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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Top 20 Albums of 2012

It’s time for my end-of-year list. I really didn’t listen to as much new stuff this year as I did in 2011, so the list is cut to 20. Generally tried to limit to one album per label, but I didn’t really follow that rule (go 12k!?). Anyway, maybe I’ll add some comments at some point. Really beautiful stuff, and I look forward to diving into some other great albums based on other year-end recommendations soon.

Like I said last year, 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, I would recommend searching for these fantastic labels and their online websites.

1	Swans	The Seer	Young God Records
2	Gareth Dickson	Quite A Way Away	12k
3	Nuojuva	Valot Kaukaa	Preservation Records
4	Deep Listening Band	Great Howl At Town Haul	Important Records
5	En	Already Gone	Students of Decay
6	Fire! With Oren Ambarchi	In The Mouth – A Hand	Rune Grammofon
7	Steve Peters + Steve Roden	Not A Leaf Remains As It Was	12k
8	Strategy	Strategy	Peak Oil
9	Hakobune	The Cowboy Across the River	Constellation Tatsu
10	From the Mouth of the Sun	Woven Tide	Experimedia
11	Gabriel Saloman	Adhere	Miasmah Recordings
12	Sujo + Sun Hammer	Fistula	Inam Records
13	Neptune	msg rcvd	Northern-Spy Records
14	Electric Bird Noise	Live at the Basement	Silber Records
15	Brian Eno	Lux	Warp Records
16	Mount Eerie	Ocean Roar	P. W. Elverum & Sun, Ltd.
17	Sharon Van Etten	Tramp	Jagjaguwar
18	Thee Oh Sees	Putrifiers II	In The Red Records
19	Gultskra Artikler	Abtu/Anet	Miasmah Recordings
20	White Hills	Frying On This Rock	Thrill Jockey Records

Quarterly music update, recent show, recent releases

It’s been a while. I’m going to chalk it up to my new, non-music radio show that I started, Green Grid Radio. It has occupied a lot of my free time of late.

Since then I haven’t done much. I’m back at KZSU doing a short music show regularly again. There’s been some good music I’ve been listening to as of late. In some kind of comical response to my own twisted question, yes, I fell for Cap’n Jazz after Owls. I fell hard. And I can almost telegraph now that I’ll be writing on here in a few months that I’m a sucker for Joan of Arc. The other things that have been scratching that itch lately– new Swans (oh my god, that is all I will say), Rella the Woodcutter‘s I Know When It’s Time To Get the Fuck Away EP (gorgeous freaky folk noise, see my review), and Neptune‘s msg rcvd (fantastic music that  sounds like it was made on drugs in a factory)

I decided to post some photos from a recent live performance on KZSU. We were lucky to have Evan Caminiti (of Barn Owl, Higuma, and his own fame) and Vestals (aka Lisa McGee, also of Higuma) perform on Wednesday Night Live. As is the case with everyone else I meet in the bay area music scene, Evan and Lisa were great folks to chat with. Oh yeah, they also play the most beautiful music.

Lisa McGee’s music is as ghostly and dreamy as the apparent effect on this photograph, thanks to the old studio windows at KZSU. Her album Forever Falling Toward the Sky was released on local legendary label Root Strata and received a lot of attention here at KZSU over the summer. Though seeing her perform this in person was a whole new thing. Just warm blankets of bliss.

Caminiti, fresh off the release of 2012’s guitar-driven Dreamless Sleep, followed Vestals on a whole new setup. Lisa told me that he planned to utilize a brand new modular synthesizer in the performance, but troubles in the mail prevented this, and Caminiti shifted his set to incorporate this setup of pedals, effects, laptop, and keys. It was cool stuff. Brand new, dark, dreary, and beautiful. We’re really fortunate to have hosted. Again, college radio has the honor to unleash the best new music to listeners.

That’s it for self-promotional time for now. Have a nice rest of your month of November!

Adam