{"id":20460,"date":"2019-10-08T00:12:06","date_gmt":"2019-10-07T23:12:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/?p=20460"},"modified":"2020-04-21T14:05:12","modified_gmt":"2020-04-21T12:05:12","slug":"culturedarms-albums-of-the-decade-2010s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/culturedarms-albums-of-the-decade-2010s\/","title":{"rendered":"Culturedarm&#8217;s Albums of the Decade 2010s"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20522\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/Album-of-the-Decade-Front-2.png?resize=696%2C464&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"696\" height=\"464\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/Album-of-the-Decade-Front-2.png?w=1200&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/Album-of-the-Decade-Front-2.png?resize=978%2C652&amp;ssl=1 978w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/Album-of-the-Decade-Front-2.png?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/Album-of-the-Decade-Front-2.png?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/Album-of-the-Decade-Front-2.png?resize=370%2C247&amp;ssl=1 370w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/Album-of-the-Decade-Front-2.png?resize=270%2C180&amp;ssl=1 270w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/Album-of-the-Decade-Front-2.png?resize=570%2C380&amp;ssl=1 570w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/Album-of-the-Decade-Front-2.png?resize=770%2C513&amp;ssl=1 770w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/Album-of-the-Decade-Front-2.png?resize=1170%2C780&amp;ssl=1 1170w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/Album-of-the-Decade-Front-2.png?resize=870%2C580&amp;ssl=1 870w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 696px) 100vw, 696px\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>102. Azealia Banks &#8211; <em>Broke with Expensive Taste\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>(2014)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">From cowboy hats and mermaid tails to Illuminati imagery, Haitian advocacy, and spiritual symbolism around the Yoruba and Vodun, with her tongue sometimes in cheek Azealia Banks professes to have all the answers, and when it comes to music she just might be the one. Beyond the <em>Fantasea<\/em> and <em>Slay-Z<\/em> mixtapes, <em>Broke with Expensive Taste<\/em> remains her first and only fully-fledged release, and it still brims with big beats and abundant promise. Rangy and lewd, on &#8216;212&#8217; one of the decade&#8217;s standout songs, lolling against a brick wall, the edging climax almost masks Azealia&#8217;s snap and snarl.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"i3Jv9fNPjgk\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"AZEALIA BANKS - 212 FT. LAZY JAY\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/i3Jv9fNPjgk?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20306\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-1.png?resize=250%2C26&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"26\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>101. Mac DeMarco &#8211; <em>Salad Days<\/em><\/strong> (2014)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Channelling his out-of-time but effervescent and endlessly fresh blend of psychedelic slacker rock, on <em>Salad Days<\/em> Mac DeMarco refined his sound while dragging gently at its borders, shrewd and sensible and always charming, dropping couplets like the falling of autumn leaves on a sunny day.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"vF7P3oq8Enc\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Mac DeMarco - Passing Out Pieces (Official Video)\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/vF7P3oq8Enc?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20309\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-2.png?resize=250%2C34&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"34\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>100. Solange &#8211; <em>A Seat at the Table<\/em><\/strong> (2016)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/culturedarms-albums-of-the-year-2016\/\">Culturedarm said<\/a>: &#8216;Less a moment than a process &#8211; a few of these songs, notably &#8216;Rise&#8217; and &#8216;Cranes in the Sky&#8217;, stretch back years &#8211; <em>A Seat at the Table<\/em> is a living monument, a tangible exhalation, a handsome and timely devotional in the name of healing and self-worth. Solange emanates from the centre of these soul figures, kaleidoscopic, even psychedelic, but steadily clearing the view.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">While she moves effortlessly and breaks down the delineations between the private and public spheres, the most explicitly political content is to be found in the interludes: Solange&#8217;s father Mathew Knowles recalling the racial discrimination of his childhood, Master P expounding on community and belonging, black entrepreneurship and ambition, pain and value in an imperfect world, and Solange&#8217;s mother Tina Lawson extolling black beauty and expressing pride in her cultural heritage, which does lead directly into the subject of the sensitive and tactile &#8216;Don&#8217;t Touch My Hair&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Yet the interludes don&#8217;t exist to make Solange&#8217;s point for her, captions to explain her conceptual art or merely adding volume to her silky soprano and spacious beats. Rather they reflect and reverberate through what is an intimately personal record, deepening the sense of lived experience. Even &#8216;Mad&#8217; gestures towards reconciliation with self, realising that righteous anger too can be owned, passionately felt and forcefully expressed and adroitly and lovingly for the sake of love let go.&#8217;<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"S0qrinhNnOM\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Solange - Cranes in the Sky (Video)\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/S0qrinhNnOM?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20324\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-8.png?resize=250%2C29&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"29\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>99. Quercus &#8211; <em>Nightfall<\/em><\/strong> (2017)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">June Tabor, Britain&#8217;s finest folk singer, alongside Huw Warren on piano and Iain Ballamy on tenor and soprano sax, interpret the tradition and classics from Dylan to Sondheim austerely and trenchantly, quickening the pulse and tingling the spine.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/track\/6FwJmHrGYYPARIlR5iSnex\" width=\"1000\" height=\"400\" frameborder=\"0\"><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20326\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-10.png?resize=250%2C26&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"26\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>98. Samaris &#8211; <em>Black Lights<\/em><\/strong> (2016)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/culturedarms-albums-of-the-year-2016\/\">Culturedarm said<\/a>: &#8216;An Icelandic trio making this sort of music can readily conjure local icons and images, alongside a keen and closely drawn if capricious sense of place: cold nights in padded overcoats against the swirling wind, Faxafl\u00f3i bay providing the backdrop as busy lights hum dimly in the distance. It is a liminal space between trendy dance clubs and rawest nature, but on their third album Samaris sound fully formed, more than the sum of their influences, beyond the mere evocation of atmosphere or mood.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Vocalist J\u00f3fr\u00ed\u00f0ur \u00c1kad\u00f3ttir &#8211; who has been cited by Bj\u00f6rk as one of her favourite current artists &#8211; clarinettist \u00c1slaug R\u00fan Magn\u00fasd\u00f3ttir and programmist \u00de\u00f3r\u00f0ur K\u00e1ri Stein\u00fe\u00f3rsson, writing for the first time solely in English and recording between Reykjavik, Berlin, and Ireland, have made a record at once eloquent and hypnotic. Through the stuttering beats and ambient electronics emerge private anthems of loss and longing, beacons blinking out before home, bodies unfurling and dissipating beyond the reach of a warm touch. <em>Black Lights<\/em> tells of two people falling out of sync, and moving tentatively but resolutely while still hearing old echoes and seeing old shapes. There is room for hope too on tracks like &#8216;R4vin&#8217; and &#8216;Gradient Sky&#8217; &#8211; the latter the shortest track on the album as well as the standout &#8211; even where it resides in memories that will not soon be forgotten.&#8217;<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"z-D20CvXJqc\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Samaris - R4vin\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/z-D20CvXJqc?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20304\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-Flowers.png?resize=300%2C101&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"101\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>97. Dizzy Fae &#8211; <em>Free Form<\/em><\/strong> (2018)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/culturedarms-albums-of-the-year-2018\/\">Culturedarm said<\/a>: &#8216;Any preconceptions one might have going in to Dizzy Fae&#8217;s debut mixtape &#8211; whether owing to her name, the ordinary nature of mixtapes, or the alternative R&amp;B catchall she falls under &#8211; are utterly dispelled within the first few phrases of the opening song &#8216;Her&#8217;, which begins as a lush and airy piece of musical theatre. &#8216;She taught me everything I know&#8217;, Fae confides, her voice knowing and mellifluous, over glistening and swelling and seafaring synths which she swoops and swoons to meet and meld with, the crunch and drag of footsteps providing the percussion and her voice the contours as the song edges towards its crescendo and Fae repeats &#8216;Can you feel the isle of snow carved beneath?&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">A classically trained musician who studied opera and dance at two Twin Cities institutions, the Saint Paul Conservatory for Performing Arts and TU Dance, a fledgeling solo star who performed with The Internet, Kehlani, Empress Of, and supported Lizzo and Toro y Moi before this first mixtape release, what really distinguishes <em>Free Form<\/em> beyond its freewheeling attitude to genre is the composed, performative approach through which Dizzy Fae roots the project. &#8216;Johnny Bravo&#8217; is a sleek and urbane take on 80s synth-pop, replete with breezy insights and evocative imagery, like &#8216;Lighthouse boy, you see that girl light up? \/ She always glows pink, so you can disguise the fact that she&#8217;s always feeling blue&#8217;. &#8216;Canyon&#8217; oscillates inside a plasma globe, its wiry filaments, electric glow, and the steady snap of percussion sustaining a soaring soul vocal.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Most of the tracks are lushly produced or co-produced by Minnesotan contemporaries Alec Ness, Su Na, Sen 09, and Psyum. There are wobbly basslines, funk and jazz and new wave cues on &#8216;Booty 3000&#8217; and &#8216;Baby Pillz&#8217;, a zither-like, eastern-infused melodic line on &#8216;Kosmic Love&#8217;, and pensive late-night R&amp;B on &#8216;Temporary&#8217;. &#8216;Indica&#8217; &#8211;\u00a0 a song about falling in love for the first time with a woman, transposed as the second half of &#8216;Her&#8217; for Dizzy Fae&#8217;s music video bow &#8211; makes use of pitch-shifted vocals to figure vulnerability, pitting Dizzy Fae right where she belongs, amid the alarums of synths and slow-throbbing bass, in the middle of contemporary trends with an unusual mastery of form and emotional register.&#8217;<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"D-AhxD_cJwI\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Dizzy Fae - Her\/Indica (Official Video)\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/D-AhxD_cJwI?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20316\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-11.png?resize=250%2C24&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"24\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>96. Young Thug &#8211; <em>Barter 6\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>(2015)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>Jeffery<\/em> was brimming with personality and the <em>Slime<\/em> series by turns slick and sulphurous and outr\u00e9, but <em>Barter 6<\/em> remains the most rounded release from the decade&#8217;s most supple and innovative vocal stylist. Beyond &#8216;Constantly Hating&#8217;, so airy and rubbery and wet it still sounds like a mirage, <em>Barter 6<\/em> offers Thug&#8217;s best batch of raw and smooth.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"fVv0VrTrAqk\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Young Thug &quot;Constantly Hating&quot; feat. Birdman (WSHH Premiere - Official Music Video)\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/fVv0VrTrAqk?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20323\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-7.png?resize=250%2C34&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"34\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>95. Frankie Rose &#8211; <em>Interstellar<\/em><\/strong> (2012)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Opening as a disembodied voice on an astral plane, polishing in &#8216;Pair of Wings&#8217;, &#8216;Had We Had It&#8217;, and &#8216;Night Swim&#8217; a steadily gleaming core, on <em>Interstellar<\/em> Frankie Rose melds the sounds of 60s surf pop and proto-punk with 80s synthesizers and new wave, like The Cure gazing out over the Florida Keys or Blondie gone celestial.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"VE56wTNj7J0\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Frankie Rose - Night Swim (Official Music Video)\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/VE56wTNj7J0?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20317\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-12.png?resize=250%2C27&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"27\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>94. Noname &#8211; <em>Room 25<\/em><\/strong> (2018)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Jazzy rhythms and vintage soul lay the backing for Noname&#8217;s tale of twenty-first century adventure and peril, in which public and interpersonal trappings make way for a process of romantic and artistic becoming.<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=syi60tUIP48<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20331\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-B1_1.png?resize=650%2C50&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"650\" height=\"50\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-B1_1.png?w=650&amp;ssl=1 650w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-B1_1.png?resize=300%2C23&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-B1_1.png?resize=370%2C28&amp;ssl=1 370w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-B1_1.png?resize=570%2C44&amp;ssl=1 570w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 650px) 100vw, 650px\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>93. Ariel Pink&#8217;s Haunted Graffiti &#8211; <em>Before Today<\/em><\/strong> (2010)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">High-spirited, fuzzy and warm, Ariel Pink&#8217;s heteroglossic Hollywood reanimates old forms. &#8216;Round and Round&#8217; and &#8216;Beverly Kills&#8217; provide the knockout one-two punch.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"VcS0oJwlz_Q\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Ariel Pink&#039;s Haunted Graffiti - Bright Lit Blue Skies (Official Video)\" width=\"696\" height=\"522\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/VcS0oJwlz_Q?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20333\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-15.png?resize=250%2C33&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"33\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>92. Sean McCann &#8211; <em>Music for Private Ensemble<\/em><\/strong> (2013)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">On <em>Music for Private Ensemble<\/em> Sean McCann took a brisk step away from his early experimental noise pieces, synths and drones and the cassette culture of the previous decade, moving easily in the space of contemporary classical composition. The four arrangements here feature over a hundred layers of carefully edited instrumentation, McCann playing an array of strings, keys, woodwind and percussion while sampling the unavailable orchestral remnants. What comes is characterised by the steadying force of McCann&#8217;s violin, tactile and yielding, by fluttering and billowing glockenspiel, dimly lighted French horn, reiterating cello, and a gentle choral conclusion &#8211; in &#8216;Arden&#8217;, the third movement of the final piece &#8211; built up by McCann from the vocals of Kayla Cohen.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"jq2NALxdwk0\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Character Change\" width=\"696\" height=\"522\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/jq2NALxdwk0?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20321\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-5.png?resize=250%2C36&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"36\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>91. Tirzah &#8211; <em>Devotion<\/em><\/strong> (2018)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/culturedarms-albums-of-the-year-2018\/\">Culturedarm said<\/a>: &#8216;Trained in the harp, working a day job as a designer for a print agency, with production by Micachu which teeters and disorients and lilts, on <em>Devotion<\/em>, her debut album, Tirzah provides a model of intimate, understated, singer-songwriter R&amp;B. The record works by a process of repetition: most of its songs are built around loping and stuttering, looping, low frequency keys, punctuated by hi-hats and the fuzz and rumble and occasional glimmer of synthesizer, music which serves to buttress Tirzah&#8217;s lovesick and lovelorn themes. Innocent, clear-sighted, yet still with a touch of menace, again and again Tirzah ostensibly addresses a lover, although some of these songs double as messages to herself. Occasionally she seems to occupy both sides of a dialogue, or in the tumult and uncertainty of separation inhabits both spaces, one and the same: the gesture remains familiar, whether to hold on to something worth saving, or to finally let go, to say when or say forever, each in an attempt to make whole.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">It is difficult to say who conjures the better trick: Micachu whose production so thoroughly unsettles the plainspokenness of Tirzah&#8217;s lyrics, or Tirzah who manages to straddle these loops with her frank and thin but still dexterous, modulating voice. &#8216;Do You Know&#8217; circles the plughole, unsure whether to drain or let sink. On &#8216;Gladly&#8217; a four-note synth loop and steady percussion sustain a song full of clarity and hope, Tirzah&#8217;s voice hovering above the mix, the odd twinkling key reaching out before the lushly drenched bridge. Muted trumpets provide an air of cautious triumph on &#8216;Holding On&#8217;, with an instrumental interlude offering momentary resolution. The brashly gleaming opening to &#8216;Basic Need&#8217; gives way to breathy percussion and a shape-shifting vocal which inhabits all of the spaces between R&amp;B, gospel, and soul. Power chords and pitch-shifted vocals distort &#8216;Guilty&#8217; almost to the point of incomprehensibility until the song is finally subsumed by guitar, pacing keys and a simple entreaty from Coby Sey provide the building blocks to the title track, &#8216;Go Now&#8217; mines &#8216;Are You That Somebody?&#8217; by Aaliyah and &#8216;Bills, Bills, Bills&#8217;-era Destiny&#8217;s Child for a slightly grimy, funky, late-90&#8217;s R&amp;B sound but without the uplift, and the lurching, buzzing synths which give way to wet lubricated keys make album closer &#8216;Reach&#8217; a dense and misty final plea for communication.&#8217;<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"c2EIDPpzXUE\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Tirzah - Gladly (Official Video)\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/c2EIDPpzXUE?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20320\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-3.png?resize=250%2C37&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"37\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>90. Kali Uchis &#8211; <em>Isolation<\/em><\/strong> (2018)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/culturedarms-albums-of-the-year-2018\/\">Culturedarm said<\/a>: &#8216;From Motown soul to Brazilian bossa nova, from West Coast psychedelia to swinging sixties London with a tropical twist, on <em>Isolation<\/em>, her debut album, Kali Uchis glides and bounds through a palette of sounds rooted in and richly evocative of the past, globetrotting with one eye on home, lingering in the sun of the late afternoon. There are traces of Marvin Gaye (&#8216;Body Language&#8217;) and even Roy Orbison (&#8216;In My Dreams&#8217;), Amy Winehouse-inspired, schematized takes on vintage soul and R&amp;B (&#8216;Feel Like a Fool&#8217;, &#8216;Killer&#8217;), Robyn-esque electropop (&#8216;Dead To Me&#8217;), while features bring their own flourishes to the mix: rapper BIA brings the flash to the sleek and bubbly &#8216;Miami&#8217;, &#8216;Just a Stranger&#8217; with Steve Lacy moves with a warped and chopped funk, &#8216;Tyrant&#8217; with Jorja Smith is kaleidoscopically transient, on &#8216;Nuestro Planeta&#8217; amid dashes of disco Reykon offers his characteristic blend of reggaeton, and Bootsy Collins and Tyler, the Creator provide the star turns on &#8216;After the Storm&#8217;. There are instrumental plumes too, for instance in the flute on &#8216;Body Language&#8217; or the brass ends which punctuate &#8216;Killer&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">But though they play their part these features flicker in and then out, wafting on the breeze: it&#8217;s in Kali&#8217;s hands that the whole coheres. Aside from her impeccable taste and an ability to seamlessly blend genres, vocally she&#8217;s always up to the task, mingling and melding with and sustaining her songs. &#8216;Gotta Get Up&#8217;, styled as an interlude, is a standout for its whoozy atmospherics and tangible daydreams. <em>Isolation<\/em> is on the one hand about the push and pull of family, home and the familiar, on the other about escapism, and reconstituting as a means of preserving the self. There are pensive moments, like on &#8216;Tomorrow&#8217; where the sun strains to keep the clouds at bay; &#8216;Flight 22&#8217; is a love song which forebodes disaster; on &#8216;Dead To Me&#8217; she&#8217;s a touch sarcastic, for she might be the one who&#8217;s still obsessed; while &#8216;In My Dreams&#8217; featuring Gorillaz is so hyper it&#8217;s dizzying. In the end Kali Uchis comes through, showing that with sharpness, deft, and an easy disposition, she&#8217;s more than capable of seizing opportunity on her own terms.&#8217;<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"9f5zD7ZSNpQ\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Kali Uchis - After The Storm ft. Tyler, The Creator, Bootsy Collins\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/9f5zD7ZSNpQ?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20308\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-4.png?resize=250%2C32&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"32\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>89. Bill Callahan &#8211; <em>Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest<\/em><\/strong> (2019)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Bill Callahan&#8217;s longest album to date foregoes pungency to find profundity in the wide pastoral, in the wake of marriage, fatherhood, and his mother&#8217;s death proffering an ample, gently uplifting take on family life.<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"600\" height=\"720\" style=\"position: relative; display: block; width: 600px; height: 720px;\" src=\"\/\/bandcamp.com\/EmbeddedPlayer\/v=2\/track=2747620499\/album=3526350855\/size=large\/bgcol=ffffff\/linkcol=0687f5\/tracklist=false\/\" allowtransparency=\"true\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<div align=\"center\"><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20335\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-Signs_1.png?resize=320%2C124&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"320\" height=\"124\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-Signs_1.png?w=320&amp;ssl=1 320w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-Signs_1.png?resize=300%2C116&amp;ssl=1 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 320px) 100vw, 320px\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>88. Chromatics &#8211; <em>Kill for Love\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>(2012)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Chromatics are one of the most influential and evocative bands of the decade, setting the mood on cinematic highlights from <em>Drive<\/em> to <em>Twin Peaks<\/em>. To name those pictures is to give the right contour to <em>Kill for Love<\/em>, which eschews the Italo disco of earlier releases more firmly in the direction of dreamily impulsive synth-pop. It&#8217;s a grandiose, quixotic offering from Johnny Jewel, Ruth Radelet, and Adam Miller and Nat Walker on guitar and drums, swooning on the threshold with late-night ennui and a stately languor.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"c0mxXrHowHQ\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"CHROMATICS &quot;KILL FOR LOVE&quot; (Official Video)\" width=\"696\" height=\"522\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/c0mxXrHowHQ?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20322\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-6.png?resize=250%2C35&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"35\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>87. Grimes &#8211; <em>Art Angels<\/em><\/strong> (2015)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/culturedarms-albums-of-the-year-2015\/\">Culturedarm said<\/a>: &#8216;First appearances can be suggestive, but they rarely tell the full story of a work of art: <em>Visions<\/em> too tended to blur in the middle across early listens, with &#8216;Infinite \u2665 Without Fulfillment&#8217;, &#8216;Genesis&#8217;, &#8216;Oblivion&#8217;, and &#8216;Symphonia IX&#8217; providing the hooks, and it&#8217;s the same sort of thing on <em>Art Angels<\/em> thanks to &#8216;Laughing and Not Being Normal&#8217;, &#8216;California&#8217;, &#8216;Flesh without Blood&#8217;, and &#8216;World Princess Part II&#8217;. <em>Art Angels<\/em> soon emerges however not only as Grimes&#8217; most conscientious album to date, but as her most strident and upbeat, retaining her otherworldly atmospheres and idiosyncratic song structures, still eminently danceable, all while charting a new course through twanging guitar country, lush neo soul, and shimmering punk pop.&#8217;<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"EOwhuTlxE54\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Grimes - World Princess Part II [Official Video]\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/EOwhuTlxE54?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20325\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-9.png?resize=250%2C27&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"27\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>86. Marie Davidson &#8211; <em>Working Class Woman<\/em><\/strong> (2018)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">On her first album for Ninja Tune, sneering and sarcastic, the French-Canadian producer uses accented spoken word to skewer life in and around the club. There&#8217;s the inebriated come-ons of club revellers, the mind-bending exhaustion of routine overwork, and in the downtime moments of loneliness and lovelorn ennui, all set over icily throbbing techno, pneumatic industrial, and more accessible electroclash beats. Sometimes the lyrics are scattered, questions begging their answers or statements of indefinite intent, other times their observations are taut and compressed like a Symbolist poem by Alexander Blok. Like a tunnel crawl through broken glass with dim lights in the distance, Marie Davidson&#8217;s fierce wit provides the connecting thread.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"23Df3jHYTrs\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Marie Davidson - &#039;Work It&#039;\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/23Df3jHYTrs?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20336\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-B2_1.png?resize=550%2C39&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"550\" height=\"39\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-B2_1.png?w=550&amp;ssl=1 550w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-B2_1.png?resize=300%2C21&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-B2_1.png?resize=370%2C26&amp;ssl=1 370w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>85. Oneohtrix Point Never &#8211; <em>Age Of<\/em><\/strong> (2018)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/culturedarms-albums-of-the-year-2018\/\">Culturedarm said<\/a>: &#8216;After collaborating with ANOHNI, FKA twigs, David Byrne, and Iggy Pop, and composing his first soundtrack, to the Safdie brothers&#8217; neon-clad crime caper <em>Good Time<\/em>, the first Oneohtrix Point Never album for three years has been described as folk horror, suitably cinematic while capturing its manner of composition and prevailing mood. Between work on his other projects, Daniel Lopatin retreated to suburban Massachusetts, to a glass-clad Airbnb out in the woods. He made much of his album there, alone and feeling under observation, the windowpanes at night alit with kamikaze moths. But you could just as well throw &#8216;space&#8217; in front of the genre descriptor, because if there&#8217;s something down-home and makeshift about <em>Age Of<\/em>, that doesn&#8217;t halt or hamper its interstellar reach.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>Age Of<\/em> attains folk horror histrionics and palpable moments of dread, but as usual Lopatin draws from a broad palette of musical styles and cultural ephemera. In his hands ephemera become stranded in space, carved out or crystallised, detritus is redesigned or rediscovered as high culture, and prevailing trends, the spirit of the age, are spread out and made to go swimming. <em>Age Of<\/em> for the first time foregrounds Lopatin&#8217;s vocals, usually autotuned so that they attain a robotic intimacy, with support from ANOHNI and Prurient. James Blake provides additional production and mixing, Kelsey Lu features on keyboards, and especially on the second half of the album, Eli Keszler takes over on drums. <em>Age Of<\/em> has another life as part of Lopatin&#8217;s MYRIAD project, a multimedia stage production which played at Park Avenue Armory as part of the Red Bull Music Festival, an &#8216;epochal song cycle&#8217; in four parts which figures a group of artificial intelligences who in the distant future lounge about parsing the history of human recording, seeking the banality in the beauty of our ongoing decay.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Album opener and title track &#8216;Age Of&#8217; springs to life with a synthesized cross between a koto and a lyre, before rapid arpeggiated harpsichords transport us and we wind up in a baroque, austere and stringent. Somewhere amid the boing-boing of the synths the baroque gets smoothed out, like a string quartet performing inside of a mall elevator, until the gloop and gunk and then a final barrage of sound overcomes the edifice. The track is typical of the album in being so forthright, while mining traditional forms for a queasy resonance. &#8216;Babylon&#8217; is a pitch-shifted country ballad, both ode and elegy to the modern city, the looped guitar riff which shackles &#8216;The Station&#8217; gives out and rolls off into the nether, and on &#8216;Black Snow&#8217; descending bass and percussive clicks give way to an R&amp;B vocal on televisual static, societal demise, and impending apocalypse.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&#8216;Toys 2&#8217; swirls and swells inside its temple block beakers, a slow-moving, pensive instrumental composed as the score to an imaginary film, the sequel to the early-90s clunker <em>Toys<\/em> starring a CGI Robin Williams. As the sheen wanes in the second half, its sound is too inert to be described as ennui, too glazily abstract to be portrayed as melancholy. &#8216;Warning&#8217; is all faltering breath under shimmering sitar, &#8216;We&#8217;ll Take It&#8217; wades through the radioactive wreckage, fiery sparks, industrial hammering and welding, squelching percussion and trammelling waves of synth interrupted by fragments of a <em>MADtv<\/em> sketch, where a minister-cum-car salesman exuberantly hawks his wares to a compliant young couple, and &#8216;Same&#8217; stars ANOHNI, despairing and crashing, whose lyrics on the themes &#8216;As above, so below&#8217; and &#8216;Dust to dust&#8217; offer the most overt instance of the spiritual undertone to Oneohtrix Point Never&#8217;s music. The slinky and radiant &#8216;RayCats&#8217; refers to a scientific proposal around genetically modified cats, bred to change colour in proximity to nuclear radiation. &#8216;Still Stuff That Doesn&#8217;t Happen&#8217; is a quiet celebration of the household. And &#8216;Last Known Image of a Song&#8217; is dark and stellar, but it abides rather than forebodes, for <em>Age Of<\/em> might be grim and sometimes isolated, but it&#8217;s never desolate, always suffused with human inclinations.&#8217;<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"qMQJF-7Y2h0\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Oneohtrix Point Never - Black Snow\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/qMQJF-7Y2h0?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20338\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-16.png?resize=250%2C30&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"30\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>84. Ariana Grande &#8211; <em>Sweetener<\/em><\/strong> (2018)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Sweet are the sweets, and while Ariana Grande never sins, on <em>Sweetener<\/em> the tumult of personal experience and newfangled production tricks bolster her soprano while imbuing her art with a fighting spirit. Sensuous downtempo ballads jostle willingly for space alongside trap and house influences and R&amp;B-infused pop that glistens and radiates.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"ffxKSjUwKdU\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Ariana Grande - no tears left to cry (Official Video)\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ffxKSjUwKdU?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20340\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-19.png?resize=250%2C33&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"33\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>83. Iggy Pop &#8211; <em>Post Pop Depression<\/em><\/strong> (2016)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">No great downer after the demise of The Stooges, on <em>Post Pop Depression<\/em> with Josh Homme, Dean Fertita, and Matt Helders the garage rock is tethered but the band still find their groove. Meanwhile Iggy&#8217;s voice takes front and centre, richer and fuller than ever before, by turns embittered and sage-like, harking back to his Berlin period, replete with toxic impressions and snatches of Beat poetry. As good as this was, thankfully it wasn&#8217;t the last of Iggy&#8217;s career.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"tjSnrDikc4M\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Iggy Pop - Sunday\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/tjSnrDikc4M?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20341\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-20.png?resize=250%2C34&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"34\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>82. Kamasi Washington &#8211; <em>Heaven and Earth<\/em><\/strong> (2018)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">On <em>Heaven and Earth<\/em> accompanied his eight-piece ensemble The Next Step and other assorted Los Angeles musicians, orchestral horns and strings and an elysian choir, Kamasi Washington swells up like plumes of soft smoke from within the sax-led jazz tradition.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"LdyabrdFMC8\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Kamasi Washington - Street Fighter Mas\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/LdyabrdFMC8?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20342\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-Snap.png?resize=300%2C104&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"104\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>81. Future &#8211; <em>DS2<\/em><\/strong> (2015)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Woozy, languid, and brooding, on <em>DS2<\/em> Future bottled lightning amid downpours and lit sparks between downing soporifics. It&#8217;s his most consistent album, though its best track &#8216;Real Sisters&#8217; was saved for the deluxe edition.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"AiPrHaGJsT8\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Rocksmith Presents: Future - Real Sisters (Official Music Video)\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/AiPrHaGJsT8?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><!--nextpage--><br \/>\n<strong>80. Tink &#8211; <em>Winter&#8217;s Diary<\/em><\/strong> (2012)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Tink was on such a roll by the summer of 2014, when <em>Winter&#8217;s Diary 2: Forever Yours<\/em>, her fifth mixtape in two years, was destined for year-end lists in <em>Rolling Stone<\/em> and <em>Billboard<\/em>, that in the autumn she signed a deal with Timbaland and Mosley Music Group, an imprint of Epic Records. Timbaland announced that Aaliyah had come to him in a dream, proclaiming Tink to be &#8216;the one&#8217;, and she seemed destined to become one of the Chicago rap scene&#8217;s biggest breakouts. Then <em>Think Tink<\/em>, her major-label debut, suffered repeated delays apparently at Timbaland&#8217;s behest, and the relationship turned sour and the album was cancelled. So a new spring: she took some time out, got out of her deal with Mosley, and started putting out new mixtapes.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Her latest, <em>Voicemails<\/em>, built around amorous and innately private and intense voice messages, could easily have made this list, as could <em>Winter&#8217;s Diary 2<\/em>, boasting in the longingly downtempo &#8216;Lullaby&#8217; one of the lushest ballads of the decade. But whether it&#8217;s sentimentality alone or something less tangible, the pick remains the first <em>Winter&#8217;s Diary<\/em>, whose highlights in songs like &#8216;Can I&#8217; and &#8216;Bonnie&#8217; show Tink at her most sultry and caustic. Modulating her voice like the sudden crash of waves and their foamy retreat, alternately rapping and singing her mostly lovelorn lyrics, Tink compels her music with a sheer mastery of R&amp;B mood and pacing.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"ITAe6u76dMQ\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Tink - Bonnie and Clyde (OFFICIAL VIDEO) | Shot By @Franky_LoKoV\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ITAe6u76dMQ?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20351\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-26.png?resize=250%2C26&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"26\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>79. Panda Bear &#8211; <em>Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper<\/em><\/strong> (2015)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">An ideal blend of babbling surf pop and skittering psychedelia, on <em>Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper<\/em> Noah Lennox wraps blissed-out and sometimes wistful vocal harmonies in oscillating layers of gauze.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"prBaZzYmQrI\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Panda Bear - Boys Latin (Official Video)\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/prBaZzYmQrI?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20355\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-B3.png?resize=550%2C39&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"550\" height=\"39\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-B3.png?w=550&amp;ssl=1 550w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-B3.png?resize=300%2C21&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-B3.png?resize=370%2C26&amp;ssl=1 370w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>78. Holly Herndon &#8211; <em>PROTO\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>(2019)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">For <em>PROTO<\/em> together with the digital artist and philosopher Mat Dryhurst and programmer Jules LaPlace, Holly Herndon created an AI named &#8216;Spawn&#8217;, feeding it for six months on musically-tuned vocalisations. The result is fractured, inquisitive choral music, which beyond the usual discomfit of human bodies butting up against social media mining and mass surveillance, for the first time sees Herndon attain the communal.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"r4sROgbaeOs\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Holly Herndon - Eternal (Official Video)\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/r4sROgbaeOs?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20348\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-23.png?resize=250%2C28&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"28\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>77. Rihanna &#8211; <em>Anti<\/em><\/strong> (2016)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Antimatter that grinds away from the grist and mill of the pop cycle, here with a veneer of R&amp;B and elements of dancehall and trap, Rihanna sounds hazily, huskily soulful.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"HL1UzIK-flA\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Rihanna - Work (Explicit) ft. Drake\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/HL1UzIK-flA?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20350\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-25.png?resize=250%2C25&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"25\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>76. Bj\u00f6rk &#8211; <em>Biophilia<\/em><\/strong> (2011)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Bj\u00f6rk found pearls within the context of biomolecular science.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"br2s0xJyFEM\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"bj\u00f6rk: moon\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/br2s0xJyFEM?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20349\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-24.png?resize=250%2C27&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"27\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>75. Earl Sweatshirt &#8211; <em>Some Rap Songs<\/em><\/strong> (2018)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Cupping fragments and shards in the palm of his hand while he sifts through layers of sediment, on <em>Some Rap Songs<\/em> Earl Sweatshirt is both rip tide and murk, finding his way on his most rhythmic and soulful and vital composition. Tracks bubble and slurp, packed tight with his associative wordplay and assonance.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"onPuuUD-Z4o\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Earl Sweatshirt - Nowhere, Nobody\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/onPuuUD-Z4o?start=92&#038;feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20541\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-Saturn-2.png?resize=250%2C122&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"122\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>74. Kate Bush &#8211; <em>50 Words for Snow<\/em><\/strong> (2011)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">A zephyr wanders the grove and gets caught up in a flurry, a tempest swirling and billowing and landing far out at sea. On <em>50 Words for Snow<\/em> Kate Bush&#8217;s restless piano plays off the fixidity of Steve Gadd&#8217;s drums, with occasional forays from guitars, bells, and double bass, chamber music while the snow settles and the roof creaks.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"KKPHA3_cBus\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Kate Bush - Eider Falls at Lake Tahoe - Animation\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/KKPHA3_cBus?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20346\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-21_1.png?resize=250%2C33&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"33\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>73. Prurient &#8211; <em>Frozen Niagara Falls<\/em><\/strong> (2015)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">A dramatic tour de force that loosely inhabits the realm of industrial noise music and sounds just like its title indicates: a swallow dive through the jagged bucolic, with the inevitable crack and seep.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"3dgFykz0bNo\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"PRURIENT - Dragonflies To Sew You Up (official audio)\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/3dgFykz0bNo?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20352\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-27.png?resize=250%2C27&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"27\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>72. Pusha T &#8211; <em>DAYTONA<\/em> <\/strong>(2018)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Pusha T dons goggles and leathers for a lesson in frictionless flow. Pointed by Kanye&#8217;s high-definition production, <em>DAYTONA<\/em> is punishing and plosive and packed with bars that hit.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"L7-0ugujS2U\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Pusha T - If You Know You Know (Official Video)\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/L7-0ugujS2U?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20360\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-31_1.png?resize=250%2C38&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"38\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>71. Charlotte Gainsbourg &#8211; <em>Rest<\/em><\/strong> (2017)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">A disco-clad treatise on death and grief, hoisted by pristine synths, shrouded in sorrow and menace.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"eRwgL_PrQYQ\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Charlotte Gainsbourg - Rest (Official Music Video)\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/eRwgL_PrQYQ?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20357\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-B4.png?resize=650%2C43&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"650\" height=\"43\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-B4.png?w=650&amp;ssl=1 650w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-B4.png?resize=300%2C20&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-B4.png?resize=370%2C24&amp;ssl=1 370w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-B4.png?resize=570%2C38&amp;ssl=1 570w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 650px) 100vw, 650px\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>70. Tanya Tagaq &#8211; <em>Retribution<\/em><\/strong> (2016)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/culturedarms-albums-of-the-year-2016\/\">Culturedarm said<\/a>: &#8216;One of the best and boldest of the steady spurt of acclaimed protest albums to be released in 2016 &#8211; many with overlapping concerns, specifically environmentalism, LGBT activism, feminism, and black or indigenous rights &#8211; <em>Retribution<\/em> takes its rhythms from the frenzy of accusation and the claustrophobia of anger, resentment, and distrust. With an all-encompassing palette running the gamut from folk and orchestral music to grunge and black metal, Tanya Tagaq&#8217;s fourth album is her fiercest yet.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">The sounds the Inuk throat singer makes can be loosely described with reference to physiological processes: guttural growls, ominous gargling, animalistic panting which falters and protracts and becomes more recognisably human even as its hyperventilations leave us utterly transfixed. But Tagaq is almost overcoming her own body in order to make these noises, and the cumulative effect is impossible to translate.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">The opening track &#8216;Ajaaja&#8217; sounds like the spectre of youth, in tenuous dialogue with her ancestors even as their words unravel on the wind. On a couple of occasions Tagaq makes her warnings explicit, as on the eight-minute-long title track, which snaps &#8216;When mother grows angry, retribution will be swift&#8217;, and more beguilingly on &#8216;Cold Wind&#8217;, where half-tauntingly and half-teasingly, she explains &#8216;Gaia likes it cold&#8217;. But mostly <em>Retribution<\/em> is a frontal assault, full of impermeable percussion and pulled-apart strings, which gradually song by song strives to turn the tables, luring aggressors helplessly even if it is to a shared fate. On &#8216;Summoning&#8217;, the record&#8217;s nine-minute centrepiece which finds Tagaq reliably backed by Toronto&#8217;s Element Choir, she sounds at times pained, at others in the throes of ecstasy, and still at other moments surprisingly and not altogether sinisterly coy.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">As Canada struggles more than ever with its history of indigenous abuse, the title <em>Retribution<\/em> markedly contrasts with the name of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, established to investigate the role of old Indian residential schools. This network of boarding schools for indigenous peoples saw children removed from their parents and forcibly assimilated into the Christian mainstream. Over a hundred years, 150,000 children were placed in residential schools across Canada, leaving a legacy of alienation and exploitation, not to mention thousands of early deaths. Some of those who endured the system have spoken about recurring illnesses, of being thrown into cold showers every night, sometimes after being raped. Tagaq &#8211; who has suffered multiple sexual assaults and considers hydraulic fracturing &#8216;like earth rape&#8217; &#8211; makes these intersections blisteringly apparent on &#8216;Cold Wind&#8217; and her closing cover of Nirvana&#8217;s &#8216;Rape Me&#8217;, which she gives a slow and steadfast, whispering and lingering rendition.&#8217;<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"xNYTA6SV6tM\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Tanya Tagaq - Retribution\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xNYTA6SV6tM?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20345\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-30.png?resize=250%2C31&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"31\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>69. Matmos &#8211; <em>Ultimate Care II<\/em><\/strong> (2016)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/culturedarms-albums-of-the-year-2016\/\">Culturedarm said<\/a>: &#8216;Crafty and quietly subversive, Matmos&#8217; tenth studio album &#8211; following in the tradition of earlier works like <em>A Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure<\/em>, which sampled medical procedures such as plastic surgeries, liposuctions, hearing tests, and orthopaedic bonesaws, and <em>The Marriage of True Minds<\/em>, which saw the duo drawing out the psychic visions of subjects put into sensory deprivation &#8211; is comprised solely of sounds produced with a Whirlpool washing machine.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">The appliance&#8217;s name gives the album its title, and <em>Ultimate Care II<\/em> broadly covers the whirring and sloshing, the occasional blips and beeps of a full washing cycle, one thirty-eight minute track divided into nine excerpts. Sometimes &#8211; for instance for the duration of excerpt seven &#8211; they leave the machine more or less to its own devices, other times they rub, stroke, and drum upon its surfaces, using transducers to feed it with samples, aided by guest contributors including Dan Deacon, Max Eilbacher and Sam Haberman of Horse Lords, Jason Willett of Half Japanese, and Duncan Moore of Needle Gun.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">From such a conceit within the first minute Matmos conjure the most vivid landscapes, dense vegetation, tribal drums, and gushing streams. It&#8217;s a trick, an animating act, which they repeat throughout the record, from burgeoning wildernesses to droning dystopias their music humming with life. Even excerpts which feel more domestic, like the oiling and tinkering which characterises the onset of excerpt five, is interrupted and remoulded by incessant, insistent barks. M. C. Schmidt tumbled upon the concept lost one day in the Whirlpool&#8217;s rhythms, noting &#8216;It was a self-contained, very simple idea, but once you start examining anything, it gives and gives and gives. The shit writes itself as soon as you\u2019re actually paying attention&#8217;.&#8217;<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"ukqOGGJqtZM\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Matmos - Ultimate Care II Excerpt Five (Official Music Video)\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ukqOGGJqtZM?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20354\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-29.png?resize=250%2C31&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"31\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>68. A Tribe Called Quest &#8211; <em>We Got It from Here&#8230; Thank You 4 Your Service<\/em><\/strong> (2016)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">This wasn&#8217;t simply a celebratory lap or an elegy for the recently departed Phife, but vintage Tribe built from the ground up for the modern era, brisk and bracing, straddling the future and the past and painting liberally from across the sound palette, encompassing and ultimately buoyant.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"vO2Su3erRIA\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"A Tribe Called Quest - We The People.... (Official Video)\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/vO2Su3erRIA?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20353\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-28.png?resize=250%2C30&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"30\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>67. Kanye West &#8211; <em>My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>(2010)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Whether you consider this an evolutionary step or an intermediate point between <em>808s &amp; Heartbreak<\/em> and <em>Yeezus<\/em>, this was Kanye West at his most maximalist, the last time he left all of the lights on for everybody.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"Bm5iA4Zupek\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Kanye West - Runaway (Video Version) ft. Pusha T\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Bm5iA4Zupek?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20358\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-Spirals.png?resize=300%2C92&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"92\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>66. Ambrose Akinmusire &#8211; <em>The Imagined Savior is Far Easier to Paint<\/em><\/strong> (2014)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">An epic that unfurls through endless variations, winding and swinging and bubbling and screeching and setting the field of modern jazz ablaze, on <em>The Imagined Savior is Far Easier to Paint<\/em> Ambrose Akinmusire&#8217;s full-bodied trumpet and the rest of his working quintet &#8211; Walter Smith III on saxophone, Sam Harris on piano, Harish Raghavan on bass, and Justin Brown on drums &#8211; are joined by Charles Altura on guitar, by flute and strings and a trio of featured vocalists, through dark soulful flights and socially informed spoken word. There are folk melodies and gospel harmonies amid the avant-garde jazz, on an album Akinmusire wrote and self-produced, amounting to one of the decade&#8217;s most uncompromising artistic statements.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"qKOuk9j0F6U\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Ambrose Akinmusire - The Imagined Savior Is Far Easier To Paint (EPK)\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/qKOuk9j0F6U?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20347\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-22.png?resize=250%2C29&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"29\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>65. Ian William Craig &#8211; <em>Centres<\/em><\/strong> (2016)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/culturedarms-albums-of-the-year-2016\/\">Culturedarm said<\/a>: &#8216;A single voice in a vast cathedral, light refracting on four sides through stained glass, the shrug and hum of a submersible, the muffled rhythm of a steadily beating heart, Ian William Craig&#8217;s <em>Centres<\/em> is sometimes baroque, or monastic and cloistered, or like the strings and sinews of popular forms stretched out and carefully pressed, plucked, rubbed, or cut apart. Occasionally it veers towards folk or singer-songwriter territory, always graceful, but mostly this sounds like a cross between Craig&#8217;s FatCat\/130701 labelmate Max Richter, under flowing water, and John Cale&#8217;s <em>Paris 1919<\/em> wrapped in layers of gauze.&#8217;<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"cwce-8kBB10\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Ian William Craig - Contain (Astoria Version) - promo video\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/cwce-8kBB10?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20368\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-36.png?resize=250%2C39&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"39\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>64. A$AP Rocky &#8211; <em>LIVE.LOVE.A$AP<\/em><\/strong> (2011)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">A$AP Rocky&#8217;s debut mixtape was the foundational document not only for the artist but for the entire A$AP Mob as a collective, less a statement of intent than a heady atmosphere and an apparently spontaneous but all-encompassing aesthetic. Despite assorted highlights elsewhere and a growing introspection as he leans more heavily into psychedelia and discordant sounds, <em>LIVE.LOVE.A$AP<\/em> remains his strongest record.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Combining the influence of Southern hip hop with some of the emergent themes and manners of cloud rap, it&#8217;s grounded in the impeccably woozy loops and beats provided by A$AP Ty Beats, Beautiful Lou, but most of all Clams Casino, on the resounding &#8216;Palace&#8217;, the spectral &#8216;Leaf&#8217;, the trilling and throbbing &#8216;Wassup&#8217;, and &#8216;Bass&#8217;, low-frequency and impalpably gaseous. Any hack can write socially conscious lyrics, but few possess Rocky&#8217;s ear for cadence, his rapping languid yet emboldened and packed with internal rhymes. <em>LIVE.LOVE.A$AP<\/em> was enhanced too by A$AP Ferg and SpaceGhostPurrp&#8217;s career-high cameos. Through the occasional gnarl and menace, the first run from &#8216;Palace&#8217; through &#8216;Purple Swag&#8217; offers an almost impossibly chilled vibe for this or any other decade.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"ob3ktDxAjWI\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"ASAP Rocky &quot;Peso&quot;\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ob3ktDxAjWI?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20361\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-B5.png?resize=325%2C54&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"325\" height=\"54\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-B5.png?w=325&amp;ssl=1 325w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-B5.png?resize=300%2C50&amp;ssl=1 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 325px) 100vw, 325px\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>63. Jamila Woods &#8211; <em>LEGACY! LEGACY!<\/em><\/strong> (2019)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Each song on <em>LEGACY! LEGACY!<\/em> is devoted to the life of an inspirational artist, mostly black, all of colour, all &#8216;other&#8217; in their relationship to their form as well as to the wider world. So Jamila Woods shapeshifts in the company of Betty Davis, affirms in the name of knowledge Zora Neale Hurston&#8217;s unquenchable thirst, traces through Jean-Michel Basquiat the complexities and categorisations of fame, and on &#8216;SUN RA&#8217; explores the cosmic outreaches of jazz while &#8216;MUDDY&#8217; offers a transposed take, funky and soulful, on the electrified Chicago blues. In the process Woods pays tribute to black experience and black excellence, while finding the causeways and tributaries connecting these icons to her own life and the present flood.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"lOylrOyohnU\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Jamila Woods - BALDWIN (Official Video)\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/lOylrOyohnU?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20372\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-40.png?resize=250%2C51&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"51\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>62. Mount Eerie &#8211; <em>A Crow Looked at Me<\/em><\/strong> (2017)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/culturedarms-albums-of-the-year-2017\/\">Culturedarm said<\/a>: &#8216;Working as The Microphones then as Mount Eerie, Phil Elverum&#8217;s music &#8211; often viewed as if from a shallow ridge, at a slight remove and in brief retrospect &#8211; has always sought to both embrace the elevate the moment. Imbued with rumbling organic sounds which belie their sparse instrumentation, his songs demonstrate a keen sense of place and an acutely sensitive, poetic, yet still decidedly modern sensibility. On recent albums <em>Wind&#8217;s Poem<\/em>, <em>Clear Moon<\/em>, <em>Ocean Roar<\/em>, and <em>Sauna<\/em>, his fragile but present voice has been increasingly encompassed by an unsettling, always alert ambience bridging the gap between lo-fi folk and the experimental outreaches of drone music and black metal.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">How to square presence, a keen sense of place, and music of profound intimacy &#8211; with an atmosphere that now teeters on the verge of existential dread, salvaged by the through-line of the embrace of nature &#8211; with the stark fact of the loss of your partner? How to inhabit those domestic spaces which through the devastation of absence still imply the life, the shape, the fading warmth of another? After Genevi\u00e8ve Castr\u00e9e, a cartoonist, illustrator, and musician, died of pancreatic cancer in the summer of 2016, her husband Phil Elverum began writing and recording songs in her room in an attempt to document the experience while providing some sort of testament.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">The result at once coheres with the rest of Mount Eerie&#8217;s catalogue and stands utterly apart from the body of recorded music, an extended, harrowing, private, often overwhelming, mustering, still graceful look at death and grief. Pared back to acoustic guitar and the drip-drop of minimal percussion, bearing dates and grim specifics and symbols that double as spectres, devoid of possible interpretation but still passionately felt, <em>A Crow Looked at Me<\/em> ruins &#8211; for those of us who just have to bear its duration &#8211; the notion of music as escapism, baring the boundaries between imagination, empathy, and experience itself. Listen to &#8216;Real Death&#8217;, and how coping mechanisms, efforts to record and compute death, swoon and plummet in the face of death, in the modulation of Elverum&#8217;s voice in the long-flowing final verse, fond and desperate and clawing. Love and death: both are real and both enduring.&#8217;<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"H2R2Ck8qKWM\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"&quot;Ravens&quot; by Mount Eerie (official video)\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/H2R2Ck8qKWM?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20362\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-Drone.png?resize=400%2C139&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"139\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-Drone.png?w=400&amp;ssl=1 400w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-Drone.png?resize=300%2C104&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-Drone.png?resize=370%2C129&amp;ssl=1 370w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>61. Laurel Halo &#8211; <em>Dust<\/em><\/strong> (2017)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/culturedarms-albums-of-the-year-2017\/\">Culturedarm said<\/a>: &#8216;From the wobbly synths of &#8216;Jelly&#8217;, to the jazzy &#8216;Arschkriecher&#8217;, to the djembe drums, rumba rhythms, and big band flourishes of &#8216;Moontalk&#8217;, <em>Dust<\/em> finds Laurel Halo incorporating a wider range of genre influences into the usually robust sonic palette of bleeps, buzzes, and hums, skittering kicks, and abstract synth patches, elements alternately layered and foregrounded to create urbane, street-level, and cave-like compositions of place. This is the least confrontational album she&#8217;s made: rather than enacting the process of negotiation, it&#8217;s about defining the fraught space, and then leaving if desirable or necessary. Lyrics read like diagnoses, accusations, and open-ended questions, of the moment yet it&#8217;s never quite clear whether they are being uttered or felt. Fragmented in the manner of collages and sound poems, they cohere on the level of mood rather than semantics.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">On &#8216;Who Won?&#8217; a lounge lizard smoothly utters non sequiturs on the themes of time, location, and access by password or phone number, a cross between a hotel receptionist and a would-be lover. On &#8216;Syzygy&#8217;, Halo sings &#8216;I said &#8220;Get up&#8221; \/ I said &#8220;Time for love&#8221;&#8216; in a tone that suggests the time has already passed, each figure locked in their own orbits. The later tracks on <em>Dust<\/em> seem to break out of the city into a rumbling, swooning nature, before album closer &#8216;Buh-bye&#8217;, a stumbling carousel, is finally overcome with a brassy sunset sheen. <em>Dust<\/em> features a stellar group of contributors, including Eli Keszler, Klein, Lafawndah, Michael Salu, Craig Clouse, and Julia Holter. It&#8217;s the sort of album you can dip into at any point, and it&#8217;s a lot of fun.&#8217;<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"IrjeMN_U1hw\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Laurel Halo - Jelly (Hyperdub 2017)\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/IrjeMN_U1hw?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><!--nextpage--><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>60. FKA twigs &#8211; <em>LP1\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>(2014)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Smoky, sinewy, taut but unconstrained, on her first full-length FKA twigs combined state-of-the-art electronics and sleek R&amp;B with elements of grime and trip hop dug out and polished up closer to home. The result was an album that placed her not just ahead of the pack but on a different track altogether, armed with mallet and chisel.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"3yDP9MKVhZc\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"FKA twigs - Two Weeks\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/3yDP9MKVhZc?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20377\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-45.png?resize=250%2C36&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"36\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>59. The-Dream &#8211; <em>Terius Nash: 1977<\/em><\/strong> (2011)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Three acclaimed albums established The-Dream as the most grandiloquent R&amp;B artist since Prince, but failed to result in commercial glory. Successful sure, but The-Dream remained just as well known for his songwriting and production credits. In late August 2011, the embers of summer, he released this mixtape for free, under his birth name Terius Nash, with the year of his birth as the title.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Seen as a stopgap while work on <em>IV Play<\/em> haltingly progressed, it went largely unheralded, even after Def Jam released it commercially at the end of 2012. Yet it shows a version of The-Dream that&#8217;s loose and intimate, allowing his songwriting to flourish. The first five songs are especially strong, tactile and a little bit world-weary but cool and alluring. &#8216;Wake Me When It&#8217;s Over&#8217; abounds in ironic wordplay, free-form crooning exalts the end of &#8216;Ghetto&#8217;, and amid bright synths as he defiantly and drunkenly elaborates his feelings upon the wedding of a former lover, &#8216;Wedding Crasher&#8217; stands as The-Dream&#8217;s defining moment.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"rJBUDYSc7jM\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The-Dream (Terius Nash) - &quot;Wake Me When It&#039;s Over&quot; Official Video\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/rJBUDYSc7jM?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20370\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-38.png?resize=250%2C41&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"41\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>58. Jolie Holland &amp; Samantha Parton &#8211; <em>Wildflower Blues<\/em><\/strong> (2017)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/culturedarms-albums-of-the-year-2017\/\">Culturedarm said<\/a>: &#8216;Opening with a rollicking cover of Townes Van Zandt&#8217;s &#8216;You Are Not Needed Now&#8217;, one might expect that this is where Jolie Holland and Samantha Parton &#8211; co-founders of The Be Good Tanyas, reuniting for the first time since Holland&#8217;s 2008 album <em>The Living and the Dead<\/em>, three years after two car accidents left Parton requiring brain surgery for an aneurysm behind the left eye &#8211; will more or less end up: in something folksy and rootsy, with handsomely executed harmonies, outlined by Holland&#8217;s utterly distinctive trill, and with the occasional swagger and rock. But Holland&#8217;s solo work has always pushed at genre boundaries, never more so than on 2014&#8217;s wide and rumbling <em>Wine Dark Sea<\/em>, and any thought that this might be a down-home roots retread is dashed by the next song, the title track &#8216;Wildflower Blues&#8217;, a scuzzy jam firmly in the milieus of psychedelia and early-90s grunge.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">There&#8217;s soul-infused R&amp;B, jazz flourishes, gospel vocals, fuzzy 60s garage rock, laid-back rockabilly, songs that veer towards dream pop and new-age, and even an instrumental ragtime closer, on what are finely-wrought mostly original lovelorn compositions, with a cover of &#8216;Jocko&#8217;s Lament&#8217; by Michael Hurley and a reworking of Bob Dylan&#8217;s &#8216;Minstrel Boy&#8217; featuring new verses evoking the poets Steven &#8216;Jesse&#8217; Bernstein and William Blake. The result is a record that&#8217;s deeply meditative at the same time as it&#8217;s transitory, happily informal and offhand, roving but not quite restless, surprising even on repeated listens, an effortlessly elegant and endlessly pleasant trip in the company of old friends.&#8217;<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"HXHOkCgM9SU\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"&quot;You Are Not Needed Now&quot; - Jolie Holland &amp; Samantha Parton Official Video\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/HXHOkCgM9SU?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20378\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-46.png?resize=250%2C31&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"31\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>57. David Bowie &#8211; <em>Blackstar<\/em><\/strong> (2015)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">David Bowie didn&#8217;t need to contrive his own immortality, but on <em>Blackstar<\/em> while exploring the sonic outreaches he constructed a work of art in the liminal space between life and death.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"y-JqH1M4Ya8\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"David Bowie - Lazarus (Video)\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/y-JqH1M4Ya8?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20374\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-42.png?resize=250%2C39&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"39\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>56. Zola Jesus &#8211; <em>Okovi<\/em><\/strong> (2017)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/culturedarms-albums-of-the-year-2017\/\">Culturedarm said<\/a>: &#8216;A dense forest suddenly permeated with shafts of light, the subject matter of Zola Jesus&#8217; fifth album <em>Okovi<\/em> &#8211; death, drowning, self-harm, suicidal thoughts, the specifics coalescing as an attack on the body to be resisted at all costs &#8211; might sound dark and depleting, but this is music infused with measure and balance, a sense of space and steady hope. &#8216;Doma&#8217; is a rebirth, the first sight of a clearing, its lyrical chants and repetitions recalling Zola Jesus&#8217; breakthrough <em>Stridulum<\/em>, but instead of menacing drums and driving synths, an industrial clash and clamour, we are out in the stillness of nature, awestruck and enveloped by a choral piece.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Those pummelling percussive beats do make their presence felt on &#8216;Exhumed&#8217;, along with jagged strings and a lyric in counterpoint, which is a plaintive entreaty against being submerged by grief perversely framed as the act of swallowing one&#8217;s tongue.\u00a0&#8216;Soak&#8217; is written from the perspective of a serial killer&#8217;s victim, who wrests back control by choosing to die, an allegory for the entire record. &#8216;Ash to Bone&#8217; features lovely loping, diving, swallowing strings as Danilova&#8217;s vocals soar above and the chaotic hum of percussion and bass bubble underneath, a more oblique sort of hymnal. &#8216;Witness&#8217; &#8211; the first of two songs about a close friend&#8217;s suicide attempts &#8211; interpolates Max Richter&#8217;s &#8216;On the Nature of Daylight&#8217; on cello, viola, violin, and double bass, boasting some of Danilova&#8217;s most affecting vocals.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&#8216;Veka&#8217; emerges gradually, through abstract ambient rustle and stretched, pitch-shifted shunts of Russian poetry, into a hypnotic piece on the theme of legacy, a temporal change of tack, before the club breakout at the close, the dance floor and flickering lights a fitting destination and climax. &#8216;Wiseblood&#8217; keeps time, &#8216;Remains&#8217; gives in to the swirl and pace of life, and &#8216;Half Life&#8217;, the elegant and optimistic instrumental closer, embodies a rebuilding of the edifices of life and self. &#8216;Okovi&#8217; is an old Slavic word meaning &#8216;shackles&#8217;, but here Zola Jesus still finds room to stretch and breathe.&#8217;<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"RVtwUxQ1TeA\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Zola Jesus - Siphon (Official Music Video)\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/RVtwUxQ1TeA?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20382\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-Trees.png?resize=320%2C115&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"320\" height=\"115\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-Trees.png?w=320&amp;ssl=1 320w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-Trees.png?resize=300%2C108&amp;ssl=1 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 320px) 100vw, 320px\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>55. Oneohtrix Point Never &#8211; <em>Garden of Delete<\/em><\/strong> (2015)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/culturedarms-albums-of-the-year-2015\/\">Culturedarm said<\/a>: &#8216;Where <em>R Plus Seven<\/em> played as skewed vignettes of modern America, bleak and breaking, slightly wistful, but still bearing shards of hope, <em>Garden of Delete<\/em> &#8211; the title a play on Hieronymus Bosch&#8217;s <em>The Garden of Earthly Delights<\/em> triptych as well as on the name of God &#8211; is the most intimate object in Daniel Lopatin&#8217;s catalogue. Grungier, scuzzier, regenerating a panoply of adolescent influences, the record captures a particularly ferocious form of teenage angst, but there are also moments of wry or guffawing awareness, and those that depict the graceful coming together of self.&#8217;<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"td-e4i2BL_Q\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Sticky Drama - Music Video\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/td-e4i2BL_Q?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20379\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-47.png?resize=250%2C30&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"30\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>54. Danny Brown &#8211; <em>XXX<\/em><\/strong> (2011)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">A full-colour introduction to Danny Brown&#8217;s addictive, anxiety-laden and sometimes comically absurd interior, packed with some of the decade&#8217;s hardest bars.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"Nj0jiEIyT24\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Danny Brown - &quot;Monopoly&quot; (Official Video)\" width=\"696\" height=\"522\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Nj0jiEIyT24?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20380\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-48.png?resize=250%2C30&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"30\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>53. Nicole Dollanganger &#8211; <em>Observatory Mansions<\/em><\/strong> (2014)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Recorded in her bedroom or bathroom pushing through a plethora of plush animals, bottled keepsakes, and old dolls, Nicole Dollanganger&#8217;s <em>Observatory Mansions<\/em> &#8211; her fourth self-release, preceding <em>Natural Born Losers<\/em> which saw her affiliate with Grimes and the Eerie Organization &#8211; is of a piece with her body of work, haunting and captivating, flinty but glimmering dimly as light on an old photograph or something abandoned and ensconced. Self-consciously and stylistically but never falsely or ironically white trash, she draws her material from &#8216;sleepy towns and cemeteries&#8217;, littered streets, dilapidated apartments, stained upholstery, deserted theme parks, and daytime TV, wringing out elegies in the form of laments for the living dead.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Which is to say all of us, for as she unfolds on the title track, &#8216;Time scurries away from us like field mice \/ Out through the holes in our walls \/ Lost to the dark night&#8217;, before her voice carries faintly over the top, half pleading, half conjuring, lingering as she enacts, &#8216;Heal me up again&#8217;. There is raw violence here which her swooning and coddling voice neither masks nor forgives, but over wary synth lines, the occasional forlorn guitar, and the thrash and clang of distant percussion, she manages to find beauty and delicacy in perseverance, in the fact and the materiality of life. Her lyrics are archly observed, wistful, witty, and rooted in a keen sense of place, which evokes her Ontario hometown and seems capable of resuscitating the past to move thinly in the present. <em>Observatory Mansions<\/em> has the stagnant glow of nowhere to go and a golden evening.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"2DbvcLfxRq4\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Observatory Mansions - Nicole Dollanganger (Official Video)\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/2DbvcLfxRq4?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20376\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-44.png?resize=250%2C38&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"38\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>52. Donnie Trumpet &amp; The Social Experiment &#8211; <em>Surf<\/em><\/strong> (2015)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/culturedarms-albums-of-the-year-2015\/\">Culturedarm said<\/a>: &#8216;A collaboration in the grandest sense &#8211; sold on the name of Chance the Rapper, only the extraordinarily generous Chance provides his music for free; introducing the world to the elegant and dexterous playing of Donnie Trumpet; but equally highlighting the other members of The Social Experiment, Peter Cottontale as the musical director, Nate Fox on keys, and Greg Landfair Jr. on drums, alongside a host of featuring artists from Big Sean and Busta Rhymes to Janelle Mon\u00e1e and Noname Gypsy &#8211; <em>Surf<\/em> was the soundtrack to a blissful summer, endlessly verdant live variations on rap, jazz fusion, soul, and gospel.&#8217;<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"i4ooH8frBWg\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Donnie Trumpet &amp; the Social Experiment - Sunday Candy &quot;Short Film&quot;\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/i4ooH8frBWg?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20366\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-34.png?resize=250%2C35&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"35\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>51. Jenny Hval &#8211; <em>Apocalypse, girl<\/em><\/strong> (2015)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/culturedarms-albums-of-the-year-2015\/\">Culturedarm said<\/a>: &#8216;Whether enacting and envisioning flickering gender transformations or observing more passively, rapt on the platform of a big city subway, standing at the back of church in a small Norwegian town, or lying in bed with one hand on her cunt and the other clutching a placidly soft dick, Jenny Hval sparks the consciousness, writing self-revelatory music in a conversational tone with a political edge. For their candid language and sudden insights, some of the lyrics on <em>Apocalypse, girl<\/em> are enough to laugh out loud.\u00a0Hval\u00a0whispers in spoken-word paragraphs that soar into pristine moments of song, over a superficially skeletal accompaniment that withholds a wealth of bubbling\u00a0detail, new age and barrel organ melodies, cello, harp, bass, and Mellotron interspersing with stretches of electronic noise.&#8217;<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"oGksHxwnap0\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Jenny Hval &quot;That Battle is Over&quot; (Official Music Video)\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/oGksHxwnap0?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20381\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-49.png?resize=250%2C32&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"32\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>50. Animal Collective &#8211; <em>Painting With<\/em><\/strong> (2016)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/culturedarms-albums-of-the-year-2016\/\">Culturedarm said<\/a>: &#8216;A few days before the release of the record&#8217;s sweaty and squelching first single &#8216;FloriDada&#8217;, Animal Collective premiered <em>Painting With<\/em>\u00a0through the speakers of Baltimore-Washington International, looping the slightly surreal and hitherto unspecified music &#8211; best heard through the building&#8217;s bathrooms, pre-security observation areas, and post-security lounge &#8211; until 6 pm in the late afternoon.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">The band have called <em>Painting With<\/em> their &#8216;Ramones record&#8217;, &#8216;short songs with a homogenous energy [&#8230;] something where the first song revs up the engine, and it kind of just cruises after that&#8217;. But while the comparison is apt it could just as well be today&#8217;s <em>Music for Airports<\/em>, &#8216;able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular&#8217;, &#8216;as ignorable as it is interesting&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">The relentless onrush of overlapping voices, spouting and sloshing synthesizers, and buzzing and hiccuping beats can be by turns disorientating, fist-pumping, or strikingly danceable, but they&#8217;re not without uncertainty or doubt, and in the right mood and with the right atmosphere, the whole thing coheres to provide a certain still. Perhaps more than any other Animal Collective record <em>Painting With<\/em> harks back to The Beach Boys, The Velvet Underground, and even 60s and 70s singer-songwriter influences, yet it feels completely of the moment, finding balance amid busyness and bombardment, sensuously and with a sense of fun attuned to modern life.&#8217;<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"cuoIvNFUY7I\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Animal Collective - FloriDada (Official Video)\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/cuoIvNFUY7I?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20367\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-35.png?resize=250%2C36&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"36\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>49. Blood Orange &#8211; <em>Negro Swan<\/em><\/strong> (2018)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/culturedarms-albums-of-the-year-2018\/\">Culturedarm said<\/a>: &#8221;First kiss was the floor&#8217;, Dev Hynes sings on <em>Negro Swan<\/em> opener &#8216;Orlando&#8217;, and as he got up he seems to have carried some of the world with him. There&#8217;s a weight to this music, feelings of anxiety and alienation and exhaustion, themes of black identity expressed through music, hair, and skin, of performative masculinity, of political and societal and psychic distress. Hynes discusses childhood beatings based on race and gender or sexual nonconformity, there are brief references to police brutality and mass shootings, and Hynes delves into personal locales from the run-down East London borough of Barking and Dagenham where he grew up to the covered-but-still-porous legacy of Manhattan&#8217;s Minetta Creek. Yet none of this specificity and none of this darkness provides the right contour for the sheer pleasure of listening to <em>Negro Swan<\/em>. Dev Hynes seems able to reflect at the same time as he absorbs, to float on the breeze as a model for sturdy self-realisation: <em>Negro Swan<\/em> is yielding and unhurried even as it bristles with life, gently buoying its listener.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">The sonic palette is broad and encompassing: Hynes casually finds the connecting threads between the easy funk and celestial R&amp;B of <em>Sign o&#8217; the Times<\/em>-era Prince and the shoegazing psychedelia of early Smashing Pumpkins, between the freewheeling soul of Marvin Gaye and the dreamy soundscapes of Air and the Cocteau Twins. There are robust rap features and one major coup in the appearances of A$AP Rocky, Project Pat, and Puff Daddy, with the train-track percussion and pitch-shifted samples of &#8216;Chewing Gum&#8217; &#8211; a song about tiredness and ennui set upon images of oral sex, which loops the refrain from the mid-90s Memphis underground classic\u00a0 &#8216;Lookin&#8217; for Da Chewin&#8221; by Kingpin Skinny Pimp &#8211; providing that tune with its hard edge. But moments like these sit happily alongside the Robert Wyatt-inspired, woodwind infused &#8216;Take Your Time&#8217;, and the smooth opening to &#8216;Jewelry&#8217;, reminiscent of nothing so much as the Beach Boys&#8217; &#8216;Cabin Essence&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&#8216;Hope&#8217; &#8211; on which Puffy positions himself as hip hop&#8217;s first purveyor of faltering intimacy &#8211; and &#8216;Runnin&#8221;,\u00a0highlighted by the soaring vocals of Tei Shi and Georgia Anne Muldrow, make explicit some of the lingering tensions on the album, anxiousness dispersed by messages of optimism and encouragement and self-belief. There are jazz flourishes notably on &#8216;Saint&#8217; and &#8216;Jewelry&#8217;, and on &#8216;Holy Will&#8217;, a partial cover of the Clark Sisters&#8217; &#8216;Center of Thy Will&#8217; featuring Ian Isiah and Eva Tolkin, high-definition gospel with on outro of glimmering synth. There&#8217;s a choral quality to &#8216;Dagenham Dream&#8217; which turns the tables on violence and coercion, while &#8216;Minetta Creek&#8217; and &#8216;Smoke&#8217; possess a sleek, urbane and chattering New York City feel. Finally acoustic guitar breaks through the din and Hynes repeats, &#8216;The Sun comes in, my heart fulfills within&#8217;, but whatever he&#8217;s found, <em>Negro Swan<\/em> shows he&#8217;s more than capable of giving.&#8217;<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"mVH_wxk9ZtE\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Blood Orange - Saint (Official Video)\" width=\"696\" height=\"522\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/mVH_wxk9ZtE?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20389\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-51.png?resize=250%2C33&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"33\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>48. Jessy Lanza &#8211; <em>Oh No<\/em><\/strong> (2016)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/culturedarms-albums-of-the-year-2016\/\">Culturedarm said<\/a>: &#8216;Tonally and atmospherically <em>Oh No<\/em> plays like the composite of decades&#8217; worth of R&amp;B, bolstered by beefier keys, strident electronic patches, wetter and splintering beats which push the palette in the direction of footwork and house, and Lanza&#8217;s voice, an arresting admixture of Japanese pop and new wave, replete with coquettish exclamations and inhalations and breathy groans. The synth patterns &#8211; with Lanza joined by Jeremy Greenspan of Junior Boys on production &#8211; threaten to run away with themselves, only for Lanza to lure them into step and ultimately bring them under her control. Shimmering, sad, perfect for summer, <em>Oh No<\/em> is precariously irresistible.&#8217;<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"kaNZbUENKjk\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Jessy Lanza - Oh No\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/kaNZbUENKjk?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20383\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-B6.png?resize=400%2C51&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"51\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-B6.png?w=400&amp;ssl=1 400w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-B6.png?resize=300%2C38&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-B6.png?resize=370%2C47&amp;ssl=1 370w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>47. KIDS SEE GHOSTS &#8211; <em>KIDS SEE GHOSTS<\/em><\/strong> (2018)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/culturedarms-albums-of-the-year-2018\/\">Culturedarm said<\/a>: &#8216;Kanye West&#8217;s project over the early part of the summer seemed to be to take the zeitgeist for throwaways, for short attention spans and a sort of fickleness and contrariness to which he contributed more than most, and to capture its liberating qualities in forms resembling works of art. So &#8211; subsuming the world of EPs and mixtapes &#8211; we had five short albums in the space of a month, which aside from Kanye&#8217;s own releases saw him produce for Pusha T, Nas, and Teyana Taylor. If Pusha T&#8217;s <em>Daytona<\/em> was the stripped-back statement of intent, <em>KIDS SEE GHOSTS<\/em>\u00a0&#8211; Kanye&#8217;s collaborative album with Kid Cudi, a waif-like arthouse kindred spirit &#8211; sought to show that even a brisk twenty-four minutes could be mind-bending and inquisitive, an evolution in style at the same time as it&#8217;s gloriously freeform.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">It&#8217;s bold and brash in its production, full of buzzing strings, clattering drums, straining keys, and strummed guitar, its movements and interpolations strike at the gut rather than seeking to alter the mood, and its lyrics are for the most part playful and introspective. &#8216;Feel the Love&#8217;, with an extemporaneous verse from Pusha T and Cudi&#8217;s self-assuring pronouncements, sees Kanye play the mad scatter, spluttering gunfire. &#8216;Fire&#8217; features stunted brass and chain gang percussion, &#8216;4th Dimension&#8217; samples Louis Prima&#8217;s &#8216;What Will Santa Claus Say&#8217; to delirious effect, and &#8216;Freeee (Ghost Town, Pt. 2)&#8217; abounds in staggered rock dynamics. &#8216;Reborn&#8217; with its minor keys, melancholy but still sustaining, and chug-along percussion gives way to a couple of stark confessionals, Kanye forthright while Cudi blurs hauntingly into the music.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">The title track &#8216;Kids See Ghosts&#8217; is all quivering spectres: amid the bubble and drip of the beat, and the oscillation of what sounds like synthesized castanets, the shiver and subtle change of rhythm midway through Kanye&#8217;s sinuous verse marks one of the most thrilling moments of his career. &#8216;Cudi Montage&#8217;, with firebrand guitar courtesy of Kurt Cobain&#8217;s &#8216;Burn the Rain&#8217;, wraps up the record on the note of a modern-day spiritual. All of these songs deal in some way with loss, with feelings of public condemnation and abandonment, with depleted and deteriorating mental health, and with the attempt to overcome and navigate some way out, an intermittent struggle but an effort always worth celebrating.&#8217;<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"cHFzyFMT0pw\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Kids See Ghosts\" width=\"696\" height=\"522\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/cHFzyFMT0pw?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20371\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-39.png?resize=250%2C40&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"40\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>46. Robyn &#8211; <em>Honey<\/em><\/strong> (2018)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/culturedarms-albums-of-the-year-2018\/\">Culturedarm said<\/a>: &#8216;Robyn is one of the all-time great artists at conveying and embodying what&#8217;s always seemed like a decidedly youthful form of romance. Let&#8217;s put it between her and Ronnie Spector, separated by very different career arcs, Robyn starting especially young but finding her voice by seizing the sort of control over her music Spector could scarcely dream about, and by the fact that while Spector sung rhapsodically barely in the first flush of love, Robyn has borne instead love unrequited and on the way out. That&#8217;s from coquettish yet caustic takes like &#8216;Bum Like You&#8217; and &#8216;Love Kills&#8217;, to the forlorn anguish of &#8216;Be Mine&#8217;, to &#8216;Every Heartbeat&#8217; which rapt in the throes of heartbreak stumbles and tumbles and barely holds on, and even to &#8216;Call Your Girlfriend&#8217; which finds Robyn adopting dual roles, ostensibly the other woman but relating intimately through experience to the woman scorned, and &#8216;Hang With Me&#8217;, tender but ever wary.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">She hasn&#8217;t been gone for so long: in the meantime she&#8217;s released EPs with R\u00f6yksopp and as La Bagatelle Magique, featured on records by Neneh Cherry, Kindness, and Mr. Tophat, and her label Konichiwa Records has signed and released music by its sole other artist, Zhala. But though age is but a number and concepts of age changing fast, still Robyn&#8217;s first solo album in eight years has been anticipated with eagerness as well as a sense of wonder, over the sort of Robyn we&#8217;re going to find as she nears forty and grapples with the death of her longtime friend and collaborator Christian Falk. Does the popular love song have an expiry date, can a different sort of heartache still sustain moments of bliss?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">While Robyn&#8217;s crystallised songs of young love and youthful ardour are universally relatable and intimately wrought, even as an artist Robyn has always held her reserve. In songs of longing it was never you she was looking at, and as you took surreptitious glances across the club floor she was alone wrapped up in thoughts about someone else, even if there was always the implicit invitation to dance. By contrast on <em>Honey<\/em> Robyn enters into more of a negotiation with her audience: its songs are unhurried, at times they bear traces of weariness and worry, but they are each suffused with an inviting warmth. Unafraid to mine a long history of dance trends and subcultures, Robyn intuitively melds their disparate pieces into a sturdy yet flexible, seductive and enveloping whole.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&#8216;Missing U&#8217; eases its listeners in through shimmering electropop, vintage Robyn with a psychedelic twist, on a song whose meditation on loss doubles as a message to Robyn&#8217;s fervent fanbase. &#8216;There&#8217;s this empty space you left behind \/ Now you&#8217;re not here with me&#8217;, Robyn sings breathlessly, but &#8216;All the love you gave it still defines me&#8217;, a message of courage and resolve, cuts quietly through the murk. Featuring Zhala, &#8216;Human Being&#8217; inhabits a future of artificial intelligence, over fraying, distending synths and dull thudding drums Robyn still managing to find her sense of rhythm. &#8216;Because It&#8217;s in the Music&#8217; is pure disco, steady bass and Robyn&#8217;s sinewy vocal preventing the confection from becoming sickly sweet.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&#8216;Because It&#8217;s in the Music&#8217; forms a sort of trio with &#8216;Baby Forgive Me&#8217; and &#8216;Send to Robin Immediately&#8217;, the songs seguing into one another and affording different visions of the disco-led late night: &#8216;Baby Forgive Me&#8217;, whose backing vocal follows on from &#8216;Because It&#8217;s in the Music&#8221;s song-within-a-song, sounds like a road song or saloon song in the manner of &#8216;One for My Baby&#8217;, detached but seeking intimacy, a mellow mood with a modern R&amp;B sensibility on which wind chime synths are buttressed between back-and-forth cowbell; while on &#8216;Send to Robin Immediately&#8217; the entreaty &#8216;Baby forgive me&#8217; becomes less persuasive and more direct. Produced by Kindness, &#8216;Send to Robin Immediately&#8217; interpolates Lil Louis&#8217; house classic &#8216;French Kiss&#8217;, amid the thick buzzing atmosphere offering tail-end twinklings of hope.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&#8216;Honey&#8217; is a towering achievement that suffuses the rest of Robyn&#8217;s work, trickling over and through the extent of the album, offering tactile and tensile support. Its synths come in waves, silky and fragrant, Robyn&#8217;s brisk vocal surfing effortlessly over the top. &#8216;Honey&#8217; really encapsulates a newfound softness and generosity to Robyn&#8217;s music, as well as necessitating a new word, a new concept, a new process: something that figures a song which sounds like its foodstuff. &#8216;Between the Lines&#8217; draws overtly from early 90s house music, &#8216;Beach 2k20&#8217; offers a taste of the tropics through discrete parts, and the slick 80s synth-pop of album closer &#8216;Ever Again&#8217; opens out with an upbeat lyric full of optimism and liberty hard-won. &#8216;Never gonna be brokenhearted \/ Ever again \/ I&#8217;m only gonna sing about love \/ Ever again&#8217;, Robyn sings with a pulse, knowing full well that the two are inseparable, and that the pitfalls and passions of love have always been her theme. Love can be fickle, but in the moment of love its unsullied, pristine: love lasts, and art endures, and when Robyn moves the world gasps and ogles at her agility then strains to keep up.&#8217;<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"Mru9GG3ur9U\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Robyn - Honey\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Mru9GG3ur9U?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20369\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-37.png?resize=250%2C41&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"41\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>45. Sharon Van Etten &#8211; <em>Are We There<\/em><\/strong> (2014)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">With a thick tread and an even gait, Sharon Van Etten stomps and sways through the shards and embers of old edifices, steadily rebuilding in her wake. &#8216;Tarifa&#8217; with its slow burn and stretched-out, sunburnt harmonies proved perfectly suited for the Roadhouse and a late-night climax on <em>Twin Peaks<\/em>.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"nyuPWHwZru0\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Sharon Van Etten - Your Love Is Killing Me\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/nyuPWHwZru0?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20363\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-50.png?resize=250%2C35&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"35\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>44. Grimes &#8211; <em>Halfaxa<\/em><\/strong> (2010)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Dark and woody synthscapes, laden but carried on a profusion of spirits, in the run from &#8216;Devon&#8217; through &#8216;Dream Fortress&#8217; to &#8216;World \u2661 Princess&#8217; which serves as the centre of <em>Halfaxa<\/em>, Grimes darts between wan intimacy and wanton menace in a process of artistic self-realisation.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"hy3FPRaeW3Y\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Grimes - Dream Fortress (Official music video)\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/hy3FPRaeW3Y?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20388\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-Fish-2.png?resize=250%2C124&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"124\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>43. Frank Ocean &#8211; <em>channel ORANGE<\/em><\/strong> (2012)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Scuzzy and free mood pieces and torch songs which shine a flickering light over Ocean&#8217;s personal life at the same time as they set classic soul and funk aglow, on <em>channel ORANGE<\/em> impeccable songwriting provides the space for virtuosic solos, notably on &#8216;Pyramids&#8217;, which pulls the stones out of ancient Egypt in the service of a distinctly modern motel mythos.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"-qaO-i5rD9Y\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Pyramids\" width=\"696\" height=\"522\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/-qaO-i5rD9Y?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20364\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-32.png?resize=250%2C36&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"36\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>42. Flying Lotus &#8211; <em>You&#8217;re Dead!<\/em><\/strong> (2014)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Concentrating his unique blend of home-brewed electronics, hip hop, and fused jazz, on <em>You&#8217;re Dead!<\/em> Flying Lotus took us on a rollicking, kaleidoscopic ride through the neon nether.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"2lXD0vv-ds8\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Flying Lotus - Never Catch Me ft. Kendrick Lamar\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/2lXD0vv-ds8?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20392\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-52.png?resize=250%2C34&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"34\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>41. Sufjan Stevens &#8211; <em>Carrie &amp; Lowell<\/em><\/strong> (2015)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Stripped-down and laid bare and all but flayed after the electronic deviation of <em>The Age of Adz<\/em>, on <em>Carrie &amp; Lowell<\/em> with sometimes excruciating intimacy Sufjan Stevens dwells on the death of his mother, plucking out from harrowing loss moments of solace and grace.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"JTeKpWp8Psw\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Sufjan Stevens, &quot;Fourth Of July&quot; (Official Audio)\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/JTeKpWp8Psw?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><!--nextpage--><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>40. Arca &#8211; <em>Arca\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>(2017)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Swooning and soaring with balletic limpidity and operatic heft, on <em>Arca<\/em> Alejandra Ghersi&#8217;s third studio album, the willing artist finds her voice.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"0WKWZ9y-dvU\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Arca - Reverie\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/0WKWZ9y-dvU?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20393\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-53.png?resize=250%2C34&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"34\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>39. Olga Bell &#8211; <em>\u041a\u0440\u0430\u0439 (Krai)<\/em><\/strong> (2014)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/culturedarms-albums-of-the-year-2014\/\">Culturedarm said<\/a>: &#8216;The word &#8216;krai&#8217; &#8211; whose etymological connection to the name &#8216;Ukraine&#8217; remains a matter of nationalistic dispute &#8211; once referred to the frontier regions of the Russian Empire. While Russia&#8217;s nine krais are today administered in much the same way as its oblasts, Olga Bell&#8217;s second long-play calls equally upon a neglected historical past and an unexplored cultural present. Scoring her compositions for cello, harp, electric guitar, bass, pitched drums, and mallet percussion, and pitch-shifting her vocals so that her pieces surge and uncoil in a profusion of voices, Bell draws from the syncopated rhythms of Asian and Russian folk song, foregrounding these in relation to the course of twentieth century avant-garde and electronic music. From the sustained liturgical wail which introduces &#8216;Krasnodar Krai&#8217;, <em>Krai<\/em> is a process of exposition through creation.&#8217;<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"600\" height=\"720\" style=\"position: relative; display: block; width: 600px; height: 720px;\" src=\"\/\/bandcamp.com\/EmbeddedPlayer\/v=2\/track=3820906585\/album=4119708928\/size=large\/bgcol=ffffff\/linkcol=0687f5\/tracklist=false\/\" allowtransparency=\"true\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<div align=\"center\"><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20404\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-63.png?resize=250%2C30&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"30\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>38. Matana Roberts &#8211; <em>Coin Coin Chapter Three: river run thee<\/em><\/strong> (2015)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/culturedarms-albums-of-the-year-2015\/\">Culturedarm said<\/a>: &#8216;After the first two chapters in the <em>Coin Coin<\/em> series saw her leading\u00a0variously-sized bands, on <em>River Run Thee<\/em> Matana Roberts channels her lone voice through layers of historical narrative, the poetry of her grandfather and diaries kept at sea merging with documents of slavery and a recording of Malcolm X as he seeks to deny accusations of racism. Her utterances loop over a background of conversational chatter, field recordings, and old standards, whose melodies twist and twine against wailing saxophone and buzzing electronic drones and beeps. In keeping with her practise of &#8216;panoramic sound quilting&#8217;, the album unspools on a thread, starting and finishing in one piece. In the process Roberts conjures up the old American South, recultivating its landscape for the present.&#8217;<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"0zF-Fuv8T5M\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Matana Roberts | &quot;clothed to the land, worn by the sea&quot;\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/0zF-Fuv8T5M?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20391\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-B7.png?resize=550%2C40&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"550\" height=\"40\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-B7.png?w=550&amp;ssl=1 550w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-B7.png?resize=300%2C22&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-B7.png?resize=370%2C27&amp;ssl=1 370w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>37. Kendrick Lamar &#8211; <em>To Pimp a Butterfly<\/em><\/strong> (2015)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/culturedarms-albums-of-the-year-2015\/\">Culturedarm said<\/a>: &#8216;From the funk groove that underlies &#8216;King Kunta&#8217; and the soulful shuffle of &#8216;Institutionalized&#8217;, to the convulsed delivery on &#8216;u&#8217; and the wobbling synth loop and high-pitched throwbacks of &#8216;Hood Politics&#8217; &#8211; punctuated throughout by dexterous and doleful notes of free jazz &#8211; <em>To Pimp a Butterfly<\/em> exchanges the cinematic narrative\u00a0of <em>Good Kid, M.A.A.D City<\/em> for something like a mural or tapestry, withholding the scene until the weaving of the final revelatory threads. Across dense passages of music Kendrick discusses the twin traps of fame and consumer capitalism, embarking on a journey of self discovery by means of a trip to Africa and a dialogue with Tupac, demanding all the while to understand and convey what it means to be in 2015 and black and alive.&#8217;<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"Z-48u_uWMHY\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Kendrick Lamar - Alright (Official Music Video)\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Z-48u_uWMHY?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20407\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-66.png?resize=250%2C28&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"28\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>36. Mitski &#8211; <em>Puberty 2<\/em><\/strong> (2016)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/culturedarms-albums-of-the-year-2016\/\">Culturedarm said<\/a>: &#8216;Mitski lingers beyond the confines of classification, her immediate palette drawn from the sounds of 60s and 70s New York punk and proto-punk giving way to a modern indie sensibility, with surf and slacker rock and traces of sultry late-night soul and R&amp;B pushing through a wistful electronic filter. She carries the same visceral raw power and do-it-yourself attitude as some of her near contemporaries like Waxahatchee and Frankie Cosmos, yet her voice is mellifluous and sometimes even cosseted by the surrounding noise, forceful and emotional and at moments teetering on the edge of operatic but at the same time always carrying with it a certain restraint.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">On <em>Puberty 2<\/em>, her fourth and lushest album, she explores the transitory nature of happiness, the bubbling fixity of depression, cultural clashes, shame, desire, bodily sundering, and forbidden and forsaken and unrequited love. Against fuzzy feedback and thunder and rain &#8211; both literal and metaphorical &#8211; her vocal shifts show a dynamic mastery of soft-loud. &#8216;Fireworks&#8217; and &#8216;Your Best American Girl&#8217; demonstrate that amid all the fumbling and humiliating and ultimately failed gropes towards validation, beneath the charred surface something solid, valiant, even triumphant remains. &#8216;My Body&#8217;s Made of Crushed Little Stars&#8217; skewers yet validates the grandiosity and pomposity of youth.&#8217;<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"u_hDHm9MD0I\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Mitski - Your Best American Girl (Official Video)\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/u_hDHm9MD0I?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20408\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-67.png?resize=250%2C29&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"29\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>35. Waxahatchee &#8211; <em>American Weekend<\/em><\/strong> (2012)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Perhaps it&#8217;s personal preference for a low-fidelity sound and blurred stylistics, but it sometimes seems that fledgeling artists &#8211; whether they&#8217;re relatively new to recording music, or enjoying newfound freedom as they embark on solo careers &#8211; catch themselves in moments of raw and untethered and idiosyncratic brilliance, encapsulating a flash state of mind and a relationship with the wider world as it shifts and flickers. Take for instance Jolie Holland&#8217;s debut <em>Catalpa<\/em>, or some of the other albums on this list like <em>Love Remains<\/em> by How To Dress Well or <em>Brazil<\/em> by J\u00f3fr\u00ed\u00f0ur \u00c1kad\u00f3ttir.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>American Weekend<\/em> by Waxahatchee marked just such a moment. Katie Crutchfield has continued to churn out minor revelations, concise and forthright albums brimming with emotional resonance, by turns mining indie rock and veering into fully-fledged rock and roll or psychedelic territory. Yet the sheer urgency of <em>American Weekend<\/em> &#8211; a collection of eleven perfectly discrete songs depicting bodies butting up against each other and drifting inevitably apart &#8211; remains hard to beat. Was there a sonically heavier or more emphatic song this decade than &#8216;Luminary Blake&#8217;?<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"frgtpZliigU\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Waxahatchee - Luminary Blake (Official Audio)\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/frgtpZliigU?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20400\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-59.png?resize=250%2C33&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"33\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>34. ANOHNI &#8211; <em>HOPELESSNESS<\/em><\/strong> (2016)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">A crystalline cry of alarm, a love wail in the age of the Anthropocene.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"aUEoic7ro_o\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"ANOHNI: Drone Bomb Me\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/aUEoic7ro_o?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20365\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-33.png?resize=250%2C35&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"35\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>33. Wayne Shorter Quartet &#8211; <em>Without a Net\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>(2013)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Wayne Shorter&#8217;s first album on Blue Note for forty-three years found the saxophonist &#8211; accompanied by John Patitucci on bass, Brian Blade on drums, and Danilo Perez on piano &#8211; as carefree and inventive as ever.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"a7t0d4R9SCM\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Starry Night (Live In Europe\/2011)\" width=\"696\" height=\"522\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/a7t0d4R9SCM?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20412\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-Phones-2.png?resize=250%2C129&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"129\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>32. JFDR &#8211; <em>Brazil<\/em><\/strong> (2017)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/culturedarms-albums-of-the-year-2017\/\">Culturedarm said<\/a>: &#8216;The debut solo album by J\u00f3fr\u00ed\u00f0ur \u00c1kad\u00f3ttir &#8211; already well established in her home of Iceland and beyond thanks to her work as the frontwoman of Samaris and Pascal Pinon &#8211; offers an uncanny juxtaposition of elements. Guitar and piano loops remain tautly elegant even as they are doused in feedback, even as they unfold with a simple and carefree gait. Percussion shifts moment to moment from the granular to the monolithic, sandy and scuzzy and bold and brash. Synths reverberate and then are briefly suspended in air, loping and lulling and eternally washing. The sound palette broken down to its component parts is a fusion of sixties folk and garage rock, some of the droning sensibilities of John Cale-era Velvet Underground, and new age music, yet the invocation here is utterly modern and distinctly fresh.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">In the midst are J\u00f3fr\u00ed\u00f0ur&#8217;s vocals, sometimes swirling in the mix, other times impressing themselves more steadily, a sort of choral spoken word. The lyrics straddle uniquely the personal and the mythological, nowhere better than on the album-opener and standout track &#8216;White Sun&#8217;. A road trip, even a single journey conjures a mini-history of Iceland, natural and mythic, terns and other seabirds, the nighttime sun, and the &#8216;intense wonders&#8217; of the island giving way to a vision of shared destiny, as a breakup song seamlessly attains the communal.&#8217;<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"eikLsHzfpL4\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"JFDR - White Sun\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/eikLsHzfpL4?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20395\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-54.png?resize=250%2C29&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"29\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>31. Jlin &#8211; <em>Black Origami<\/em><\/strong> (2017)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/culturedarms-albums-of-the-year-2017\/\">Culturedarm said<\/a>: &#8216;On <em>Black Origami<\/em> Jlin pushes footwork beyond its usual locales, its roots in Chicago and its destination in face-offs at parties and clubs, on a dynamic path that encompasses world music while treating it as a ripe discovery, her honed electronics terraforming as they go. Coiling, unfurling, intimately concerned with space at the same time as it rushes headlong, there&#8217;s not a branch of music it does not touch, nor a brain centre or nerve ending. On the opener and title track, computer game blips and beeps, roving ambient swipes with an industrial sheen, and rolling rapid-fire drums somehow cohere in a song which enacts the forming of voice, all palate. &#8216;Enigma&#8217; takes a Missy Elliot-esque vocal sample and layers it over skittering tabla.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Glistening wind chimes, a Hindi vocal, and synthetic birdsong provide the access points on the bright and airy &#8216;Kyanite&#8217;: if this is a forest, we&#8217;re constantly emerging through the canopy for a view of life from above the treetops. On &#8216;Holy Child&#8217; with William Basinski, a Baltic folk sample is transformed through operatic swoops, muzzled jazz, and syncopated percussion into something balletic. Anxious polyrhythms characterise &#8216;Nyakinyua Rise&#8217;, the marching drums on &#8216;Hatshepsut&#8217; open triumphantly before being drilled into something more dangerous and defiant, while amid the reverberating beats and slinking shakers of the eastern-infused &#8216;Calcination&#8217;, the short track remains resolutely choral. &#8216;1%&#8217; with Holly Herndon samples <em>Resident Evil<\/em>, more apprehensive than frightened, with a segue just before the midpoint into something lovely and watery. The youthful exuberance of &#8216;Never Created, Never Destroyed&#8217; proves a late highlight.&#8217;<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"cxPBqUh3kSU\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Jlin - Carbon 7 (161)\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/cxPBqUh3kSU?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20399\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-58.png?resize=250%2C30&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"30\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>30. Kanye West &#8211; <em>The Life of Pablo<\/em><\/strong> (2016)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/culturedarms-albums-of-the-year-2016\/\">Culturedarm said<\/a>: &#8216;In retrospect, it is tempting to see everything about <em>The Life of Pablo<\/em> &#8211; from the rambling prelude of GOOD Fridays and title changes, the tentative release of the record amid fashion shows and exclusivity disputes, the fragmentary series of updates which stretched until the addition of &#8216;Saint Pablo&#8217; four months later, to the sprawling nature, cleaving soundscapes, and lyrical content of the music he produced &#8211; as a symbol or sign of Kanye West&#8217;s faltering health and excessively heightened mental state. Overworked as he committed to a one-of-a-kind tour between fashion launches and family crisis, struggling with the demons of fame and his own penchant for causing controversy &#8211; whether for the sake of publicity or in an artistic gesture borne from the need to feel freed from restraint &#8211; in November he was hospitalised and cancelled his remaining tour dates.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">But his relatively brief period of hospitalisation was no more a culmination than the record itself. Some of its songs had a long gestation &#8211; &#8216;Wolves&#8217; a notable example, howling plaintively in public for more than a year &#8211; and the changes wrought by West were always considered, and wound up giving much more than they took. This was an artist in a creative flourish, and in full control of his work. The sprawling nature of the record, as well as its staggered, sometimes swaggering, sometimes self-doubting release, not only reconfigured our sense of the album as something static and singular, but perfectly suited Kanye, who has made the embrace of life&#8217;s conflicts and contrasts his ethos.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">It is a Joycean pursuit, collages with a dizzying array of textures and subtle and sudden tonal shifts, the putting together and repurposing of sacred texts and ephemera, willing portals out of mistakes. <em>The Life of Pablo<\/em> features the best moments and best runs of Kanye&#8217;s career, from the opening choral salvo of &#8216;Ultralight Beam&#8217; to &#8216;Famous&#8217;, or as the placidity of &#8216;Waves&#8217; ripples out through &#8216;FML&#8217;, &#8216;Real Friends&#8217;, and &#8216;Wolves&#8217;, a sequence full of defiance in the face of fear and regret. &#8216;Saint Pablo&#8217; provides the record with a holy apostrophe. Nobody else can take us in the space of seconds from anal bleaching to a state of unfettered and helpless harmonic bliss.&#8217;<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"LsA84bXrBZw\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Kanye West - Wolves (Balmain Campaign)\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/LsA84bXrBZw?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20394\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-70.png?resize=250%2C31&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"31\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>29. Mount Eerie &#8211; <em>Clear Moon<\/em><\/strong> (2012)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&#8216;If I look \/ Or if I don&#8217;t look \/ Clouds are always \/ Passing over&#8217; sings Phil Elverum, the opening lines to &#8216;the Place I Live&#8217;, <em>Clear Moon<\/em>&#8216;s third song. Transposed to the natural world, clear-eyed, compassionate, and full of shifting feeling, Elverum revels in our small continuous moments. <em>Clear Moon<\/em> was the first of two records he released in 2012: both it and the denser, more experimental <em>Ocean Roar<\/em> focused immediately upon his hometown of Anacortes, Washington, and were recorded there in the large room of a converted church. Through the detail of his observations, the scope of his speculations and misgivings, and the subtle tracings of the landscape, <em>Clear Moon<\/em> stretches beyond the provincial to what is truly essential. Accompanied by a rumbling acoustic guitar, steady percussion, and the odd backing vocal which wisps and winds, Elverum&#8217;s voice sustains and encompasses.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"khrAhOrSZQc\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Mount Eerie - &quot;The Place Lives&quot; (Official Music Video)\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/khrAhOrSZQc?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20406\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-65.png?resize=250%2C31&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"31\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>28. Lana Del Rey &#8211; <em>Norman Fucking Rockwell!<\/em><\/strong> (2019)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">We&#8217;ll always have &#8216;Video Games&#8217;, and <em>Honeymoon<\/em> with its standouts &#8216;Art Deco&#8217; and &#8216;High by the Beach&#8217; was glassy and amorphous and wet, but as she skirts the psyche of the present <em>Norman Fucking Rockwell!<\/em> is Lana Del Rey&#8217;s boldest and brashest and most accomplished work yet.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"qolmz4FlnZ0\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Lana Del Rey - Doin&#039; Time\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/qolmz4FlnZ0?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20403\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-62.png?resize=250%2C31&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"31\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>27. Ariel Pink&#8217;s Haunted Graffiti &#8211; <em>Mature Themes<\/em><\/strong> (2012)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Melodious if sometimes manic, motley and idiosyncratically multi-voiced, blending the facile or puerile with the emotionally complex, <em>Mature Themes<\/em> &#8211; following the rhapsodic breakthrough of <em>Before Today<\/em> &#8211; finds the singer navigating the margins of post-Golden Age Hollywood, twirling on the floor of the discotheque but gazing dolorously out to sea, sexed-up but with a sense of yearning, and yes, ultimately more mature.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">The satanism of &#8216;Early Birds of Babylon&#8217; and the spunk of &#8216;Symphony of the Nymph&#8217;, with &#8216;Schnitzel Boogie&#8217; sandwiched in between, provide <em>Mature Themes<\/em> with its strange but undeniably catchy centre. Yet its heart resides in the title song, &#8216;Only in Dreams&#8217;, and &#8216;Baby&#8217;, an obscure cover from Donnie and Joe Emerson&#8217;s 1979 album <em>Dreamin&#8217; Wild<\/em>, which Pink imbues with ethereal soul, funk, and Flamingos-style &#8216;shoo-bops&#8217;. For a line which not only shakes the foundations of truth and expressibility but seems to shy agonisingly away from the very possibility of mutual relations, try &#8216;I\u2019m sorry but it\u2019s true \/ Truth is shameful and vile \/ So I\u2019m not real and I won\u2019t call you \/ And I want to talk about mature things (daily)&#8217;.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"Ta46M5rksBk\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Ariel Pink&#039;s Haunted Graffiti - Only In My Dreams (Official Video)\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Ta46M5rksBk?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20402\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-61.png?resize=250%2C31&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"31\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>26. Bj\u00f6rk &#8211; <em>Vulnicura<\/em><\/strong> (2015)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/culturedarms-albums-of-the-year-2015\/\">Culturedarm said<\/a>: &#8216;Bj\u00f6rk has never been afraid of unravelling herself through song, but especially after the relative outgoingness of\u00a0<em>Volta<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0<em>Biophilia<\/em>, this was a startling and shatteringly poignant act of self-exposition. From the first line <em>Vulnicura<\/em> throws \u2018a juxtapositioning fate\u2019 into sharp relief, recording in descriptive fragments the deterioration of a long-term relationship. Through drawn-out vocals and a soundscape of spare isolation &#8211; the result of Bj\u00f6rk\u2019s string arrangements and throbbing production aided by Arca and, on &#8216;Family&#8217;, The Haxan Cloak &#8211; Bj\u00f6rk enters new territory while at the same time folding back and filtering through the full extent of her career. The feelings and the memories of love and loss linger and return in blazing bursts, but at their core stands the persevering self, which takes its ultimate form in the reverberating close to &#8216;Black Lake&#8217;.&#8217;<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"YGn1pJIpZw8\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"bj\u00f6rk: black lake\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/YGn1pJIpZw8?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20397\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-56.png?resize=250%2C29&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"29\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>25. Vince Staples &#8211; <em>Summertime &#8217;06\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>(2015)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">A coming-of-age whose detours turn out to be shortcuts, shunting us one street along and asking us to view the world all askew, <em>Summertime &#8217;06<\/em> established Vince Staples as one of rap&#8217;s most focused and singular storytellers.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"mb6Jc4juSF8\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Vince Staples - Norf Norf (Explicit) (Official Video)\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/mb6Jc4juSF8?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20413\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-Avocados.png?resize=250%2C122&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"122\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>24. Zola Jesus &#8211; <em>Stridulum II<\/em><\/strong> (2010)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">A chant between two worlds, the ceaseless continuous and the coming apocalypse, the living and the near deceased, as the falling sun and flickering moon of the evening give way to the pristine darkness of the night, the creaking of a doorway and a wanton foot and one chance out, in the end nothing wallops quite like <em>Stridulum<\/em>, with its encircling synths and fabulistic lyrics and insistent industrial percussion and Zola Jesus&#8217; biggest instrument of all, her utterly transfixing voice.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"ah8QWamNXWk\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Zola Jesus &quot;Night&quot; Official Music Video\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ah8QWamNXWk?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20414\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-B8.png?resize=600%2C49&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"49\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-B8.png?w=600&amp;ssl=1 600w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-B8.png?resize=300%2C25&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-B8.png?resize=370%2C30&amp;ssl=1 370w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-B8.png?resize=570%2C47&amp;ssl=1 570w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>23. Kelela &#8211; <em>Take Me Apart<\/em><\/strong> (2017)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/culturedarms-albums-of-the-year-2017\/\">Culturedarm said<\/a>: &#8216;The process and the narrative of <em>Take Me Apart<\/em> &#8211; Kelela&#8217;s studio debut after the acclaimed <em>Cut 4 Me<\/em> mixtape and <em>Hallucinogen<\/em> EP &#8211; begins with &#8216;Frontline&#8217;, which might sound like an apt title for an album opener, but the track itself finds Kelela putting her back foot first. Its late-night synth throbs segue into a tale of breakup and defiance, Kelela&#8217;s voice besieging her about-to-be ex lover from all angles before the click of heels and the shuffle of gravel signal her walking out the door, two bleeps and she&#8217;s in the driver&#8217;s seat, moving off for someplace else. It&#8217;s a conjuring trick she pulls off again and again throughout <em>Take Me Apart<\/em>, her layered, shifting vocals buttressed by pristine synthesizers and whirring percussion, creating senses of place utterly tangible in their dimensions and for their feelings and atmospheres even while the specifics remain abstract.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">The breakup inevitably doesn&#8217;t take, and we pass through chance street encounters and passionate nighttime soirees to the lull and steady acceptance of &#8216;Jupiter&#8217; and &#8216;Better&#8217;, before &#8216;LMK&#8217; &#8211; one of the sharpest and sultriest and club-friendliest tracks of the summer &#8211; provides a reset, strident steps towards new romance. Amid the dripping sensuality of &#8216;S.O.S.&#8217; Kelela takes full command of all the body&#8217;s pleasure centres; a burgeoning, burnishing openness characterises &#8216;Blue Light&#8217;; &#8216;Onanon&#8217; bristles and bubbles with conflict; and after Kelela sings &#8216;All the light you keep brings out the darkness in me&#8217; on &#8216;Turn to Dust&#8217;, screeches by turns mechanistic and animalistic figure vulnerability and give way to elegant perseverance on &#8216;Bluff&#8217;. &#8216;Altedena&#8217; then is no mere sendoff, a message to a loved one which doubles as a message to the self, graceful and pared back and broadening in scope with each shuffle and sigh to encompass patience, striving, and hope.&#8217;<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"ePi5BLJogyA\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Kelela - LMK\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ePi5BLJogyA?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20410\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-69.png?resize=250%2C29&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"29\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>22. Lorde &#8211; <em>Melodrama<\/em><\/strong> (2017)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Cutting-edge with a vintage spirit, Lorde is like a submersible, diving deep into endless house parties and coming up for air with these pulsing and palpitating, preternaturally wise, barely modulated pop anthems, heartfelt and lovelorn but always composed, never hapless. Broadcast this boom, boom, boom, boom: they&#8217;ll come, they&#8217;ll dance to it.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"J0DjcsK_-HY\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Lorde - Perfect Places\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/J0DjcsK_-HY?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20396\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-55.png?resize=250%2C28&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"28\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>21. Laurel Halo &#8211; <em>Quarantine<\/em><\/strong> (2012)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Something lingers in the isolation chamber, pliant but no longer malleable, coiling and squirming and seeking its way through the cracks. On <em>Quarantine<\/em>\u00a0Laurel Halo&#8217;s unfettered vocals push through contaminated landscapes with verdant sprouts.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"zvDPWcy2Rps\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Thaw\" width=\"696\" height=\"522\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/zvDPWcy2Rps?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><!--nextpage--><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>20. Majical Cloudz &#8211; <em>Are You Alone?<\/em><\/strong> (2015)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Oscillating analog synth loops from Matthew Otto provide the live-wire ground for Devon Welsh&#8217;s one-of-a-kind vocals, at once formidable and inviting as he sings about the shifting fabric of relationships between lovers, between friends, and within ourselves. Power dynamics are excruciatingly and often jarringly real, but on <em>Are You Alone?<\/em> Majical Cloudz eschew shock and awe for push and pull, something more gradual and compelling. Car crashes, breakups, loneliness and the searing pain of separation and the self-doubt that can ensue, childhood traumas &#8211; wrapped in Devon&#8217;s arms, nothing ever feels wrong.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"7Rihk7_2BVw\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Majical Cloudz - Downtown (Official Video)\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/7Rihk7_2BVw?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20398\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-57.png?resize=250%2C30&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"30\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>19. Run the Jewels &#8211; <em>Run the Jewels 2<\/em><\/strong> (2014)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Bombastic with a brilliant core, barking loud but scarcely masking their jugular bite, grungy and brawny but sinuous and smart behind the full-frontal assault, on <em>Run the Jewels 2<\/em> the hypostatic union of Killer Mike and El-P achieved the nigh impossible: they bettered <em>Run the Jewels<\/em>, their awesome debut.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"pJJyKlRxyvA\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Run The Jewels - Early (Official Music Video from Run The Jewels 2)\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/pJJyKlRxyvA?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20401\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-60.png?resize=250%2C31&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"31\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>18. Danny Brown &#8211; <em>Atrocity Exhibition<\/em><\/strong> (2016)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/culturedarms-albums-of-the-year-2016\/\">Culturedarm said<\/a>: &#8216;On <em>Atrocity Exhibition<\/em> the most distinctive and offbeat voice in rap doubles down &#8211; and hard &#8211; on feelings of loneliness and paranoia, trapped in a cycle of wanton sex and addiction to cocaine. Featuring credits from Petite Noir, Kendrick Lamar, Ab-Soul, Earl Sweatshirt, and Kelela add brief moments of levity, buoyancy and braggadocio of a type not provided by the production, which is helmed by Paul White, incorporates Evian Christ, Black Milk, and The Alchemist, and abounds instead in jagged punk, loping ghettotech, and menacing shards of noise.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Brown often sounds like a buzzsaw, frenzied and up on his feet atop a hot floor, but he can switch in a second to something deeper and more combative. Sometimes, spitting even the darkest of rhymes with a lilting precision, he could even pass for the robotised future of meditation or self-help.\u00a0<em>Atrocity Exhibition<\/em> more than dabbles in nihilism and yet &#8211; as he makes plain on &#8216;Lost&#8217;, with the line &#8216;Lost in the sauce but a nigga still dipping&#8217;, or on album closer &#8216;Hell for It&#8217; &#8211; Danny Brown is writhing ferociously against the void.&#8217;<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"Xs-Dc3_eiV8\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Danny Brown - Pneumonia [Official Video]\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Xs-Dc3_eiV8?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20416\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-71.png?resize=250%2C30&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"30\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>17. Julia Holter &#8211; <em>Aviary\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>(2018)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/culturedarms-albums-of-the-year-2018\/\">Culturedarm said<\/a>: &#8216;Amid glittering and straining strings, crashing rolls of percussion, plucked bass and buzzing brass, a cacophony of sound, on &#8216;Turn the Light On&#8217;, the opening song from <em>Aviary<\/em>, Julia Holter is stranded again: beaming brightly from the lighthouse, transfixed by memory, enveloped in a love which may be more imagined than real. &#8216;In a high, vast, and empty distance&#8217;, Holter&#8217;s love light is a searing, ululating, reverberating supernova of the stars she would have her suitor eat. &#8216;Turn the Light On&#8217; sets the tone for <em>Aviary<\/em>, an expandable enclosure with the lure of nature which for all its grandiosity and intimacy finds Holter at her most isolated. Its meditations are full of wariness as well as wonder, and its swirling rhapsodies speak of alarm, for even a love call is a call of alarm when it rises and falls suddenly and is keenly felt.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">At eighty-nine minutes, the length of a double album, <em>Aviary<\/em> might seem daunting, but its songs seem to gallop by even when they unfold with a stately march. Pop hooks and full-frontal auditory assaults subsist alongside elegant baroques, still characterised by the hocketing technique where a single melody bounces between two instruments or voices compete and cohere in rapid call-and-response. Each track is full of interest, and joyous in the ways that they play with sound despite the sometimes remote and lovelorn themes. These days people feel easily oppressed by the attention implied by duration, or by acquaintance to cultural forms outside their usual milieus. In this sense the fact that <em>Aviary<\/em> draws its title from a line from an Etel Adnan short story, &#8216;I found myself in an aviary full of shrieking birds&#8217;, already serves as a barrier to entry: at best it&#8217;s something else to add to the reading list. But references no matter how erudite they might seem have always served as portals rather than hurdles on Julia Holter&#8217;s records, and likewise on <em>Aviary<\/em>. It takes no effort whatsoever to immerse yourself in this.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">On &#8216;Chaitius&#8217;, whose soaring choral vocals mimic birdsong before progressing into something approaching new age, medieval strings and naif-like phonetics give way to synthetics and a spoken-word passage delivered in the manner of a self-help manual, with lyrics drawn from the Old Occitan troubadour poet Bernart de Ventadorn. &#8216;Voce Simul&#8217; continues in the same vein, its automaton utterances over cool and sombre jazz eventually becoming tribalistic. Bagpipes sound like foghorns on &#8216;Everyday Is an Emergency&#8217;, before ominous keys and lyrics which once again function like sound poems figure the dim and circling pseudo-continuous. Some of these songs have long gestations, and &#8216;Another Dream&#8217; with its jagged synths, spaciousness, and refrain &#8216;In the sweet melody I can see your face&#8217;, harks back to Holter&#8217;s earlier works <em>Tragedy<\/em> and <em>Ekstasis<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&#8216;I Shall Love 2&#8217; is a piece of blistering, beautifully distilled pop, with propulsive percussion and vocal trills reminiscent of 60s girl groups, a Dantean interlude in the lines &#8216;Why do you squander? \/ Why do you hoard?&#8217;, and whooping and hollering as the song reaches its impassioned climax. &#8216;Underneath the Moon&#8217; offers a slight change of pace with its ramshackle drumming, &#8216;Colligere&#8217; is an ornate evocation of memory, as it slips its bonds or disintegrates, and &#8216;In Gardens&#8217; Muteness&#8217; is an aching, almost tearfully sad song about separation and incommunicability. &#8216;I Would Rather See&#8217; is based on a fragment of Sappho&#8217;s poetry as translated by Anne Carson:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&#8216;I would rather see her lovely step \/ and the motion of light on her face \/ than chariots of Lydians or ranks \/ of footsoldiers in arms&#8217;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">fitting for an artist so concerned with faces in turn or in silhouette, seen only in the brisk blurred moment.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&#8216;Les Jeux to You&#8217; draws its inspiration from medieval memory games, slinkingly exquisite, its abundance of simple present forms forging an impression of intent which becomes wilfulness, swirling and heady. Quivering strings provide the panorama on &#8216;Words I Heard&#8217;, a sweeping song set in war time, present, ancient, or mythic. Droning bagpipes and strings, chomping bass and constant shakers sustain &#8216;I Shall Love 1&#8217;, a reprise figured as the first part, muttering, pleading, coupling, and dependent. And on the muted ceremonial close to <em>Aviary<\/em>, &#8216;Why Sad Song&#8217; &#8211; based on a phonetic transcription of &#8216;Kyema Mimin&#8217; by the Nepalese Buddhist nun Ani Choying Drolma and the jazz guitarist Steve Tibbetts &#8211; Holter inhabits a pensive mournfulness before shimmering out on the cymbal. <em>Aviary<\/em> is lush and exploratory, its sounds exulting in small triumphs, its moods and states lingering.&#8217;<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"k5uwPaCvbhA\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Julia Holter - I Shall Love 2 (Official Video)\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/k5uwPaCvbhA?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20415\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-Car.png?resize=350%2C129&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"129\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-Car.png?w=350&amp;ssl=1 350w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-Car.png?resize=300%2C111&amp;ssl=1 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>16. SZA &#8211; <em>Ctrl<\/em><\/strong> (2017)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/culturedarms-albums-of-the-year-2017\/\">Culturedarm said<\/a>: &#8216;Bleeding at the borders of conventional and alternative R&amp;B, with a sonic palette that incorporates elements of soul, jazz, trap, trip hop, disco, chillwave, indie and more, over laid-back guitars and languid, squelching, sometimes tropical beats, on <em>Ctrl<\/em> SZA takes centre stage. There is a huskiness to her voice which both claims and portends intimacy, which can alternate seamlessly with a snapping conversational high pitch; and yet at moments, usually unexpected, the husk opens and the construct gives as a sudden turn, a repetition, packed syllables or a particularly poetic line spur a vocal soar, ripe and vulnerable, as on album opener and standout track &#8216;Supermodel&#8217;, upon the realisation her adulterous ex was only ever a &#8216;temporary lover&#8217;, or amid the ascending synths of &#8216;Garden&#8217; when she sings &#8216;I need your support&#8217;. Some of the percussion sounds ramshackle, half-formed, almost a warm-up, buttressing loosely and serving to highlight SZA&#8217;s voice, helping towards the album&#8217;s twin airs of casualness and immediacy. Sometimes the beat lags behind SZA, sometimes she lags behind the beat.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&#8216;Prom&#8217; juxtaposes the promise of the future, readily imagined and always almost tangible, with the gropings and limitations of sloppy romance and self-conscious youth. &#8216;The Weekend&#8217; feels like the album&#8217;s emotional centre, even as SZA&#8217;s voice sounds flat, frayed, tired out. When the Azzaro pour Homme fragrance first came out in the late 70s, it advertised itself with the tagline &#8216;For men who love women who love men&#8217;; here on a perfumed and subtly intoxicating song about having to share, SZA inverts the formula, explaining &#8216;My man is my man, is your man, heard it&#8217;s her man too&#8217;, although she thinks she&#8217;s got things covered for the weekend, just about. Encapsulating the rest of <em>Ctrl<\/em>, the song is about asserting agency even where the options are imperfect and self-esteem far from its peak. On &#8216;Broken Clocks&#8217; SZA struggles to free herself from a loop, as the daily grind and hard-won independence still teeter in the face of stale but comforting romance.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>Ctrl<\/em> itself is imperfect: Kendrick Lamar provides an awkward, energy-sapping verse on &#8216;Doves in the Wind&#8217;, and the second half of the record sags just a little before Isaiah Rashad swoops in on &#8216;Pretty Little Birds&#8217; and &#8217;20 Something&#8217; provides an elegiac and forlorn guitar-strummed close, still tinged with a little perseverance and hope. But the atmosphere manages to cohere throughout, and it&#8217;s insatiable and encompassing, SZA both despondent and engaged, cozy and affectionate and aloof. It&#8217;s a bold statement about emotional fragility, late-night and swooning, anxious and frustrated, but patiently and determinedly and artistically wrought.&#8217;<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"Tiixq9rT_J0\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"SZA - Supermodel (Official Video)\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Tiixq9rT_J0?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20419\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-73.png?resize=250%2C30&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"30\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>15. How to Dress Well &#8211; <em>Love Remains<\/em><\/strong> (2010)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Quietly, nervously, almost furtively, <em>Love Remains<\/em> set the tone for so much of the off-kilter and experimental music of the decade, hollowing out the once-familiar sounds of 80s and 90s R&amp;B. Comparisons stretch from the cerebral electro-soul of James Blake, to the more bric-\u00e0-brac and outr\u00e9 approach of Oneohtrix Point Never, to early efforts from The Weeknd and Frank Ocean, to the dank cavernous Prince and Donna Summer covers on Mhysa&#8217;s <em>fantasii<\/em>. There are precursors too in the shapes of <em>The Disintegration Loops<\/em> by William Basinski and <em>The Blue Notebooks<\/em> by Max Richter, which quarried and hoarded and punctuated respectively old records and Franz Kafka notebooks. Yet however far such experiments stretch, what set <em>Love Remains<\/em> apart &#8211; as it helped birth the contentious genre of alternative, bedroom, or PBR&amp;B &#8211; was its thick atmospherics, its tangible, pervasive, acute sense of pain and grief.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">How To Dress Well&#8217;s debut album smothers a beautiful falsetto and slick R&amp;B melodies underneath layers of thick reverb and disquieting percussion. Opening with a line by Julianne Moore from the Todd Haynes film <em>Safe<\/em>, its first five tracks sound like keening turned towards popular song. Tom Krell laments in turn strained relationships, a body and mind broken down, and the past irrevocable and lingering. &#8216;Suicide Dream 2&#8217;, the longest track on the album and one of its standouts, attains a stately sort of anguish, in the middle songs the tempo picks up and gets lost in dance, and after the exuberant release of &#8216;Decisions&#8217;, &#8216;Suicide Dream 1&#8217; finds constancy in the coda. This is an intensely personal and deeply spiritual record, which dwells close to the ground and still ascends as crooked smoke.<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"600\" height=\"720\" style=\"position: relative; display: block; width: 600px; height: 720px;\" src=\"\/\/bandcamp.com\/EmbeddedPlayer\/v=2\/album=3573870938\/size=large\/bgcol=ffffff\/linkcol=0687f5\/tracklist=false\/\" allowtransparency=\"true\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<div align=\"center\"><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20426\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-80.png?resize=250%2C36&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"36\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>14. Joanna Newsom &#8211; <em>Divers<\/em><\/strong> (2015)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/culturedarms-albums-of-the-year-2015\/\">Culturedarm said<\/a>: &#8216;While the referential bravura of &#8216;Sapokanikan&#8217; shaped many interpretations of the album &#8211; allusions and quotations from the Lenape to John Purroy Mitchel, from Percy Bysshe Shelley to Vincent van Gogh, coming together in a tender waltz that relays the foundations of New York City even as we walk &#8211; the broader concerns of <em>Divers<\/em> are universal, meditations on time and space and the nature of art. They cohere here into an act of defiance in the face of onrushing death. Joanna Newsom&#8217;s most singular and circular cycle of songs is at once harrowing and packed with lush instrumentation, featuring her trusty harp and piano alongside trombones, violins, double bass, clarinet, and celesta, the Mellotron, Wurlitzer, and clavichord, Ryan Francesconi&#8217;s bouzouki and baglama, and Judith Linsenberg&#8217;s recorder. <em>Divers<\/em> is a panorama of highways and hillocks, of things jumbled and unclaimed and restored, a cosmopolitan vision, drunk in and then quietly stripped bare.&#8217;<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"48xlgXqQKLA\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Joanna Newsom &quot;Divers&quot; (Official Video)\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/48xlgXqQKLA?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20417\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-83.png?resize=250%2C34&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"34\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>13. Kendrick Lamar &#8211; <em>good kid, m.A.A.d city<\/em><\/strong> (2012)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Perhaps the greatest and most evocative instance of narrative rap came in the form of Kendrick Lamar&#8217;s sophomore album, a close coming-of-age depiction of how an introspective, unusually eloquent, agitated and sometimes angry kid from Compton outhung the crowd to become the compromised king of contemporary hip hop. Compromised because there is real sadness in this: its flashbacks are not without fondness, and they show something of the boastful big dreaming of youth, but it&#8217;s a tragic tale of petty crime, gang violence, drug addiction, dubious relationships, and family and friends dying young, Kendrick dealing steadily with the trauma rather than conquering at every turn.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Kendrick&#8217;s methodical delivery and the abundant detail of his lyrics &#8211; which relay conversations alongside his own fluctuating thoughts, and meticulously draw Compton locales and teenage haunts &#8211; make the person initially a little hard to discern. His voice is nasal and shifts across an unusually high pitch. Yet on repeated listens what come through most of all are the strengths and nuances of his character. &#8216;Swimming Pools (Drank)&#8217;, &#8216;Poetic Justice&#8217;, and &#8216;Bitch, Don&#8217;t Kill My Vibe&#8217; received the play time, but the twin title pieces &#8216;good kid&#8217; and &#8216;m.A.A.d city&#8217; are crucial for rounding out the story, as is &#8216;Sherane a.k.a Master Splinter&#8217;s Daughter&#8217;, whose spectral voices do so much towards setting the tone.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"GF8aaTu2kg0\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Kendrick Lamar - Bitch, Don&#039;t Kill My Vibe (Explicit)\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/GF8aaTu2kg0?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20409\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-68.png?resize=250%2C28&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"28\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>12. Robyn &#8211; <em>Body Talk<\/em><\/strong> (2010)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Intuited at the time but only appreciated on reflection, because back then we were rapt with glitter balls and neon lights, there is the wealth and glory of the popular song, with its youthful ardour and tales of heartache and longing &#8211; and then there is Robyn and <em>Body Talk<\/em>. On and away from the dancefloor she stands alone. A compilation of three mini-albums bearing the same name released across 2010, <em>Body Talk<\/em> is a record of pristine singles speaking across and echoing within one another. Its numerous highs &#8211; &#8216;Dancing on My Own&#8217;, &#8216;Call Your Girlfriend&#8217;, &#8216;Hang with Me&#8217;, &#8216;Love Kills&#8217; &#8211; portray not the full bloom of love, but relationships either tentative or disintegrating. Robyn&#8217;s romantic hold is therefore never firm, but her voice is both plaintive and commanding, as she endures tribulation and heartbreak without denying or fracturing her exquisite sense of self. The depth and wit of her voice is allied to jagged, swirling electropop, producing a potent and enlivening, eminently danceable, shimmering pop masterpiece.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"J294A-R1Cjk\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Robyn - Dancing On My Own\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/J294A-R1Cjk?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20422\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-76.png?resize=250%2C33&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"33\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>11. Chance the Rapper &#8211; <em>Acid Rap<\/em><\/strong> (2013)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Chance&#8217;s metaphors extended and his spiritual side became more overt, but musically and lyrically it&#8217;s hard to beat the ebullience of <em>Acid Rap<\/em>. Chance &#8211; just turned twenty upon the release of the mixtape &#8211; sticks within a fairly close and familiar set of thematic concerns, drug use, gun violence, his musical influences, his time at school. But the density and the detail of his wordplay, the narrative weight so lightly borne by each of these songs, their brash humour and the irrepressibility of his vocals, together make <em>Acid Rap<\/em> uniquely intimate, an insight into the life of a precocious young rapper just as he reaches out into the world.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Nobody managed to make the conflux between public and personal so seamless or so relatable as Chance, switching from the casually observant but emotionally scarred &#8216;Paranoia&#8217;, with its Chicago summertime murder sprees, police brutality, and psychic fear, straight into a fond lament for his childhood and a wish for the &#8216;Cocoa Butter Kisses&#8217; of his mom. Nobody else could conjure such funny and empathetic double entendres as &#8216;Her pussy like me, her heart like &#8216;Fuck it&#8221; from &#8216;Lost&#8217;, a frisson of real sadness amid the neediness and the mundane. On <em>Acid Rap<\/em>, Chance held up a bunch of collaborators and featuring artists, from Nate Fox, Vic Mensa, and Noname to Childish Gambino, Action Bronson, and Ab-Soul. The album is full of personal touches, like Chance&#8217;s audible incredulity as Ab-Soul desires to eat out the potty, or the phone call from his father which kicks off the outro &#8216;Everything&#8217;s Good&#8217;. The production bubbles and flourishes. In this company, you can&#8217;t help but have fun.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"DWZBchgVSvc\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Chance The Rapper - Smoke Again Ft. Ab-Soul (Official Video) #ILLROOTS3\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/DWZBchgVSvc?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20438\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-Shoes.png?resize=400%2C124&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"124\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-Shoes.png?w=400&amp;ssl=1 400w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-Shoes.png?resize=300%2C93&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-Shoes.png?resize=370%2C115&amp;ssl=1 370w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>10. Jolie Holland &#8211; <em>Wine Dark Sea<\/em><\/strong> (2014)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/culturedarms-albums-of-the-year-2014\/\">Culturedarm said<\/a>: &#8216;After the tightly drawn compositions of 2011\u2019s\u00a0<em>Pint of Blood<\/em>,\u00a0<em>Wine Dark Sea<\/em> finds Jolie Holland no less composed, but its pieces rumble, scuzzy and searing, in wave upon wave with her voice cohering at the centre. Songs shift seamlessly between the genres of blues, jazz, folk, and soul. There\u2019s thick feedback played through multiple guitars; reverberating piano; cello which lifts a couple of songs at their most apposite moments, notably in concert with Holland\u2019s violin as it steps and strides forth on \u2018First Sign of Spring\u2019; burly bass; and percussion which swells in time, all coming together to forge richly atmospheric, slowly forming, modulating, moving shapes of noise, the bobbing of cork and broad vessels on the sonar.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Holland sounds like she\u2019s having fun, wrapping her voice around words, but more she sounds supremely confident, which is a confidence hard won by an artist performing at the peak of her powers. Nobody else could deliver a song like \u2018I Thought It Was the Moon\u2019, reminiscent of \u2018Catalpa Waltz\u2019 from her debut, as Jolie patiently navigates the words as she navigates a space, at once carefully recalled and celestially suggestive. She is generous too: just as her interpretation of Townes Van Zandt\u2019s \u2018Rex\u2019s Blues\u2019 marked the culmination of <em>Pint of Blood<\/em>, so here the take on Joe Tex&#8217;s &#8216;The Love You Save&#8217; proves one of <em>Wine Dark Sea<\/em>&#8216;s centrepieces. Clarinet comes to the fore on \u2018All My Love\u2019, a distorted R&amp;B number; echoing, clip-clopping percussion underlies \u2018Out on the Wine Dark Sea\u2019; and if the album has any single highlight, it comes on \u2018Saint Dymphna\u2019, a summoning of the saint, as Jolie holds and delivers, \u2018What do you mean by that? \/ Do you mean to break my heart? \/ Do you mean to break my heart in two?&#8217;.&#8217;<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"4AOJbhgct8w\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Jolie Holland - &quot;Dark Days&quot;\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/4AOJbhgct8w?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20423\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-77.png?resize=250%2C34&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"34\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>9. Bj\u00f6rk &#8211; <em>Utopia<\/em><\/strong> (2017)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/culturedarms-albums-of-the-year-2017\/\">Culturedarm said<\/a>: &#8216;Teeming with life, human, animal, and man-made, organic and wind-up, with birdsong eliding the boundaries between many of the tracks, on <em>Utopia<\/em> Bj\u00f6rk willingly and self-consciously gives herself up to an enveloping paradise. Intended as an about-turn from the &#8216;hell&#8217; of <em>Vulnicura<\/em> with its austere and astringent uncoiling of heartbreak, it features all of the hallmarks of Bj\u00f6rk&#8217;s idiosyncratic percussive production, its volcanic eruptions and spurts, sputtering beats, and gushing electronics, here in especially lush surrounds. Yet the proximity to\u00a0<em>Vulnicura<\/em> and her continuing relationship with Arca &#8211; who arrived at a later stage of the previous project but here worked as Bj\u00f6rk&#8217;s closest collaborator throughout &#8211; still affords some of the same spatial qualities, punctuated deliveries and swirling, throbbing builds.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Sonically &#8216;Batabid&#8217;, a &#8216;Pagan Poetry&#8217; B-side, and &#8216;Ambergris March&#8217;, from the <em>Drawing Restraint 9<\/em> soundtrack, have been cited as touchstones, and the overall ambiance does feel closest to this period, perhaps <em>Med\u00falla<\/em> most of all from Bj\u00f6rk&#8217;s full-lengths. That album eschewed strings for beats and breathy vocals with throaty or choral accompaniments, and while strings do feature on <em>Utopia<\/em>, they&#8217;re in a supportive rather than a structural role, with the focus given over to woodwind sounds and instruments, most of all the flute. At the time of <em>Med\u00falla<\/em>&#8216;s release Bj\u00f6rk described it as a political album, its &#8216;human spiritualism&#8217; offering a counter to the fervid patriotism which she experienced especially in the United States following the 9\/11 attacks. There&#8217;s something of that too in <em>Utopia<\/em>, at once a retreat and an act of forthright defiance.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">After the eye-rubbing, arm stretching, wide awakenings of &#8216;Arisen My Senses&#8217; and &#8216;Blissing Me&#8217; &#8211; songs which recall and reaffirm intimacy through the possibility of intimacy &#8211; &#8216;The Gate&#8217; unfurls more patiently, its barriers pushed steadily ajar allowing beads of affection to pulse through. &#8216;Body Memory&#8217;, a centrepiece and the album&#8217;s longest track, amid squelching percussion and choral backing figures a reunion with nature, which for Bj\u00f6rk is always biological and molecular, breathing in familiar air and tramping with the same bend of arch underfoot. &#8216;Features Creatures&#8217; is about creature comforts, the most fundamental of which is the cherished form of the one we love. And there&#8217;s a nice segue, led by flutes, between &#8216;Body Memory&#8217;, &#8216;Features Creatures&#8217;, and the more club-oriented &#8216;Courtship&#8217;, an ebullient take on forestalled and one-time intercourse.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&#8216;Losss&#8217;, laid on thick with beats by Rabit and Arca, subtly yet tangibly shifts the pace. A turbulent track, it offers not a lament but an act of recognition, based on the realisation that we must fight to redefine ourselves in the face of lost love. The sibilance of the extra &#8216;s&#8217; in the song&#8217;s title here conjures not nature but the spluttering of machinery, firing and clanking and hammering in an effort to rebuild. For its sound palette, its candour and vehemence, &#8216;Losss&#8217; and the following track &#8216;Sue Me&#8217; approach <em>Homogenic<\/em>-era\u00a0&#8216;Pluto&#8217;; with limpid lucidity &#8216;Tabula Rasa&#8217; elaborates on a theme, Bj\u00f6rk striving for a &#8216;Clean plate: Not repeating the fuck-ups of the fathers&#8217;. The closing tracks of <em>Utopia<\/em> are similarly optimistic and egalitarian and watery in the best sense. &#8216;Paradisia&#8217; is a sunny instrumental which brings birdsong and flute to the fore, &#8216;Saint&#8217; a personification of music with overlapping, undulating vocals which pays tribute to music&#8217;s indiscriminatory healing powers, and &#8216;Future Forever&#8217; &#8211; a spare closer interpolating &#8216;All Is Full of Love&#8217; &#8211; requests &#8216;Imagine a future and be in it&#8217;, a message of hope amid twinkling and glistening, diving and surfacing synths.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>Utopia<\/em> features some of Bj\u00f6rk&#8217;s most involved, coiling and charming lyrics, for instance on &#8216;Blissing Me&#8217;, which opens &#8216;All of my mouth was kissing him \/ Now into the air I am missing him&#8217; and later &#8216;The interior of these melodies \/ Is perhaps where we are meant to be \/ Our physical union a fantasy \/ I just fell in love with a song&#8217;. It&#8217;s an album that encompasses, that bends and gives, and that grows with every listener and every listen.&#8217;<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"RIGgn1s3AvI\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"bj\u00f6rk - the gate\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/RIGgn1s3AvI?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20429\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-B9.png?resize=400%2C34&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"34\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-B9.png?w=400&amp;ssl=1 400w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-B9.png?resize=300%2C26&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-B9.png?resize=370%2C31&amp;ssl=1 370w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>8. Fiona Apple &#8211;\u00a0<em>The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Chords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever<\/em><em> Do<\/em><\/strong> (2012)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Eschewing lush orchestration for kitchenware percussion and a looser sort of jazz, <em>The Idler Wheel&#8230;<\/em> is Fiona Apple at her most spare and searingly passionate. You know, then, that you&#8217;re in for a treat, even if the raw power of this record means it&#8217;s not always an easy listen. It coheres in its run-along piano and the crackling intensity of her voice, finding alleyways and rivulets in field recordings and the most mottled shuffles and drums: Apple and the instrumentalist Charley Drayton are listed in the album credits as playing, alongside keys, guitars, harp, marimba, bouzouki, and kora, &#8216;thighs&#8217; and &#8216;truck stomper&#8217;. Apple&#8217;s torrents of poetry are self-conscious and scathingly funny, whether she&#8217;s renouncing the hot piss that comes from the mouth of her entitled ex, or playing the coquette and appealing for some rare shared time with folded fans and playact UFC rookie.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"bIlLq4BqGdg\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Fiona Apple - Every Single Night (Official Video)\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/bIlLq4BqGdg?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20425\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-79.png?resize=250%2C35&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"35\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>7. Joanna Newsom &#8211; <em>Have One on Me<\/em><\/strong> (2010)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">After the elaborate orchestral arrangements of <em>Ys<\/em>, for <em>Have One on Me<\/em> Joanna Newsom packed up her pretty dresses and high-heeled shoes and hit the open road, freewheeling and full of camaraderie, but as with so many road trips of this type she carried plenty of baggage with her, and look at the sights she saw along the way! In fact <em>Have One on Me<\/em> was rooted in the touring schedule for <em>Ys<\/em>, which saw Newsom accompanied by her five-piece band, rearranging those complex songs for live performance alongside the composer and multi-instrumentalist Ryan Francesconi. With Newsom behind the piano as well as her trusty harp, Francesconi providing additional arrangements while playing the kaval, the soprano recorder, and all manner of stringed instruments, and band member Neal Morgan arranging the percussion, the result on <em>Have One on Me<\/em> is a sprawling record over two hours and three discs, looser and livelier than her previous work but no less labyrinthine.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">It&#8217;s an album of bucolic, Edenic clearings and dusty wide vistas, home comforts which begin to spindle and chafe, long highways which soon carry their own slick momentum, old flint stools, worn plush chairs, lavish thrones that just won&#8217;t sit. Whereas <em>Ys<\/em> seemed to capture mythologies in the first act of their telling, <em>Have One on Me<\/em> lies farther downstream, a few links in the chain from the great oral tradition, as Newsom reworks and in the process revitalises fairy tales and epics from as far afield as the Mekong in Southeast Asia, over and across Europe, to the Roanoke and Native America and the semblance of early settlement, to California and the here and now of home.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Songs like the title piece and &#8216;Good Intentions Paving Company&#8217; stretch out, driving and building to quickening climaxes, playing happily alongside the redolent parables &#8216;On a Good Day&#8217; and &#8221;81&#8242;. &#8216;Baby Birch&#8217;, which subjugates the world of nursery rhyme, culminates in violent discord as Newsom depicts life&#8217;s losses and closed doors. And what happens at the end of &#8216;Go Long&#8217;, a thorough reworking of the Bluebeard folktale, a divine act of creation somehow strangely mechanistic, the sprouting of something monstrous and liberating and bejewelled?<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"eBa3QSycc0c\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Joanna Newsom - Good Intentions Paving Company (with lyrics)\" width=\"696\" height=\"522\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/eBa3QSycc0c?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20428\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-82.png?resize=250%2C32&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"32\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>6. Oneohtrix Point Never &#8211; <em>R Plus Seven<\/em><\/strong> (2013)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Daniel Lopatin&#8217;s Warp Records debut took its impetus from constrained modes of aesthetic production and the narrowing confines of modern life, framing a view of America in wide perspective. The title of the record indicates Lopatin&#8217;s interest in Oulipo, a school of writing founded by Raymond Queneau and whose practitioners have included Italo Calvino and Georges Perec, which seeks creativity through the imposition of constraints and adherence to identifiable patterns. One such constraint, referred to as N+7, involves replacing each noun in a text with the noun seven places after it in a dictionary.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Lopatin followed Oulipo&#8217;s strictures on <em>R Plus Seven<\/em> to spread disfigured vocals throughout the record. Chopped choirs chatter and chant disparately or in unison, accompanied by synthesized brass and sax, new-age harmonies, and sounds drawn from nature, which break through to provide moments of respite. There is a sheen to these pieces which beyond the riggings of vaporwave, might recall Fennesz or Opiate&#8217;s <em>Objects for an Ideal Home<\/em>, but Lopatin eschews warmth for fracture and his movements are in constant flux. There is a concerned throb and hum at the centre of tracks, and after the muzzled celebration of &#8216;Americans&#8217;, the tension grows. &#8216;Wait&#8217;, the most clearly enunciated word on the record, comes on &#8216;Problem Areas&#8217;, and the tension reaches a laden and hectic climax on &#8216;Still Life&#8217;, before &#8216;Chrome Country&#8217; unburdens in a choir of children.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"-KygwniRHXc\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Oneohtrix Point Never - Problem Areas\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/-KygwniRHXc?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20418\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-72.png?resize=250%2C29&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"29\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>5. Grouper &#8211; <em>Ruins<\/em><\/strong> (2014)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/culturedarms-albums-of-the-year-2014\/\">Culturedarm said<\/a>: &#8216;Barring the final track &#8216;Made of Air&#8217; &#8211; which was recorded in 2004, and rumbles to life before submerging itself as a coda to the album &#8211; the set of\u00a0songs which comprise <em>Ruins<\/em> were recorded on a portable 4-track during a residency in Portugal in 2011. Liz Harris has depicted a several-mile hike to the beach, undertaken daily during her stay in Aljezur, and has described the resulting songs as &#8216;A nod to that daily walk. Failed structures. Living in the remains of love&#8217;. Frogs whir, on the margins of the remote tribal beat of the opening track &#8216;Made of Metal&#8217;, and again in the midst of &#8216;Lighthouse&#8217;, with its gently looping piano. Thunder and rainfall surge and then peter out on &#8216;Holding&#8217;. Harris&#8217; voice, tender and plaintive, occasionally pulls away from the keys, straining and marvelling in the separation as on &#8216;Call Across Rooms&#8217;, before reconciling and merging wordlessly with the music.&#8217;<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"600\" height=\"720\" style=\"position: relative; display: block; width: 600px; height: 720px;\" src=\"\/\/bandcamp.com\/EmbeddedPlayer\/v=2\/track=1952326553\/album=198056242\/size=large\/bgcol=ffffff\/linkcol=0687f5\/tracklist=false\/\" allowtransparency=\"true\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<div align=\"center\"><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20439\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-Stars.png?resize=300%2C93&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"93\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>4. Frank Ocean &#8211; <em>Blonde<\/em><\/strong> (2016)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/culturedarms-albums-of-the-year-2016\/\">Culturedarm said<\/a>: &#8216;Even amid the hype and buzz around <em>Boys Don&#8217;t Cry<\/em> and potential due dates, in the heat of the summer with a boombox and workbenches, with orchestral grumblings and short industrial spurts, Frank Ocean turned the anticipation over his second studio album into something more resembling a slow burn. <em>Blonde<\/em> is emotionally dense and musically complex and not always riveting, but that&#8217;s part of the point: as he sings on &#8216;White Ferrari&#8217;, one of the tracks of the year, &#8216;Basic takes its toll on me &#8216;ventually yes&#8217;, which is to say that the pressures of life &#8211; especially one lived openly &#8211; and romances unrequited or forestalled can make expression a struggle and each hour more wearying, but our bodies still pump elegantly and our thoughts can remain lucid and free to roam.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">The beats take a backseat on <em>Blonde<\/em> but bubble up to give life its momentum, as Ocean ruminates and allows his mind to wander against languid guitars and brooding synth sounds offset by the chirping and tweeting of birds. There&#8217;s a hazy atmosphere, a lushness to the music especially on the pivotal &#8216;Nights&#8217;, and the crackle of tape recordings which bring us handily back down to earth. Ocean lingers on the threshold of love and reminisces on drug use and his youth, but never gets caught in the mire, casually yet concertedly conciliating and harmonising with the here and now. <em>Blonde<\/em> is a deep dive yet fresh as the morning.&#8217;<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"r4l9bFqgMaQ\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Frank Ocean - Nights\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/r4l9bFqgMaQ?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20424\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-78.png?resize=250%2C33&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"33\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>3. Grimes &#8211; <em>Visions<\/em><\/strong> (2012)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">From the glitch and kick which opens &#8216;Infinite \u2661 Without Fulfillment&#8217;, <em>Visions<\/em> still sounds like the shock of the new, a startup brand and an artistic statement in the name of Claire Boucher&#8217;s cybernetic spiritualism. But as snapping elastic and wispy and ethereal vocals fall in layers over propulsive loops, is she the wave or the vessel?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">On <em>Visions<\/em> Grimes emerged from the murky woods, the dark soundscapes of <em>Geidi Primes<\/em> and <em>Halfaxa<\/em> by turns impish and devilish, through voile curtains into a violet clearing. Still hazy and sheer, some of her genre influences &#8211; covering everything from dream pop to electronic dance music, K-pop, emo, experimental ambient music, and nu metal &#8211; became more discernible. But the construct she leaves in her wake is like nothing else, dreamy but wiry and essential.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Grimes has often been discussed within the framework of the postinternet: a product of the internet&#8217;s profusion of materials, its endless repetition and recontextualisation of images, its viral videos, its fractured texts and snatches of song, its closed social aspect. One of the characteristics of the internet&#8217;s materiality is that it seems to speed up time, and on <em>Visions<\/em> Grimes sits at the controls of time, mostly with her finger on the fast-forward button. Yet for an album jam-packed with so many musical ideas and which abounds and rebounds with so much energy and replenished confidence, <em>Visions<\/em> still feels spacious and tranquil.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Percussion squelches and skitters and refuses to quit, and synths swallow and dive, or circle and soar, spiralling like single-use twisters. After the shattering multiplicity of &#8216;Infinite \u2661 Without Fulfillment&#8217;, &#8216;Genesis&#8217; and &#8216;Symphonia IX (My Wait Is U)&#8217; sound monastic and holy, bookends to a dance-oriented middle. &#8216;Oblivion&#8217;, one of the songs of the decade, still cutting to the quick, cuts imperceptibly through the murk as Grimes sets her sights on her tormentor. It&#8217;s a song about sexual abuse, a valiant attempt to shake loose and turn the tables even while the fear and dread remain palpable. &#8216;Be a Body (\u4f98\u5bc2)&#8217; and &#8216;Nightmusic&#8217; generously repurpose synth-fuelled bubblegum pop, and &#8216;Skin&#8217; unfolds in tender intimacy. Vigorously feminist, thrillingly modern, <em>Visions<\/em> is a wary embrace of life even as the neck hairs stand to attention.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"JtH68PJIQLE\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Grimes - Oblivion\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/JtH68PJIQLE?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20420\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-74.png?resize=250%2C30&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"30\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>2. Julia Holter &#8211; <em>Have You in My Wilderness<\/em><\/strong> (2015)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/culturedarms-albums-of-the-year-2015\/\">Culturedarm said<\/a>: &#8216;A collection of songs without the conceptual underpinnings of her earlier works, on <em>Have You in My Wilderness<\/em> Julia Holter shifts between salty coastal and sultry urban settings, offering listeners a restless embrace. The palette is effortlessly varied, by turns jazzy, country, and baroque, and keys, strings, synths, and vocals swoop and swirl in often startling juxtapositions, but the record is still characterised by a graceful restraint: these are songs that lilt and teeter on the edge of love, balancing finely between the rush of freedom and the rapturous stay of romance. <em>Have You in My Wilderness<\/em> finds Holter at her most endearing and approachable, but there&#8217;s still plenty of daring here, enough to stumble or strip your breath.&#8217;<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"m8_ZWlOKsUQ\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Julia Holter - Silhouette (Official Video)\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/m8_ZWlOKsUQ?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20440\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/AOTD-85.png?resize=250%2C30&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"30\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>1. Kanye West &#8211; <em>Yeezus<\/em><\/strong> (2013)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>Yeezus<\/em> was Kanye West at his most scabrous and experimental yet pointed and compact. It lurches menacingly from the explicit politics of &#8216;Black Skinhead&#8217; and &#8216;New Slaves&#8217; to &#8216;Blood on the Leaves&#8217;, which pilfers the paradigmatic protest song, a bristling and graphic denunciation of lynching, a distillation of blues, soul, and jazz, placing it instead on a plinth of egocentric consumption and heedless romance. In the process Kanye lives in the blistering present, scribbling over histories we might otherwise be doomed to forget. And amid the juxtapositions of high and low, realities and aspirations, values and morals set against the seething human spirit, there&#8217;s plenty of humour here too, whether it&#8217;s his exhilarating verse on &#8216;Hold My Liquor&#8217; with its stream of setups and punchlines, or album-closer &#8216;Bound 2&#8217; which melds willful obnoxiousness with exuberance and grace.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">This is where Kanye really perfected &#8211; by boldness and exaggeration &#8211; his collage-montage technique, doing for early twenty-first century music what the modernists did for twentieth century literature, repurposing a diversity of texts in a way that goes beyond sampling, not only colouring but reconstituting the mood and the flow and the meaning of his songs. The yield is one of stunning resonances and real emotional depth. <em>Yeezus<\/em> features glowing contributions from Chief Keef, Justin Vernon, Frank Ocean, and Charlie Wilson, and incorporates samples stretching from the Hungarian psychedelic rock band Omega to the Jamaican dancehall of Beenie Man to the all-American rockabilly of Brenda Lee. With Kanye West beauty is omnipresent, and never delivered through gritted teeth, but this still feels brilliantly uncompromising and explosively lean. It&#8217;s the album that best captures this fragmented decade.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"BBAtAM7vtgc\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Kanye West - Bound 2\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/BBAtAM7vtgc?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>102. Azealia Banks &#8211; Broke with Expensive Taste\u00a0(2014) From cowboy hats and mermaid tails to Illuminati imagery, Haitian advocacy, and spiritual symbolism around the Yoruba and Vodun, with her tongue sometimes in cheek Azealia Banks professes to have all the answers, and when it comes to music she just might be the one. Beyond the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20522,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4018,3880],"tags":[4711,169,171,505,4037,4542,1236,4512,1451,4038,1699,1716,1735,1754,2336,2712,4495],"class_list":{"0":"post-20460","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-lists","8":"category-music","9":"tag-2010s","10":"tag-albums","11":"tag-albums-of-the-decade","12":"tag-bjork","14":"tag-danny-brown","15":"tag-fiona-apple","16":"tag-frank-ocean","17":"tag-grimes","18":"tag-grouper","19":"tag-joanna-newsom","20":"tag-jolie-holland","21":"tag-julia-holter","22":"tag-kanye-west","23":"tag-oneohtrix-point-never","24":"tag-robyn","25":"tag-sza"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.9 - 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