This is my list of favorite albums for 2024.
Is May too late to post such a list? Perhaps. Nobody reads this anyway and I hardly care myself, but it is a project that is vaguely important enough to me that I feel obligated to finish it up. I guess 2024 was fine, although it seemed oddly lacking in excitement as a whole.
Kim Gordon made a jarring and discordant noise pop album. It's fascinating to me that the only member of Sonic Youth still pushing the edges of the avant-garde is Gordon with either her solo efforts or collaborations with Bill Nace. On the opposite end of the spectrum was Crystal Dorval's White Poppy. Dorval crafted a mellow instrumental record without the the lo-fi shoegaze bluster of her earlier releases or the more developed songs of her last couple records. Somewhere between those two was FIN's experimental pop on the always great Hausu Mountain label.
Skin Graft kept on plugging along and released a couple more albums in whatever arty weirdo realm they've been operating in for the last 30+ years. Germany's Cuntroaches plumed the darkest depths to create some type of mutant no wave black metal. Japan's Hyper Gal manufactured a set of highly kinetic and noisy abstract pop songs with drums, vocals, and samplers.
White Suns were back with another record of their patented caustic, shredding noise rock. Dredging Heaven was a bit more wide open and clanging in an empty zone than previous releases. Also on Decoherence was Chaser, a somewhat new band, who built their sound on the last 25 years of no wave.
C. Lavender synthesized a mysterious sonic space in CD form that was inspired by exploring a Buddhist meditation practice involving music as a starting point. Pharmakon returned with an album of agitating and brooding industrial noise about the decay of the natural environment for profit.
Samara Lubelski and Bill Nace teamed up for two songs of sprawling electric guitar/taishogoto and violin squall. Along those same lines were the cello and synth efforts of Nora Rogers and Brian Haran.
As always any album had to be released in the calendar year and I had to listen to it a lot. And if you are one of those types who needs a definitive album of the year, then that honor goes to New Animals by Itsï Ramirez on No Rent. New Animals is an album of difficult, glistening laptop electronics that is echoing and haunting.
The list goes band/album/label for those with questions of that nature.
01. Chaser - Planned Obsolescence - Decoherence
02. C. Lavender - Rupture In The Eternal Realm - IDEAL Recordings
03. Cuntroaches - s/t - Skin Graft
04. FIN - Cleats - Hausu Mountain
05. Kim Gordon - The Collective - Matador
06. Hyper Gal - After Image - Skin Graft
07. Itsï Ramirez - New Animals - No Rent
08. Samara Lubelski & Bill Nace - 43/80 - Open Mouth Records
09. Pharmakon - Maggot Mass - Sacred Bones
10. Nora Rogers & Brian Haran - s/t - Flat Plastic
11. White Poppy - Ataraxia - Not Not Fun
12. White Suns - Dredging Heaven - Decoherence
