2018 has been another incredible year for new music. It’s amazing that despite the well documented travails of the music industry, people stick with it, stay true to their art despite the inevitable expenses and organisational headaches of being a music act on the modern world, and producing amazing music year after year. Our hats go off to all of you.
Before we get in to the listy bit that you’re really interested in, I want to give a shoutout to a couple of labels who, amomgst all of the incredible music this year have stood out, for me anyway, with their incredible consistency. The first is Fuzzclub Records, who have smashed it out of the park this year with bands like Throw Down Bones, Medicine Boy, The Oscillation and many more.
The second is the ever wonderful Rocket Recordings, who have not only released immense records by the likes of Gnod, Pigsx7, MIEN, Shit & Shine to name a few but also celebrated an incredible 20 years at the coalface of unearthing some of the mightiest psych acts around with a 3 day showcase at The Garage in London. It was an astonishing weekend of music but the finishing combo of Anthroprophh > Teeth Of The Sea > Gnod was as good a 2 or so of hours of live music as I have ever witnessed.
For the first time in a decade we have decided against doing a writers’s poll for the end of the year. list. There are a number of reasons for this. Some prosaic; not having the time and resource for the huge amount of effort that it entails, but also increasingly over the last few years we’ve we’ve struggled with the basic futility of trying to arbitrarily rate records that come from all across the musical spectrum. I mean, how do you decide that a Black Metal record is better or worse that an Acid Techno album?
However, we seem to be congenitally unable to not make some sort of list for you, so instead this year I, as your humble editor, have picked 25 records that I have enjoyed over the last 12 months and I hope you might enjoy them too.
I’ve largely tried to avoid actually ranking them but there is one ‘number one’, the extraordinary second album by Throw Down Bones which is as close to the music in my head as I have ever heard laid down on tape, and then the rest are all joint second, with probably another 25 records that are joint 26th and maybe would have made the cut on any other day!
Also, a few of our writers have collated their own lists on this Google Doc if this doesn’t meet all of your listastic needs.
Please dig in and enjoy. Have a very Merry and Musical Christmas and New Year from all on the E&D team
