Setting aside, for a moment, the hearing loss I incurred at a concert earlier this year, 2024 has been a remarkable time for diverse listening.
The internet continues to attend to our private idiosyncrasies. It guides us down new untrodden paths. Towards artists who resonate with our individual tastes. Nowhere is this more evident than in the ‘diverse to the point of indifference’ year-end lists published across various sites. The lack of consensus strikes me as proof that our listening habits are liberating us from groupthink.
A cursory look at these year-end lists (and my friends’ choices) suggests that we are drifting further into a decentralised musical landscape — one characterised by niche networks and personalised pockets. In which we stalk musicians across digital spaces. Each platform its own city of information. I enjoy the surveillance. Tip toeing onto a site to see what can be found. Perusing. Suspecting. Prospecting. Sampling. Leaving. For me, this online foraging has nurtured a deeper connection with the music I cherish. It’s allowed me to cut out the noise and crowds of what I should be listening to, and focus on the music I find, or which finds me. If there’s some big cultural event or must not miss record, well that exists somewhere over there. Faintly in sight, but out of earshot.
The year was marred by an accident at a gig in September in which a loud noise has left me with some high pitched tinnitus in my right ear, and caused some hearing loss that an ongoing course of treatments is slowly, hopefully correcting. I’m grateful for Jane, my audiologist who has been technically excellent and emotionally tender through the process.
Beyond the physical damage, I have found that September to mid-December was a period of limited exposure to music. Partly to rest my ears. and in part because I was recoiling at the sound of music. An emotionally tough passage for me, one that I will publish my feeling on once the recovery reaches a point of conclusion, and when I’m ready to reflect.
In the build up to Christmas I found myself weeping with joy while listening to the reissued ‘Grounation’ by the Count Ossie and the Mystic Revelation of Rastafari (Soul Jazz, 2024). As my hearing gradually recovers, the record pillowed my frustrations. A cuddle. It was the first glimpse in months that everything was going to be OK. That music was still there. Waiting for me. Still sounding so sweet. Still being made be sweetheart musicians meditating to their own sounds.
Several other albums deserve mention include ‘Morton Feldman played by Philip Thomas’ (Another Timbre, 2019), a treasure trove of wonder; Arnold Schoenberg’s “Das Buch der hängenden gärten, Op. 15, Nos. 7 and 11,” which I had hoped to experience live before the accident; and, more recently, Bill Orcutt’s ‘how to rescue things’ (Palilalia, 2024) and Leila Bordreuil’s ‘1991, summer, Huntington garage fire” (Hanson, 2024), both of which I have only just begun to appreciate as my hearing recovers. Mr. Orcutt’s latest work is a testament to his consistently exceptional output.
Below, I present my top 10 list for the year. I hope it introduces you to new sounds, sparks a new obsession, or reinforces confidence in your own journey.
- Aaron Dilloway ‘the absence of milk in the mouths of the lost [Hanson, 2024]
- Beryllium ‘your laughter is an echo in my head’ [Total Dissonance Worship, 2024]
- Linda Caitlin Smith ‘flowers of emptiness’ [Another Timbre, 2024]
- Linus Vandewolken ‘oud geuze uit niemandaal’ [morc tapes, 2024]
- Manja Ristić/Joana Guerra/Verónica Cerrotta ‘slani pejzaži’ [tsss, 2024]
- Mike Cooper ‘slow motion lightning’ [room40, 2024]
- Motion Sickness of Time Travel ‘the rabbit and the hawk’ [Hooker Vision, 2024]
- Pat Thomas ‘the solar model of Ibn Al-Shatir’ [Otoroku, 2024]
- Simon Fisher Turner ‘instability of the signal’ [Mute, 2024]
- Steve Gunn and David Moore ‘live in London’ [RVNG, 2024]
The image above was taken by the author at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. It features “non-musical” singers performing Study of Slope by Lina Lapelytė.
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