The end of 2018!

Hello and welcome to the end of the year!

This year was special in several ways, for starters the blog turned ten year old but more importantly I managed to make much more posts than in several past years. I'm really happy about that and I really fucking hope I'm slowly slipping in a comfortable steady pace of discovering/listening/posting. In 2019 I want to hopefully continue this trend (or just watch me fuck everything up after first week). I haven't been very diligent this year with discovering new releases mainly because of my work enviroment which didn't allow me to listen to music while on the job and more importantly it's a job that had me away from town so I couldn't even be on my PC in my spare time.  So during work days I would slave away without any opportunity to listen to music and my only listening days were delegated to weekends and during that time I just wanted to listen what I already knew to keep me sane. So not a lot of contemporary 2018 releases from me.

The list can be find at the bottom of this post so skip there if you don't want my ramblings. For those of you who like to read my thoughts here are a few opinions on some releases and bands from this year:

John Coltrane - Both Directions at Once

Is this a 2018 album? No. Is this a revolutionary album? No. Is this my album of the year? Yes! As a big Coltrane fan I have to say this made me really happy to hear and learn about it. I'm familiar with a lot of his established (official?) catalog and to be able to hear something new was something that got me absolutely thrilled. Is it deserving of all the praise? As much deserving as any other solid Coltrane record. It's definitely a victim of too much hype but I think people were just really happy to get a hold of it (apparently it was rumored to exist long before it came out). Not only is it something new by Coltrane it also happens to be made by my favorite combination of musicians that played with him so I can't really objectively look at this release. It got me thinking about how who knows how much unreleased material there is by jazz giants? I'm sure there are a lot stuff out there waiting for better days perhaps.

Pouya - Five Five

I have to admit I'm largely clueless about the current state of hip hop and trap. I have a couple of friends who are into it that send me tracks every now and then but largely the whole movement, which will probably mark this whole decade, is completely going past by me. I can't really say I feel left out because it's just not my forte. I'm a cave dwelling metalhead after all. Pouya is one of few examples that I discovered by my own during one of my youtube rabbit hole adventures. He's alright I guess. He grabbed mainly because of his fast and fluid flow and also the tone of his voice is really suiting me for some reason. I'm not sure how well known or good he actually is because I have nothing to compare it to. I like it, maybe you will too and his new single has been on heavy rotation this past month for me. His buddy Shakewell has probably my favorite music video of this year.

New forces and faces of jazz

I might be completely wrong here but it seems like modern jazz is slowly rupturing into two streams. One one side you have this insular, for the fans scene that is spearheaded by very technically apt players like Chris Potter, David Binney, David Kikoski etc. (just sifting through Criss Cross roster and you'll get an idea). It feels like nobody outside of contemporary jazz knows or talks of these people for some reason. I like them a lot and I enjoy their music but they can't seem to penetrate to a wider audience. On the other hand Kamasi Washington came from a completely other field and is slowly cultivating this new and also interesting scene of jazz and jazz players which seems to be aimed and also branded as jazz for audiences that aren't familiar with jazz that much. Sure they get shunned and not all of their albums are great but I think it's important that the pillars of jazz get shaken up a bit and him and similar are doing just that. The Optimist was released this year but recorded much earlier (led by Ryan Porter and featuring a bunch of players that are with Washington) and the album proves that the band and the individual players have much more in store than just flashy playing and endless tacky choirs. Another name that popped up for me is Kamaal Williams who seems like another interesting outsider figure in jazz. Perhaps what captivates me about his new album is that it pushes the lo-fi hiphop ambient music into something more structured and interesting while retaining its familiar comfy feel. Lastly from these new forces I want to single out Nubya Garcia who's short EP would probably top my list of the year had it not been for Coltrane. She maintains a good balance between outside and inside, showing skill yet still finding that comfy groove which seems to resonate among a lot of these "outsider" players. Such a shame I missed out on her live concert during this summer.

Metal musi... HEY WAIT, SUMMONING RELEASED AN ALBUM THIS YEAR

It feels like Old Mornings Dawn came last year but in fact it has been well over five years so this album came as a surprise to me. I've read several times on Metal Archives that this new one feels like just a Vol. II of the previous one but I have to disagree. The album is over an hour long but it never feels like that. The last song is absolutely amazing and is worth all the praise it gets! If we're talking only metal this is probably my biggest favorite from this year. I just adore the melodies, the atmosphere and the honesty this album oozes. There were several other good ones that I enjoyed like Esoteric Malacology, ION, Abiogenesis and so on but throughout the year With Doom We Come is the album that I would always get back to when I would come home during the weekends.

And that's about it from what I would like to highlight. I just want to mention that I saw Kraftwerk live this year and it was probably the best live show I've ever saw so far in my life. The whole thing was a thing of absolute beauty. Anyway, here's the complete list:

Metal:

Augury - Illusive Golden Age
Burial Invocation - Abiogenesis
Clandestine Blaze - Tranquility Of Death
Cosmic Church - Täyttymys
Degial - Predator Reign
Drudkh - They Often See Dreams About the Spring
Ectoplasma - Cavern of Foul Unbeings
Funeral Winds - Sinister Creed
Hiidenhauta - 1695
Immortal - Northern Chaos Gods
Imperialist - Cipher
Mammoth Grinder - Cosmic Crypt
Our Place of Worship Is Silence - With Inexorable Suffering
Portal - Ion
Sleep - The Sciences
Slugdge - Esoteric Malacology
Summoning - With Doom We Come
The Order of Apollyon - Moriah
Wayfarer - World's Blood

Not metal:

3 Chairs - Three Chairs 3
Andrew Jackson Jihad - Ugly Spiral - Lost Works 2012-2016
Coco Bryce & FFF - Falling in Love
Grouper - Grid Of Points
Idris Ackamoor & The Pyramids - An Angel Fell
John Coltrane - Both Directions At Once
Kamaal Williams - The Return
Nubya Garcia - When We Are
Pouya - Five Five
Ryan Porter - The Optimist
U.S. Girls - In a Poem Unlimited

Thanks for sticking around and happy new year everybody!