JDIDS 50 favourite records of 2018.
50. Facecahin - Accensor
It’s easy to get trapped in the formulaic niceties of dub techno. Facechain’s vaporwave past helps him untie Accensor into an otherworldly excursion, worlds away from his nature sampling friends on terra firma.
49. The Men - Hated: 2008 -2011
The Men learnt to make music as a band a little differently to most, starting with structure and texture before they ever even thought about melody. In more recent times they have been in an arm wrestle with Parquet Courts to be the most ambitious proper capital R independent Rock band of the moment, so it’s easy to forget that once a upon of time they were more literally, physically trying to “open your heart”. These previously near impossible to source early recordings that preceded 2011’s still incredible Leave Home are about the first thing released since then that actually come close to matching the jarring intensity of that record.
48. Poemme - Moments In Golden Light
If there is any proof of the existence of a god it is in sunsets, a nuclear explosion that evaporates the previous day and shrouds anything bad that happened in a vast all saturating golden light. Celebration of their existence seems like logical worship to me and a lot of other ambient enthusiasts however Constellation Tatsu are a mark of quality, Moments in Golden Light is a reminder of how often this type of thing is done and how rarely it is done this well.
47. Borusiade - A Body
The ex Romanian Choir girl’s record is an unforgivingly dark introverted record that turns a modest setup into a deep mine for showcasing her incredible talents as a producer. From some of the most gut wrenching ambient to vocal tracks that layer ambivalent, deep vocals, to deep pulsating European techno.
46. Pinegrove - Skylight
It’s no secret there was controversy around this record which makes it very hard to write about, but once that controversy was laid bare it really didn't make a lot of sense. I’ve had bands ruined for me by this type of thing - Swans for one. Skylight was written before it all but exudes a scary self awareness. I listened to this record a lot when I took a week off work and found its levels of introspection incredibly useful. Aside from Pinegroves present and predictably wondrous technical acrobatics, Skylight offers a glimpse into a mind that acknowledges it is confused.
45. Answer Code Request - Gens
Berghain techno is a now a universally celebrated sound and Answer Code Request is one of the clubs lauded success stories. Gens shrouds his once crystal clear mathematics with a mist, dulling the edges a little. The dynamics edge closer to label mates Barker and Baumecker’s booming sonics without sacrificing his insane level of detail.
44. Merzbow & Hexa - Achromatic
Every record that Merzbow features on is a Merzbow record. He’s released around 2-300 depending on who you ask and not even his greatest fan would try and claim they’ve heard them all. Of the 15 or so I have heard, this is the most transcendent. Here he is mellowed, (relatively) and it allows the door to crack open a little wider to achieve the masochistic enlightenment a merzbow bowel cleanse can achieve. If there is beauty in self torture it lies somewhere within these walls of screeching noise.
43. Nadia Kahn - In Gleam
Nadia Kahn is highly out of step, In Gleam is full of sun faded deep house and ambient, almost a contemporary version of the memory house nostalgia of the late 2000’s. But the record is guarded in a way those records never were and rewards patience. Snips of these tracks may conjure a record of small insular moments but an afternoon of listening reveals a golden, spacious terrain.
42. Masayoshi Fujita - Book of Life
The vibraphonist called this his most “human” release but there's only some truth to this. It’s his first record you could imagine being played by a couple of people in a room but on the record’s best moments like the sparse, quiet title track he has an uncanny ability to make you feel like the instrument is simply conjuring these sounds itself. Thanks to sublime recordings you can hear every little detail, scratch and vibration the instrument is making. It’s a true demonstration of the complexities of sound and challenges conventions of what can summon images of beauty in music.
41. Taylor Deupree - Fallen
One of ambient’s most reliable contributors both through his own record and his label 12K, it seems a little odd that Deupree hadn’t made a record centering around the piano until now. Fallen joins a long list of smoky, conceptually tight Deupree records that could be his best.
40. Melquíades - Blue Caves
Alex Albrecht’s Scissor and Thread debut is a delight in subtle mutations. It’s an appropriately cavernous record, a meeting of traditional piano-scapes and and deep electronics that flows seemlesly from expressive exercises on melodic ambience to more traditional deep house. Less about invention and more about melding disparate ingredients in a new way, the record hangs around the air like a thick summers evening.
39. Yo La Tengo - There’s a Riot Going On
Yo La Tengo deal in absolutes of quiet and loud, their live shows often divided by the two. Dismantling the eclectic tendencies of their more recent records, the vets have crafted a cohesive, calm album that sits content with the former, gorgeous ambient passages swell into quiet signature songs -the type only they can write - whilst never raising their voice from a whisper.
38. SUSS - Ghost Box
Strange things would happen in Suss’s world, unsolved murders, unexplained out of town visitors would show up, stunning sunsets would welcome another night of unease. Ghost Box is spaghetti western ambient, steel pedal guitars and cavernous reverb abound, painting a revolutionary landscape. Post rock fore fathers Tortoise and Godspeed have both made music like this in the past but I’ve never heard anyone dive so far down the rabbit hole as these guys.
37. American Pleasure Club - A Whole Fucking Lifetime of This
Oh Sam Ray, what are you serving us up now? Field recordings of construction sites at night? Drake sampling house? A homage to a seminal Jim O’Rourke album? More emo love songs dedicated to the shit belt of America? Another record under yet another name that does just about all of it? I’m not sure if he means it when he goes on those long rants about how talented he is, or if his bashing of Car Seat Headrest is internet trolling or unabashed sincerity, but as long as he’s pumping out records like these it’s hard to care.
36. Mary Lattimore - Hundreds of Days
The harpist’s latest pushes her vision as an innovator of the instrument- medieval kitsch this is not. Her harp wanders around guitars, synths and her own voice her mastery in a way that are easier to compare to natural phenomena than music, it crackles like fire and swarms like evening insects. She uses a 47 string behemoth to slow the world down.
35. Objekt - Cocoon Crush
According to their forums, despite being scored higher than any other album this year on RA, it seems disappointment was a common reaction among their readers to Objekt’s latest. Until Skee Mask showed up Objekt was the greatest hope for IDM in the 2010’s and follow up to 2014’s highly important Flatland with similar intentions was something worth waiting four years for. This wasn’t it, instead TJ Hertz decided to stay with the more relevant sound design movement gravitating towards the hyper queer scenes of Arca, Lotic and Amnesia Scanner. But this music didn’t want to shock, nor did it just exist to serve TJ’s obsession with chrome plated sonics. I kept coming back to this record, despite its gravity there’s something really nice about it. I’m not entirely sure what it is but I’m looking forward to spending the next four years figuring it out.
34. Laurel Halo - Raw Silk Uncut Wood
The shapeshifting wonder turns her sights towards ambient and like her immersive techno and chameleon like experimental pop, she makes it her own. The brevity of Raw Silk makes it feel like it may have been an experiment for her, but it’s unique nature just expands the legacy of her genius for us.
33. Sandro Perri - In Another Life
Sandro Perri works slowly. This record took seven years and effectively only contains two songs, but they are songs you could plausibly say took seven years to write. Fantastically out of step with the current world, the title track swarms for 24 minutes and just when you’re settling in Dan Bejar shows up and makes dinner for you. It’s familiarity at its finest.
32. Cavern of Anti Matter - Hormone Lemonade
On their best, and at times gorgeous third krautrock album, Tim Gane continues to carve out the smaller details of Stereolab songs (and their memorable outros) as full widescreen instrumentals. Perfectly monotonous but never taxing, Hormone Lemonade forgoes Stereolab’s hard to ignore melodic qualities for offers beautifully human blankets of rhythmic, trance like sound still hooked to the kooky genre that birthed it. Its details are so luxurious and its synths so warm and big you want to curl up inside them.
31. Rafael Anton Irisarri - Midnight Colours
The collective earth has perhaps never looked at its mortality closer than it did in 2018. There’s discussions on how to “stop” climate change that happen within pockets of intellectual thought but the science, stupidity and capitalist drive outcome is indisputable, it’s done. Rafael has long been ambient royalty and he is perhaps one of the most capable to turn this final exhale into a record. Big music for a big feelings.
30. Pariah - Here from Where We Are
2018 was a year of hard turns for many artists featured on this list but Pariah’s was potentially the most surprising, like Laurel Halo he turned his way to ambient but for an artist riding the James Blake bass wave of 2010 and then falling into an eight year writer's block it feels quite odd he ended up here. His brand of ambient is more perplexing still, an odd mix of complicated arpeggio layering that gently shifts your focus to various elements of the music with graceful fluidity.
29. Joyce Manor - Million Dollars to Kill Me
It’s 2018 and Joyce Manor are still fucking awesome.
28. Negative Gemini - Bad Baby
Low-fi pop has long been a genre more ambient than ambient itself, a trick used to hide flaws, ironically flattening whatever good may lie inside. Negative Gemini turns that idea on its head, rather than hide behind it, she seeks to add spaces to her immensely complex music using hiss and gaseous drift. To-die-for melodies float in and out of focus like a slightly off kilter dream you can't quite figure out, one that that makes you uneasy and blissful at the same time.
27. Tangents - New Bodies
The Australian improvisors continue to run a course similar to their American forefathers Tortoise. If 2016’s Stateless was their TNT, New Bodies is their Standards, a fleshed out ambitious front to back rendering of improv jazz, post rock and insane electronics. It’s a complete spectacle.
26. Aphex Twin - Collapse
For someone who’s spent his life creating genres, setting trends and defying expectations it’s more than a little odd to hear actual outside influence from a high profile act in Jlin’s instant classic Black Origami on Richard D James’ latest. However fraught or obvious the relationships between the two might be, James warps it into an IDM aphex acid frenzy full of his own signatures and lots of cheeky winks. It doubles as his most accessible release of this decade.
25. Steve Hauschildt - Dissolvi
Hauschildt’s output of aggregated landscapes has been both predictable and blissful since his band Emerald’s disbanded. Dissolvi sees him maneuver it the way of minimal techno and although it’s his first big surprise, he makes it into something beautifully out of alignment with everything around him. Julianna Barwick joins him for a meeting of ambient titans that lives up to the bill.
24. Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto - Glass
Delicately recorded live in Philip Johnson’s glass house, Glass is the very rare meeting between music and architecture that moves beyond the tokenistic. The pair use the surroundings to create a piece of music that at once could not have been made anywhere else and is warmly emotive. The single piece is 37 minutes long but expertly dissolves time, destined to be deemed an overlooked ambient classic.
23. Tiny Moving Parts - Swell
To understand the magic of Tiny Moving Parts you really have to see them live. Dylan Mattheisen physically explodes, throws himself everywhere and looks like he is the happiest man on earth. He does this whilst playing some of the most ludicrously complicated math rock you could imagine in unworldly time signatures whilst screaming his head off. Swell cleans up the rougher edges of 2016’s Celebrate and amps up the ludicrosity, an impassioned and technically dazzling record.
22. Lone - Ambivert Tools Vol 1- 4
DJ’s hate Lone. His time signatures and BPM’s are a nightmare and his synths are often bizarrely tuned leaving very little avenues for him to slide readily into sets. The Ambivert Tools series, released over the last two years was designed to be a break from this, a more straightforward club ready, 4/4 offering form one of current electronic music’s great visionaries. It started out that way, but by the essential, mesmerizing fourth volume he seemed to have jettisoned that idea in favour of crafting the most ambitious music of his esteemed career. Anyone can make basic club music, except Lone.
21. GAS - Rausch
After last years unexpected return that jettisoned the project into new spaces of neo classicism after a 17 year coma, Rausch returns to GAS’s origins. It’s a darker, more familiar GAS sound, reminiscent of a refueled version of 1997’s Zauberberg and although the era shifting experimentalism of last year is notably absent, the seamless cohesion of Rausch will be welcomed by a certain type of GAS fan.
20. Biosphere - The Hilvarenbeek Recordings
Based around field recordings form a dutch farm, this typically odd piece of ambience may actually be the Jenssen’s finest work this decade, recalling the surreal and instantly identifiable, creepy soundscapes of Substrata. It’s a Biosphere sound that has been missed.
19. Felicia Atkinson & Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - Limpid as the Solitudes
Ambient Music has long had an obsession with the idea that it exists within the contamination of the world’s outside sounds. Eno went on and on about the relatively new nature of recorded music and how pre the record, music would always be subject to its environment. Even headphones are susceptible to the sounds of the outside leaking in. Ambient, instead of fighting that idea has celebrated it. Limpid as the Solitudes, a meeting between two big names in ambient is a fantastic example. Felicia’s gracious, collaging style dominates and dulls traces of Jefre’s more recent shoegaze exploits, the result is a non democratic meeting of the minds that is lucid and dreamlike.
18. Sarah Davachi - Let Night Come On Bells End The Day
Davachi is a fanatical fan of Frédéric Chopin, the romantic tone poet of the 1800’s. It shows. Her music deals in what first appear to be solid blocks of sound yet of further examination are like following long winding undulating tunnels. Let Night Come Over is her finest yet, it beautifully captures the duality of the clam hussle and bussle of sleepy rural European cities at dusk. If you find yourself inclined to enter a meditative trance and follow her boldest moment like highlight “Hours in the evening” Bells doubles as a cheap psychedelic trip. Pieces that at first seem like a single note sustained for 10+ minutes start to wobble, and melodies appear sunken within them. Like Chopin, Davichi can teach you to hear new things.
17. The Field - Infinite Moment
The Field is this decades colossus of ambient techno. On the third album of his “Black Period” he makes his music seem big and small all at once. This is the headphones record of the year, one where the best moments lie coiled up in gargantuan slow moving waves of fog. It’s no secret that GAS birthed The Field’s sonic framework, but never has Axel taken his music closer to Voigt’s.
16. Jim O’Rourke - Sleep Like It’s Winter
For someone who hates ambient music Jim O’Rourke sure makes a lot of it. His Steamroom series is music that he says “he just has to make” and it’s a relatable position for many ambient artists who use the genre as both a meditative process an act of self examination and an exercise in restraint. His first labored over effort in formless music elevated to “album” status acts as a counterpoint to his 2015 stunner Simple Songs (A record I wrote about a lot) and a critique on ambient music and himself alike. If you ignore all this however it is simply one of the most peaceful, soul cleansing records you will hear all year.
15. M. Geddes Gengras - The Hawaiki Tapes
Recorded in the evenings whilst on holiday with nothing more than a space efficient Vulca FM and a reverb pedal these recordings work sublimely into an ambient history of artists honing in on the possibilities of one instrument. I own a Vulca FM and nothing achieved on this record is other worldly or technically difficult, but nobody has unpacked the emotional scope achievable within this accessible synthesizer in quite the same way. You can imagine him coming home from days on the beach and making these tracks, they’re long, indulgent and they don’t expect an audience. It’s a beautiful, perfectly executed small scale idea in a world of big poorly executed ideas.
14. Citizen Maze - Serenity In The Woods
For someone who is apparently a fruity loops wizard, Citizen Maze’s Analogue Attic debut felt remarkably untied from the world of the computer. He fits the label like a glove, an Australian wunderkind who melts field recordings into his own dubby electronic wilderness with a surprising jazz influenced undercurrent. He’s got his own unique magic, unlike the location specific music of label bosses Albrecht La'Brooy, Serenity sounds to me like a fictional landscape painted by the mind of its creator.
13. Grouper - Grid Of Points
Liz Harris’s music seems to be getting smaller to the point of collapsing in on itself. After the eclectic Ruins, the uniformity of Grid of Points creates a striking desolation despite the absence of traditionally ambient pieces. The record is made entirely of simple, quick songs and the best one of all, the bizarre opener called “The Races” is done in under a minute. Grid of Points is stark, airy and like everything else she’s done, mesmerizing. You can feel every crack, creek and gust of air that occupies the space that made this music.
12. Adrianne Lenker - Abysskiss
Already proven as a songwriter whose biggest moments have the effect of a sledgehammer, Big Theif’s Adrianne Lenker’s solo outing evokes the surreal nature of peak Thom Yorke. Using simple, familiar tools she's built an ominous, devastating presence far larger than herself and you get the feeling shes just getting started.
11. Dedekind Cut - Tahoe
Music media is increasingly bending genres into twisted shapes to alleviate the pressures of tradition. Ambient is a genre that has proved hard to bend, and a few records have shone through showing how barriers like genre need not be eroded to defeat political ones just as we should all remember that democracy is not married to capitalism. These records are incredibly important. Tahoe is one of them.
10. Albrecht La'Brooy - Tidal River
In an Australia where nationalism is a torrid word, Albrecht La’Brooy have show the beauty of embracing a universal regionalism that everyone can enjoy. Their music is distinctly Australian in a way that is hard to describe without using hazy descriptors. This record actually does sound like the progression of a warm summer's day in the Australian wilderness and conjures that kind of blissful exhaustion of a long day under our sun. Their debut for R&S ambient offshoot Apollo was bound to reach a bigger audience and the pair took that on - Tidal River is the culmination of years of carefully defining a new brand of Australian music and carries a kind of celebratory finality with it.
9. Shinichi Atobe - Heat
Mysterious, but more likely just modest, the Japanese producer produces yet another brilliant looping work of minimalist nostalgic tech house with that lovely Japanese sensibility that money just can not buy (or maybe it's just keeping the hi’s loud in the mix who knows). Heat is his most optimistic record yet, one that floats on the borders of euphoria and hints at the fairytale life of its creator.
8. Skee Mask - Compro
Unmasked not as a greying master but a stoned German teen, Skee Mask continues to confound by intensifying and expanding the musical universe he has built. Although it alludes to a decade past and Aphex’s obvious legacy, Compro feels completely of its own, a new level of immersion and sound design riding an emotive and unashamedly melodic wave. Breakbeats are vital and godlike and nowhere near cheesy nostalgia. A once in a decade event, Compro could be the best IDM album since Music Has The Right to Children.
7. Tim Hecker - Konoyo
Hecker’s career has operated in strange territories. Each of his records is more of the same, a recipe he perfected nearly two decades ago, yet each drills aggressively into a completely different conceptual mine. Konoyo asks a question rarely asked by musicians - what happens when western tuning interacts with non western ones. Richard D James has long been ranting, raving and producing incredible records based on an aggressive anti 440hz stance, but he was all but alone until now. Hecker who is a master of blending two alien entities into one takes 440 and 430hz instruments and melts them into something that has never existed in modern music. Although he’s always been a provocateur and a supporter of anti-music, (you need look no further than Ravedeath for that) the results of Konoyo are a new revelation.
6. Julia Holter - Aviary
If Julia’s 2015 baroque pop masterpiece Have you in my Wilderness was a like watching her world through a crack in a door, Aviary blows the ceiling off and watches the pieces fall from the sky. A difficult, sprawling, formless epic of an album that frequently, thrillingly borders on collapse, it conjures the same magic anco did in the mid 2000’s when you first heard them, completely alien but entirely enthralling.
5. Amen Dunes - Freedom
Freedom is a brilliant evolution of an artist’s sound that was already wholey distinctive to begin with. He shares a lot on paper with retroactive rockers like Kurt Vile and the War on Drugs, yet his music now completely untethered to any decade or style in particular. When he sings about his desire to drift along the Mekong if he could on “Skipping School” or reflects on the black and white world of 1963 on the years best song by a mile “Miki Dora” he constructs a musical fever dream of places he’s only read about. His distinctive voice gives the record a placeless,alien quality, his twentieth century narratives capturing a Dylan level of intrigue. There are few who can take this type of music and make it their own, there are fewer who can completely reinvent it. This guy reads.
4. Joseph Shabason - Anne
Joseph Shabason has already played a major role on one of the 2010’s most influential records. The seminal saxophone on Destroyer’s 2011 monolith Kaputt was played entirely from his lungs. That record was this blog’s album of the year that year, but has since gone on to make a massive impact, a complete outlier compared to what the rest of the decade was to offer. His appearance wouldn’t ordinarily be such a big deal but that instrument formed the emotional core of Kaputt, it was all class and kept Dan Bejar from shifting into 80’s kitsch. Instead Kaputt was the most important and emotional record Bejar has ever made. There had been brilliant Destroyer records, but Kapput is readily acknowledged as his masterpiece.
Anne is the same but different. It’s a highly charged, solo ambient record. Just as Dan was the star on Kaputt, Shabason makes it his mother by peppering the record with conversations between them removing himself from the centre. The saxophone, just as it did on Kaputt forms the emotional core. The restraint is incredible, a man of his talents could have easily gone wild with the instrument but Shabason’s understanding of his craft sees him implement it as the record’s secret weapon. Simple synths do the grunt work and often unexpectedly such as on “Deep Dark Divide” the saxophone swells into the mix as a powerful blanket or drone and offers pieces their most devastating melodic flashes. It’s a masterful and unique approach by a true old school master of an instrument.
3. Autechre - NTS Sessions
Don’t worry about the unimportant format of a radio show made super important with an issue of 8 hours of music on LP to confuse you, the human rhythms that drive most western music have long since left Autechre, so their logic systems of releasing music are the least of your concerns. These NTS sessions could actually prove to be their best, a record so confounding and challenging that when you connect with it the results offer a very different kind of euphoria. Considering the algorithms that went into making this thing are beyond the grasp of human minds alone (it seems a lot of it was Max/MSP based) it’s amazing how easy it is to find satisfaction time and time again when visiting its colossal innards.
2. No Age - Snares Like A Haircut
No Age are a punk band with ambient sensibility at a zoomed out level but at a micro scale they operate as noise band with pop residue. They compose atmospheres, not songs and their latest makes a point of this sounding as delicate as steam burning off a lake. It’s as if something different is happening within their distortion. After their 2013 excursion to the world of art rock, It’s a welcome return to what they do best, only begging for more of the incredible ambient interludes that peppered their previous work of which we are only granted two (admittedly perfect ones). This is a minor gripe to say the least, Snares glistens in a way that even their magnum opus Everything in Between only hinted at.
1. DJ Healer - Nothing 2 Loose
More than any other year there was never really any competition.
It might sounds strange but to really understand the effect of Nothing 2 Loose you have to understand Oprah Winfrey. Her show is a cultural melting point where suddenly the superfluous issues of celebrities become deep and meaningful tools reflected back at you for your own self examination. It’s easy to dismiss but it is also easy to be on the other side and to embrace the fact that although we hold ourselves as superior to all living things we are just a big fleshy emotional mess. She acts as a large part of the emotional machine of Healer’s universe
The reclusive artist once most famously known as Traumprinz among other names, retired after a decade amassing a lauded discography. Flash forward to Easter 2018 (not so Incidentally April fools day) and a strange website promising two new records from someone who ~might~ be him appears. Legions around the world, including myself, part with cash very quickly. Faith pays off in capitalism quicker than religion it seems, whilst Prime Minister of Doom’s Mugshadow Propaganda is a DJ delight of 4/4 basics on N2L the prince takes his meta hat, looks inwards at himself and reality and mortality and of course religion. It’s at once theatrical, uncomfortable, comforting and jaw droppingly beautiful. In the current world peppered with insincerity and irony this is no joke, On “God’s Creation” he floated over the world from above and asked me to consider the grandeur of all around me. This is not giving me time to reconcile that some anonymous German calling himself DJ Healer who gets most of his samples from Oprah interviews has made what may as well be the only record of 2018.
But he wasn’t going to stop there, soon after three hours of additional, original, music appears on soundcloud and although it starts with some straightforward house, the collection appropriately called Planet Lonely soon swells into some of the most vital, impactful and brilliant music of the decade. It’s lovelorn and wistful and profoundly simple. On “Interior Renovations” our subject is in the midst of reflecting on a quest for personal reinvention within some pooling ambient clouds, “it seems, almost impossible to get through that without some damage”, laments a friend before the shriek of a power drill cuts through the ambience. The devastating highlight “A lot of Freedom” is a simple arpeggiated synth line with a forlorn female spoken word vocal sample repeated for four minutes. She sounds alone in a world gifted to her and she sounds desperately unhappy about it. “A Lot of Freedom” appropriately calls into question our own liberties and introduces the final, and best half an hour of Healer’s universe, trying to describe it would do it no justice but you get the feeling this is the kind of euphoria Moby wished he could have achieved in the late 90’s.
I will never forget the first time I heard Boards of Canada's In a Beautiful Place and how that record changed the way I experienced the world, almost as if it had cast a sun ray over the afternoon that only I could see. It’s probably my favourite piece of music ever and until I heard that last half an hour of Planet Lonely nothing had ever quite made me feel the same things. Maybe the religious overtones in both those records are telling me that although I’m not religious, the feeling of religion is a broader church than you might think. Cast aside the mythology, the wars, the politics, that it scratches an itch, and thoughts that large can conjure magic and at the end of the day we just want to feel something.