Best Albums of 2024 (Part 2)

by 5:4

And finally we reach the zenith, the apex of this year’s best albums, each and every one of them a bewilderment of shock, awe and wonder.


10 | Dagny – ELLE

The year’s most infectious pop album picks up the threads from Dagny’s bold debut album Strangers / Lovers and explores them with a greater sense of experience. The title ELLE indicates not simply a feminine perspective but the fact that Dagny’s also expressing the need to look at herself and understand and accept the limits of what relationships, and even love, can provide. Initially, there’s an impression of mixed messages: opener ‘Heartbreak in the Making’ is so light and cheerful it seems at odds with its theme of doomed romance. Yet the messages are deliberately mixed: not only is it “a good thing that a bad thing can feel this great” but “I’d do it again and again and again and again”. It’s the start of a learning curve carried through the following songs. The driving ’80s pulse of ‘Same Again (For Love)’ takes a sanguine attitude towards the foibles of romance, matched by the zeal of ‘Somebody’s Baby’, caught in a tension between caution and lust.

Yet Dagny often slows down, turning intimate and introspective, nowhere more powerfully than in ELLE’s final two songs. ‘Close’ is an achingly poignant ballad about a moribund relationship, but without a trace of anger or even regret: “One day, this’ll be a memory / And this house is just a place we used to call home / You’ll live your better days without me … / But we’ll remember when we used to be close”. There’s deep maturity in these sentiments, extended in ‘Coast to Coast’, an epilogue with a strong Carly Rae Jepsen vibe where Dagny is finally happy to be alone with herself: “Just one body under the covers / Took time, but I finally love her”. [DL]


9 | Amy Brandon – Lysis

“The word ‘lysis’ is a word with several meanings, mostly biological, primarily referring to the breakdown of cells. There’s something very apt in that choice of word for Brandon’s music, as it embodies both subtlety (these processes happen on very small scales, invisibly, soundlessly) and transformation between states, with a potential connotation of violence due to the destructiveness of this mechanism. These are all qualities that permeate Brandon’s music, with extreme contrasts being one of the key features running throughout Lysis. Not in the opening piece, microchimerisms, however. This serves as a 67-second curtain raiser, a hint of what’s to follow, and despite its brevity it’s extraordinary. … This miniature demonstrates the same no-holds barred approach heard everywhere else. Indeed, when the next piece, threads, starts, it’s a fluid continuation from the attitude of the flute. A work for string trio, threads is nine minutes of all-or-nothing intensity, one minute nebulous, the next unleashing explosive tremolandi. … An even greater contrast of elements is heard in ensemble piece Affine, where the material is preoccupied with quick, somewhat forceful repeating notes.

One of my favourite works on the album is Intermountainous, for 10-string guitar and electronics … . It’s a ruminative piece, slow and reflective, the guitar meandering through microtonal phrases, while the electronics, having emerged as a pitch-noise hybrid, become a diffuse form of accompaniment. It’s like hearing an attempt to duet with an alien, or (perhaps better) an artificial intelligence, familiar and bizarre working together in a genuinely captivating two-part invention that’s as strange as it is touchingly beautiful. … Taken on its own terms, this is cogent, arresting, riveting music, highly original and individual, demonstrating a consistency of approach while allowing for every piece to have its own unique identity and dialect of Brandon’s fascinating musical language.” [reviewed in August]


8 | LEYA – I Forget Everything

New music from LEYA is always a cause to rejoice. Despite lasting a mere 18½ minutes, the weight and impact of this miniature song cycle is considerable. On I Forget Everything Marilu Donovan and Adam Markiewicz have returned to the focused immediacy, and intimacy, that permeated their 2020 album Flood Dream. Opening track ‘Eden of Haze’ suggests it’s the last of those three words that’s most important, yet its smeary ambient introduction – so prevalent on their previous collaborative album, Eyeline – is rudely silenced. Alongside brisk but provisional arpeggios from Donovan’s off kilter-tuned harp, Markiewicz’s vocal line moves with such hesitancy it’s as if he were torn between the necessity and the risk of singing. The ambience returns, swallowing up this brief notion of song, though its survival is again short-lived.

Other songs play with similar pairings of fast and slow. ‘Corners’ picks up what ‘Eden of Haze’ hinted at, with rapid passagework behind a steady vocal delivery, this heightened, elevated combination again abruptly halting in a reflective coda. In ‘Weaving’ it’s a dense harp texture that serves as the hypnotic backdrop for heady crooning, taken to its zenith in ‘Baited’, where an echo of Donovan’s material is conflated into throbby, clustered pulsations, Markiewicz opting for a form of gentle chant. ‘Fake’ goes the other way, with sparse, cautious harp chords below a free-flowing vocal line. Most of these songs feel like small windows into much larger vistas. One of the two exceptions (with ‘Corners’) is closing song ‘Mia’ which, despite lasting just four minutes, in this context nonetheless feels significantly more expansive. The harp arpeggios now underpin a surging lyricism untapped in what went before, gently cushioned by a radiant, ambient mandorla. [DL]


7 | Gloria Coates – Time Frozen – Works for Chamber Orchestra

“… this new performance [of Symphony No. 1] by the Munich Kammerorchester conducted by Ilan Volkov is a strong addition, and easily the most clear and vivid recording of the work so far. … [They’re] joined by soprano Jessica Niles, who aligns with oboist Tobias Vogelmann to give an absolutely searing account of Cette blanche agonie. … There’s a schizoid quality to the work, which comes through loudly here, as if we’re hearing two sides of the same personality emerging side by side, in a heightened atmosphere filled with foreboding by relentless timpani blows and rolls. Wir tönen allein is a very different act of musical expression. Here, the soprano sits in the midst of what appears to be an ongoing, rather ritualistic process, characterised by long-term glissandi, periodic fizzes of tremolando, timpani rolls, and a strict pulse marshalled by a snare drum. … There’s no remoteness whatsoever here; indeed, the string glissandi in particular have an edgy forcefulness that suggests both the plunging parabolas of warplanes and also the related sound of air raid sirens. … Everything about the performance is mesmerising, managing to sound abstract and emotional at the same time.

The opening of [Time Frozen’s] first movement is here given a beautiful, pristine clarity, communing a quiet sense of deep disquiet, the drums gently causing the ground below to shudder. It’s about as gorgeous as i’ve ever heard any of Coates’ music performed, the circularity of the music indicating something of the “frozen” state of things, the orchestra moving gingerly forward in a pained procession made more plangent by the winds. … This is a deeply compelling album that sheds new light, and gives fresh energy and impetus, to Gloria Coates’ unique and remarkable music.” [reviewed in April]


6 | Chelsea Wolfe – She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She

Chelsea Wolfe’s seventh studio album is a testament to a process of self-examination and detoxification, the title referencing herself in the three “she”s: past, present and future. As such, while the atmosphere of this particular album is as dark-hued as one would expect from Wolfe, it lacks that sense of the implacable, the leaden and the fatalistic, which has given so much of her previous work its weighty intensity. The result is a kind of emotional oscillating. At one end of the swing are slow, pounding tracks like ‘Whispers in the Echo Chamber’, which itself pivots between overdriven immensity and whispered wavering, and ‘Everything Turns Blue’, an attempt to get beyond past pain and trauma – “you fucked me up in my dreams / What do I have to do to heal you out of me?” – with a melodic line at its heart so fragile in such a dense, rough-edged texture it could be eroded in an instant.

Something of this swing is clarified in ‘The Liminal’, where the slow pace and restrained arrangement suggest a kind of dulled frustration resulting from being in a place where “Nothing dies, but nothing thrives”, an uncomfortable in-between, unable to progress or resolve. Yet the other end of the oscillation brings light and healing into the mix. ‘Tunnel Lights’ injects hints of Björk in both its timbrally complex, stratified accompaniment and Wolfe’s angular, undulating vocal line. ‘Eyes Like Nightshade’ breathes real life and space into the album, driven by quick, lively electronics and an increasingly intricate texture. The song speaks of slowness yet sounds otherwise: “I am flying in my sleep”. The album’s high point – and it’s curious this wasn’t the final track – is ‘Place in the Sun’, where darker elements recede to the distance, and real euphoria and elation unfurl at its triumphant chorus: “I am safe in this body, safe in this heart … let me fly”. [CD / LP / DL]


5 | Lee Fraser – Scii Tenaph

“[Scii Tenaph is] a work in three movements, and it’s interesting to note, considering the liminal nature of his music, caught between synthetic and allusive, that their titles also reflect this liminality. The first movement is named for something concrete, Stheno (referencing one of the three mythological gorgons), while the latter two are simply titled Scii Tenaph II and Scii Tenaph III, abstract words that don’t suggest anything specific. Within this tripartite structure, Stheno speaks as something akin to a warm-up exercise. A minute’s worth of lowish noise yields to edgy, tactile, somewhat aggressive actions, tapping directly into the kind of heightened physicality typical of Fraser’s music. … Its denouement allows for calmer material, forming around a quickly pulsing central pitch, becoming a huge panoply of chirring, ticking and rippling elements, a tension broken by more muscular movement, coming out the other side in a beautiful hovering shimmer. …

Stheno establishes paradigms of behaviour that are extended in Scii Tenaph II. Another gentle start … leads to more textural ripples and tickles. Yet what follows is almost like a literal embodiment of liminality, Fraser bringing together obviously electronic sounds in the form of blips and bleeps, overlaid on ostensible familiars of insect calls or bird songs. It’s a nice demonstration of the timbral tension at the heart of Fraser’s work, pulling us between being drawn to the pseudo-real for footholds or signposts while revelling (or, perhaps, flailing) in the alien. … As a short conclusion, Scii Tenaph III limits itself to pitch-based materials. … forming a rich, vibrant but edgy chorus of tones, embellished with hard bass slaps, displaying the same razor edge as in Stheno. It’s an intimidating level of ferocity that suggests it’s the root cause of the disintegration that brings the work to its vivid close.” [reviewed in September]


4 | O’o – Songs of Wishes and Bones

Songs of Wishes and Bones continues the linguistically inventive, stylistically mercurial approach to songwriting established on O’o’s debut Touche two years ago. Again, the duo flits between French and English to create a poetic song cycle veering between pounding pop and delicate balladry. Opener ‘Scorpion’ establishes something of what’s to come in its gentle but insistent beat, and in the way its playfulness is challenged by a distinct hard edge. That’s expanded in ‘Arena’, a stomper revelling in (yet somewhat wary of) dancefloor shenanigans, with “Heads for business / But a body for sin”. Different bodies are explored in the similarly upbeat ‘Tako-Tsubo’, though whether they’re of people or creatures is hard to tell. There’s mischief in the way its cheerfulness aligns with violence: “Hammer hammer hammer hammer hammer afresh / Tender tenderise the helpless flesh”. ‘Delay’, an anthem to breaking free from unnecessary caution, sets out as soft touch encouragement – “Give it a try … it’s not that deep … you will survive” – before pressing on at double time in delirious impatience, coated in a SOPHIE-esque plasticated veneer.

Just as often, though, the pulse is more relaxed or hard to discern. ‘Les os du lac’ invokes traces of chanson in its gentle lyricism, coloured with a delicate accompaniment that grows ever more beautiful as it enriches. The song is one of many to feature a lengthy coda, highlighting their thoughtfulness, and a desire to remain in and celebrate their immersive soundworlds for as long as possible. Chanson also emerges as oblique moments of reverie in the otherwise glitchy ‘L’orage’, while ‘L’E dans L’O’ indulges in verbal gymnastics on the ligatured relationship between two letters. Victoria Suter’s voice has never sounded lovelier than in closing track ‘Barcelona’, a ballad confronting heartbreak and finality, dispensing with a coda to reflect on “Leaving behind / What could have been / And simply / But truly / And cruelly won’t be”. [LP / DL]


3 | Abul Mogard & Rafael Anton Irisarri – Impossibly distant, impossibly close

The two parts of this superb album both function, essentially, as passacaglias. In each case, though, this is far from obvious at the start. ‘Place of Forever’ takes a full third of its 17-minute duration to establish the beginnings of a soundworld. Traces of pitch in the far distance, soft crackle, vague chords humming at varying levels of proximity; together suggesting not so much progression as rotation, a collection of adjacent but independent threads playing out to form a composite whole. Only after this has been given six minutes to speak does the bass materialise, from a mere idea to something tangible to a deep source of developmental focus. The cycling bassline, for all its slowness, nonetheless brings shape to the music, galvanising it, transforming the total effect from that of a mobile to a glacial, open-ended evolution. All the more so considering where we came from, the piece quickly obtains towering hypnotic momentum, overwhelming and unstoppable, infusing us with rich radiant glory.

The gentle opening buzzy drone of ‘Waking Up Dizzy on a Bastion’ feels like a continuation of this, a vestige of its heat, coloured by nothing more than the lightest of tendrils and a whiff of something harmonic. It’s as if ‘Place of Forever’ had transported us far away to an entirely new place (another green world, perhaps?), these simple ideas again quietly playing out in parallel, plus the addition of a more prominent melodic element. Fuzzy swells herald the materialisation of the bass, again acting to clarify these processes, this time into an exquisite, slowly-rotating object, not evolving but revealing more of the layers and details of its glowing active surface as it turns. [LP / DL]


2 | Tarmo Johannes – Tumesoe

“i’ve seen [Tarmo Johannes] perform, as both soloist and ensemble member, innumerable times, and both his technical abilities and innate musical sympathies are outstanding. All of which makes the release of Tumesoe, Johannes’ first album, a mouth-watering prospect.

The title translates as “Dark-warm”, and that’s an entirely appropriate descriptor for the atmosphere that pervades Tumesoe as a whole, and specifically its eponymous opening track … . Over the course of its 20-minute duration, Johannes establishes a language of slow, steady, deep intoned notes. … All of this has sounded eminently stable and controlled, yet a little after its midpoint ‘Dark-warm’ pulls back and for a while is undermined by rumble. This is an unexpected sonic appearance, making the music feel troubled at its core, and perhaps in response to this, Johannes becomes much more assertive, projecting a stronger, higher melody. Vocal tics and noises add to the tactility of the performance, and despite the rumbling bass still appearing to be present, electronic tones gently pour into the upper levels of the texture. It’s a gorgeous sequence, and though busy, things now seem balanced. …

‘Rhythms’ shifts away completely from sustained notes, exploring a soundscape of light percussive impacts and vocal sounds. … The third and fifth parts of Tumesoe both bear the title ‘Harmonics’ and swing in the opposite direction, away from rhythm. Both of them feature Johannes on natural horn, shaping a tune over an omnipresent electronic drone, its slightly buzzy timbre continually in flux. … In between the two ‘Harmonics’ sections, Johannes unexpectedly introduces a genuinely foreign element: extant music, in the unlikely form of Jacques Ibert’s 1934 Pièce for solo flute. It emerges seamlessly … like a playful, dream-like reverie in the midst of more sombre melodic exploration.” [reviewed in October]



1 | The Body & Dis Fig – Orchards of a Futile Heaven

It was four years ago that Felicia Chen, a.k.a. Dis Fig, was to be found in the midst of the not merely immersive but all-enclosing cycle In Blue, her collaboration with The Bug that was one of my best albums of 2020. Her role there was marvellously fluid, from one perspective front and centre, the music’s focal point; from another, the unwitting protagonist set upon on all sides by a slew of bass and beats that threatened to pulverise her completely. So it is in her latest collaboration, this time with U.S. duo The Body, Orchards of a Futile Heaven, an album that makes In Blue sound like the easy-going prelude to this almighty onslaught.

From the outset, in ‘Eternal Hours’, Chen is as fragmentary as the beats, a distortion of something half-tangible lurking at the periphery, less musical than the possibility of music. She attains clarity and the effect is immediate: near-silence, rapt attention, the preparatory pause before a remainder that plays out with the flavour and fervour of a rite. A slow vocal chant, with signs of a small chorus, their indistinct words caught between invocation and incantation. It’s a striking introduction, but The Body now greatly ups the ante, conjuring up an amazing array of fuzzing, buzzing bass permutations that make up the rippling foundation of what follows. ‘To Walk a Higher Path’ processes forward with a deliciously complex pulse, almost as if it’s controlled by and bereft of tempo simultaneously. Its shuffling progress belies the fact that it’s energised literally everywhere, made more fraught by Chen’s breathy voice being answered by screams during its overdriven bridge passages. Echoes of the opening track return in ‘Dissent, Shame’, Chen intoning low with great solemnity, to the accompaniment of grinding bass surges as if the ground were cracking apart beneath her. It’s the most unlikely of places for an ethereal choir to materialise, becoming a fixed locus of beauty in the midst of grime, distortion, decay and destruction. The result is both a cancelling out and a transfiguration, subsequent pounding beats unable to shake the vocal radiance which produces a kind of anti-stillness at its centre.

It’s clear in these opening tracks that the role of Dis Fig’s voice is complex and variable, sometimes – when we can make out her words – communicative, more often textural, instrumental, timbral, though always emerging with a directness that we instantly connect with through all the swirling dirt and detritus. More verbal clarity comes through in the title track, though it’s lost as the song builds to a massive climax, contrasting her indefatigable lyricism with an overload of crunchy, acidic glory. The implied continuity from ‘Eternal Hours’ and ‘Dissent, Shame’ continues into ‘Holy Lance’, Dis Fig returning to a slow, halting delivery, like a fractured incantation, focused and portentous, with the ever-present sense that things could let rip at any moment. And they do, The Body matching the sudden rising of each phrase with crude, colliding eruptions, Chen’s melody becoming an ever more desperate ululation high above.

There’s a greater level of ambition brought to bear in penultimate track ‘Coils of Kaa’. We’re plunged into the core of a purring machine, where a slow, crumpled beat (redolent of the trudge in ‘To Walk a Higher Path’) is heard as if through intense heat, rippling through its regularity. Yet this pulse is the only thing keeping the music grounded; Chen veers wildly between song, scream, speech and some furious amalgam of despair, keening and rage. Yet she also sounds akin to a witch, casting a new spell, causing her voice to expand and multiply, a swirling omnipresence. This brings a new dimension to the song’s ostensibly doomed demeanour, an evocation of triumph that’s crowned in its crushing coda, the voice by now a distant abstraction.

Where to go from here? The clue comes in the final track’s title, ‘Back to the Water’, segueing from buzzing, wavering tones into, of all things, clear chord progressions. The solemnity returns as Chen, reverentially, half-whispered, slowly brings warmth and power to her voice. She acts as cantor for the album’s final, ferocious, incandescent processional – seemingly at, or for, the end of the world – at the last becoming a figment in the music, like a strand of something burning in the midst of hard crashing edges, piledriving on to an oblivion of piercing tones like lasers burning their truth into our skulls.

Though they’re each unique and engrossing in their own right, the individual tracks are essentially inseparable from the overall, long-form act of expression. They’re the chapters of a thrilling, devastating liturgy draped in black, etched with light, expressed through fire. [CD / LP / DL]

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