The albums making my year...

My recommendations from 2024

Analogue photograph (35mm) by Florencia Viadana

This week I attended the international contemporary music festival Ensems, in Valencia, Spain. The festival has been running for 46 years, which is, roughly speaking, ever since Spain transitioned from Francoism to democracy.

At the festival, I was most powerfully moved by a performance of Songs of War I Have Seen, written by the German composer Heiner Goebbels. Inspired by Gertrude Stein’s memoir Wars I Have Seen, Goebbels used excerpts from the text throughout his composition. Stein’s somewhat surreal passages are accompanied by a medium-sized classical ensemble playing music in a style that incorporates everything from baroque to serialism to jazz and electronic. The result is a gentle and mournful meditation on the futility of war and our tendency to repeat mistakes.

I attended the performance alone and afterwards felt the desire to share this experience with others but was unable to find an official recording. I discovered a couple of YouTube videos though I found myself quickly tuning out, as the music felt much less engaging once recorded, which is not uncommon for music intended for the concert hall.

This experience made me reflect on the power of recorded music, and in particular, the album, which allows us to share music across time and space. While live music thrives on its uniqueness and intimacy, it is the sameness of recorded music that gives rise to its shared experience. Created from the limitations of mass-produced objects (vinyl, CD, tape etc.) only capable of containing so much music its packaging became part of the art form. The standardisation of the album allowed people across the world to have shared musical experiences.

Though only someone who attended a concert of Heiner Goebbels’ music could experience its uniqueness, the list of albums below can be experienced by anyone, anywhere, at any time. All released in 2024 this is a list of recommendations, not reviews. I hope you find something in this list that moves you.

Shabaka / Perceive Its Beauty Acknowledge Its Grace

When British-Barbadian saxophonist Shabaka Hutchins announced last year he would be referring to himself only as Shabaka and retiring from the sax to play the flutes, it sounded like a bold move. What followed is, I believe, his finest album to date. It has a deeply original melodic style, where the patterns of the sounds feel like they are undergoing a constant process of unfolding. Themes carry from one piece to another, transposed and modified, but with a musical thread joining them all. It is an album in the truest sense of the word, in that you can listen to it from start to finish and experience a development in its emotional narrative.

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Spectral Evolution / Rafael Toral

I wish I could relive the experience of listening to this album for the first time, as it took me completely out of myself. Toral’s homemade instruments imitate bird songs and ‘sing’ along with slowed-down jazz harmonies in a lush cacophony. At moments it sounds like a digital dawn chorus. I am sure Oliver Messiaen would have approved of Toral’s original approach to incorporating birdsong.

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Aroof Aftab / Night Reign

This album is a mellow nocturne. If you have not encountered the subtle modulations of Aroof Aftab’s rich voice, then you must. Especially with this record, which is recorded and produced exceptionally well. It is another slow-paced album, that is skilfully composed and contains an array of briliant collaborators.

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Sept Cordes / Petar Klanac

French composer Petar Klanac describes his generative composition as follows.

Sept cordes is rooted in two fundamental observations: the beauty of Nature and the gift of existence, both of which are an endless source of inspiration for me; and the problem of technical reproducibility, the production of perfectly identical copies of a musical work.

I don’t tend to like albums that have multiple versions of the same composition, as it seems to conflict with linearly-ordered recordings. For this album, it somehow works, perhaps because the tracks are short enough to make it compelling, perhaps because they are well composed.

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Kamasi Washington / Fearless movement

The first time I heard Dontae Winslow’s trumpet solo on the preview track for this album Prologue I thought ‘Nobody can follow that’. Then Kamasi did, blowing into altissimo in a manner that felt like it could reawake the spirit of Pharaoh Sander. Much of the rest of the album does not connect with me in the way some of Washington’s previous work has, but he’s exploring new ground, and that’s a good thing.

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Sarah Davinci / The Head As Form​’​d In The Crier​’​s Choir

In recent years, there has been a revival of drone music inspired by the American composer La Monte Young, with Sarah Davinci a leading composer in this field. In seeking out specific organs with unique attributes this album was recorded in places as far afield as Finland, France, Italy, and The United States. The music requires you to slow down and experience the spaces in which it was recorded.

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BeLonging / Andy Akiho

Five years in the making, this political album was inspired by immigrants in detention in Brooklyn. The political dimension of the music did not have much effect on me. However, I did, as ever, enjoy the angular and percussion-driven nature of Akiho’s composing. The record contains some of the most technically expressive steelpan playing I have heard from the composer-instrumentalist.

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Pat Metheny / Moon Dial

Doing a Beatles cover is likely to expose the flaws of a musician, since however easy the quartet made it look their music was consistently composed, arranged, and recorded to the highest standards. Pat Metheny is one of the few people who can match their level and his cover of Here, There and Everywhere demonstrates that. It’s another wonderful record to add to a great legacy.

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Six Pieces for Solo Violin / Sophia Jani

This album crossed my path thanks to Stephen Kunse’s excellent Substack zensounds. Six pieces for solo violin might sound a bit terse, and in some ways it is, but there is a beauty to this recording that keeps me coming back to it. I still don’t feel like I’ve fully digested it, so I’ll avoid describing it and just let you listen.

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Poppy H / Wadham Lodge

Much like the previous record, I have to admit I haven’t fully got to grips with this one either, although it only was released this week. Poppy H is a semi-anonymous musician who only releases music through Bandcamp. His music is made entirely using a phone and field recordings. What I like is the braveness of the juxtapositions in this album, that create moments of dissonance and Ives-esque polytonality. It’s a tense and claustrophobic album, but there is an emotional warmth beneath it.