The Tunes We Tried To Distract Ourselves From 2014 With
I spent most of 2014 walking around in a daze, battered by the realization that everything was terrible and only getting worse. I was tired of words. We had more words than we needed and no one was willing to shut the fuck up, so I tried to keep myself quiet at least, because so many of those worthless words were mine in the first place and I knew I would never be able to stay silent enough to make up for that. Above, in no particular order, the tracks available on Soundcloud from the albums I enjoyed this year. You will note that most of these songs lack lyrics. This is deliberate, and the tracks with words are begrudging exceptions. I am all for noise, it’s the words I can’t stand. Below, and again in no particular order, a list of the records released in 2014 that made me briefly forget just how awful everything was.
• Objekt, Flatland
• Clark, Clark
• Arca, Xen
• Patten, Estoile Naiant
• Andy Stott, Faith in Strangers
• Celer, Sky Limits
• Ricardo Donoso, A Song for Echo
• Dirty Beaches, Stateless
• Ryan Teague, Block Boundaries
• Bitchin Bajas, Bitchin Bajas
• Jo Johnson, Weaving
• Bing & Ruth, Tomorrow Was the Golden Age
• Jani R, Fragile
• Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier I
• Beacon L1
• Various Artists, Hyperdub 10.3 [N.B.: All the Hyperdub collections are good, but this is the most consistent]
• Loscil, Sea Island
• Steffi, Power of Anonymity
• Leonard Cohen, Live in Dublin
• Vicky Chow, Tristan Perich: Surface Image
• Todd Terje, It’s Album Time
• Various Artists, Kompakt: Total 14
• Christopher Bissonnette, Essays in Idleness
• Christina Vantzou, No. 2
• Huelgas Ensemble, La Oreja de Zurbarán
• A Winged Victory for the Sullen, Atomos
• Wolfgang Voigt, Ruckverzauberung 9 / Musik Fur Kulturinstitutionen
• Arp, Pulsars e Quasars
• The Dublin Guitar Quartet, The Dublin Guitar Quartet performs Philip Glass
• Siinai, Supermarket
There were some excellent reissues this year but even though everything is terrible and only getting worse that’s no excuse to live in the past. It’ll all be over soon; you might as well focus on what’s left. You cannot jam the earbuds in deep enough to block everything else out, but that doesn’t mean you can’t try. Enjoy.