This is some of the music released/recorded this year that I particularly enjoyed. Sharing a list of music is something I like to do every December/January. Reflecting on the past dozen months, I think I will remember 2014 as the year I was unintentionally going through a little bit of this WQXR Q2 phase, which I suppose is humorous to me, for reasons that I cannot precisely articulate. Partially, I think, it's because I'm at the point in my life where I like to get dizzy envisioning some completely imaginary circle of distinguished academics from fashionable 'new music' ensembles with all their swanky Ivy League D.M.A. pedigree, participating in ardent intellectual exchanges about Adorno's influence on contemporary counterpoint in some ivory-Brooklyn-loft wallpapered in Juilliard diplomas. It's patronizing to go about indirectly confessing this any other way; I'm totally complicit in the morally bankrupt and oppressive power structures of Western academia and its self-congratulatory privilege -- drowning daily in the embarrassing fetishism of the beautiful and wholly sublimated Other. I have to infrequently whisper to myself, 'every human being on this planet is underrated', just so I remember. With that in mind, I think it's also an appropriate time to mention the beautiful life of Pete Seeger and the gratitude I have for the life he lived. He has compelled me to try to be a more loving and courageous human being, and as a peace activist has shown the world the true power of music.
Canadian pianist, Vicky Chow, is my favourite find of 2014. I discovered her from Margaret Leng Tan's facebook page. (Side note: I discovered Margaret Leng Tan this year as well while doing some research on Singapore, where I travelled to visit family this year. Born in Singapore, Tan moved to New York and was the first woman to graduate with a doctorate from Juilliard. She became known as the 'diva' of prepared piano, and captured the attention of John Cage who she worked with for the last decade of his life). Like Tan, Vicky Chow studied at Juilliard and after completing her Master's there, soon stumbled upon the vibrant 'new music' scene. Her recordings have introduced me to that world of composers, especially the more recently emerging of them, and has largely shaped and defined this list of favourites for the year. Just watch her effortlessly play this arrangement of Steve Reich's Six Pianos, and I have a feeling you'll be proselytized deep into the fold too.
I felt this was very nice to listen to, and I think many in Niger, Nigeria, and beyond agreed because it was widely exchanged throughout Saharan cellphone file sharing networks there. It's easygoing Hausa pop hanging on the rare modern sound of electronic Tuareg guitar.
Cafe Oto, in London, hosts an experimental music scene that I discovered through the now defunct 'The Liminal' music blog. Cafe Oto puts out releases under a label called OTORoku, and in 2014 they put out one sole new release -- a collection of recordings from Chris Corsano's summer residency there. Later in the year Chris Corsano did duo work with Joe McPhee, and released the album, 'Dream Defenders', a namesake in honour of one of the most important activist collectives working on racial justice issues, recently lauded by Cornel West. The album itself was actually recorded in 2012, but with the tragedies of 2014 at Ferguson, Staten Island, Miami Beach, and beyond, it couldn't be more timely, channelling voices like James Weldon Johnson and James Baldwin.
Ear candy.
Christopher Cerrone, like many of the founding pioneers of Bang On a Can, finished his D.M.A. at Yale, and if you've seen this musical performance at Yale floating around featuring Tao Lin's poetry as found text for its vocal parts, that is Cerrone's doing. This record is a new studio recording of his 2012 opera, Invisible Cities, which was a Pulitzer Prize Finalist for this year.
'The Immoralist' by Elisa Ambrogio
The human being behind the print-out Waka Flocka Flame mask on the album cover is Elisa Ambrogio, member of everyone's favourite weirdo band, Magik Markers. It's a beautiful record, and surprisingly easy to listen to. And even while busy with releasing this solo work, she still had time to prove the Markers are alive and well, with an EP release made available for one day, and also another album called, 'Some Funk for Tunc and Squeo', which I'm grateful has stuck around the internet long enough for me to enjoy.
The human being behind the print-out Waka Flocka Flame mask on the album cover is Elisa Ambrogio, member of everyone's favourite weirdo band, Magik Markers. It's a beautiful record, and surprisingly easy to listen to. And even while busy with releasing this solo work, she still had time to prove the Markers are alive and well, with an EP release made available for one day, and also another album called, 'Some Funk for Tunc and Squeo', which I'm grateful has stuck around the internet long enough for me to enjoy.
Donnacha Dennehy, who recently moved to Princeton's music faculty, has probably become one of my favourite composers. I highly recommend his interview on WQXR Q2 with Nadia Sirota where he talks about falling in love with Karlheinz Stockhausen's music at the age of 10, his embarrassing encounter with Gerard Grisey, and the way Ligeti's 'Atmospheres' was a pivotal piece that in some sense makes his own 'project' possible.
'The Hunger' is a new opera about the tragedy of the Irish Famine -- a work whose stark political stance is partially inspired by Amartya Sen's claim that famines are not a natural failure so much as a political and economic failure. Dennehy draws on interviews with Chomsky, Krugman, and others to shape the text of the opera, and though I've been unable to listen to the whole performance, the tantalizing excerpts have been enough to sustain me for now. To get your full Dennehy fix, there's a new album recording put out by the RTE National Symphony Orchestra of some of his works, which you can stream on Spotify: 'Donnacha Dennehy: Orchestral Music' performed by RTE national Symphony Orchestra
This album probably had the highest play count for me this year. I sometimes found myself accidentally singing 'Wildest Dream' a lot out loud without realizing it. It helped me stay awake through some late nights of school work, and other than that I don't have anything else to say but that I sort of really liked this album -- a lot. I should say something about cultural appropriation also, and that it also still occurs in the most progressive corners of music, and that idk what to say other than I hope it changes -- everywhere -- because it still happens everywhere.
They refer to their body of work as indigenous noise. I saw this group perform at the Guelph Jazz Festival, and it was incredible. They fielded questions after, it's always such a treat to hear experimental artists respond to inquiries about their art so openly, articulately and intelligently. I think they plan to release the recorded form of the work in 2015, but I'm glad I got to hear it live this year, because it was very enjoyable for me, and I'm almost always hearing things as posterity, lol.
Juilliard violinist and student of Itzhak Perlman, Kristin Lee, curated and performed newly commissioned works of 'new music' bringing them into conversation with older beloved stalwarts of western art music, like Camille Saint Saens. Each work also brings the violin in dialogue with another instrument, and altogether it's a beautiful conversation between a perfect line up of emerging star composers (Andy Akiho who is a favourite of mine especially with his new work 'Deciduous' for this program, Patrick Castillo, Jakub Ciupinski, Vivian Fung, Shobana Raghavan) and performers (Patrick Castillo on spoken word, Jakub Ciupinski on theremin, John Hadfield on percussion, Bridget Kibbey on harp, Shobana Raghavan on South Indian Carnatic vocals, Ian Rosenbaum on steel pan, and Jason Vieaux on guitar). This was one of my absolute favourite things to listen to (and watch) in 2014.
'UNCONVERED' by Maya Beiser (Rearrangements composed by Evan Ziporyn)
Evan Ziporyn is another one of my favourite discoveries of 2014. I dream of the day I will have the privilege to hear the work he composed with Catherine Southworth for Roomful of Teeth. I can only salivate at the idea of my favourite experimental vocal group (Roomful) belting out a new composition by my favourite 'new music' power couple (Catherine and Evan). But to hold me down for now, I have this sweet collection of cello interpretations Ziporyn did on some classic rock tunes. It sounds like a terrible idea until you actually hear it.
Evan Ziporyn is another one of my favourite discoveries of 2014. I dream of the day I will have the privilege to hear the work he composed with Catherine Southworth for Roomful of Teeth. I can only salivate at the idea of my favourite experimental vocal group (Roomful) belting out a new composition by my favourite 'new music' power couple (Catherine and Evan). But to hold me down for now, I have this sweet collection of cello interpretations Ziporyn did on some classic rock tunes. It sounds like a terrible idea until you actually hear it.
I first encountered Hannah Diamond in one of Portal's monthly playlists along with Kane West (love that name) and A.G. Cook. I used to share this stuff with my friends somewhat frequently, because I earnestly thought they would like it too. But I soon found out I had a lot more cynicism inside me than other people around me, and I soon just kept my self-consciously ironic music pleasures to myself. After a couple years I know I should really be over it all considering I've made a concerted effort to disavow my former cynical self, but here we are at the end of 2014, with this sort of austere aesthetic full of uncommitted irony pushed to its logical limit, but I'm still not over it and in all honestly I find myself wanting even more (the perfect parody of the neoliberal consumerist urge?).
The Fader recently put out an article on feminine appropriation being the defining theme of 2014, and I have to admit I was (maybe am) totally complicit in this. I will qualify this confession with claiming that my intention was more so gender-bending than anything else, as maybe is the case for the privileged white cis-men behind PC Music, but it's become clear (at least to me) that this has become a systematic colonizing and exploitation of the female body as Steph Kretowicz put it in The Fader. I think the project has a lot more redeeming qualities however, so it's still far from a waste for me, and still remains one of my favourite musical phenomena of 2014.
The Fader recently put out an article on feminine appropriation being the defining theme of 2014, and I have to admit I was (maybe am) totally complicit in this. I will qualify this confession with claiming that my intention was more so gender-bending than anything else, as maybe is the case for the privileged white cis-men behind PC Music, but it's become clear (at least to me) that this has become a systematic colonizing and exploitation of the female body as Steph Kretowicz put it in The Fader. I think the project has a lot more redeeming qualities however, so it's still far from a waste for me, and still remains one of my favourite musical phenomena of 2014.
Released by Yale's Institute of Sacred Music, this is a very beautiful collection of Ragas performed by Pandit Rabindra Goswami. I feel Yale's ISM is a worthwhile place to check into each month for music. Just last year, Yale ISM's Schola Cantorum released this beautiful album, 'Anniversaries & Messages', that closed off with a piece by new music composer, David Lang. Fun fact: some of the members of Roomful of Teeth actually studied at Yale's ISM before joining the group.
I saw Fire Moss open for Steve Hauschildt last October in 2013, and one time before that, and one time after. They are likely one of my favourite groups I discovered IRL and also pbly my favourite music project based in Kingston (the town I lived in while studying at college). I remember how I excited I was when I first discovered them. I still semi-regularly listen to Kristiana Clemens' radio show 'Below The Decks' on CFRC (the campus/community radio station she runs there), and she is someone I really admire in many ways. Another Fire Moss release from the year is 'What the Moon Tells Us' and I feel it's also definitely worth checking out.
[See album title.]
I had the opportunity to watch Vijay Iyer interview Randy Weston this year at the Guelph Jazz Festival. He's become my new favourite jazz pianist this year. This collection of compositions is absolutely perfect.
I really loved this album. I only started listening to D'Angelo this year on a recommendation made in a video conversation between bell hooks and Cornel West and some members of the New School community. I found out about the new album when my friend Andrew posted on my wall, and I've spent the last few days of 2014 listening to this album on repeat. I know nothing of the 14 years of silence, I'm just glad this powerful heap of soul found its way to me in 2014.
Elena Ruehr, MIT professor of 21 years, won the Guggenheim Fellowship this year to compose a operatic piece for Roomful of Teeth which premiered in the fall as 'Cassandra in the Temples'. I suppose its the cruel reality of the world that I will only hear this sometime in 2015, but I can rest easy with some beautiful new recordings performed by BMOP of some of Elena Ruehr's orchestral compositions.
I almost forgot about this record. I discovered it midway through the year while trying to find music for a radio show I was hosting. I've grown very fond of the output from both members of Hype Williams. At the same time I feel nervous that my fondness for them only perpetuates the type of alienating pattern my life has tended towards most of the time. Either way this is some of my favourite experimental music of the year, and I'll wait and see if I grow out of it.
World Circuit Records, distributed under Nonesuch Records, put out this dazzling father-son collaboration of West African Kora music, a tradition that the family claims goes back 77 generations to the time of the Prophet Mohammed. It's gentle easy going strings that evoke the peaceful insight of their Sufi-inspired tradition. The Guardian put an article out earlier in 2014 describing the tension in Mali between rap and Kora music, and rap's claim that Kora musicians are complicit in the oppressive power structures that be. That is always the risk of tranquil and 'high-art' music, buttressed by affluent patrons, but times are tough in Mali, and I only pray with the devotion of these musicians, there will be a way forward with peace and justice, whatever it may be.
I found The Observatory while digging through Singapore's experimental scene. They are loosely affiliated with Ujikaji Records, and have released a wide variety of music stylistically. This is a moving collection of delicate avant recordings put out earlier this year that I really appreciate.
A new music ensemble performing an all-star line-up of composers. That's basically it. Name dropping Nico Muhly will suffice, but there's even a little Sufjan to close the deal.
Best album title name of 2014. It's earnest emotional pop music whose highlights for me are the haunting radio evangelists implicitly and explicitly weaving their way in and out of the quiet shadows of rural America.
Fred Frith from legendary band, Henry Cow, teams up with Danish saxiphonist Lotte Anker to put out an impressive collection of free improvisation recordings.
I regrettably didn't listen to metal this year as much as other years, but it was very difficult to avoid this album this year.
Alt-folk treatment of haunting Appalachian America. Runner-up for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize. Vicky Chow is on this. Evan Ziporyn is on this. All your favourite musicians are on this. The Trio Mediaeval vocals are perfect, and I'm glad I can hear things many years after its composition date in recording studio form.
High Priest of the Anti Pop Consortium releases an album full of smooth easy-going hip-hop production, and if that's not convincing enough for you, its garnered a nod from everyone's favourite young jazz pianist Vijay Iyer, so you really have no excuse not to listen to this.
Chautaqua's 2014 composer in residence and former collaborator with John Zorn, Gosfield, puts out a new piece called 'Signal Jamming and Random Interference' which received a nod from the New York Times. The piece above is just a short work, not from 'Signal Jamming', but still a favourite of the year for me.
I remember reading the comments of the Google Glass ad she did and being extremely surprised at the number of people that disliked her music. I struggled very hard to understand then, and I struggle very hard to understand now. twigs is the best fucking pop artist alive rn to me. [See Snoop Dogg.]
The gem of my high school ipod. And the gem of 2014 ambient music. It's Aphex Twin. What's not to love?
So much music works towards grandiose intentions, but counter to that urge, Julia Brown, to me, works to make something small, intimate, raw, and very human. Their last song sings, "It's not art it's something much smaller than that."
One of my favourite ambient records of 2014.
Lydia Lunch played on the short-lived but extremely influential no-wave band, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. More recently she's been putting out some really good stuff under the moniker, Big Sexy Noise, which I noticed Sarah Weiss (Music Professor at Yale-NUS in Singapore) likes on facebook. Either way this is really good stuff, and I think you might like it.
Singapore composer working towards her doctorate at Brandeis University.
Das Racist have been one of the most influential artists for me intellectually and I still regularly follow what each of them are up to, whether it's opening for a Philip Glass performance, in the studio with Vijay Iyer, or reading Gayatri Spivak. Did I mention Toro y Moi produced one of the tracks on this? Toro y Moi produced one of the tracks on this.
A beautiful way to honour the life of Dr. Maya Angelou with compositions by Aaron Copland, David Lang, and Nico Muhly. Side Note: A new work by David Lang that I'm particularly in love with is this short song 'When We Were Children' which uses a Pauline verse from the First Epistle to the Corinthians as vocal text.
Mandy Woo studied music at the University of Toronto and put out this incredible three movement saxophone-piano duet at the end of last year. She releases her electronic music under the moniker of postmoderndisco, and at the end of the year she put out this EP and it is unbelievable. I actually feel like weeping halfway through one of the tracks for some reason, it's very moving to me.
Irreverent Toronto trio back with original material.
A fun slice of Toronto punk.
'Music From the Mountains of Bhutan' by Sonam Dorji
New releases from Smithsonian Folkways are always a treat.
New releases from Smithsonian Folkways are always a treat.
Two tracks + the single 'Home' to carry me into the new year.
I saw her open for Colin Stetson in Kingston in 2012 and was utterly amazed and later rather disappointed I couldn't find her work in recorded format. She's since released an album and now this beautiful EP. Hometown hero, Owen Pallett, (he's from Mississauga, where I live) helped arranged the opening track. In just three short tracks, she makes you fall in love with strings all over again. (Side Note: besides putting out an amazing album, Owen Pallett is behind like everything this year. From the soundtrack for 'Her' to playing violin in the new Caribou album.)
Very lovable experimental pop. Also the music video for 'Malachite' might be my favourite of the year.
Safely one of my favourite avant collaboration albums of the year.
Sounds like breezy and sparkling electronic pop, to me, and also sounds like vibrant candy drops exploding out of a Nintendo console.
Chin and Pauly are two Costa Rican composers working to shift sounds traditionally found in avant-garde instrumentation into the dimension of hyper-expressive human vocals. It's weird stuff. Pauly just started as a fellow at Harvard's Radcliffe Institute and I look forward to hearing what he has prepared for the coming year.
'2014 Season' by Trinity Wall Street Choir et al.
I was found a little wanting in the ramshackle folk hymn department this year, but sacred high church choral work was in plenty with my discovery of Trinity Wall Street Choir on recommendation from Caroline Shaw, who used to be involved with its choir, as well as Christ Church New Haven's choir while she was studying at Yale. I discovered most of the music performances posted on this site in video format, which makes me excited because Roomful of Teeth are performing on January 5th, some hopefully it should be up on the internet soon. I linked their Christmas eucharist service, because I have fond memories from this Christmas of attending the service at St. Andrew's, a beautiful Anglican church in Singapore, and I love hearing hymns quivering in the resonant nave of an old cathedral.
'Become Ocean' by John Luther Adams
Winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize and possibly one of the most important compositions of the century. The New Yorker likened its release to that of The Rite of Spring. It's a vast Alaskan soundscape in palindrome form, foreshadowing climate change returning us to the waters from which we emerged. Though seemingly grandiose, I think the personal story of John Luther Adams is far less so, and a good note to end on. A modest cadence. He jokes that he made all the wrong decisions in life: he didn't go to Columbia, he dropped out of graduate school, he left for the Arctic -- claiming that at the time he really was running away from what he thought were all the things he was supposed to be doing, but didn't realize he was actually running towards something.
Favourite Music From Other Years:
2013 // 2012 // 2011 (EPs) // 2010 (P.2) (EPs) // 2009
'2014 Season' by Trinity Wall Street Choir et al.
I was found a little wanting in the ramshackle folk hymn department this year, but sacred high church choral work was in plenty with my discovery of Trinity Wall Street Choir on recommendation from Caroline Shaw, who used to be involved with its choir, as well as Christ Church New Haven's choir while she was studying at Yale. I discovered most of the music performances posted on this site in video format, which makes me excited because Roomful of Teeth are performing on January 5th, some hopefully it should be up on the internet soon. I linked their Christmas eucharist service, because I have fond memories from this Christmas of attending the service at St. Andrew's, a beautiful Anglican church in Singapore, and I love hearing hymns quivering in the resonant nave of an old cathedral.
'Become Ocean' by John Luther Adams
Winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize and possibly one of the most important compositions of the century. The New Yorker likened its release to that of The Rite of Spring. It's a vast Alaskan soundscape in palindrome form, foreshadowing climate change returning us to the waters from which we emerged. Though seemingly grandiose, I think the personal story of John Luther Adams is far less so, and a good note to end on. A modest cadence. He jokes that he made all the wrong decisions in life: he didn't go to Columbia, he dropped out of graduate school, he left for the Arctic -- claiming that at the time he really was running away from what he thought were all the things he was supposed to be doing, but didn't realize he was actually running towards something.
Favourite Music From Other Years:
2013 // 2012 // 2011 (EPs) // 2010 (P.2) (EPs) // 2009
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