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The second part of our favourite albums of 2024
Favourite albums of 2024: Welcome to The Song Bar’s favourite albums of 2024 Part 2. Part 1 can be found here. There’s no such thing as ‘best of’ and everything is subjective, but please dig into this rich seam of originality and quality, and even suggest more of your own
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This year’s selections include some returning veterans at the top of their game as well as some fabulous newcomers
Favourite albums of 2024: Welcome to The Song Bar’s favourite albums of 2024 Part 1. There’s no such thing as ‘best of’ and everything is subjective, but rich seams of originality and quality are certainly here to be enjoyed. Peruse away …
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Aphex Twin: Music From The Merch Desk (2016-2023)
Album review: A decade since his last album, Syro, electronica’s brilliant British outsider and pioneer Richard D James returns with a surprise fan-pleaser, a mass compilation release of 38 numbers played at festivals, and previously only on limited-edition vinyl sold at the merch desk of select events
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Izumi 'Mimi' Kobayashi: Choice Cuts 1978-1983
Album review: Out of many compilations released in 2024, this Time Capsule collection is a highlight, picking some of the fabulously fun, inventive, hybrid jazz-funk-Latin-reggae-electronica pop of the innovative Japanese composer and pianist
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A wonderfully twinkling, clockwork vitality: Human Error
New album: Ingenious, playfully inventive electronica by Jeremy Barnes, from Albuquerque, New Mexico, inspired by the idea of how errors lead to invention and discovery, written while teaching music to incarcerated teens at YDDC juvenile detention
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Legowelt: A Field Guide To The Void
Album review: The Netherlands electronic artist Danny Wolfers returns with a delightful mixture of old-school-influenced synth pop, crafting textured soundscapes, nostalgic, futuristic, eccentric and eclectic, steering somewhere between robot voices, cosmic exploration and the dancefloor
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Image inside a carriage of sound from E.U.E.R.P.I’s 1971 album
New album: A truly evocative, alternative experimental project of the Bulgarian composer Mirian Kolev from Tryavna, here combining music with detailed field recordings of an old Soviet train, one still running on trips along the Bulgarian railway line Gabrovo-Tsareva Livada
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Saint Etienne: 'The Night'
New album: The London trio of Sarah Cracknell, Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs returrn with an strange, dream-like, ambient ‘headphones’ release, one that hovers across their career as if perceived through rain-soaked glass, designed to capture the essence of the after-hours
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Angel Olsen and various: Cosmic Waves Volume 1
New album: A novel form of “compilation reimagined as a dialogue” LP by the acclaimed, serene-voiced American singer-songwriter, showcasing five different lesser-known artists on Side A, and then covering other songs by them on Side B
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Tristan Perich and Ensemble 0: Open Symmetry
Album review: Released on the wonderfully innovative, independent London label Erased Tapes, the New York-based composer joins with the French group on a mesmeric, 50-minute work of seven instrumental tracks for three vibraphones and 1-bit electronics
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Papa M: Ballads of Harry Houdini
New album: The alt-rock LA-based musician from Louisville, Kentucky, aka David Pajo, returns with six long-ish numbers, not necessarily themed around the famous escape artist, but packed with ear-catching, meaty, thrumming, sometimes looped, and always dynamic guitar work and rhythmic experimentation
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Jack Cheshire: Interloper
New album: Following 2020’s acclaimed Fractal Future Plays, the British experimental musician returns with his sixth LP, an excellent exploration across pastoral psychedelia, lysergic polyrhythms and beautiful field recordings on tricky themes of belonging in age of post-Brexit and gentrification
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Fazerdaze: Soft Power
New album: This sophomore album by New Zealand singer-songwriter Amelia Rahayu Murray is dreamy, soft-sheen, shoegazey “bedroom stadium” electro-pop and indie on themes of womanhood, devotion and compassion
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Sofie Royer: Young-Girl Forever
New album: The California-born, Vienna-based Iranian-Austrian multidisciplinary artist’s newest LP is a very catchy mix of eclectic, political and mainstream, electro-pop, disco and new wave, centred on the contradictions of being a female artist today with all of its freedoms and capitalist trappings
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Warmduscher - Too Cold To Hold
New album: The mischievous mayhem post-punk band of Clams Baker Jr.), Mr. Salt Fingers Lovecraft, Quicksand, The Witherer, Three Piece aka the Worm and Bleucifer return with more songs on the seedier side of life, but also one of their most musically adventurous LPs of their five, with guest vocalists including Lianne La Havas, Janet Planet and Coucou Chlo
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Fie Eike: Water
New album: A delicately beautiful distillation through fluid subject in different contexts by the Copenhagen-based artist composer and singer, Anne Sofie Strandheim Eike, with Norwegian roots, creating a soundscape from piano, electronic elements and natural field recordings
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Underworld: Strawberry Hotel
New album: The veteran techno rave and electronica king pair Karl Hyde and Rick Smith return with one of their finest LPs of the 11 to date, a miasma of metronomic beats, stream-of-consciousness lyrics, ambience, energy and ecstatic elevation
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Half Waif: See You At The Maypole
New album: Ethereal, shimmering, poetic, sensual delicate experimental folk and synth-pop in this substantial 17-track sixth LP, following 2021’s Mythopoetics, by the New York singer-songwriter and producer Nandi Rose Plunkett, with lingering release about pain, grief, but resilience and beauty
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Kelly Lee Owens: Dreamstate
New album: The London-based Welsh electronic artist, DJ and producer’s fourth LP takes a new mainstream turn, celebrating daydreaming and emancipated creativity through electronica and dance music, combining ambience and beats with guest collaborators Bicep, Tom Rowlands of The Chemical Brothers, and George Daniel
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Marysia Osu: Harp, Beats and Dreams
New album: Truly gorgeous experimental work by London’s Trinity Laban-graduate harpist of Polish parentage, who as well as conventionally rippling the strings of instrument, creatively uses it with other effects, adds sea other nature sounds with electronica, with magical sprinkles of guest vocals, cello, woodwind and percussion
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