Best of 2015 Not from 2015

Did you know that people often listen to music during the year that was released in years prior to that very year? Did you know that the very same people who engage in this behaviour have opinions about the music of yesteryear they listened to during this present year? What if someone wrote a "Best of (insert year)" article that featured albums not released in that year? Let's find out!

This is a list of albums that saw heavy rotation in 2015 but were released not in 2015!

Harold Budd - Abandoned Cities and Lovely Thunder

According to Spotify, I listened to Harold Budd more than any other artist in 2015. That's sensible, because I read/study a lot, and I need lots of ambient soundscapes for that. But Budd was a budding superstar for me this year. I hadn't really gotten into the nitty gritty of his expansive oeuvre until this year, and that exploration yielded numerous albums worth discussing. I've picked 1982's Abandoned Cities and 1986's Lovely Thunder because I listened to both repeatedly and both albums highlight unique aspects of Budd's sonic profile. 

Abandoned Cities is a blueprint for dense, complex, and emotive drone. It is haunting, sprawling, unsettling, and comforting. Like any good drone, it isolates its listener while embracing the listener, creating a warm solitude that both fills space entirely and leaves it entirely empty for the listener to fill. It's an aptly named record that consists of two songs that both clock in over twenty minutes. 

Lovely Thunder is more like Budd's other albums. It jumps around a bit, experimenting with ambience and electronics, maintaining a sense of serious song-writing that doesn't get in the way of its intentional formlessness. It also has beautiful song titles. Harold Budd's song titles are poetry. It's hard not to pick the devastating 20-minute closer "Gypsy Violin" as the album's best track. "Ice Floes in Eden" and "Valse Pour Le Fin Du Monde" are just as good. 

Cluster & Eno - Cluster & Eno

All the way from 1977, this was just an album I never knew existed until I saw it on some list on the internet (thanks, Patrick!). "Ho Renomo," the album's first track, was my third-most streamed song on Spotify this year. Part of me wonders what exactly struck me about Cluster & Eno any more than any other Eno project, but it might simply have been its novelty. It was more Eno to listen to, another Eno album I could play on a constant loop while I read or studied or stared at the ceiling or did crossword or sudoku puzzles. The songs are more compressed than on most Eno albums, but they're no less impactful. 

(Young) Jeezy - Let's Get It: Thug Motivation 101

Maybe because it's been ten years since Jeezy's debut album? I don't know, but at some point this year I had to listen to this album, and I've had a hard time stopping. 

"I'm what the streets made me - a product of my environment 

Took what the streets gave me - product in my environment"

Pfft. 

Lustre - Wonder

Kinda like with Budd, this could also say "Lustre - All," though it would be significantly fewer albums. I remember hearing They Awoke the Scent of Winter a few years ago, but I forgot about it until YouTube reminded me. Then I kinda went nuts. There were months of the year where I would listen to at least one of Lustre's albums in total before going to sleep. Usually, I would end up listening to two, playing kenken or sudoku, reluctant to fall asleep but exhausted. Lustre is the only band to successfully supplant Futurama (or Bob's Burgers) as what I will fall asleep to. 

The soft, plunking notes dropping over the deceptively fast guitars and drum machine, supported by a slow-burn synth bloom, create a romantic atmosphere of jubilation and despair. I find Lustre, especially their 2013 Wonder, to be immensely comforting. Has something ever been so bleak and so pleasant at the same time? It's Burzum's "Rundgang..." without the neo-pagan fascism. It's peaceful in its dreariness. 

Joni Mitchell - The Hissing of Summer Lawns

My dad's records just sit in my apartment. I never do much with them. Early in the year, though, I pulled out Court and Spark and listened to it a few times. I then decided that 2015 would be the year that I got really into Joni Mitchell. Her 1975 The Hissing of Summer Lawns was the album that stood out to me more so than any others. It's like a riskier version of Court and Spark, willing to adventure further into jazz/folk hybridity without worrying too much about how smooth it'll all be. 

Kevin Gates - Luca Brasi 2

Kevin Gates can rap. Kevin Gates is a better rapper than most other rappers. Maybe because he so embraces his Southern roots and that it's palpable in both the way he raps and what he raps about. Maybe it's because his persona is more believable than most other rappers', regardless of its veracity. Maybe it's because he never gets tired. I don't know. But I can't stop listening to him.

YouTube is being extra stingy with what it will find for me through blogspot, so no song again. Goddamn technology. 

Moving Mountains - Moving Mountains

This was one of my favourite albums from 2013, and it swung its way back into rotation pretty swiftly in autumn. They've got a split coming out with Prawn. Isn't that just the most amazing thing you've ever heard? Two of emo's best bands on one split? Ah, my heart!

This isn't even the song I wanted to post (fucking YouTube!), but it doesn't matter. It's a beautiful song, and it encapsulates pretty perfectly what this band is. Dunn's plaintive vocals and the band's deliberate, delicate blend of post-rock and emo figuratively turn me to mush. "Burn Pile" and "Eastern Leaves" make me want to explode into tears and confetti. This album will help you process whatever it is you need to process. 

Hammock - Sleepover Series, Vol 2.

Hammock is a third-tier post-rock band. There's no shame in that. You've got your GY!BE and Mogwai and Sigur Ros in Tier One; This Will Destroy You and Silver Mt. Zion are in Tier Two; and then you've got Set Fire to Flames and Hammock and God is an Astronaut somewhere below them, depending on the album. What makes 2014's Sleepover Series, Vol 2. so special is that it's not a post-rock album. This is the mark of the divine in the form of cathartic ambience. It is a study in what the absence of pain might feel like. It is a portrayal of the freedom to breathe as fully as perfect lungs and perfect air would allow. It is anti-gravity made aural. 

This is what it sounds like to have the universe care.

Thou - Algiers

And this is the very real sound of of the universe not caring. Thou is the heaviest and most oppressive doom band to ever maybe exist. Their songs, both sonically and lyrically, demonstrate a hypersensitivity to the struggles of modern life and the political and social mechanisms working to perpetuate all of that pain. Thou lives in the muck and mire of the margins and bellows out of it with the force of a mass extinction event. I think they might be the smartest band in music. 

Algiers is a 2013 compilation of previously released material. Because of the prolific nature of the band and the difficulty in tracking down all their various releases, Thou has very kindly released two compilations, this one and 2014's Ceremonies of Humiliation. I also listened to that album, and Thou's 2014 Heathen, incessantly this year. Algiers, though, deserves a mention because it re-presents the madness of the older full lengths. 

One day Thou will be understood for the unmitigated triumph of revolutionary art that they are. 

Bang on a Can All Stars, Brian Eno - Music for Airports Live (2011)

There are two versions of this album in existence. This version, from 2011, is superior to the original recorded version from 1998. This is another album that I did not know existed until this year. I never imagined hearing a live version of "1/1" that nearly paralleled the absolute perfection of Eno's original 1978 version of the song. I also never imagined hearing any versions of "2/1" or "2/2" that actually improved those songs. I didn't know it was possible. This album is an impossibility made real. It is so good that it almost convinces you it's better than the original Ambient 1: Music for Airports. You listen to it and can almost picture yourself thinking it's better when you know that can never be nor is it objectively true. That's how good this record is. 

YouTube won't let me pull up any of the specific versions from the record, but you can find it on Spotify or on CD (I don't think it ever got a vinyl pressing). Enjoy this version anyway!

There's probably a lot to be learned from this collection of albums. Patterns clearly emerge and my aesthetics and tastes are all in tact. I left out all of the classical music and noise tapes I've been listening to this year. But, if you consider those genres along with the preponderance of ambient music on this list, I'm clearly responding to an emotional or psychical need. A lot of this music finds a way to fill up large amounts of space without traceably occupying it. It's satisfying in that it simultaneously suffocates and expands. It tricks you into making you think you've stopped thinking while all the while you've been thinking and it just hasn't been unpleasant. This kind of music doesn't just create a void or fill a void, it is a void, deafening silence and all. 

Which is what Eno wanted all along.