Nothing about this year was normal; next year promises the same. But that’s what music can do — reframe moments in time.
It’s a surreal thing seeing end-of-year lists arrive, but I’m deeply gratified that critics across the spectrum have been pushing back and choosing challenging music. There’s also a feeling of satisfaction as music that you care about gets some recognition; I hope people are reading. I’ll be talking more in 2025 about how we organize our listening, how we remain engaged as listeners and readers, and how we avoid the algorithmic nightmares around us. But 2024 was a tough year; it was a year, frankly, when a lot of us had spans of time where we didn’t want to make music at all.
With that in mind, absolutely check out David’s look at the year – which covers a broader span, and a ton of essential music I don’t ramble about here:
These selections are all personal ones. A lot are friends – though looking at that, I realize that you find people partly through music, so that makes sense. But I’m grateful for the chance to reflect. We should do it monthly and not just yearly.
I’ll probably toy with this a little more right as we get through New Year’s Eve, so I’ll post an update when I do that.
Sandy Chamoun / Anthony Sahyoun / Jad Atoui – Ghadr – غدر (Ruptured Records)
When SANAM meets Jad Atoui, you know something excellent is going to happen. Amidst an escalating war and unprecedented bombardment, somehow Lebanon’s music scene still managed to churn out releases – all while many were organizing shelter and food for those in need. This one embodies that spirit as much as any of them. The album’s fiercely crackling and driving electronics fuse a sound so powerful, that it seems to channel lost and unwritten musics together with newly invented music, and Sandy’s vocals ring out as both song and scream. This music may be the best answer to 2024, transcending words alone. And Ruptured Records remains one of the most critical labels to follow.
I see critics making comparisons, but I’m not sure why – no comparisons needed. Accept no substitutions.
Kotra – Grid Light (Prostir)
Easily my industrial album of the year, Grid Light from Ukraine-born Dmytro Fedorenko is relentless and nuanced all at once. I can’t wait for Kotra and Zavoloka to reunite as Cluster Lizard shortly; Zavoloka’s live set were some of the best I saw this year. I was going to say some more words about this, but these four lines weave together the zeitgeist and deeper, spiritual feeling of this release:
The choice seems impossible and obviously clear.
Burn into dust or transform.
There is no escape to rest or recharge.
Total presence is not optional.
As deadly as a crowdfunded DIY drone.
Quiet Husband – Religious Equipment (Drowned by Locals)
Richie Culver’s debut full-length album – out on Jordan’s inimitable Drowned by Locals – charts an alternative course for industrial techno, one even more deeply connected to noise tradition. (Oddly enough, this sounds more like what you’d imagine “hard dance” to mean, rather than the TikTok-tailored EDM mainstage trance pastiche it’s turned out to be.)
For all that tsunami of distortion – enough to overheat a budget oscilloscope – it’s all meticulously composed.
Microhm – Metathesis
Leslie Garcia on her Microhm project completes a trilogy exploring “a quest for Latin American futurism,” and this release – polyrhythmic techno-dembow-reggaeton hybrid club beats mixed with marine and hydrophone sounds – feels like an arrival. It’s cool, confident intensity, as unmoved as an ocean. I look forward to Leslie crossing that ocean from Mexico City to Europe this year.
It’s another beautiful direction for techno to go, away from western European fashion sunglasses pop-ups and into something that tells a story again.
Snakeskin – They Kept Our Photographs
It’s hard to know which combination of Beirut artists to pick here, as various configurations have been so incredible this year. Julia Sabra and Fadi Tabbal as Snakeskin is an easy highlight – ephemeral, enchanting vocals against grinding industrial destruction tragically and perfectly sum up the opposing forces of rage and determination, beauty and devastation and loss from this year.
But that’s not just the voice of Lebanon. It’s the voice of the planet.
Oh, and – don’t miss Julia Sabra’s Natural History Museum, either. Julia’s work is so extraordinary in the duos and trios, but here in contrast to those dense and polished realms, you get something that sounds like a postcard from somewhere deeper. It has that magical quality, where you feel you’ve always known the song, even the first time you hear it.
tarxun – A4.K/she آچار کشی
It feels a lot like tarxun is about to blow up. This one is a dense, mystical journey into the earth, full of a complex, coded rhythmic language that just never lets up and somehow always grooves. Like, yes, you can dance to it. Just as club music on the top of the charts seems lobotomized, IDM will save us all. And thankfully, it won’t sound like the IDM of the past, either. Thank God. Something has to make us come out of our caves and enjoy the current decade (which, incidentally, tarxun’s live sets will do, too).
DJ DanceAlone – Owl Theory (Black Techno Matters)
Owl Theory has such a direct message that maybe it made critics uncomfortable. The Memphis artist easily slides between genres – the label is Black Techno Matters, but while it occasionally veers into techno, it’s also frequently house, future funk, and even electronic chillwave. The samples speak directly to the listener through sample, from Bronx rubble to “Black Marxist” ideas. As the notes explain, the title is significant, too. “The concept of “owl theory” comes from Kathleen Peterson’s murder in 2001, where, despite evidence that Kathleen was killed by a large owl, the state prosecuted her husband instead,” we’re told. The production sparkles; the soul underneath is irresistible. It’s essential, a 2024 must. By the people, for the people.
Nadia Struiwigh – OXI5 (Distorted Wave☡)
Nadia Struiwigh may be best known for techno and more elaborate jams, but great as those are, my favorite sounds from her are unadorned, dreamy ambient. It’s just two tracks, but you want to put the EP on repeat like it’s an album. This sound is so clear and direct and timeless, glistening with color but with a harmonic, timbral spirit that connects back across the decades. I can’t wait to hear what she does in 2025.
“Creating Electronica makes my heart leap joyfully, transporting me to a different planet,” says Nadia. That’s OXI One, OXI Coral, and Qubit Nautilus with some Juno, plus Nord Lead and Ableton Live on the other. There’s a hardware music series inbound, it seems.
Gábor Lázár – Reflex (Raster)
Easily one of the most disciplined records of the year compositionally and feeling like a return to form for Raster, Reflex is obsessively programmed dance music. Call it “hyper-constructed,” not deconstructed, full of brightly-colored stabs, precise percussive hits and rhythms, and gem-like FM, the entire album seems to maximize tempo and spectrum. If anything, it sounds like a spiritual cousin to Barker’s productions, but as cold and forward as Sam’s work is dreamy and reserved.
Doc Sleep – Cloud Sight Fade
Intimate, detailed, cooly collected, Doc Sleep’s latest is full of gentle layers. It’ll feel like you’re a otter sunning on the Pacific coast.
SD_OA – alla prima (Detroit Underground)
Detroit Underground has long been the home of music too leftfield for this world, and a steady churn of releases of varied, excellent sound. Let’s pick just one – SD_OA’s release, from the Italian artist living in London aka SODA, is an unforgiving stream of stacatto percussion, like rap in a machine language. It’s dancefloor friendly — if you’re an insect. But every beat and swooping synth stab sounds calculated and intentional. It’s a giant bag of ear candy.
Zvrra – Heretical Dynamics (Prophet Recordings)
Techno isn’t dead. It’s just gone underground. And you know that when people push techno into new directions, the critical reaction is often resistance and apathy. But go digging for what Chicago-based Zvrra is doing, as it’s dark, moody – uncomfortable. It’s techno with the sense of unease that we feel now. But no matter how moody it gets, the groove slaps. It’s hard to pick out a single Zvrra release – for context, check this absolute weirdo banger on Black Petal – but go check what she’s doing. You know the best stuff often requires some digging. Now we need a full-on revolt by more DJs ready to mix this stuff.
Gary Gwadera – Far, far in Chicago. Footberk Suite (Pointless Geometry)
I reviewed this already. I said it would be one of the releases of the year. Promises made, promises kept. The future of footwork is Polish, or the future of Poland is footwork, or both. As happiness-inducing as downing a bag of Krówki after a day at the Hayden Planetarium? I’m available for writing commissions.
I see that not all of you bought it. Go buy it.
Nour Sokhon – Beirut Birds (aural conduct)
The question of what defines musicianship now is a mystery, as so much music is produced as a compositional process alone, refined in edits and screen work. But Beirut Birds is as live as it is honest; the live version of this album is essentially what you hear on the album. Nour croons into the mic and animates rattling objects, all ephemera she brought from Beirut to Berlin. The show then became a plea to her native city as the bombs rained down and Lebanese people found themselves cut off by war. That meeting point of memory and present, the unspeakable emotions of feeling longing across time and space, is the very essence of what defines music. Listening to it on repeat is no less moving.
“To be in between…”
Matrixxman – Identity Crisis
The deepest, the dubbiest. No crisis here that I can see.
ABADIR & Nahash – Marchadair مرشدير (SVBCVLT)
Ever have an album that’s on your perpetual “review this” list, but that’s so good you get distracted by the music and never write it? This is rightfully one of the most-noticed releases of the year in critical circles, for its pitch-perfect Franco-Egyptian hybrid language. It has so much pure kinetic energy that you might miss how sparse and economical the production is – it’s a full-course meal of sound, prepared from exactly the right ingredients.
Four on the floor is dead. Everyone on the floor.
Ehsan Saboohi – Quark Mode II
Eshan Saboohi’s entire “Post-Orientalism” series is forming into an epic musical re-education for the listener. It’s hard to pull out just one release, but this latest episode from the Iranian composer is utterly beautiful. Excerpt from the liner notes:
Acknowledging that Eastern societies historically struggled to define their identity is not an act of self-deprecation; I do not deny this fact. Likewise, recognizing that many scientific and technical terms in music, used by early ethnomusicologists from both East and West, are colonial, racist, and unprofessional, is not a matter of arrogance. This recognition parallels the era of slavery and racial discrimination, when Black individuals were demeaned due to their skin color.
Fax – Forma y Fondo
Constructed on a modular rig with synths and guitar, the results on Forma y Fondo are like a kinetic sculpture, one that is constantly remaking itself. At moments, sparse, bubbling noises dance and interconnect; at others, you’re treated to washes of sound. The guitar becomes a mist falling over those hard synth efforts. It’s simply one of Fax’s best, from the Baja-born mind who’s helped share Facade Electronics (founder) and Static Discos (co-founder).
Everyone has made their self-released tracks a personal laboratory – and maybe there we get the greatest sonic powers and explorations.
I also like the Spanish review here:
..Su nuevo álbum Forma y Fondo, siete nuevos temas en donde distintas tendencias electrónicas como el ambient, el glitch y el techno se dan cita para fluir como mantras, como pequeños espacios de reflexión, de melancolía y de contemplación. El músico continua con esa carrera tan constante que ha labrado con ya más de veinte años en el camino y que sigue sorprendiéndonos o atrapándonos con sus sonidos y ambientaciones que crea.
– TONY SPINOTTI | Primero Fué El Sonido
Jlin – Akoma (Planet Mu)
Goddmanit, Jlin, can you please stop being better at this than the rest of us?
You could spend a ton of money on production courses, or you could spend under 9 quid on this and just listen on repeat for a week, frankly.
Though that raises a question – how the hell was Akoma not at the top of the lists? Are you not entertained by the ft. Björk bit? Seriously, it’s not that the top 10 lists were bad or that I even want to compare music to other music. But I get the sense that a lot of what critics value at the moment is stuff that’s easier to listen to, that doesn’t stimulate the frontal lobe. Jlin’s music will give your sneakers a workout and get some sweat on your brow all at once. Try it.
SØS Gunver Ryber – SPINE
“Futurism” is a term that gets applied to the point of being meaningless, but Gunver’s latest – and the debut of her Arterial label – has both a glossy digital sheen and a feeling of optimism. That shines through in the AV show, in the immersive video game Gunver concocted herself, and throughout the music. It connects on an emotional level, even without reading the liner notes here:
If we want to look into the future, we have to start considering the implications more holistically. All too often, science fiction is a dystopian projection of the current era’s grimmest realities spiked with pragmatic historical hindsight – but what if instead it was able to reflect our needs, hopes, and dreams?
Cinna Peyghamy – The Skin in Between (Zabte Sote)
Cinna’s music is just transcendent – the line between percussion and modular is a complete blur, merging into a single instrumental ensemble. It’s so easy to present this music as “other,” but I’d say rather that Cinna is defining how electronic-acoustic rhythm can evolve.
Yara Asmar – Stuttering Music
I’ll give this a proper review soon, but Yara Asmar is a firey, up-and-coming sound artist and composer and the Lebanese answer to Pauline Oliveros (not just because of the instrument but also her approach to listening and practice).
The music itself needs no direct comparison. Yara’s voice in everything she does is original – from a giant wind chime installed in area C of the West Bank while I was there to this mournful, conversational record.
Isaka – Elytra (SFX)
What would happen if you circuit-bent glitch-hop and fed it to a cyborg? Probably something like Isaka’s fire return here — and the accompanying art, and the zine, all out on SFX. It feels like your whole brain is rewired.
While we’re at it, SFX label boss Zoe’s work is brutal as ever, expanding into ever-deeper references and grooves. It’s a treat to see live, and you can hear that experimentation in their latest trio of live tracks, battle-hardened with crowds. “My brain is bursting” again.
Betty Apple – Taiwan Bay Be (Establishment)
One from our own Establishment label – I’m biased, but I have to mention it, as it’s one I’ve returned to repeatedly. Betty’s music connects on a deeper level, a transdimensional epic – see her interview describing it.
Establishment has been slower lately, but I’m glad to spend the time to focus on what to put out, especially in strange times. And more is coming.
Y-DRA – HOREG (Yes No Wave Music)
This sounds like someone in Sumatra found a super-powerful new energy drink that also made you hyperintelligent. It’s a hyperactive album of liberation. And it’s a perfect outing from Yes No Wave Music in Jogya. From the notes:
Horeg is a celebration of sound, sound of rage. Horeg is a homo sacer, who puts up a small resistance in a party. Although by no means anything, it continued to become louder, while planting the seeds of resistance.
Temp-Illusion – Noxious Jaaam
Unbounded from a more conventional album format, the duo Temp-Illusion are at perhaps their most free and expressive on this extended outing. It sounds like a ritual from outer space. Who else jams like this? It’s back to that question of live performance-as-album that’s a throughline here – because it includes experimentation at the edge, beyond what we edit down and package.)
ZULI – Lambda
Z is for Zuli. I don’t know that there’s any way to condense this epic album – it’s coherent and singular, but eh musical range almost makes it a mini-music festival in an album, complete with shining collaborations by MICHAELBRAILEY, Coby Sey and Abdullah Miniawy.
Sote – Ministry of Tall Tales (Zabte Sote)
It’s easy to forget that this was a 2024 release – it was the first SVBCVLT release, back in January, which now seems a lifetime ago. But Sote’s urgent, biting portrait of pain and loss with its taut electronic renderings of Persian tunings is just as vital now.
See also the extensive review:
SLIKBACK – Slikback
This release, reviewed back in March, demonstrated that Slikback’s unreleased material can hit even harder, full of raw energy:
Liliane Chlela – Anatomy of a Jerk (Infinite Machine)
Liliane is simply one of the most prolific musicians I know. Anatomy of a Jerk I’ve already written up, and it deserves a mention again as a standout release of 2024. (That’s the same Mexico City-based label Infinite Machines as Microhm above – but I think there are some beacons of imaginative music at the moment.)
But while this is an album compilation, keep an eye out for Liliane’s new live work and compositions. I arrived one day too late to catch this, and I’m gutted so – someone please book it somewhere I’m at, okay?
Keep your eyes glued here – https://www.lilianechlela.media/music
I might also add that while a lot of the electronic-concert music / producer-composer hybrids these days are disappointingly conservative, we need more like Liliane.
Rhyw – Melt in Unison
Lovers of ear-delighting compositions already know to be on the lookout for the name Rhyw. So no need that the late-November release left this off some editorial radar; you just know it’ll slap. The surprise here is how easygoing this one feels – high energy, yes, but deliciously optimistic.
And speaking of Rhyw, Fever AM, his label with Mor Elian, is back with an exception VA, Peder Mannerfelt to Karenn to DJ Doomscroll and beyond. It’s a level of consistency and inventiveness at the limit, every single track:
Murcof – Twin Color (vol. 1)
Tijuana-native Murcof is back with a great magnum opus. I missed the audiovisual premiere in Montreal this summer, set to Simon Geilfus’ visuals, but the feeling of this is expansive. It’s a vista from a mountaintop and a maestro at the top of his craft and visionary powers. Every track pushes further, aided by a residency at IRCAM. For all my affection for the live and raw in this list, here is a crafted, composed narrative – while still with the sense of live musicianship woven in.
Nicolas Jaar – Archivos de Radio Piedras
I’ll close with this one. Human lives are under direct assault – homes, hospitals, children, people. That calls into question what an album even should be, and whether the polished art object is appropriate. Let’s leave with the sounds of Radio Piedras. For the release, Nicolas assembled seventeen tracks from materials that were originally assembled on Telegram. It premiered in May in Barcelona, Valencia and Madrid, via the Catalonia-based multidisciplinary platform Lapsus. (Their site is worth a browse, more generally.)
Like the other radio projects I’ve written about regularly here, there’s an impromptu, immediate aspect to this. But conversely, these materials have a life to them and demand even deeper listening.
They also have a social project, for both the Wallmapu people and Palestinians:
70% de los fondos obtenidos de este lanzamiento en Bandcamp serán donados a las siguientes organizaciones en Wallmapu y Palestina: 35% de lo recaudado será destinado al proyecto educativo mapuche de la Escuela Intercultural Cerro Logkoche, ubicada en la comunidad rural mapuche del mismo nombre. Esta iniciativa, que lleva 10 años en funcionamiento, ha creado un espacio seguro para las infancias mapuche y no mapuche pertenecientes al territorio. Se centra en la revitalización del mapudungun, el fortalecimiento identitario, espiritual y cultural, el cuidado de árboles nativos y la naturaleza en general. Los fondos recaudados ayudarán finalizar el levantamiento de su ruka (construcción tradicional mapuche), proporcionando un espacio de encuentro para las infancias, familias y comunidades que forman parte de la Escuela. Otro 35% de lo recaudado será destinado al Fondo Ghassan Abu Sittah para Niños, que ofrece atención médica a los niños y niñas que más lo necesitan y ayuda a aliviar el sector médico en Gaza.
English:
70% of the funds obtained from this release on Bandcamp will be donated to the following organizations in Wallmapu and Palestine: 35% of the proceeds will be allocated to the Mapuche educational project of the Cerro Logkoche Intercultural School, located in the rural Mapuche community of the same name. This initiative, which has been in operation for 10 years, has created a safe space for Mapuche and non-Mapuche children belonging to the territory. It focuses on the revitalization of the Mapudungun, the strengthening of identity, spiritual and cultural, the care of native trees and nature in general. The funds raised will help complete the construction of its ruka (traditional Mapuche construction), providing a meeting space for children, families and communities that are part of the School. Another 35% of the proceeds will go to the Ghassan Abu Sittah Children’s Fund, which provides medical care to children who need it most and helps alleviate the medical sector in Gaza.
These sounds are perfect for this moment as I listen to the wind gusting here in Berlin and wonder – what actions should we be taking as musicians right now?