This post was originally posted on cohost on 2022-12-03. I’m reposting these in preparation for this year’s music rundown!
I don’t use Spotify so I do not have end-of-year summary of what I played the most. My main source of music streaming has been whatever I have in my Bandcamp collection, so instead I am going to list a few tracks I enjoy from albums I bought this year.
Vladislav Delay - Isoviha
Listen to it here (Embedding is unfortunately disabled for this track.)
Last year I listened a lot to the albums Rakka and Rakka II by Vladislav Delay. These albums were inspired by the barren Finnish landscapes north of the arctic circle. They cannot be described as ambient albums as they are much more forceful - the power of the molten rock kilometers below you, the mountain-eroding winds and rains, life and growth forcing itself through every crack in the earth.
The album Isovia from this year is a soundtrack to one’s return back to civilization from the wilderness. The tracks are short with rapidly changing themes, distorted voices trying to grab your attention, the stress of ‘normal’ life ever present.
For this reason I found the entire album a bit difficult to listen to unless I am in the correct mood for it. The album’s title track Isoviha stands out for me though and it is one I keep coming back to for another listen. It is something about the different textures, interrupted by the rhythmic bursts of voices and sections of constantly pounding base drums that makes the entire track seem cohesive despite jumping between so many different forms and shapes. Anger and energy, it gets me pumped up.
Amamelia - Colourbox
Turns out a catchy melody with vocals over the Amen Break makes for a pretty fun listen. Love the crunchy 3D graphics of its music video too!
Second Woman - 300528mj1
Second Woman’s self-titled debut album came out in 2016, which goes to show how out of the loop I was when it came to discovering new music during my Spotify-using years.
300528mj1 starts out in complete chaos. We only have a drum machine to listen to and it has gone haywire, its tempo is wildly oscillating and it is just mashing every instrument in order. In the background, a temporal foothold develops in the form of a dub chord stab which later is accompanied by a slim drum loop. Eventually, the orderly rhythm section takes over while the chaos fades away, leaving us with the most pared-down dub techno track - dub techno for skeletons.
Second Woman seems to have been a temporary collaboration between two established electronic artists (one half of Telefon Tel Aviv for instance) and they have not released anything new since 2018. A shame, because this is really up my alley, much like Cam Deas & Jung An Tagen - Presentism was last year for me. There is something about this kind of focus on unpredictability and clean sound design that hits it for me.
There were a bunch more music I enjoyed that also deserves a writeup, but I think leaving it at these three is a nice summary of the year. I hope you, the reader, also had a nice time discovering new music in 2022.