Dedekind Cut, one of the most exciting experimental composers working today, has released his most accomplished set yet, an industrial ambient juggernaut that folds all his prior rough edges into an interstellar discovery vehicle. Tahoe is music for travelling beyond, informed by a deeply honest sense of what it’s like to be alive right now in this weird world.
When I was ten years old, I chose the alto saxophone as my instrument for school band. I kept at it through high school, but gave up when my interests turned elsewhere. I still own that sax, but I haven’t touched it in years.
If only I’d known that it could create otherworldly music like Joseph Shabason does on his masterful debut album, Aytche, I’d probably still be playing today.
2017 was easily the most definitive year of my entire life. This year, I became a father. I got married. Everything changed, including the way I appreciated music.
It wasn’t my tastes; I didn’t suddenly drop my love for techno and weird jazz to become a dad rock connoisseur, despite in fact making a dad rock mixtape. No, it was a subtle shift in weight, a slight refocusing on what aspects most affect what I love about music. I’m still largely into the same genres and artists as before, but I now feel drawn to facets of sound and meaning that I shied away from before. I’m more interested in peeling back the meaning behind what I’m loving, searching for a thread to pull, an arc to follow. Slowly but surely, I recognized the colors emerging from the stories that built these pieces of art.
It’s not that I wasn’t interested in the behind-the-scenes or the history before becoming a dad; it’s simply that I now find myself automatically working recursively when I’m emotionally struck by something, running down the fibers of time that brought it to my attention, trying to work out a map for my own journey forward in this new life role. I’m living for more than myself finally, and although it feels vulnerable to have my heart living outside my body, it’s incredibly rewarding. I’ve felt more energized, more creative than I have in years. I made five new mixtapes between winters. I began running for the first time. I started writing fiction again. Oh and, along with my wife, I’ve been raising a child pretty successfully for half a year so far. Even more than ever before, I can’t wait to experience what happens next.
Speaking of my wife, that’s her in the header picture above. I thought the image of her, pregnant, hiking in the late winter sunset, encapsulated the way I felt about 2017. All that nervous possibility and raw beauty surrounding the long shadow down the path ahead, feeling real warmth after too many frozen months.
This year, like every year, was bursting full of new, exciting, brilliant music. It only takes some effort and desire to find it all. In another first, I barely read any music journalism, kept up with no major release schedules, and missed out on most of the hype 2017 had to offer. I have only the faintest ideas about what other people hold up as the best music of the year. To me, these 50 albums mattered more than anything else I heard all year, give or take a few. For a more comprehensive picture of the year, be sure to check out 50 more must-hear albums of 2017.
Let’s begin the countdown. These are the 50 best albums of 2017.
Alessandro Cortini is a member of Nine Inch Nails and somehow I never knew it before the release of his latest and best album, AVANTI. I got on board with the Italian synth maestro when I heard his Forse series, but I admittedly hadn’t paid much attention to NIN since The Fragile. I gave each new album a listen or more, but I didn’t keep up with the band; I didn’t know anything beyond “Trent Reznor and some people.”
In an interview with Pitchfork last week, Oneohtrix Point Never explained how he needs weird breakages and colliding contrasts to happen for music to feel truthful, and how this also applies to all good film scores. After listening to his soundtrack for Good Time, a new film by the Safdie brothers, reading this passage felt like a tiny lightbulb flickering on.
It’s the rough, distinctive patina surrounding everything he’s ever recorded, the philosophy underpinning the very reason his music is so often astonishing. It’s something he’s expressing most clearly on this, a movie score that basically functions as a proper new album.
Three years ago, Actress, aka English musician Darren Cunningham, dropped the apocalyptic, noise-damaged Ghettoville and promptly announced that he was retiring the moniker for good. Sure, he was cryptic, but there aren’t many ways to interpret “bleached out and black tinted conclusion of the Actress image,” or “R.I.P Music 2014.” The album was maybe the best album of the year so it would have been a grand finale.
As it turns out, Cunningham’s eulogy was mercifully premature. He just released a new Actress single, and it’s a revelation for anyone familiar with his work. X22RME sounds like a whole new evolution for the artist. Check the video:
An Act of Love is a gentle midnight surprise, music as pulsing revelation birthed in the moment between waking and tumbling into dreams. It comes on ominously before dissolving into inescapable rhythm, leaving a breadcrumb trail through memory toward some warm place half-recalled.
Optimistic Underground 