ACL 2024
Top Ten Experimental
Perhaps the greatest joy found in a year-end list of experimental music is that it rewards not only the experimentalism, but the overall appeal. This is the landing spot for albums that stand out for being different, yet are embraced for being original. Even an album packed with Normal Sounds seems like something otherworldly in the hands of a gifted composer. Others manipulate voice or bend music past the breaking point. One even brings tinnitus, which was previously thought inaudible, to the light. There’s play here and there’s pain; there’s singing and there’s screaming. On one double album, a slew of composers pay tribute to a recently fallen friend. When the dust settles, we’re left stunned, having heard the sound of multiple timelines, the past, present and future, all in one place.
Cruel Diagonals ~ Calcite (Beacon Sound)
Calcite is like a haunting one-woman opera. Using little more than a single person’s voice, it tells an expansive galactic story spanning thousands of years, and ending with the end of life on Earth. Even though Calcite is composed mostly of one person’s voice, the soundscape is anything but thin. Cruel Diagonals uses heavy electronic production to layer her voice over and over on itself, creating deeply rich harmonies and texture. The album takes listeners on a mysterious and chilling journey through time and space, and it ultimately reminds us of the fleeting frailty of human life. (Maya Merberg)
Lia Kohl ~ Normal Sounds (Moon Glyph)
In a world of engines and electronics, a tornado of sound hums, beeps, drones, whirrs, and honks around us. At the eye of this storm, we can’t often pause to listen to its detail. Kohl reveals the sonic richness of the everyday noise. Moreover, she collaborates vehicles, appliances, and floodlights, embellishing them with softly beautiful instrumentation. This is a thought-provoking record that also soothes and attunes our weary ears. (Samuel Rogers)
Li Yilei ~ NONAGE (Métron)
Named for a carefree period of childhood, this is an album focused on memory and nostalgia. Li’s music captures the fragile imperfection of the remembered. Processing old recordings and revisiting broken toys, she makes tangible connections to her own past. Nonetheless, her melodic ambience of keys, synths, and bells has the slight wobble of unreality we find in dream. (Samuel Rogers)
Lola de la Mata ~ Oceans on Azimuth
One of the most unique albums of the year also has one of the year’s most compelling backstories. Her recording career threatened after being diagnosed with tinnitus, Lola de la Mata pivoted to a different form of music. She flew to New York, where biophysicists were able to record what she was hearing, an experience once thought unimaginable. Recording through instruments of metal, glass, ceramic and ice, the artist has produced a sonic treatment of tinnitus that not only conjures the ailment, but the treatment (“PINK Noise”), spinning straw into sonic gold. (Richard Allen)
Moor Mother ~ The Great Bailout (Anti-)
I was fortunate to experience the premiere of The Great Bailout with the London Contemporary Orchestra in 2019 – it’s a vitally important piece of music that has stuck with me ever since (you can watch it here and listen to the earlier version on the Deluxe Edition of the album). There may have been some uncomfortable stirring in seats as the British Slave Trade is not a topic that’s spoken about much in the UK – and yet the evidence of our economy being built on the backs of slaves is literally everywhere. Musically and lyrically, this album is devastating. Educators should put it on the curriculum in schools. It should be performed, with no little irony, in the great concert halls of the land. The Great Bailout should be included in next year’s Prom programme. It’s a masterpiece; once listened to, it’s impossible to forget. (Jeremy Bye)
The Necks ~ Bleed (Northern Sky)
We review a lot of music that explores silence, but The Necks are in a league of their own in their mastery of the space between the notes. On Bleed the Australian trio maintain the minimalist, improvisational nature of their work, this time with the keyboard taking center stage. The trio have a knack for allowing the individual elements of their music to remain independent even as they are tied together through the form of the album. It’s a pensive, gloomy album and to achieve its full effect requires an engaged listener. If you give it the time though, Bleed can make one really feel, as we put it in our initial review, the “fullness of quiet.” (Jennifer Smart)
Philip Jeck ~ rpm (Touch)
rpm is an incredible collection, a sonic eulogy for a fallen composer. The double album includes contributions and collaborations with friends, some of which had been planned or unfinished at the time of his death. But of course Jeck’s work is the unifying factor, his brilliance shining through every piece. Gone but not forgotten, Jeck was an originator and a trail blazer, and his influence is heard throughout the industry. A huge congratulations to Touch for this indelible tribute, a gathering of like-minded artists, generous in length and in love. (Richard Allen)
Rafael Toral ~ Spectral Evolution (Drag City)
From the lightly reverbed strum of a guitar and the gentle bird-like sounds of the first few seconds, Spectral Evolution feels significant. As the music ascends and builds over the course of the 47 minute track, Rafael Toral crafts one of the most delicately beautiful and sonically interesting pieces of music we heard this year. Toral puts his guitar as well as a set of oscillators and synthesizers that journey far across the universe of timbre to work in service of a composition that somehow manages to make classic jazz chords and the warbling, squeaking, and whirring chorus of electronic sound feel like natural companions. There are periods of harsh noise and delicate beauty on this album but the overall impression one is left with is wonder. (Jennifer Smart)
SABIWA, Queimada, Nathan L. ~ Sons of _ (Phantom Limb)
A kind of nihilism cuts across the album, a principle of negation driven by the track titles and the sense that these sounds are opposed to their own articulation as such. From whispers to electronic noise to quiet drones, Sons of_ suggests not a core lack but a core fluid paradox between something and nothing; it often baits us with music, an intelligibility that will afterwards end up subjected to aural instability of various types. As it is deconstructed through a mix of electronic techniques, its structure and organization is revealed – its precarity, however, means also that a difference might emerge, a new perspective from which to reconstruct our way of listening. It is an affirmation that we must endeavor, and that is, perhaps, the hardest part of it all. (David Murrieta Flores)
YATTA ~ PALM WINE (PTP)
PALM WINE is a serious departure from YATTA’s last release, WAHALA, which was more troubled and confused. In contrast, PALM WINE is victorious. While its first few tracks are highly experimental, incorporating snippets of field recordings, traditional West African singing, and two interludes under one minute long, its latter tracks are more accessible. The album’s lead single, “MTV,” is a straight-up pop anthem with a sing-along factor that anyone– fans of pop music and otherwise– would find compelling. (Maya Merberg)