Favorite 20 Albums of 2014

Wisdom for Debris, Eluvium

Ghost Trees is a blog with (apparently) 2 posts per year. Prolificacy has always been the specialty here.

I’ll cut the crap. Last year on my blog I wrote about lists. I still do not like them.

I was asked to contribute to Decoder Magazine’s end-of-year features again this year (Last year I wrote an ode to Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse and Jason Molina of Songs: Ohia. You can find the feature here: “More Yellow Birds and Lunch Box Blues“), which I did. And when my feature is posted, it will be clear that I again skirted the actual topic of commenting on a list for 2014. So here I go and post a list on my blog anyway. I don’t know. There is a sixteen-year-old in me still following through on some kind of silly tradition that I started.

Rank	Artist	Album	Label
1	Swans	To Be Kind	Young God Records
2	Grouper	Ruins	Kranky
3	Eluvium	Wisdom For Debris	(self)
4	The War on Drugs	Lost in the Dream	Secretly Canadian
5	Have a Nice Life	The Unnatural World	Enemies List Home Recordings
6	Fennesz	Bécs	Touch
7	Dads	I’ll Be The Tornado	6131 Records
8	Owls	Two	Polyvinyl
9	Maxwell August Croy and Sean McCann	I	Students of Decay
10	Horseback	Piedmont Apocrypha	Three Lobed Recordings
11	Fire! Orchestra	Enter!	Rune Grammofon
12	Adult Jazz	Gist Is	Spare Thought
13	Thee Silver Mount Zion	Hang On To Each Other	Constellation Records
14	Orcas	Yearling	Morr Music
15	Inventions	Inventions	Temporary Residence
16	Rivulets	I Remember Everything	Jellyfant Records
17	Christopher Willits	Opening	Ghostly International
18	Wolves of the Throne Room	Celestite	Artemesia Records
19	Alex Cobb	Marigold and Cable	Shelter Press
20	Sun Kil Moon	Benji	Caldo Verde

That Swans record is a monster. For other people who have read my blog before, you might see some familiar faces like Owls, Horsback, Fire! Orchestra, Rivulets, Grouper, etc.

The year was an interesting one in listening to music for me. I got hooked on a lot more older stuff, and did a good deal of traveling with the day job and on vacation. This meant fewer times with a computer or plugged in, limiting my music carrying capacity to a few old apple products and somewhere in the range of twelve GB. Great new musical seductions – that War on Drugs one surprised me!

I’ll look forward to doing more writing for Decoder Magazine in 2015. And the other news for me is that I’m leaving Berlin to move back to San Francisco, so my music access points will change again, and I’m sure my list(?) next year will be quite different.

Adam

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March 2012 Record Roundup

The first quarter of 2012 is beginning to wrap up, so I decided I would write up a bit about my favorite releases that have surprised me so far this year. As is the case every year, a large part of the beginning of the year is spent discovering parts of the previous year’s music that I missed upon initial release. For me specifically, this includes the Miasmah Records release Bunny, by Simon Scott, the Fonal Records album Nääksää nää mun kyyneleet by Tuuskanuuskat, and Illuha’s Shizuku, from 12k. Truly beautiful music that I can highly recommend. Taking a look at more recent releases, I would love to send praise to the following albums.

From the Mouth of the Sun – Woven Tide – Experimedia – 2012

Experimedia gave us the tremendously beautiful Lawrence English release in 2011. So I was fortunate and excited to find this treasure (From the Mouth of the Sun) in the mail during our weekly music listening night at KZSU. The release is a collaboration between Dag Rosenqvist and Aaron Martin and it combines everything I love about experimentation and ambient music. Many of the avant and ambient outlets have praised it, but I would like to reiterate why it is so affecting. Glacial instrumental music can lack a human connection, but From the Mouth of the Sun absolutely forges one. It connects in a way that vocal music can, in those rare instances when the lyrics are tasteful and are the only way to express a certain feeling. From the Mouth of the Sun can unnerve me the same way that Godspeed You! Black Emperor does; it can wash all over me the way Talk Talk does; it can share an aching sentiment better than Mark Kozelek. I whipped together a review (for internal radio DJs) that you can read here.

Plante – Harvest – Fedora Corpse Recordings – 2012

As my dear friend, DJ awyeh writes in his review, “Fedora Corpse strikes gold again!” This beautiful clear piece of vinyl is a guitar drone record by Andrew Plante out of Kansas City. The theme is spaced-out sustain and celestial hovering. Just a great thing to put on when you’re nodding off, or are bleary-eyed in some relaxed state. Fedora Corpse is a wonderful label. Too bad Comoros and Rat Catching couldn’t make it to the KZSU 2012 Day of Noise!

Windy & Carl – We Will Always Be – Kranky Records – 2012

I have pretty much always been a Kranky Records groupie. A Winged Victory For the Sullen was easily one of my favorites from last year. Their first release from this year is another fine entry into the impenetrable catalog. Windy & Carl doesn’t move into new territory with this one; it’s not the kind of interesting collaboration that they had with Heavy Winged a few years back. No, We Will Always Be simply pushes my buttons the way my favorite albums do. The overwhelming melodic drones, layers, feedback, vocal loops — it all warms me in an exciting, loving way. The feeling is a physical one and it reminds me why I listen to music. It would be an incredible experience to hear this in a live setting — not only taking in the blissful waves, but also feeling the physical reverberations. And I have another useless review to augment the praise.

Stay tuned for my new radio show time for April – June. Until then, listen to a lot of great music (hopefully some of it on KZSU)!

Yours,

Adam

Top 25 of 2011

It’s time for my end-of-year list of musical goodies that touched my ears. What a wonderful year of listening! If you are struggling to find out more information about a specific release, let me know and I can possibly direct you in the correct direction. But for the most part, google is everyone’s friend.

1	Josh T. Pearson	Last of the Country Gentlemen	Mute Records
2	Grouper	A I A : Alien Observer / Dream Loss	Mississippi Records
3	Lumerians	Transmalinnia	Knitting Factory Records
4	Rivulets	We’re Fucked	Important Records
5	I Am Oak	Oasem	Snowstar Records
6	Haunted House	Blue Ghost Blues	Northern Spy Records
7	A Winged Victory for the Sullen	A Winged Victory for the Sullen	Kranky Records
8	Demian Johnston & Mink Stole	Trailed and Kept	Debacle Records
9	Starving Weirdos	Rolled in the Mist of Never Ceasing Currents Without a Rest Forever Onward	Bo’Weavil Recordings
10	Tim Hecker	Ravedeath, 1972	Kranky Records
11	Blue Angels	Isidora	Digitalis
12	Oren Ambarchi/Robbie Avenaim	Dream Request	Bo’Weavil Recordings
13	Sean McCann	The Capital	Aguirre Records
14	Colin Stetson	New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges	Constellation Records
15	Deaf Center	Owl Splinters	Type Records
16	Je Suis Le Petit Chevalier	L’Enfant Sauvage	Aguirre Records
17	Implodes	Black Earth	Kranky Records
18	Warm Ghost	Uncut Diamond EP	Partisan Records
19	Borden, Ferraro, Godin, Halo & Lopatin	FRKWYS Vol. 7: Borden, Ferraro, Godin, Halo & Lopatin	Rvng Intl
20	Daughters of the Sun	Ghost With Chains	Not Not Fun
21	Sundrips	Just a Glimpse	Debacle Records
22	Gnod	InGnodWeTrust	Rocket Recordings
23	Tidal / Motion Sickness of Time Travel	Tidal / Motion Sickness of Time Travel	Tranquility Tapes
24	Voder Deth Squad	1	Stunned Records
25	Thee Oh Sees	Carrion Crawler / The Dream	In The Red Records