Today you can listen Live Eye Tv’s 10 Favorite Albums of 2018. New music this year featured a return from Fourth World maestro Jon Hassell, as well the experimental noise band Daughters. While neither had released music in a number of years, it was good to see them both back with outstanding records. Speaking of returns, Analog Africa followed up their 2008, critically acclaimed African Scream Contest compilation with a brilliant new installment of Voudoun-inspired Afrobeat and heavy funk.
Meanwhile, Daniel Lopatin’s project Oneohtrix Point Never continued to amaze with an album of baroque compositions that often seem to mutate right before your ears, while the fantastic rock band E delivered another powerful sonic missive from the edge of the Void. And if that wasn’t enough, Lopatin colleague Kelly Moran ascended to her place atop this list with the kind of album that continues to open new paths of discovery–even after multiple listens.
Below, you can stream our top 10 entries in full. In addition, our Spotify list of 2018 album favorites includes an additional 10 entries from these artists, in order: FRIGS, Rival Consoles, Pill, The Soft Moon, Robert Lippok, YOB, Screature, Proc Fiskal, Fucked & Bound, and IDLES.
10. Moritz Simon Geist Robotik Electronic Music (SonicRobotsRecords)
Moritz Simon Geist‘s 2018 LP Robotic Electronic Music (SonicRobotsRecords) is the first techno album made entirely by robots. Back in 2012, the German-based performer/musicologist/engineer built a giant (13?x6′) replica of the iconic 808 drum machine. Filled with various real percussion elements like a snare, kick, and hi-hat, Geist?s 808 was played by robots and was capable of performing live.
Since that time he has continued to engineer and build various robotic instruments including his Futuristic Kalimba, Pneumatic Hi-hat, mechanically controlled Drone Guitar, as well as various deconstructed hard drives that create snare and clap sounds. Blurring the lines between electronic and acoustic music through the mechanized physicality of his sonic creations, Geist explains: “No beat is like the other. Everything is played with actual acoustic physicality, and thus the actual error.”
9. Eartheater IRISIRI (PAN)
Alexandra Drewchin‘s busy year included dropping the IRISIRI LP (PAN) under her Eartheater moniker. Employing the attention grabbing acronym ?C.L.I.T.? (?Curiosity Liberates Infinite Truth?), the album’s lead single displayed her ability to blend genres into potent examples of experimental Pop. Combining a soaring vocal range, off-kilter drumming, and a gestural production style just as likely to disrupt as invite you in for a closer listen, the track is a feverish display of her abilities. Eartheater’s compositions, though, can also be supremely uncluttered leaving plenty of space for odd sonic details and her inimitable vocal style. Tracks like “Inclined,” “Inhale Baby (ft. Odwalla1221)” and “Curtains” float on a dream-like ambiance just as her her minimal but essentialized palette floats in and out of relief in fascinating ways.
8. Various African Scream Contest 2 (Analog Africa)
This year Analog Africa brought us another installment of their critically lauded African Scream Contest compilation. Label owner and relentless crate digger Samy Ben Redjeb returns to the countries of Benin and Togo to unearth forgotten gems from the 60’s and 70’s. Focusing on Vodoun-inspired Afrobeat and heavy funk from the region, this year’s collection, like 2008’s, will also come with a booklet of extensive liner notes cataloguing the lively scene, as well as plenty of photography from the period provided by the bands themselves. Introducing international fans to a funky retinue of fashion forward bands like Les Sympathics de Porto Novo, Black Santiago, and Lokonon Andr? et Les Volcans, Analog Africa has once again assembled an unforgettable collection that reminds us of the power music has in bridging cultural divides.
7. Helena Hauff Qualm (Ninja Tune)
German-born electronic music producer and DJ Helena Hauff returned to a pared-down analog machine approach on her 2018 LP Qualm, and the result is a timeless brand of techno. While her “one synthesizer, one drum machine” strategy is minimalist, she told Mixmag this past August: ?I?m always interested in creating something strong and powerful from not too many elements.” Seeking a sound she described as “quite rough,” Hauff’s blistering bass and scorched drum loops have a way of delivering punishingly sensual textures. With a monochromatic sound perfect for extended dance sets in a pitch black club or a late night bus ride through a crumbling section of the city, Qualm is a retro-future classic somehow sounding primal and alien all at once.
6. Djrum Portrait With Firewood (R & S Records)
Electronic musician Felix Manuel returned under his Djrum moniker this year releasing the Portrait With Firewood LP in August on R&S Records. Eschewing his formerly sample based practice of music making in favor of a return to his childhood instrument of the piano, the record also found him purchasing his first analog synthesizer. In addition, Portrait With Firewood includes collaborations with musicians like cellist Zosia Jagodzinska and vocalist Lola Empire, as well as Manuel’s own field recordings. Describing his approach as “confessional,” while conceeding that we usually don’t think of instrumental music in that way, Manuel has indeed crafted an open-hearted album that feels “lived in” in the best of ways. Meanwhile, his meticulous attention to sonic detail makes this one of the finest records of the year.
5. Jon Hassell Listening To Pictures (Pentimento Volume One) (Ndeya)
Fourth World Music theorist, trumpeter, and composer Jon Hassell returned this year with the LP Listening To Pictures (Pentimento Volume One) (Ndeya), his first effort since 2009. Forming an important nexus between European and American avant-garde musical traditions, Hassell has had a wide ranging influence on several generations of musicians. Threading together philosophical cross-currents between the East and West, he fostered an interest in indiginous cultures, as well as a fascination with experimental electronic music methods. Along the way he has collaborated with artists like Brian Eno, Talking Heads, David Sylvian, Bj?rk, Moritz Von Oswald and Carl Craig.
Discussing Listening To Pictures (Pentimento Volume One), Hassell explains: “Most of the world is listening to music in terms of forward flow ? based on where the music is ?going? and ?what comes NEXT.? But there?s another angle: Vertical listening is about listening to ?what?s happening NOW? ? letting your inner ears scan up and down the sonic spectrum, asking what kind of ?shapes? you?re seeing, then noticing how that picture morphs as the music moves through Time…Vertical listening is related to ?listening to yourself listening.? So this is where the title ?Listening to Pictures? comes from: The process of vertical listening creates the picture.?
4. Daughters You Won’t Get What You Want (Ipecac Recordings)
The Rhode Island-based experimental noise rock band Daughters returned this year with their heavyweight LP You Won’t Get What You Want out on Ipecac Recordings. While the group had disbanded after releasing their self-titled, 2010 LP on Hydra Head Records, Daughters returned in 2013 to play a pair of sold out shows in Providence. The band would go on to perform some live dates in the intervening years including support for Dillinger Escape Plan on their 2017 farewell tour.
While those shows must have proved there was more than enough juice in the tank, You Won’t Get What You Want confirms this band is still a potent creative force. Helmed by vocalist Alexis Marshall, with Nick Sadler on guitar, Sam Walker on bass, and Jon Syverson on drums, Daughters’ newest album was recorded in Providence at Machines With Magnets (Battles, Lightning Bolt). Unapologetically brutal, and the kind of record that needs to be endured as much as “enjoyed,” You Won’t Get What You Want is an unrelenting reflection of these dark times.
3. Oneohtrix Point Never Age Of (Warp Records)
Oneohtrix Point Never sure has come a long way since his initial ambient/noise days experimenting with his dad’s Juno-60 synthesizer. While that period yielded works of tantalizing drift like 2007’s Betrayed in the Octagon (Deception Island), and 2009’s Zones Without People (Arbor) and Russian Mind (No Fun)–all collected together that year for the compilation Rifts (No Fun)–Danial Lopatin’s 2018 LP Age Of (Warp Records) finds the artist continuing to expand his musical vision in dizzying new directions. Long gone is the cosmic minimalism of those early releases and in its’ place is a baroque complexity coupled with a compositional strategy that continually embraces interuptions and the unexpected. Meanwhile, Lopatin has fixed his sonic attention on the structures and tropes of pop music, while continually turning the genre upside down with his expansive experimental scope.
2. E Negative Work (Thrill Jockey)
E, the band featuring Thalia Zedek (Come, Uzi, Live Skull), Jason Sanford (Neptune), and Gavin McCarthy (Karate), followed up their 2016, self-titled debut with a powerfully dark new album entitled Negative Work (Thrill Jockey). Few bands can stare into the Void of the human condition and return with an artistic statement as vital as Negative Work. Sanford explains, ?Writing a good song is frequently not so much about how much you can put into it, but also about how much you can take back out.”
This yields music that is often experimental in its’ approach to guitar rock, while still maintaining the structure of “the song.” Throughout the process, E combines their restless musicality with fiercely poetic lyrics capable of devastating at every turn of a phrase. The result is an unforgiving record brimming with the kind of hard-won wisdom that you can return to time and again to slake your existential thirst.
1. Kelly Moran Ultraviolet (Warp Records)
Kelly Moran‘s Ultraviolet LP is a gorgeous respite from the hassles of everyday life. Moran’s work composing for prepared piano was on full display on her 2017 LP Bloodroot, but she told Pitchfork this year that the rigors of the process robbed spontaneity and feeling from her method leading the musician to ultimately deduce, ?It sounds like I?m trying really, really hard.?
At a creative impasse, she decided to take a John Cage-inspired trip to nature attuning her ears to the subtle sounds all around her. Liberated by the experience, Moran returned to the grand piano that day and her improvised recordings would become the sketches from which Ultraviolet was ultimately built. With prepared piano still at the center, and layered synthesizer often adding buzzing atmospherics, these tracks twirl in hypnotic cycles following the piano’s small sonic deviations as melodic lines ebb and flow with organic ease.
Listen to our 20 Favorite Albums of 2018 via this Spotify playlist:
