It’s here. You’ve all wanted to read it. My list of the best albums of 2018. Why does this differ from everyone else’s album list? It’s made up of the albums I bought this year so is utterly skewed by my odd music taste but isn’t everybody’s list?
As always, there is a playlist which has my favourite songs from albums I’ve bought. It’s here. Also, as has become customary, I need to plug my third album that came out this year. You can listen to Outsourcing Efficiency here.
I’m not going to bother telling you how there were loads of great albums this year. There are always loads of great albums. It’s relentless. It is worth mentioning that only four of my top ten albums have any vocals on them. That’s a bit odd.
Here we go. My favourite albums in some sort of reverse order.
Singularity – Jon Hopkins This came out in May this year and is a fantastic sweeping electronic album with lots of nods to 90s/00s techno. It’s exactly the sort of thing I thought I’d stopped listening to many years ago but it seems not.
Heaven and Earth – Kamasi Washington 2017’s – The Epic was an astounding first album. It was as described, epic. Could that be beaten? I’m not sure if this is better, mainly because the sheer scale of it is too enormous to be listened to in one go. Unless you have a spare four hours. Even at four hours long it isn’t just filling up CDs for the sake of it. Kamasi has a vision of jazz that goes back to the large jazz orchestras of the 30s but is very much based in the 21st Century.
All Melody – Nils Frahm More jazz. Well much more on the electronic end of jazz. Loads of synths and piano creating long atmospheric sounds. It’s the best album of the year to have a nap to. That wasn’t quite the complement I intended.
Wonder Trail – Dinosaur At this point it looks like this is my list of jazz and electronica albums of the year. Dinosaur are one of the most gifted bands I’ve ever seen. Laura Jurd plays the most amazing trumpet, frequently whilst playing a synth with the other hand. This album fluctuates between a straight up jazz album with crazy synth bits popping up randomly.
Performance – White Denim Yay, an album with proper songs. White Denim have changed a lot over the last few years. Personnel changes have driven them to sound much more like singer James Petralli’s solo Bop English project. Which is fine with me. Adding in Michael Hunter, playing keyboards, makes bits of this album sound like Hawkwind. If you’re looking for a Texan version of Hawkwind then this could be for you.
Komischer Laufer – The Secret Cosmic Music of the East German Olympic Programme 1972 – 83, Volume 4 I’ve included this less for the album itself and more because despite having been told about the series for years it’s the first time I paid attention. It is claimed that all four of these albums are undiscovered electronic music written to inspire the East German Olympic Team. Yeah, I did believe that for a couple of hours. All the albums are amazing but volume 4 is one of the best.
Remain in Light – Angelique Kidjo This album is a song for song cover of Talking Heads’ Remain in Light. All done as sort of afrobeat. I can’t say I know the original Remain in Light that well, beyond the obvious songs. I love this album. Every song works and sounds very different to the original, yet obviously the same.
Hormone Lemonade – Caverns of Anti-Matter I’m not sure who Caverns of Anti-Matter are. This album is a psyche rock instrumental thing. This is by far the album that I’ve listened to the most this year.
Twenty Two in Blue – Sunflower Bean There isn’t a bad song on this album. There is so much of the 80s in this but obviously made today. I need to stop comparing them to Fleetwood Mac because that is just lazy. They do sound a bit like Fleetwood Mac though. Also the best gig I’ve been to this year. They deserve to be massive and I hope that they get to break through to the sort of places that pay you enough money to make a living in music.
Twin Fantasy – Car Seat Headrest In some ways this is a cop out for my favourite album of the year. Will Toledo originally recorded this in his house and released it in 2011. He was obviously quite attached to it as he went back and had another go at it. Not just sitting down and recording it again but rewriting all of the songs. It’s an amazing album with much deeper and creative songs than you think when it starts. If you buy one album this year, buy this. If you’ve got to December and not bought an album so far I have a feeling that you won’t like this much.
That’s my albums of the year. Much less varied than normal but I’m getting old.
