance, but I eventually realized that she was simply spellbound like I was. When the first piece climaxed there was rush of energy from the audience. This was obviously another one of those unpredictable music moments where I was undergoing imprinting with new and vital information being introduced to my DNA with long-range repercussions. Through it all, Bärtsch smiled gleefully at the extraordinary work his band was doing; only pausing to occasionally strike his piano strings with a mallet to coax new sounds out of them that their manufacturer never anticipated.

Then they played their second song, which lasted some 40 minutes. Our minds were stretched to a new place by the end of that time. Now I like some complex pop music. There’s Japan or Rush, and as always King Crimson is my standard bearer of such things, but in all candor; this made King Crimson sound like ABBA®. It was like a ballet of pure oxygen imparting its energy to the audience like an element that was missing from our diet. How had we gone for so long without this being a part of our lives? One big difference between this music and that of King Crimson was that the punishment/reward dynamic of that band was nowhere to be seen. This music was far more intense without having any harshness in it. When it was over we were thrilled that we had stumbled onto this revelation.

Nik Bärtsch told the audience that they would be meeting any fans at the merch table and my wife raced to the table like a champ. We bought their latest album, “Awase” and Nik and two of his band cohorts [Sha – sax, Tomy Jordi – bass] listened to us gush for a minute or two as they signed our CD. Nik even drew a sketch, and my wife also opted for the CD by Sha’s Fetel; the “more rock oriented” side projects from the sax/clarinet player.

Former TP subscriber [81, 82, 83, 84]

[postpunkmonk.com]
For further rumination on the Fresh New Sound of Yesterday®

"Modul 58" is an absolute masterpiece of a song. I envy you having seen them play it. I had a chance to see Ronin at SXSW about 10 years ago, and passed it up to see (ironically) Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds. Ronin did a US tour last year, but didn't come back to Austin, alas.

Barstch and Ronin have a new record out entitled Spin, released on their own label Ronin Rhythm Records. (I guess the ECM deal is over.) It's quite good - worth the effort if you dig them, as you clearly do.

Trouser Press Books appreciation from Variety

Right on! Hope it shifts a few units, as they saw in the record biz.

This made me laff: "Despite and also because of its puzzling inside-joke name (italics mine), Trouser Press was one of the greatest music magazines in history."

That's the kind of praise the tome obviously deserves! I have given it as a gift this year but still need a personal copy…even thought my TP collection #61-84 is always at my side.

Former TP subscriber [81, 82, 83, 84]

[postpunkmonk.com]
For further rumination on the Fresh New Sound of Yesterday®

Currently listening to J. Robbins - Basilisk and enjoying it very much!

Following up on more 2024 releases, most recently the latest from Imperial Wax (featuring ex-members of The Fall). Good stuff! I really like the guitar work. Vocals are OK, but not enough to put me off entirely.

>> Biggest disappointment for me: Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds' Wild God. I haven't been able to truly get into anything he's done since Skeleton >> Tree. Maybe my tastes have changed in my old age?

I hesitate to agree but I agree here. I don't normally notice artist' routine press junkets, but Nick Cave was everywhere and probably more places that Hawk Tuah Girl, but months after the fact - I don't know how much return the record labels got on that big press tour.

Since I'm the Post-Punk Monk, most of what I buy/hear [and am interested in buying/hearing] is 40-50 years old, but with the blog's reach expanding, my rear-view-mirror listening habits are being successfully challenged by promo coming across the transom. To the extent that last year I heard 18 albums released last year. A record, I think! I do not stream. A lot of these artists are in the Bandcamp universe, which for my ears, is better than most labels. Here's the rundowns for the 4 categories.

2024 Albums
1 - Yama Uba: Silhouhettes – TIE – Chopper Franklin: Spaghetti Western Dub Vol. 1
2 - Visage: Live 2013/The Prague Sessions
3 - Les Longs Adieux: Vertigo
4 - Ductape: Echo Drama
5 - Blow Monkeys: Together/Alone
6 - Pet Shop Boys: Nonetheless
7 - John Cale: POPtical Illusion
8 - The Heathen Apostles: The In-Between
9 - The Metamorph: Tecton
10 - Modern English: 1 2 3 4

2024 Singles
1 - OMD: Kleptocracy
2 - Fluid Japan: Don’t Dry Your Eyes
3 - Vamberator: I Used To Be Lou Reed
4 - Autumn: Catacombs
5 - Jan Linton: 30th Century Man
6 - Fluid Japan: When Your Heart Is A Suicide [Shinagawa Mix]/[Shinjuku Mix]
7 - Logan Sky + RIS-707: Everything, Everywhere, Endlessly
8 - René: Nothing New Under The Sun
9 - The Twistettes: Tory C*nts
10 - Vamberator: Sleep The Giant Of Sleeps

2024 EPs
1 - Parenthesis Dot Dot Dot: The Raptor E.P.
2 - Nits: Tree House Fire
3 - Visage: Before You Win
4 - Fluid Japan: Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence EP
5 - Chameleons: Tomorrow Remember Yesterday EP

2024 Reissues [now we're talkin'!]
1 - Nöel: Is There More To Life Than Dancing? DLX RM
2 - Ultravox: Lament 40th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition
3 - Ultravox: Lament Extended Remixes CD
4 - Ultravox: Lament [Steven Wilson 12″ Remixes]
5 - China Crisis: China Greatness
6 - Jesse Rae: Almost Ma Sel Again
7 - Altered Images: Pinky Blue DLX RM
8 - The Metamorph: Red Tape DLX RM
9 - David J: Tracks From The Attic 3xCD
10 - Ultravox: Lament Steven Wilson remix/instrumental 2xCD

Former TP subscriber [81, 82, 83, 84]

[postpunkmonk.com]
For further rumination on the Fresh New Sound of Yesterday®

A super deluxe edition with room for several remix compilations left over!