Undomondo's Best of 2024
Best albums of 2024, 150 song playlist, resolutions for the year, 2 traditional end of year mixes!
So. 2024 is yesterday’s news!
I know lists are authoritarian and nobody cares about lists anymore, moreover content is dead and para-content is eating it alive. I know there’s no point in doing these rituals anymore. But, I’m turning 45 this year, and I still like to spend some time on them as a note to my future aging self, maybe? Thankfully, I actually only spent 1/10th of the time I used to spend doing these lists. Am I finally getting over my ADHD/OCD/perfectionism?
I checked a few well-known music media, and blog’s year-end lists. Like the past years, I saw that there was a consensus and I missed a lot of things, but I think this list has also gotten many things that others have missed! So, let this be a complementary list to what else you might have enjoyed from these other lists.
The list below is a testament to the album format. I know it’s dead as well in 2024, but some peeps went out and did it. And they did it good! They have managed to make their albums more coherent, with more than 1 stand out song/single, and I think they are more rewarding if listened to as an album.
Here’s my best of 2024 list.
AceMo- Moblu (Self Released)
Actress - Statik (Ninja Tune)
Aluk Todolo - LUX (The Ajna Offensive)
Amanda Whiting - The Liminality of Her (Jazzman Records)
Amirtha Kidambi’s Elder Ones - New Monuments (We Jazz)
Arooj Aftab - Night Reign
BEAK> - >>>> (Letter to Yu) (Invada Records)
Bolis Pupul - Letter to Yu (DEEWEE)
Blood Incantation - Absolute Everywhere (Century Media)
Castle Rat - Into the Realm (King Volume Records)
Charles Lloyd - The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow (Blue Note Records)
Chat Pile - Cool World (The Flenser)
Cindy Lee - Diamond Jubilee (Self Released)
Dina Ögon - Orion (Playground Music)
The Cosmic Tones Research - All is Sound (Pyramid Records)
Crumb - AMAMA (Crumb Records)
Fat White Family - Forgiveness Is Yours (Domino)
Geordie Greep - The New Sound (Rough Trade)
Ghost Dubs - Damaged (Pressure)
Hauntologist - Hollow (No Solace)
Jaubi - A Sound Heart (Riaz Records)
Jean-Emmanuel Rosnet - Les Alentours (Not Not Fun)
Jessica Pratt - Here in the Pitch (Mexican Summer)
The Jesus Lizard - Rack (Touch and Go Records)
Kali Malone - All Life Long (Ideal Recordings)
Lankum - Live in Dublin (Rough Trade)
Laura Marling - Patterns in Repeat (Partisan Records)
Lætitia Sadier - Rooting for Love (Drag City)
The Lemon Twigs - A Dream is all we know (Captured Tracks)
Melt-Banana - 3+5 (A-Zap Records)
Mildlife - Chorus (HEAVENLY)
Molly Lewis - On The Lips (Jagjaguwar)
Nia Archives - Silence Is Loud (Hut Records)
Normil Hawaiians - Empires into Sand (Upset The Rhythm)
NxWorries - Why Lawd? (Stones Throw)
Nubya Garcia - Odyssey (Concord Jazz)
Oneida - Expensive Air (Joyful Noise Recordings)
Pom Poko - Champion (Bella Union)
Porcelain - Porcelain (Portrayal of Guilt Records)
Raphael Rogiński - Žaltys (Unsound)
Shellac - To All Trains (Touch and Go Records)
Sprints - Letter To Self (Nice Swan Records)
Straw Man Army - EARTHWORKS (D4MT Labs)
Tierra Whack - World Wide Whack (Interscope Records)
William Parker & Ellen Christi - Cereal Music (Centering Records)
♩I also made a 150-song playlist with 1 pick from each album/artist; I tried to group the songs roughly by genre, resetting with an ambient piece, but feel free to listen to them randomly. This year I opted to include metal in the playlist too. Before I thought it might be off-putting for some people, but I just don’t care anymore. If you don’t like something, skip it.
♩I had gradually scaled out of social media and algo-based feeds like Twitter/Instagram in general last year, and this year I’ll be looking to curb my consumption of other data forms, like YouTube videos. We’ve lost the ability to read/watch longer forms of content, and I just want to relearn it.
Here are two essays I’ve read recently that solidified my view.
We’ve never had more freedom, more choices. But in reality, most people are subtly funneled into the same streams, the same pools of ‘socially approved’ culture, cuisine and ideas. Remixes and memes abound, but almost no one shares anything weird, original or different. People wake up, perhaps with ambitions to make unique choices they believe are their own, only to find that the options have been filtered, curated, and ‘tailored to existing tastes’ by algorithms that claim to know them best.
♩Read Liz Pelly’s investigation into Spotify and realize how everything you enjoy is orchestrated for you behind your back. It embodies everything that sucks in society right now, and I just don’t want to be a part of it. The whole Spotify saga is too damning to turn a blind eye to, and hopefully I’ll ditch Spotify soon as well.
Spotify apparently targeted genres where they could promote passive consumption. They identified situations in which listeners use playlists for background music. That’s why I noticed the fake artists problem first in my jazz listening.
According to Pelly, the focal points of PFC were “ambient, classical, electronic, jazz, and lo-fi beats.”
When some employees expressed concerns about this, Spotify managers replied (according to Pelly’s sources) that “listeners wouldn’t know the difference.”
Speed and overstimulation deform our perception of ourselves and the world, much as the ripples on a pond deform what might have otherwise been a mirrorlike reflection of the surrounding trees and sky.
In the engine of the modern monster, we see bits and pieces that flicker past on the ripples of the mirror. We see snippets and parts rather than wholes, and we function by grasping the bits we can see and get accustomed to a lopsided left-hemisphere perception of the world.
Let’s hope we can all have a calmer and slower 2025.
♩P.S. : My traditional end of year vintage/kitsch/camp/easy listening/exotica mixes are going to be online until the end of this month, too.. The New Years Mix came out especially good I think.. I’d play it on your cocktails, tea parties, dinners, if I were you!