Our Favorite Albums, 2022: Individual Contributor Lists & Reflections, Part 1
Tone Glow writers reflect on 2022 through albums, songs, and more
Each of our writers was asked to submit a list of their 10 favorite albums from this year. They also had the option to list their 10 favorite songs and to create another list of any 10 things of their choosing. Below, find reflections and individual lists from our contributors, listed in alphabetical order by last name.
Vanessa Ague
As I waited for my partner to get more ketchup from inside the Love’s truck stop Wendy’s, I looked up at the station’s blinking fluorescent yellow sign and took a bite of my chicken sandwich. We were parked somewhere along the endless I-80 stretch through Pennsylvania; the sky was blue-gray and the sun barely peeked out from above the rolling hills that surrounded us. It was just me, the sandwich, the car, and the unknown. He then came out, ketchup containers in hand, and took the seat next to me. We were quiet, just eating, until my heart welled up with poignancy—I was somewhere and nowhere all at once, certain and uncertain. I was living in the “in-between,” the transient Love’s truck stop you pull into while you’re on a road from one place to the next.
I glanced over at him and said, “I think we’ll look back on times like these fondly someday.”
Top 10 Albums of 2022 (alphabetical and unranked)
Mabe Fratti - Se ve desde aquí (Unheard of Hope)
India Gailey - to you through (Redshift Records)
Joy Guidry - Radical Acceptance (Whited Sepulchre)
Horse Lords - Comradely Objects (RVNG Intl.)
Kali Malone - Living Torch (Portraits GRM)
Tomáš Niesner - Bečvou (Warm Winters Ltd)
Bill Orcutt - Music for Four Guitars (Palilalia)
Éliane Radigue & Frédéric Blondy - Occam XXV (Organ Reframed)
String Orchestra of Brooklyn, Anne Leilehua Lanzilotti, and Scott Wollschleger - enfolding (New Focus Recordings)
Kalia Vandever - Regrowth (New Amsterdam Records)
My favorite thing I baked in 2022
A funfetti cake from scratch, which gets better every time I do it! Here’s the recipe I used.
H.D. Angel
2022 is the first year I felt like I had a sense of taste. I’ve always been “into music,” always inhaling albums and Content to assemble something like taste and feel like I accomplished a goal, but I don’t think I actually had it till sometime this year. We’re in a difficult time for taste, with every kind of music obsessive being rewarded for making siloed appeals to whatever ineffectual points of view people already expect from them. Even in the two months since I joined Tone Glow, I've gotten much better at directly evaluating music, sizing up what’s happening creatively and whether it succeeds, even when I don’t have a ton of contextual dot-connecting to substitute for a point. Pop(ular) music and experimental music require a similar critical multitool. With both, you have to be able to point out what’s new, what works and why, and you’re often flying semi-blind, because new things are hard to recognize, and old things are good distractions. Taste is fun because it gives you a vantage point to collect and interpret all this stuff as it moves.
Much of the music I liked this year pierced through (and sometimes subverted) received wisdom and formulas to speak to something true, current, or undeniable. It was interesting, but also actually good, in ways that might excite lots of different listeners. And it was often cool as hell, but candid, not the kind of detached cool that engages people who don’t care about anything. I didn’t obsess over a ton of Albums this year, because lots of the styles I find compelling in this way, especially those borne out of more contemporary approaches to distribution, work best in other formats. So, in the TG spirit, a good chunk of my full-length nerd time was spent on album-oriented “experimental music,” which can resist both completionist and background-life listening by inviting close, repeated attention. But I hopefully haven’t been brainwashed yet. Across genre, the stuff I like that’s academic can still make me laugh, and the stuff I like that seems straightforward can still make me wonder. I like having to come up with new “it’s this… but that” constructions to describe things. I love to learn about art, and I love especially when the art wants me to learn about it, asking me to meet it on uncharted terms.
List-making is also an art, kinda, and for me it’s one that demands a lot of deliberation: actually making an assertive statement about a bunch of music instead of just ambiently chattering *around* it? Scary! I’m planning on blogging up a bigger, personal songs‐and-albums list in the first week of January, after more thoroughly re-examining all the things that caught my attention in 2022. But, unfortunately, deadlines are deadlines, and I was already late for the one for this list. There are lots of things to consider with a ballot format like this: comprehensiveness, “honesty” (if that exists), what you think other people are gonna vote for, what you spent time sharing with other people throughout the year, the publication’s “voice” and audience, the aesthetic effects of different choices in the same space, the broader telegraphed priorities that tie those choices together, etc. The albums I picked here most likely won’t shake out as my ten exact favorites of the year. But, for various reasons, I'm fascinated by them all. I hope my list is a useful, if somewhat abstracted, sampler of what caught my ears in 2022, and a coherent cross-section of my brain amid the competing pressures of my own interests, my very self-conscious drive to say something interesting, and the decisive impulse that you ultimately always need to release anything into the world, ever. Also I hope I'm not trying too hard lol.
Top 10 Albums of 2022
Brent Faiyaz - WASTELAND (Lost Kids)
Kehlani - Blue Water Road (Atlantic)
Alvin Curran - Drumming Up Trouble (Black Truffle)
CEO Trayle - HH5 (Do What You Love/10k Projects)
Lauren Tosswill - “1, 2” (Hard Return)
DBN Gogo - Whats Real (Zikode/Universal)
brakence - hypochondriac (Columbia)
SteezTheProducer - '22 Album (self-released)
Laura Cocks - Field Anatomies (self-released)
DJ TOBZY IMOLE GIWA - Cruise Beat Album (Nyege Nyege)
Art about art that I loved in 2022
Satsuki Yoshino - Barakamon (anime adaptation) (Kinema Citrus, 2014)
Carol Cooper - Pop Culture Considered As An Uphill Bicycle Race: Selected Critical Essays 1979-2001 (Nega Fulo, 2006)
Infinite DJ mixes (Internet/society/dreams, all time)
Megan Milks - Tori Amos Bootleg Webring (Instar Books, 2021)
elite gymnastics - snow flakes 2022 (Bandcamp, 2022)
Station Eleven (HBO, 2021)
María Barrios
My personal reflection in the shape of some things, events, works, etc. that made my year, in no particular order:
Cubicubi the hedgehog, Crimes of the Future by David Cronenberg, espresso, choreographies by Michael Clark set to music by The Fall, Lucrecia Dalt’s ¡Ay!, drones by New England’s duo Tongue Depressor, miniature tales (zvk’s) by A.L Snijders, the occasional cigarette, the poetry of John Ashbery, ramen at Menya-Gumi, the horrible noise and impeccable cleaning of the Oreck XL commercial vacuum cleaner, Norma Tanega’s I’m The Sky: Studio and Demo Recordings, 1964-1971, cebiche at La Mar, lemongrass pho at Pho Viet, an endless stream of pictures and videos of Persian cats, a confusing screening of Jean-Luc Godard’s King Lear at the Roxy Hotel in NY, season 2 of Bridgerton, paper carbone by Ormaie, biking the Farmington Canal Greenway, taking long walks in the morning, recording with a new project, laughing during Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness, my lovely partner’s company and affection, Argentina winning the World Cup.
10 Albums I Loved From 2022 (Unranked)
Silvana Estrada - Marchita (Glassnote Records)
Cate Le Bon - Pompeii (Mexican Summer)
Meridian Brothers - Meridian Brothers y El Grupo Renacimiento (Ansonia Records)
Rosalía - Motomami (Columbia Records)
Jeff Parker - Forfolks (International Anthem)
Omertà - Collection Particulère (Zamzam Records)
Jim O'Rourke, Eiko Ishibashi, Joe Talia - Patrick (Self-released)
Various Artists - Saturno 2000 - La Rebajada de Los Sonideros 1962-1983 (Analog Africa)
NewJeans - New Jeans (ADOR)
Aldous Harding - Warm Chris (4AD)
Matthew Blackwell
This year I have rediscovered the best way to experience music: the discography deep-dive. A new computer and a VPN means that I have been able to download mountains of music: Autechre’s complete output in flac can be had in minutes with nary a dent in the hard drive. Sustained time with single artists has allowed me to inhabit their world and absorb their history, rare pleasures in the ultra-dispersed ecosystem of the Spotify playlist and YouTube algorithm. Time takes on a slower pace as well, with more memorable musical moments throughout the year. In March, for example, I was fully subsumed by Sun Ra’s intergalactic visions, while the fall saw me tracking Daniel Bachman’s artistic maturity across a decade of his works. The fear, of course, is that this is time spent away from the constant churn of new releases that, as a music critic, I have some responsibility to investigate. Far from keeping me out of the loop, though, I find I approach new music with more patience and a more practiced ear, more keen to understand each new release as a step in the long journey of an artist’s career outside of the crowded context of the contemporary press cycle.
Top 10 Albums of 2022
Daniel Bachman - Almanac Behind (Three Lobed)
Motte - Cold + Liquid (Ba Da Bing)
Moin - Paste (AD 93)
Ishmael Reed - The Hands of Grace (Reading Group)
Richard Dawson - The Ruby Cord (Domino)
Goncalo F. Cardoso - Impressoes de Outra Ilha (Borneo) (Discrepant)
Ryoji Ikeda - Ultratronics (Noton)
Wojciech Rusin - Syphon (AD 93)
Manja Ristić - Him, fast sleeping, soon he found In labyrinth of many a round, self-rolled (Mappa)
Dewa Alit & Gamelan Salukat - Chasing the Phantom (Black Truffle)
Corrigan Blanchfield
Music & ice - cream. My top 2 favs of the Planet. Woman and Women are 3. Rest is 4th. And a fifth for every time My Father blessed me with Miracles and forgiveness. Amen.
—iam seperate (2 years ago)
Top 10 Albums of 2022
454 - Fast Trax 3 (self-released)
DJ R3LL & DJ Kiff - Cuff Yo Chick (2 B Real)
Duwap Kaine - A Doggs Influence (self-relesaed)
HiTech - Hitech (FXHE)
Kabza De Small - KOA II Part 1 (Piano Hub)
NBA YoungBoy - 3800 Degrees (Atlantic)
Romance - Once Upon A Time (Ecstatic)
TisaKorean - 1st Round Pick (self-released)
Tomu DJ - Half Moon Bay (Franchise)
Various Artists - Pause for the Cause: London Rave Adverts 1991-1996, Vol. 1 (Death Is Not the End)
Top 10 Songs of 2022
Cash Cobain & Chow Lee - “Vacant” (Neva Slippin/Ferrari Fiction)
Diddy ft. Bryson Tiller - “Gotta Move On” (Love Records)
DJ Gudog - BEAT MÁGICO QUE MEXE COM A SUA MENTE (self-released)
ektisy - “on me” (self-relesaed)
Father - “Flim Flam” (Awful Entertainment)
Hitkidd, Gloss Up, K Carbon, Slimeroni, Aleza - “Shabooya” (Blac Noize!)
Kevin Gates - “Super General (Freestyle)” (Atlantic)
Lucy - “New Beach Song” (self-relesaed)
Nick León ft. Dj Babatr - “Xtasis” (Tra Tra Trax)
SuperiorJay - “GOOD N PLENTY” (self-released)
Daniel Bromfield
Some of this music’s merits for inclusion have more to do with their niche in my life than whether or not I necessarily think they’re “better” than a lot of other albums that came out this year. Florist’s Florist is what I listen to when I hike in San Bruno Mountain, simple as that; if it were just the perfectly fine Emily Sprague songs it probably wouldn’t last in my head long, but the instrumental interludes are some of the most beautiful music I’ve heard all year, and luckily they make up about half the album and feel just like the sun setting over Guadalupe Canyon Parkway. As for Antidawn and Streetlands, I think the concept of “ambient Burial” can (and hopefully will) be developed a lot more than what we hear on those EPs, which are too blocky and oblong to disappear into the realm of pure mist that Burial conjures at his best—but “ambient Burial” also hits a perfect sweet spot in terms of my own personal musical tastes, and I expect to listen to it on the bus at night until he improves on it enough to knock it it out of my rotation.
Dummy Corporation also scratches my itch for endless foggy cityscape music, though I don’t always listen to the other three more club-centric tracks. I think I’m suffering from whatever kind of brain worm makes people gravitate towards neutral and artless shit like lo-fi hip-hop or binaural beats: I listen mostly to instrumental music, I rarely attempt a seventy-minute statement of purpose, and the contemporary rock albums I generally latch onto sound like folk or country. This has been a trend since the beginning of COVID, when the contexts in which I would usually listen to something joyful and funky and energized have disappeared. I suspect, or at least hope, I will spend the 2020s in the slow process of getting out of my own head.
Favorite Albums of 2022 (As of Now)
Daryl Groetsch - 2022 Bandcamp releases (self-released)
Big Thief - Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You (4AD)
More Eaze - Strawberry Season (Leaving)
Biosphere - Shortwave Memories (Biophon)
Shinichi Atobe - Love of Plastic (DDS)
Florist - Florist (Double Double Whammy)
Actress - Dummy Corporation (Ninja Tune)
The Soft Pink Truth - Is It Going To Get Any Deeper Than This? (Thrill Jockey)
Burial - Antidawn / Streetlands (Hyperdub)
Daphni - Cherry (Jiaolong)
Favorite Albums of 2021 (A Year Later)
Joshua Chuquimia Crampton - 4 (Puro Fantasia)
More Eaze - Yearn (Lillerne Tapes)
Hendrik Weber - 429 Hz Formen Von Stille (Modern Recordings)
Pendant - To All Sides They Will Stretch Out Their Hands (West Mineral Ltd.)
Jeff Parker - Forfolks (International Anthem)
Lana Del Rey - Chemtrails Over The Country Club (Interscope/Polydor)
Bitchin Bajas - Switched On Ra (Drag City)
Andy Guthrie - Gyropedie (Students of Decay)
Seven Davis, Jr. - I See The Future (Secret Angels)
Claire Rousay & Patrick Shiroishi - Now Am Found (Mended Dreams)
Dominic Coles
I first read Feldman’s Give My Regards to Eighth Street as a college freshman. At the time, it didn’t quite stick. Feldman’s idiosyncratic language for music, developed through his deep engagement with the visual arts, went over my head. I didn’t understand why he spent so much time writing about painting, when I thought he should be writing about music! On my latest reading these past few months, I wondered where this book had been all my life. These writings offered a reframing of the post-Cagean musical moment, for me best summed up in Feldman’s essay, “The Anxiety of Art.” He writes:
Offhand, I think of Schubert’s Fantasie in F Minor. The weight of the melody here is such that you can’t place where it is, or what it’s coming from. There are not many experiences of this kind in music, but a perfect example of what I mean can be found in Rembrandt’s self-portrait in the Frick. Not only is it impossible for us to comprehend how this painting was made; we cannot even fix where it exists in relation to our vision. Music is not painting, but it can learn from this more perceptive temperament that waits and observes the inherent mystery of its materials, as opposed to the composer’s vested interest in his craft. Since music has never had a Rembrandt, we have remained nothing more than musicians.[1]
After Cage’s discovery of the auditor, something crystallized in the focus and priorities of the musical avant-garde. Musical works would choreograph the listener’s perception and encounter with the specific sounding materials of a piece. The act of composing became one of composing the listening act, of attending to how the listener heard — this was, in fact, a moment of perceptive music making. I am reminded of Amacher’s demand for a music that did more than just “arrange other men’s tunes,” a music that leaves this middle register to instead focus on how music is perceived; a music that takes seriously, as Amacher so often wrote, “WAYS OF HEARING.”
With the codification of the experimental music industry[2] — the creation of venues, record labels, presses, publications, and distribution networks dedicated to “experimental” music — the focus on listening shifted again, away from the auditor and towards the surface character of the materials. Perhaps this burgeoning industry believed that an appeal to the affective strangeness of the materials was what would allow for its streamlined marketing and dissemination? In the process, these works were mistranslated — the forms of listening integral to the conception of the work were abstracted into markers of style indicating the newly formed boundaries of “experimental” as genre. I don’t entirely understand this transformation in all its complexity, but it gave way to a professionalized, distribution-ready music that did not attempt a serious engagement with its material (that kind of engagement would lead us back to the listener). Rather, these industry conditions created a music(ian) obsessed with style, with the “vibe” of a work; one that is entirely focused on the surface quality of sound and unwilling to go deeper. It is how we have arrived at our current predicament: experimental music has become anything that includes a sound or form that people feel is somehow strange! What does it even mean for a sound or form to be strange? The pitfalls of rigid definitions and boundaries are all too clear — but increasingly, I wish we could muster the courage to say what we actually mean by “experimental music.” Its purpose has been and should be more than a haphazard rendering of “strangeness.”
Returning to this elided historical moment, and in particular thinking through it in relation to Amacher: imagine a music that attends to the listener and the listening act — how sound is perceived and experienced. Imagine a music that takes seriously the distinct topographies of our materials - that touches them with respect and attention. Imagine a music that pursues the possibility of transformation. Imagine a music that isn’t so repressed, alienated, and boring. Thankfully, this year has seen many artists doing just this imagining — all too often at the margins of the experimental music industry. Despite this, they are creating works that start with Amacher’s suggestion — that is, they start with an attention to WAYS OF HEARING. Below are just some of those artists and their releases, in alphabetical order, that kept me hopeful for an experimental music.
[1] Give My Regards to Eighth Street, Pg. 26.
[2] I hope that someday an actual historian attempts to make tangible this complex story.
Top 10 Albums of 2022
Agriculture - The Circle Chant (self-released)
Ernst Karel & Veronika Kusumaryati - Expedition Content (Cinema Guild)
Jana Rush - Dark Humor (Planet Mu)
Lauren Tosswill - “1, 2” (Hard Return)
Michael Speers - Green Spot Nectar of the Gods (Otoroku)
Pat Thomas & XT, Will Holder - “Akisakila” / Attitudes of Preparation (Mountains, Oceans, Trees) (Edition Gamut)
Ryu Hankil - ⑥ (dingn\dents)
Sachiko M - I’m Here - Short Stay - 25 min (self-released)
Sean Meehan - Magazine (Sacred Realism)
Toshiya Tsunoda - Landscape and Voice (Black Truffle)
Mark Cutler
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Top 10 Albums of 2022
Staubitz and Waterhouse - Common Metals (Music Is The Worst)
Pan Daijing - Tissues (PAN)
SProt - bound for glory (breakdance the dawn)
Jack Sheen - Sub (SN Variations)
Jana Rush - Dark Humor (Planet Mu)
Myra Melford - For the Love of Fire and Water (RogueArt)
Sunik Kim - Raid on the White Tiger Regiment (Notice Recordings)
Dan Gilmore - Dutched at Swan Cleaners (Regional Bears)
xiang - Field n.n (self-released)
Debit - The Long Count (Modern Love)
Hannah Edgar
I don’t really want to dwell on the headspace I was in this time last year. I’d just gotten a full-time job in the field in which I was pursuing a professional degree—a good thing, on paper. But I wasn’t finished with said degree yet, and my partner had just begun to grapple with a chronic illness that left her bedridden most of the day. I also thought, foolishly, that I could keep up freelancing at the same pace I had been, on top of everything else.
Unsurprisingly, it didn’t end well. My mental health bottomed out; I wasn’t able to be there for my partner when she needed me most. Even I had to admit I’d reached my limit. I left the job after just four months.
The whole episode forced me to contend with failure—how I defined it, and whether my debilitating fear of it was preventing me from expanding my horizons. Leaving a job so soon, in the field I hoped to work in full-time someday, seemed like nothing less than that: a personal failure.
I spent the years just after college and all of lockdown interrogating my personal yardsticks for “success” and “ambition.” This past year was dedicated to disentangling their inverse. For the first time in years, I’m gleefully throwing myself into hobbies (gasp! hobbies!) that I’m not just OK at but actively suck at. I got that degree, even if I’m tumbling across the finish line. I’ve apologized more. I’m finally on an antidepressant that’s a good fit (Little Miss Sertraline). I’ve taken accountability in ways I probably wouldn’t have in my early 20s. I no longer care about being cool. In truth, I don’t think I ever did. Why start now?
I don’t seek out failure. But when it inevitably comes knocking, I greet it like an old friend, one that gets a little too sloppy-drunk and leaves the toilet seat up and overstays its welcome. But I’ll tell you something: that Failure and I? We have a hell of a time together.
Top 10 Albums of 2022 (listed by release order)
Iannis Xenakis: electroacoustic works (Karlrecords)
Laura Cocks - Field Anatomies (Carrier)
Mike Allemana - Vonology (ears&eyes)
Shilpa Ray - Portrait of a Lady (Northern Spy)
Julia Reidy - World In World (Black Truffle)
anteloper - Pink Dolphins (International Anthem)
Baum Sae - Communication (Sori-E Naite Music Company)
Bitchin Bajas - Bajascillators (Drag City)
Daniela Lalita - Trecerotres (Young)
Nok Cultural Ensemble - Njhyi (SA)
Top 10 Musical Memories of 2022
The best 12 hours of my year, in which I went to seven shows at three venues and got soaked to the bone in the rain
Marshall Allen ripping so hard at the Chicago Arkestra show his dentures flew into the audience
Watching my partner pick up cello again for the first time in seven years… then later realizing her teacher is Helen Money, teaching under her legal name
Catching Sons of Kemet not once but twice in Chicago, before they disbanded earlier this year
Learning how to play klezmer music with my synagogue band and falling flat on my face
Playing with my community orchestra for the first time since the pandemic
Wearing propeller hats with a buddy to a black midi show, just cuz, then 5’3” me getting protectively cocooned by 6’4” him when a mosh pit cratered around us
An onstage act of kindness by Kirill Petrenko, director of the Berlin Philharmonic, so moving I set aside my suspicion of conductors… briefly
Watching Sudan Archives get her flowers this year, many times over
A touching exchange with Philip Glass at Chicago’s Symphony Center which turned around a very shitty day
Sam Goldner
This year I turned 30, lost my cat, got two new ones, started running again, road tripped through Ireland, and made peace with enjoying independent rock music. I wrote 24 album reviews for Pitchfork (none of them actually indie rock, don’t worry), and felt better about my own writing than I ever have before. Despite all the cynicism surrounding the world of music and those who write about it, I still find more and more to get excited about every year, and firmly believe that people will find a way to dissect and discuss music for as long as it exists. Whether it actually does is another matter.
Top 10 Albums of 2022
Big Thief - Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You (4AD)
Alex G - God Save the Animals (Domino)
Bladee & Ecco2k - Crest (YEAR0001)
Lambchop - The Bible (Merge)
Fennec - A Couple of Good Days (self-released)
Sofie Birch & Antonina Nowacka - Languoria (Mondoj)
Duwap Kaine - A Dogg’s Influence (self-released)
Florist - Florist (Double Double Whammy)
Grace Ives - Janky Star (True Panther/Harvest)
Isabella Lovestory - Amor Hardcore (self-released)
Top 12 Shows I Went To (Listed Chronologically)
Machine Girl w/ 1-800-PAIN, Wacko & Johnnascus @ The Echoplex
First show of the year for me, and first time seeing Machine Girl after missing them in L.A. for five straight years in a row. Somehow even more psychotically evil than I thought it was going to be.
System of a Down & Korn @ Banc of California Stadium
Big shoutout to my man Armando Maese for hooking me up with free tickets to this the night before the show. We sat next to a nu-metal stoner dad named Happy who invited us back to his car after the concert to do bong rips out a neon green silicone skull.
BabyTron w/ ShittyBoyz @ The Echo
Drain Gang @ The Globe Theater
This show was just such a moment—the flashing magenta lights that came on during “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” took me to another dimension. Another good part was when Bladee, Ecco2k, and Thaiboy Digital all put their arms around each other and started coyly swaying side-to-side while they sang “I love to play the victiiiim.”
Tiny World Techno Party w/ Star Eyes, SFV Acid, DJ Flapjack, Baseck & More @ A Burned Down Mormon Church
These Tiny World shows have gotten so out of control that I don't know if I can keep going to them, but this party was just too insane. Usually the music at these things is pretty mediocre hardcore punk that you can't even make out over the sea of whippets—the fact that they're always outdoors doesn't help the acoustics either—but for this one they brought it indoors and went for more of a rave vibe so you could really hear the gabber and hardstyle going absolutely nuts. Police helicopters were literally circling the venue when we walked in, and we still somehow managed to stay until the place got smoked out from people setting tire fires. Unfortunately not all of us made it out unscathed (hence why this may very well be the last one of these I go to), but god, what a night.
Big Thief @ The Wiltern
They literally did not play a single one of my favorite songs off the new album and the show still totally ripped. Impressive.
A Club Called Rhonda x 2 (Nidia Minaj + Huerco S) @ Los Globos
Shoutout to Rhonda for still bringing it after all these years. Both of these nights were super fun: Nidia Minaj tore it up, and Huerco S did not compromise whatsoever—rather than placating the Silverlake gays with some standard house fare, he immediately came out blasting a twisted soundscape that only continued to mutate into stranger shapes as his set went on. The room went from being shoulder-to-shoulder to almost empty in the span of a few minutes, and for that I applaud him.
Steely Dan w/ Snarky Puppy @ The Hollywood Bowl
Donald Fagen performing the bridge of “Aja” on melodica… need I say more?
Blood Incantation & Full of Hell w/ Vermin Womb @ 1720
I was already huge on Blood Incantation going into this show, but I left it even more convinced of their powers. Franky, I originally I wasn't sure how much moshing would actually happen at this show with how droney their music can get, but live the extended tracks became these great, cresting waves, slowly laying down the atmosphere before building into completely brutal headbanging peaks, then receding back into the dark again. I think their entire set consisted of just four songs, but each one felt like getting slowly sucked into a whirlpool.
Eartheater performing Phoenix @ Hollywood Forever Cemetery
It feels like everybody has sided with Trinity as the fan favorite Eartheater project of the last few years, but Phoenix is just so much more compelling to me. This show was the first of two nights where she would be playing both albums in their entirety, and it was truly stunning; she brought an entire chamber orchestra with her which lent the songs a dark and magical aura, and the way her voice would twist into these impossibly high octaves never ceased to be haunting. Her demonic concubine hairdo just sealed the deal.
Modest Mouse (The Lonesome Crowded West Tour) @ The Wiltern
My number one favorite band in high school, playing one of my favorite albums of all time, what more can you ask for? The band didn't sound particularly good, but it didn't even matter between my friends and I shouting every single lyric to each other over the entire show. For the encore they also played “Broke” and “All Night Diner,” two of my absolute favorite old rarities of theirs which made me lose my mind.
Brakence w/ Jane Remover @ The El Rey
I love going to these hyperpop-adjacent shows so much, truly warms my heart <3
Marshall Gu
I loved a lot of music this year. I held a dog that I get to call ‘my dog’ for the first time. She lets out big sighs when she falls asleep that makes me fall in love all over. I signed a book deal. I had the best birthday ever. I traveled outside of Canada for the first time since the pandemic. I went to concerts. I saw Pavement! I shouted “NO BIG HAIR” when everyone shouted “NO BIG HAIR.” I experienced a lot of joy. And I would trade all that joy in a heartbeat if I did not have to watch someone I know die in front me from cancer. When people ask me how my year was, I will default to ‘it was good.’ A lot of it was good, and it was better than 2021. But sometimes, right before I fall asleep or in the middle of a walk, I think if I close my eyes hard enough, I can make it 2021 again. But then I open my eyes and it’s almost 2023 instead.
Top 10 Albums of 2022
Big Thief - Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You (4AD)
Kali Malone - Living Torch (Portraits GRM)
The Mountain Goats - Bleed Out (Merge)
death’s dynamic shroud - Darklife (100% Electronica)
Evgueni Galperine - Theory of Becoming (ECM New Series)
Taylor Swift - Midnights (Republic) [NOTE: sorry Eli]
Alex G - God Save the Animals (Domino)
Beyoncé - Renaissance (Parkwood)
Tatsuro Yamashita - Softly (Moon)
Rokia Koné & Jacknife Lee - BAMANAN (Real World)
Top 10 Songs of 2022
Big Thief - “Spud Infinity” (4AD)
Alex G - “Miracles” (Domino)
Taylor Swift - “Bejeweled” (Republic)
death’s dynamic shroud - “Fade Persona” (100% Electronica)
Tatsuro Yamashita - “ミライのテーマ [Mirai no Theme]” (Moon)
The Mountain Goats - “Bleed Out” (Merge)
Rokia Koné & Jacknife Lee - “Bambougou N'tji” (Real World)
Isabella Lovestory - “Cherry Bomb” (self-released)
Evgueni Galperine - “This Town Will Burn Before Dawn” (ECM New Series)
Kendrick Lamar - “We Cry Together” (pgLang)
Vincent Jenewein
One of my goals for 2022 was to increase the time I spend following new music. All in all, I think I did a pretty good job with that, trawling the net on a weekly basis, bookmarking promising new releases. Was it worth it? I’d say so. To me at least, it feels like music in 2022 was on a little “post”-pandemic high, re-energized by the reopening of clubs and festivals. I could have easily expanded this top ten list with more quality picks. Still, as always, archival releases and old music in general loom large over the present. As in recent years, I’m getting the impression that—despite the vast amount of people making music today—innovation in electronic music is being carried by the same few handful of people; pretty much everyone on my list has been at it for a good while. The technical, compositional and conceptual baseline level required to make a progressive contribution to electronic music is simply too high for a young whizz kid just starting out. Perhaps other genres (notably hip-hop) may still favor the youth, but in electronic music—as in science—slow, continuous research and refinement is essential. Evidently not as exciting as the Next Big Thing, but the results can be sublime; just listen to Caterina Barbieri’s culmination of years of research and development in modular synthesis and voltage-controlled composition on Spirit Exit. It, and Logos’ North Vol. 2, are my favorite albums of the year because they marry strong synthesis, sound design and engineering with well thought-out conceptual and compositional ideas and forms. Embodied formalism is the way forward.
Caterina Barbieri - Spirit Exit (Light-Years)
Logos - North Vol. 2 (Logos)
Huerco S. - Plonk (Incienso)
Cousin - Second Message (NAFF)
Pariah - Caterpillar (Voam)
Actress - Dummy Corporation (Ninja Tune)
Julia Reidy - World In World (Black Truffle)
Patricia - Less Than Seven (Acid Test)
cv313 - Depths Of Perception (Echospace)
Kali Malone - Living Torch (Portraits GRM)
Jinhyung Kim
The album I listened to the most in 2022 is Ha Van’s Tieng Hat Ha Van, a Vietnamese bolero revival record that renders its melancholy pre-Fall of Saigon nostalgia with a subtlety of arrangement and production often absent in even the classics of the genre. I got it at a Vietnamese record store in Houston’s Chinatown on an outing with fellow Tone Glower Adesh Thapliyal, who recommended it to me as a favorite of his. I listened to it for the first time while cooking mapo tofu with fresh goods I’d bought at a tofu shop nearby that record store; over the next week, I listened to it over and over again—more times than I can count, and many more since then.
At the time I discovered the album, I’d been back in Houston for two months after staying at my parents’ home for a similar amount of time; I dropped out of college in October 2021 and had spent six months working at a restaurant before having a mental health breakdown and coming home to find my center again (and get medicated). I didn’t listen to much music this year between February—when my mental health problems began to intensify—and the last few months, once I’d been back at school for a bit and had settled once more into a semi-regular life routine. In May, it was a struggle to get out of bed or do simple tasks without heightened anxiety, let alone make it to the end of a page or past the first minute of a song.
In the summer, I worked a job at my school’s library which gave me the time to listen to stuff for hours at a time if I’d wanted to. But I preferred to either work in silence or use idle time behind the service desk to build my ability to read back up from the ground. I lived in the laundry room of my friend’s place this summer, before we moved to a new place together at the beginning of the fall semester. It’s much cleaner and better kept up than the old place, which, in combination with the meds, did wonders for my well-being. This fall, I read more (and more regularly) than I had in ages, alongside my schoolwork; I even managed to finish my first full semester of school since the pandemic began.
When the new brakence album came out, I was wrapping up my last week of classes. I’d listened religiously to punk2—especially “dropout”—in fall 2020, though I wouldn’t drop out myself until a year later. Except “argyle,” I hadn’t been enamored with the singles for hypochondriac, although I came to like them all well enough. Listening to the album for the first time, I was impressed not only by how fucking good it was, but also by how long it’d been since the days I used to listen primarily to artists whose mental health was this bad. In any case, I think I’ve only just gotten to a point where I’m able to appreciate hypochondriac as much as I do; earlier in the year, it probably would’ve been too much.
Despite how raw the feelings it bears come off (and how thick their toxic coatings are), I have a hunch that hypochondriac, also, could only have been a product of hindsight, or at least moments of it. brakence’s music is too immaculately nerdy to be spontaneous; as Tone Glower H.D. Angel put it once in a conversation (make sure to read her review of the album), “spontaneity… is totally alien to him because everything he does is so painstaking.” I’m not saying he’s in a “better place” now after wring these songs. But they enact a powerful catharsis that carries the listener through to the other side of the emotions he’s writing about, whatever lies there.
I think that’s how I feel nowadays: am I “doing better” now? Sure, yeah. But what matters to me is that I think I’ve made it to the other side, to a space of uncertainty suffused with possibility rather than precarity. And I never would’ve made it here without the support of friends I’ve made through Tone Glow—regardless of whether we were up and running, on hiatus, or somewhere in the middle. I’m dedicating 2022 to my family (and our corgi), my best friend Zachariah, my pals in Houston, Joshua and the gang, and, last but not least, Lexapro.
Top 10 Albums of 2022
brakence – hypochondriac (Columbia)
Jack Callahan, Jeff Witscher – Issues (FLEA)
Sunik Kim – Raid on the White Tiger Regiment (Notice)
Motel Bible – Regression (Heathen Hand / Zegema Beach)
Lolina – Face the Music (Relaxin)
Kurws – Powięź / Fascia (Gusstaff / Red Wig / Dur et Doux / Korobushka)
NewJeans – New Jeans (ADOR)
Zhu Wenbo – Four Lines and Improvisation (Aloe)
Olly Wilson – Composer “Portrait” Series #1 (Creel Pone)
Eric Schmid, Duncan Harrison, Mark Groves – Eric Schmid, Duncan Harrison, Mark Groves (Infant Tree)
Top 10 Books I Read in 2022 (Unranked)
Theodor Adorno – Aesthetic Theory (Minnesota, 1996)
Eugenie Brinkema – Life-Destroying Diagrams (Duke, 2022)
Ben Davis – Art in the After-Culture (Haymarket, 2022)
W. E. B. Du Bois – Black Reconstruction in America (Free Press, 1935)
ed. Dick Higgins – A Something Else Reader [Primary Information, 2022)
ed. Lynn Hunt – The Invention of Pornography (Zone, 1993)
C. L. R. James – The Black Jacobins (Vintage, 1938)
Silvio Lorusso – Entreprecariat (Onomatopee, 2019)
Anna Tsing – The Mushroom at the End of the World (Princeton, 2015)
Alenka Zupančič – What Is Sex? (MIT, 2017)
Joshua Minsoo Kim
About five hours before I started tabulating the votes for this list and formatting everyone’s year-end reflections, I learned that the “Saved Messages” section of my Telegram phone app disappeared. I must have deleted it by accident, and so all the photos, drafts, forwarded messages, and lists I’d kept in that small but important section of my internet disappeared. I felt devastated, but also knew that I’d be okay. Most of my 2022 was spent thinking about how my relationship with music is different than before—it’s less about forging relationships with albums and songs and having them define my year, but allowing them to inform my thinking and become interwoven with my very being. This was something I recognized after my conversation with Helena Wittmann, when she spoke of how Claire Denis’ Beau Travail’s DNA works its way into her newest film. And so I present the following lists as a way to remember the different things that kept me thinking and growing in 2022. And the fact I won’t ever explain what many of these things means to me is exciting. I’ll probably forget at some point, too, but they’ll live on inside of me.
Top 10 Albums of 2022
Moin - Paste (AD 93)
Joyce - Natureza (Far Out)
Cash Cobain & Chow Lee - 2 Slizzy 2 Sexy (Neva Slippin/Ferrari Fiction)
Oren Ambarchi - Shebang (Drag City)
Lauren Tosswill - “1, 2” (Hard Return)
Amateur Hour - Krökta Tankar och Brända Vanor (Appetite)
No Artist - Contact Meditation (Förfall)
Alvin Curran - Drumming Up Trouble (Black Truffle)
Ishmael Reed - The Hands of Grace (Reading Group)
Kali Malone - Living Torch (Portraits GRM)
Top 10 Pop Songs that Made Me Grateful I Keep Up With Music
Angel Dior - “A I O” (Dominican Republic)
Asake - “Terminator” (Nigeria)
Bilou XIV & Zo Flame - “Fatal” (Senegal)
Feli Colina - “Ancora” (Argentina)
Hikaru Utada - “Somewhere Near Marseilles” (Japan)
IShowSpeed - “F.U.C.” (YouTube Streamers)
Ludmilla - “Maldivas” (Live) (Brazil)
Mona Evie - “Bí và Ngô” (Vietnam)
NewJeans - “Attention” (Korea)
Pabi Cooper feat. Murumba Pitch, Yumbs & Sfarzo Rtee - “Egoli” (South Africa)
Top 10 Other Things To Remember The Year
Going to Belize (for free!) with other teachers to do research with local scientists and to use that information in my science classes
Going to NY over the summer to meet many different people, to watch films I’ve wanted to see for ages, and to have the chance to reflect on all that
Perfumes, specifically a new one I admired (Agar Aura’s Malinau) and the return of an all-time favorite (Slumberhouse’s Kiste), and the thrill of seeing newer independent perfumers flourish (Marissa Zappas and Pineward Perfumes)
Concerts, especially those from Lucy Liyou, Davido, Joan La Barbara (x2), Jane Remover + Brakence, and Loren Connors + Eiko Ishibashi
Old movies, many of which I saw with my friends, and the exhilarating week-long Jonas Mekas retrospective at the Gene Siskel Film Center; but also new movies, especially Dane Komljen’s Afterwater, James Benning’s The United States of America, and David Easteal’s The Plains; and an excerpt of my review from Hong Sang-soo’s The Novelist’s Film appearing in its trailer and playing in theaters
Interviewing (and consequently learning) from artists, including but not limited to James Benning, Helena Wittmann, Ishmael Reed, Ruth Beckermann, Rita Azevedo Gomes, Larry Gottheim, Devin DiSanto, Yasunao Tone, and Loren Connors + Suzanne Langille
Becoming more confident in my writing, and writing some of my favorite pieces ever, most notable of which is my multi-page profile on Joyce for The Wire, but also my reviews of Iannis Xenakis, Hikaru Utada, Tatsuro Yamashita, and Hoàng Thùy Linh for Pitchfork
Simultaneously mourning and celebrating the first music publication I ever wrote for and based Tone Glow around, The Singles Jukebox, as it finally shuttered
Everything related to my family (a new nephew!) and my job as a teacher (kids finally seem to be back in the swing of things!) and my friends (too many things to name!) that I could go on and on about
Sunik Kim
I enter 2023 believing more than ever in the necessity of, in Terre Thaemlitz’s words, “cultivating and protecting the hyper-specificities of ‘underground’ and minor situations,” and reckoning with the attendant humbling, downsizing, of the fantasies and desires I all too easily project onto music itself—whether political, aesthetic, or otherwise. At the same time, I cannot stop thinking about Henry Cow’s efforts—however forced and flawed—to overtly popularize experimentation and forge a path towards economic autonomy against the industry, to specifically latch onto that most domineering of popular artforms—rock—in order to reach more people, perhaps politicize them if the fates align, and not merely speak to a reliable rotating band of die-hards, lifers—to genuinely change someone’s life and open up their world. And, finally, my mind continually returns to the letter Maryanne Amacher wrote to John Cage in 1983:
Dear John,
I write to ask for your help. I am now in a very serious financial crisis.
[...]
In the next few weeks, I must somehow find the time and ways to interest new people in my work.
[...]
I feel embarrassed by the amount of work I’ve created, and that so few have had the opportunity to know or experience it.
There is a deep tragedy in these words, but also a seemingly intractable puzzle. Did Cecil Taylor really prefer being scorned by the critical establishment for much of his life, in being boxed out of the “mainstream” and subsequently pushed towards carving a path of his own that would irreversibly alter the course of musical history? Is a genuine underground always a reliably-present negative residue, an unavoidable side-effect of the black-box machinations of the industry, that then bears its rageful fruit with a steely necessity? Or is it something to be actively sought out, cultivated, created, that can wither and die without care or support—financial or otherwise?
Of course, these two paths are not mutually exclusive. Nor are the aforementioned paths of remaining “small” and changing someone’s life. But the problem remains: if we are to intentionally keep our music “minor,” do we then also, in a barely perceptible but possibly insidious way, “make minor” our ambitions and dreams, however naive they may be, for what music can be or do? Do we then settle for the comfort of a common language, possibly at the expense of an imperceptible arresting of potentials? It might sound like a copout, but I think I’m still too young to say. All I know is that—somehow!—I leave this year feeling more energized and emboldened by music than ever before. And that’s more than enough for now.
Top 10 Albums of 2022
Pat Thomas & XT, Will Holder - “Akisakila” / Attitudes of Preparation (Mountains, Oceans, Trees) (Edition Gamut)
Toshiya Tsunoda - Landscape and Voice (Black Truffle)
Alvin Curran - Drumming Up Trouble (Black Truffle)
Tamio Shiraishi - Subway Stations in Queens (OTOROKU)
Ryu Hankil - ⑥ (dingn\dents)
John Wall - [Computer]-[Piano] Part II (self-released)
The Ephemeron Loop - Psychonautic Escapism (Heat Crimes)
Elysia Crampton - Rayo Mix 2022 (self-released)
Lucy Liyou - Cadaver Opening If You Just (self-released)
Ishmael Reed - The Hands of Grace (Reading Group)
Top 10 Films I Watched This Year
Existenz (David Cronenberg, 1999)
Double Team (Tsui Hark, 1997)
Green Snake (Tsui Hark, 1993)
Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett, 1978)
News from Ideological Antiquity (Alexander Kluge, 2008)
Crash (David Cronenberg, 1996)
Dead Ringers (David Cronenberg, 1988)
A History of Violence (David Cronenberg, 2005)
Assault on Precinct 13 (John Carpenter, 1976)
Earth (Oleksandr Dovzhenko, 1930)
Matthew LaBarbera
[Download Matthew LaBarbera’s crossword puzzle as a PDF here.]
Top 10 Albums of 2022
Vanessa Rossetto - The Actress (Erstwhile)
Staubitz and Waterhouse - Common Metals (Music is the Worst)
Junior H - Mi vida en un cigarro 2 (WEA Latina)
The Concept Horse - Synagogue Hum (czaszka (rec.))
Kaoru Abe No Future 阿部薰没有未来 - another wrong way, again 路又走错一条 (presses précaires)
Blanche Blanche Blanche - Fiscal, Remote, Distilled [La loi)
Blod - Pilgrimssånger [Discreet Music)
Maria W Horn & Sara Parkman - Funeral Folk [XKatedral]
Dave Public - Public Archive Vol. 1 (Hold)
Fred Moten / Brandon López / Gerald Cleaver - Moten/López/Cleaver (Reading Group)
Top 10 Films of 2022
Novelist’s Film (Hong Sang-soo)
Confess, Fletch (Greg Mottola)
Funny Pages (Owen Kline)
Babysitter (Monia Chokri)
Flux Gourmet (Peter Strickland)
RRR (S. S. Rajamouli)
Friends and Strangers (James Vaughan)
Afterwater (Dane Komljen)
The African Desperate (Martine Syms)
Official Competition (Gastón Duprat & Mariano Cohn)