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My favorite releases of 2017

Note that I didn’t wind up hearing as much music from this year as intended, so there’s probably some good stuff out there that I missed. Let me know about your own favorites from the year in the replies if you want!

Top 4 albums

Yes, there’s only four on this list. To be fair, though, I’ve listed quite a few albums in the Honorable Mentions section below that came close.

4. Ora Cogan - Crickets

Goth, psychedelic folk, electronic, maybe a dash of dream pop even: whatever I could call this album there’s clearly lots of interesting elements at play. Ora Cogan’s earlier albums were for the most part full-on folk reliant on guitars, so the addition of more percussion, synths, etc. is an exciting step for her. At times she reminds me of the slower, folksier side of PJ Harvey.

Every one of the first 5 songs have something cool going for them, “The Light” and the title track being favorites of mine. it’s only when the slower trio of closing tracks come in where I felt it ran out of steam. Other than that, though, there’s a very good 5-song EP in here. It’s also of course one of the more unique albums I’ve heard from this year, which is another reason it made this top 4.

3. Curtis Harding - Face Your Fear

What I like about this album is that not only does it pleasantly channel 70s soul, but adds interesting new twists to it. For example, “Ghost Of You” is, well, ghostlier than your usual vintage soul tune, while “Dream Girl” actually features a quite atmospheric synth intro. The first half is full of great songs, case in point “Go As You Are”, which combines soul with psych-rock guitar and effects. The rhythms are both mellow and groovy, a combination similar to What’s Going On by Marvin Gaye, which is certainly a good thing. Sadly, a few songs in the second half veer into more average/typical fare. Maybe I just prefer his moodier sides to the upbeat/chipper ones. Curtis came close, though, hence this making my top 4.

2. 36 - Tomorrow’s Explorers

Like I said before, spacey ambient music isn’t the newest idea around, but 36 pulled off a surprisingly good take on it with this album. The closing title track gets long in the tooth after a pretty beginning, but I liked each of the other songs which is rare for an album from this year. The production is also well done, making dense use of both synths and some soft strings.

1. New Atlantis Vol. 1 compilation

New Atlantis are the new age label I’ve been anticipating new music from since their publishing of this in July. There’s an obvious element of 80s-90s influence, of course, but this is in a style considerably less exhausted at this point than things like synthwave. In case the cover didn’t indicate it, this compilation is filled with blissful and aquatic new age. One or two dull songs aside, I enjoyed nearly all of this album. I already said most of what I thought in my first-half-of-2017 post that month, but it’s still easily my personal favorite of the year. Let’s hope they can keep putting out good stuff.

Top 5 EPs

5. Celestael - My Path

A few months ago I came across the ‘Dungeon Synth Archives’ youtube channel. It’s entirely devoted to posting ‘dungeon synth’, an obscure genre that centers around medieval fantasy music very often made on keyboards. This is one of the releases I listened to and I liked it quite a bit. This particular EP has a more nocturnal and shadowy feel than some other 'dungeon synth’.

4. Menestrel - La Poésie des Temps Jadis

Another dungeon synth find from the same channel. This French act is less ambient tinged and more active, sounding like the soundtrack to an old medieval PC game. The songs also make pleasant use of harpsichord, which is the perfect instrument for this sort of style. The only song I didn’t like was the 5-minute closer, but it was decent enough and can be forgiven.

3. DIM - Compendium I

The third and last dungeon synth EP on this list. This musician only appeared earlier this year, seeming to put up this EP with little warning. This is similar to Menestrel in how melodic and active it is; there’s also more regal harpsichord parts in several songs along with digital harp in others. My favorite was “Ellendriel’s Lullaby”, which actually has a female voice in it (I’m not sure who’s singing on it, though).

2. X.Y.R. - Reflections

X.Y.R. is a Russian synthesist who got some attention through his Labyrinth album on Not Not Fun. Reflections is considered the 'companion EP’ to Labyrinth, but at 29 minutes it kind of works as it’s own album. This is the sort of new agey ambient music I’ve been enjoying a lot lately but with a moody submerged-underwater twist. Like with the Menestrel EP, there’s only one song I didn’t like in some way, which was the last song. I’ll be very interested to hear more from him based on this.

1. Soda Lite - In Eco

I first heard Soda Lite through his “Mara Sento” track on New Atlantis Vol. 1. This EP he released in February might just be better; it sounds a lot like the beautiful cover art, thus is drenched in all kinds of aquatic and plantlike synths and bells. In fact, it happened to come one month after I posted my mix Virtual Rainforest; if I had only known of Soda Lite then, I would’ve totally put something from this on there. Besides “Aurai”, I liked every track, especially “Habitat”.

Honorable Mentions

A lot of albums this year only just missed the mark for me. Here are a handful of those.

Nabihah Iqbal - Weighing Of The Heart

Nabihah Iqbal (FKA Throwing Shade) is in part responsible for one of my favorite New Atlantis tracks “Westway (Ambient Mix)”. She also is a fan of Siouxsie, Prince, and MJ, took classes about gamelan music, plays flute, plays guitar and DJs. There’s probably some other cool fact about her I’m missing. But in short, Nabihah Iqbal is an extremely interesting musician.

Plenty of synths pop up on this debut, but it’s more in a post punk/dream pop style than what I’ve heard from her before. “Something More” has a very Durutti Column/4AD sort of guitar for example. “Saw U Twice”’s guitar feels more like a Banshees song which is all for the better. Elsewhere, “Feels So Right” has a full dream pop feel; it could very well be my favorite of the bunch.

The album is consistent for the most part, but two or three boring tracks along with the sad abundance of generic drums weakened it on the whole. Cliches like this just feel extra disappointing coming from a musician as interesting as Iqbal.

Fever Ray - Plunge

If Fever Ray hadn’t surprise-released this, it would’ve been my most anticipated of the year. I’m a huge Knife fan, so it’s been daunting to wait this long for something new from either member of the duo since their split in '14. A split I’m still upset about, really.

I wasn’t the most enthusiastic seeing the faux-edgy cover, but don’t judge an album by it’s cover, right? Well, in this case it was both true and false. This album has a precious handful of quality, Knifey tunes for sure, but also a few that have to rank among the worst in Fever Ray or The Knife’s careers. “This Country” is over 3 minutes of edgy, discordant nonsense, “Falling” takes way too long to develop anything interesting; “IDK About You” is too reliant on repetition and Karin’s vocal somehow grates my nerves. I appreciate the good songs here (in particular, the spooky slow-burn style in “Red Trails” and “An Itch”, which sounds like a sequel to “One Hit” by The Knife) but many dull and tropey elements bring a lot of potential for a great album down.

My ideal track listing for this would be: 1. Wanna Sip 2. Mustn’t Hurry 3. A Part Of Us 4. Plunge 5. To The Moon And Back 6. Red Trails 7. An Itch

And then you have a nice Fever Ray mini-album.

Goldfrapp - Silver Eye

Like I said in my halfway-through-2017 post: This album strikes me as flawed, most likely thanks to my being a Goldfrapp fan for years now. There’s still a good amount of Goldfrapp-isms that keep me loving a handful of songs here. First off, “Beast That Never Was” almost sounds like Felt Mountain’s title track. Hardly ever do musicians harken back to their very first albums, do they? Elsewhere Goldfrapp have channeled something slow-burning and closer than usual to Black Cherry. That’s a big compliment as I love their first 3 albums most. That said, Alison’s voice doesn’t seem as beautiful as before and there’s still weak links. The sounds they use sound alarmingly close to the trendy boring stuff I wanted them to stay away from. “Systemagic”, for example, feels way too simple.

Cindy Wilson - Change

Jane Weaver - Modern Kosmology

J.V. Lightbody - Inner Work

The first New Atlantis album since their debut compilation. This album is similar enough in style and has a few excellent songs but gets a bit dull with the last few songs. It gets a lot better when I trim them, though, and there it’s still almost an album’s length. I couldn’t help but expect more from New Atlantis after the several months it took to release this, but they can’t all be good and this was pretty close anyway.

Washed Out - Mister Mellow

Like I said in the halfway post: Washed Out’s last album bored me so I appreciate how much more interesting this was. His vocals (e.g. drifting over the music like some blanket) haven’t changed. But the music is like a bustling city in contrast, almost stressful. There’s samples of various 70s sounding origins (disco, soul etc.) and a lot of odd surrealism. There are too many brief sketchy songs here though, which keep the flow but don’t do much else. If only this was more made up of real songs because the album already feels fractured. The likes of “Burn Out Blues” or “Floating By” are too good to relegate to an EP’s worth of material.

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