Time to look back at our 25 favorite albums of 2019! Once again, we’ve resisted the urge to break these album choices down by genre. Instead, everyone’s invited to the party! With a wide-ranging invite list that includes everyone from relative newcomer Lingua Ignota to longstanding mainstays like Matmos, you can bet this shindig is gonna be a loud and wild affair. Not to mention, with all 25 album choices bundled together into a massive Spotify playlist below, the festivities run all day and all night!
So, hit shuffle and listen while B Boys nervously meet Boy Harsher for the first time, or Tropical Fuck Storm and Charlemagne Palestine share a spliff on the back porch. I think that’s Kristin Hayter and Italian synthesist Caterina Barbieri discussing liturgical music over shots of bourbon there in the corner, and low and behold if I didn’t just see Drew Daniel and M.C. Schmidt duck into the bathroom with John Dwyer and his Oh Sees. Rave veteran Bogdan Raczynski and experimental composer Lea Bertucci will be returning any minute with that pilfered nitrous tank, and word has it The Quiet Temple and Xiu Xiu are setting up for an impromptu jam session in the basement. Didn’t know 2019 was that kind of party, just take a listen…
10. Lea Bertucci Resonant Field (NNA Tapes)
We’re big fans of the sound artist, musician, and composer Lea Bertucci. Following up on her 2018 LP Metal Aether, she returned this year with Resonant Field (NNA Tapes). Another site-specific electro-acoustic adventure, this time Bertucci chose to record at Silo City in Buffalo, New York.
Once the site of the Marine A Grain Elevator, the now decommissioned location is an abandoned, cavernous space filled with large cast concrete cylinders approximately 18 feet wide and 130 feet tall. Using her alto sax to “awaken” the now empty space, the musician’s improvised recordings were then augmented in the studio using sound processing, tape manipulation, field recordings, and additional collaborative instrumentation. Recorded during a partial solar eclipse in 2017, Resonant Field is a profound meditation on “beauty, emptiness, and the deep melancholy of forgotten spaces.”
9. Drug Apts. Clean Living Under Difficult Circumstances (Mt. St. Mtn.)
Drug Apts. released a ferocious debut LP of empowered punk this past March entitled Clean Living Under Difficult Circumstances (Mt. St. Mtn.). The Sacramento-based group recorded their long-player with Tim Green (The Nation Of Ulysses, The Fucking Champs), and it featured standout tracks like “Straight Shooter,” “New Nam” and “Black Coat.” Combining sonic urgency with Whittney K.’s violent vocal attack, the group paints a bleak picture of suburban malaise and urban decay. With this sound bearing a relationship to the group’s name, they explain:
“The band name is a reference to drug apartments, those Mid-Century Modern complexes scattered throughout Sacramento, with rows of palm trees out front and mock English names like Dorchester Court or the Royal Arms. Common features include: concrete stairs, prison-style walkways with dudes looking in your window every five minutes, moms beating their kids next door and cop car lights reflecting off the pool. An ex used to say, “I hate living in these fucking drug apartments,” and friends would say, “It’s three blocks that way, past the drug apartments.” We all spent time staying up and crashing in them, or we tried to sleep through the noise emanating from their windows. I hear they’re better these days, but who knows?”
8. Steve Hauschildt Nonlin (Ghostly International)
Chicago-based electronic musician Steve Hauschildt (Emeralds) released his Nonlin LP via Ghostly International on October 25th. Following up on his 2018 debut effort for the label, Dissolvi, the new long-player is described as being “freer, leaner, and looser” in conception and structure than its predecessor. Recorded at studios in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Tbilisi, and Brussels, Hauschildt’s complexly textured electronic work explores feelings of alienation and culture shock. Discussing the record in an interview with 15 Questions, Hauschildt added:
“My new album could be interpreted as a response to entropy and the accelerated, self-imposed death of nature or it could also be something people listen to while they’re working or at the gym. Either way, I’ve succeeded if it doesn’t have one defined interpretation.”
7. Tropical Fuck Storm Braindrops (Joyful Noise Records)
Few things this year tasted as good as the demented weirdness of Tropical Fuck Storm‘s sophomore effort, Braindrops (Joyful Noise Records). The Australian band features ex-Drones’ members Gareth Liddiard and Fiona Kitschin, and the pair is joined in the project by Lauren Hammel (High Tension) and Erica Dunn (Harmony/Mod Con). Combining an absurdist perspective with a musical lineage that might include precedents like The Birthday Party, Royal Trux, Butthole Surfers, and The Clean, this group has arrived at a toxic amalgam of psychedelic Dada punk. When TFS released the album’s debut single “The Planet of Straw Men” in March, they explained:
“In a world where dissident writers are drawn and quartered, communists wear Rolexes, and Trump drives around with a fridge-full of blood, our new single is testament to the jester’s duty.”
6. Charlemagne Palestine + Rrose The Goldennn Meeenn + Sheeenn (Eaux)
Charlemagne Palestine and Rrose released The Goldennn Meeenn + Sheenn this past April via Rrose’s label Eaux. Chronicling the musicians’ joint live performance of Palestine’s composition for piano, The Golden Mean, the recording was made in 2018 during the Festival Variations in Nantes. Commissioned to perform the piece, Charlemagne Palestine reworked it to include two pianists inviting Rrose to perform with him.
Rrose, the latest incarnation of interdisciplinary artist Seth Horvitz, first met the composer/musician/artist Charlemagne Palestine while studying at Mills College. Inspired to play the composer’s masterwork Strumming Music in the halls of the Mills’ student union, Rrose reached out to see if a score existed. Informing the student that one did not, he instead invited Rrose to study with him at his home in Belgium.
Discussing Palestine’s The Golden Mean, Rrose explains:
“It’s probably his most systematic work–a step-by-step journey through the intervals of the octave. When we rehearsed it, we were noticing how each interval is like a universe of its own with its own history, emotions, and sonic qualities all mixed up together. Every time you move from one interval to the next, it feels like moving into another world.
Adding to this discussion of the interval, Palestine offers: “You can just do an interval, and if they’re just slightly out of tune with each other, then they shimmer, they play themselves…It continues by itself. So I don’t have to always be there. And that makes my music a little less egocentric.” This also opens up space in the musician’s composition allowing for a free play of resonances to take over the aural experience. With this in mind, Rrose reminds us:
“Do not focus your attention on the notes being played, but on the ocean of overtones swimming, suspended overhead, brushing against one another, kissing one another, melting into one another.”
5. Boy Harsher Careful (Nude Club Records)
Boy Harsher‘s Jae Matthews told DAZED this past September: “To be totally enveloped by heartbreak or loss, or pain or anger – I’m into that. I don’t think our music is known for being all that eloquent, it’s more about evocation.” The synth-wave duo that also includes Gus Muller released their sophomore LP Careful this past February via their own label imprint Nude Club Records.
The 2019 album finds the pair continuing to expand on the dance-oriented aspects of their sound using rhythm to craft a club-driven “body music.” Combined with searing atmosphere and evocative narrative, Careful is cinematic in scope. It seems only right then, that the band also posted intriguing visuals for album tracks like “LA,” “Send Me A Vision,” “Come Closer,” and “Fate.”
4. Caterina Barbieri Ecstatic Computation (Editions Mego)
Caterina Barbieri released her Ecstatic Computation LP on May 3rd via Editions Mego. The Italian composer uses complex sequencing techniques to create multifaceted sonic patterns on the album’s six tracks. Minimalist in style, Barbieri’s compositions encourage an awareness of the now, even as her varied textures seem to slip and slide back-and-forth in time.
While the digital computation of the computer’s coded world might be dictated by 0s and 1s, the composer’s method of Ecstatic Computation seeks a creative approach to what is normally an automatic process. The goal, a sonic experience capable of inducing a state of wonder as the complexity of the auditory moment brings about an expanded sense of the temporal. As she told Resident Advisor this past January: “There’s a suspension of time somehow, but there’s always motion.”
The album’s amazing opener “Fantas” was our favorite track of the year. Suggesting vast dimensions, a cosmic wind seems to reverberate thru the aural space while a slowly coalescing melody gains sentience and force. Eventually splintering off into glittering arpeggios, the cut’s growing complexity gains an opalescent gleam before its entropic demise causes an ear-splitting collapse.
3. B Boys Dudu (Captured Tracks)
B Boys dropped the serious Dudu this past July via Captured Tracks. Recorded by Gabe Wax (Deerhunter, Ought, Crumb) at Outlier Inn, and mixed by Andy Chugg (Pill, Pop. 1280, Bambara), the band’s sophomore effort brimmed with post-punk urgency and wry observations about late-capitalist alienation. Fighting fire with fire, these gents choose a rhythmically-charged righteous indignation in place of angst and anomie. Filled with anthemic, shout-along choruses, B Boys choose resistance through creatively engaged living. And you should too!
2. Matmos Plastic Anniversary (Thrill Jockey)
This year Matmos celebrated 25 years together with their Plastic Anniversary LP out on Thrill Jockey. Continuing the duo’s unique sonic approach, all sounds on the record were sourced from the recordings they made of plastic objects like a riot shield, exercise ball, and pill container. Speaking with Vice this past March, the pair explained that their strategy is to let the “object sounds” be the guide into the songs. While that presented its share of sonic challenges from a recording and compositional perspective, their project also came loaded with plastic’s problematic history.
Discussing the inevitable connotations, the duo’s Drew Daniel finds an aesthetic conundrum that cuts two ways. He explains:
“Are you doing this kind of didactic shame fest about litter and ecology, or are you celebrating commodities while thinking that you’re doing some kind of didactic shame fest about ecology?” That’s the irony of it. If you slow down and pay a lot of attention to a plastic bottle, are you saying, “Isn’t it terrible that they’re all these plastic bottles everywhere?” Obviously, it is. It’s terrible for wildlife. It’s terrible for our planet.
On the other end, if you make people sit around and listen to plastic bottles and go, “These plastic bottles sound cool,” in a weird way, that’s kind of commodity fetishism. You are sort of lighting up this object and getting everybody to worship it for a little while. I think maybe the record is a weird record because of those challenges. We’re trying to solve a sonic problem, but we’re also caught up in the problem everybody’s caught up in. It’s like, “What’s my responsibility for this fucked up situation in which I’m enmeshed?”
1. Lingua Ignota Caligula (Profound Lore)
Lingua Ignota followed up the emotional blood-letting of her self-released 2018 LP All Bitches Die, with 2019’s eviscerating opus Caligula (Profound Lore Records). A creative means by which artist Kristin Hayter processes the trauma of her own domestic abuse, she turns noise music’s male-dominated imagery of torture and destruction upside down by relocating it to a female perspective. An attempt to reclaim her suffering, Caligula is sonic retribution for the pain caused by violence and betrayal.
Discussing the album with Treblezine, Hayter explained:
“The record itself is kind of a big labyrinth, and I think for me, Caligula took on many meanings. Originally, I was thinking of the term ‘Caligula’ in regards to madness and depravity—looking at my own madness and depravity suffering from PTSD. I wanted to bring all these recurring issues I was having into this record…But eventually, Caligula took on all these other connotations and became less about me, and more about surviving in the world-at-large that we live in, as well as under the political climate that we exist.”
Listen: 25 Favorite Albums 2019
11. Bogdan Raczynski Rave Till You Cry (Disciples) 12. Oh Sees Face Stabber (Castle Face Records) 13. The Quiet Temple The Quiet Temple (Witchita Recordings) 14. Black Marble Bigger Than Life (Sacred Bones) 15. Orson Hentschel Antigravity (Denovali Records) 16. Xiu Xiu Girl With Basket of Fruit (Polyvinyl Records) 17. Sühnopfer Hic Regnant Borbonii Mane (Debemur Morti), 18. Oiseaux-Tempete From Somewhere Invisible (Sub Rosa), 19. Radical Empathy Trio Reality and Other Imaginary Places 20. Cakedog Doggystyle (Leaving Records) 21. Pachyman In Dub (Permanent Records) 22. Rod Modell Captagon (Tressor) 23. Hyperlacrimae Through the lies of Mr. Nasotti (Infidel Bodies) 24. Blue Glass Pale Mirror 25. Foresteppe Karaul (Klammklang)
