Best Of 2022: Electronic

My interest in this genre leans closer to soundscapes that create an imaginary environment or persona rather than the more popular beat-driven expressions. But there are still a few jams to be had here, where songs emerge out of the synth-based constructions. At the top are previously covered releases followed by pocket reviews of other things that caught my ear and demanded repeat listening. Get the flavor of each album in this playlist or below. 

Record Roundup: 22 For 22 (Part 1)
Carlos Nino & Friends - Live At Commend, NYC
The Living Earth Show and Danny Clay - Music For Hard Times
Debit - The Long Count

The Best Of 2022 (So Far)
Bakudi Scream - Final Skin

Record Roundup: Autumn Flood (Pt. 1)
Stephen Vitiello and Bill Seaman - The Other Forgotten Letters Note: also see his collaboration with ex-Fugazi drummer Brendan Canty and his gorgeous entry in the Longform series, Prelude (00:00)
Seabuckthorn - Of No Such Place
Molly Joyce - Perspective
Corntuth - Letters To My Robot Son

Record Roundup: Autumn Flood (Pt. 2)

Narducci - Darkness To Light

Ben Seretan - Sandhills Music As he proved on 2021's wonderfully immersive Cicada Waves, singer/songwriter/guitarist Seretan also has a gift for putting a structure around the sounds of nature by combining them with electronics. Ambient music, then, and worthy of the legacy of Brian Eno's Ambient 4: On Land. Whether viewed as landscapes in sound or travels in the mind, these pieces, recorded both in Sanford, NC and Troy, NY, have a way of redefining the space around you.

Nick Storring - Music from W​é​i 成为 Made up of layers of piano sounds (both from an old upright and a computer-controlled Yamaha Disklavier), Storring's latest album is marvelously evocative. Nearly symphonic in scope, each emotionally-driven track leads to the next with a steady inevitability. The level of invention in Storring's approach is quietly astonishing, with plucking, preparations, E-bow, and other techniques deployed with remarkable assurance - never more so than in movement VI, when things really take off! The Chinese characters in the title relate to the verb "to become" so maybe that's a clue to the story being told, but any interpretation that meshes with your life is valid and may change over time. Either way, it's an album that has continued to reveal itself over many listens - compelling stuff, indeed. 

Amanda Berlind - Mousemilk As on her delightful debut, 2021's Green Cone, this EP often combines hazy atmospherics with off-kilter rhythms, for an experience not unlike standing between rooms playing different radios - but it works. The longest track, Wand, is 13 languorous minutes of piano, guitar, wordless vocals, and reverb, perfect for staring at the rain or the inside of your eyelids. While this is only available on streaming services (including YouTube) it seems it may be forthcoming as a cassette, which would be the perfect medium for these rich but low-fi audio collages. Berlind is also a witty and wonderful visual artist so be sure to keep up with her on Instagram.

Sophie Birch - Holotropica There is a lush, almost humid, enveloping quality to Birch's work here, created with electronics and occasional sax, flute, and harp, that connects it to those "rainforest" cassettes you used to find in crunchy stores in the 70s. But that reference does little to reveal how musically astute Birch is as a composer and sonic sculptor. Birch, who hails from Denmark, also collaborated with Polish vocalist Antonina Nowacka on Languouria, which has a bit more forward motion than Holotropica on some tracks and features the voice as another instrument, sometimes soothing, sometimes startling, always wordless and expressive.

Various Artists - A New Age For New Age, Vol. 5 Launched in 2019, this series has become a durable fixture on the electronic scene, with each volume having something to offer. Expanding their brief, they collaborated with the University of Michigan's Modern Percussion Lab to have students create the eight tracks featured here. From Paul Puleo's Non-Frontation, which opens the album with Harry Partch-like resonating percussion, to the space-station corridors of Chris Sies' Radiant Streams, the collection is compelling and fresh throughout - yet another new age for new age!

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith and Emile Mosseri - I Could Be Your Dog/I Could Be Your Moon I seem to have lost track of Smith since I noted the "rich and rewarding" experience of her album, The Kid, in 2017. But this collaboration with Emile Mosseri, a composer known for soundtracks for such excellent movies as Kajillionaire and Minari, caught my attention quickly. A two-part collection that feels like a story, the first few songs seem to transit us gently through the clouds, as if on a butterfly’s back, and when we finally touch down during the sun-kissed groove of Shim Sham, it’s a marvelous sensation. Smith's latest solo album, Let's Turn It Into Sound, also has a sense of narrative, if in a more oblique way. A venture into near hyper-pop, it's full bright textures and sunny moods. Dazzling and entertaining in equal measure.

Yeule - Glitch Princess Opening with a haunting and halting spoken word piece that seems to come over a fraying ethernet cable, this remarkably assured debut introduces us to Nat Ćmiel, a creature of the internet who is looking for love, acceptance, and community. Or is Yuele the creation? In their bio,  Ćmiel calls Yeule "a portal or riff" created to "communicate their art to the outside world..." The mind-bending conceptual underpinning only adds a kick to the album. The songs are indeed glitchy, and very artfully so, conveying nuanced emotions and fractured melodies. And when they go full pop on Bites On My Neck, it's wonderfully celebratory and conjures a vision of Bowie's Earthling-era self dancing in the wings. It's an immersive album, like a trip to the metaverse without a headset, and the digital and streaming versions end with a nearly five-hour bath of dreamy ambiance, the perfect way to process everything that's come before. 

Claire Rousay - Everything Perfect Is Already Here Rousay is prolific enough that it almost seems as if the steady flow of albums and EPs may be acting as some sort of diary for her. There certainly is a lived-in quality to the two 15-minute pieces that make up this album, which not so much creates an environment but comes from one, and a Cageian dwelling at that. It feels like entering a sprawling apartment filled with musicians, but as pure consciousness, allowing you to hear all sound as music and all music as sound, without making any noises of your own. Joined by Alex Cunningham (violin), Mari Maurice (electronics, violin), Marilu Donovan (harp), and Theodore Cale Schafer (piano), Rousay maps out a place of memories you never had or haven't had yet. Captivating, witty, and utterly unique.

Dawn Richard and Spencer Zahn - Pigments As much as I wanted to love 2021's Second Line, Richard's sixth album since making her name as a member of Danity Kane, the intrigue created by her trajectory from pop star to indie artist was not enough to counter the frequent nods to convention on the record. But there was the kernel of something that made me keep trying, an effort that was finally rewarded by this spacious, drifting collaboration with Zahn. While Zahn's bass, vibes, and keyboards underpin everything, the mix also includes guitar, strings, sax and flute, with the clarinets and bass clarinets of Stuart Bogie and Doug Wieselman are nearly as prominent as Richard's strong yet diaphanous vocals, creating a blend of jazz, chamber, and electronic musics. Zahn has also been busy on his own and I'm looking forward to delving into his solo work, including Pale Horizon, a delicate series of pieces for bass and piano with some of Vince Guaraldi's wistfulness, which came out in May 2022.

Snowdrops - Missing Island Featuring Christine Ott on Ondes Martenot, an early electronic instrument, harmonium, and piano, Mathieu Gabry on piano and electronics, and Anne-Irène Kempf on viola, this album continues the marvelous thread from 2020's Volutes more so than the darker and occasionally explosive Inner Fires from last year. Over 41 minutes, the players build up velvety layers of sound, creating a space for reflection just structured enough to avoid collapsing under its own weight. I note that this was recorded in 2020 - what more wonders does their seemingly bottomless archive hold? I can't wait to find out!

Finneas O'Connell - The Fallout OST From his work with his sister, Billie Eilish, you could guess that O'Connell understands how to create drama and emotion out of minimal gestures, which he does throughout this elegantly melancholy score for the 2021 film about the aftermath of a school shooting. With treated piano leading the way, you can hear echoes of the late, great Jóhann Jóhannsson, which is not bad company to be in on your first outing as a soundtrack composer. There are also a few sweetly hymn-like songs sung by Maisy Stella with and without her sister Lennon. While his own pop music is hamstrung by his all-too-obvious lyrics and all-too-anthemic choruses, this would seem to be a worthy direction for him when he's not producing the next blockbuster for Eilish. 

Transport yourself further into these realms in this archive playlist and keep up with 2023's excursions here.

You may also enjoy: 
Best Of 2021: Electronic
Best Of 2020: Electronic
Best of 2019: Electronic
Best of 2018: Electronic
Best of 2017: Electronic
Best of 2016: Electronic

Record Roundup: Novelty Is Not Enough

Some of the hardest work of writing AnEarful is choosing what to share out of the many, many recordings that come my way. As ever, the cream rises to the top, but when interrogating why the cream is the cream, I think I've settled on something: Newness is not enough. While it's certainly admirable to push music forward by organizing sound in a manner that seems to have never been done before, for me to truly love something it must go beyond the merely novel. For example, take The Residents. While I can certainly say nothing else sounds like them and I appreciate the opportunity to hear something so strange, I'm not compelled to make their music a part of my life. Their novelty is something on which we can objectively agree, it's what is lacking for me that shades into the subjective. That said, perhaps some of what I share below may not fit the bill on all levels for you - but I hope you will give it a chance to at least expand your conception of what music can be and do.

Sō Percussion and Friends - Julius Eastman: Stay On It One of the most riveting events of the current livestream era was when Sō Percussion presented their version of Eastman's pioneering piece of maxi-minimalism with a stunning, mind-melting video by MediaQueer (the duo of Phong Tran and Darian Donovan Thomas) as part of their Brooklyn Bound series. I was in the kitchen, listening the chats and music that preceded it while doing the dishes, etc., but when that video started up, I could not look away from their next-level collage of TV ads, street protests, and bits of cultural detritus. I also had the sense that the performance of Stay On It was special on its own, instantly treasuring how the repetitions seemed to build momentum while allowing other themes and sounds to emerge. Now that it has been released as a standalone recording, I'm delighted to be 100% RIGHT. The four members of Sō laid down the elemental groove that drives the piece and then invited some extraordinary guests to add to the flexible structure of the piece, including Tran and Thomas on electronics and violin respectively, Grey Mcmurray on guitar and vocals, Beth Meyers on viola and vocals, Alex Sopp on flute, piccolo, and vocals, Adam Tendler on piano, and Shelley Washington on sax - each one a player who brings their all to any project. What a joy to hear this piece in a committed, well-recorded performance, allowing all the layers of one of Eastman's most accessible and optimistic works to reveal themselves clearly. It's as fresh and revelatory as it must have been in 1973, when he wrote it. Simply put, they've set a new standard for Eastman's ensemble work, and one as high as Jace Clayton's sparkling take on his piano music. There will be more Eastman goodies to come, too, as Wild Up has announced a multi-year project, starting with Femenine - hear an excerpt here.

Kenneth Kirschner & Joseph Branciforte - From The Machine, Vol. 1 Greyfade is a new boutique label prizing sonic excellence on vinyl and in high-resolution digital formats (no streaming) and seeking to present music that arises from innovative processes. In this case, Kirschner and Branciforte have transferred algorithmic and generative techniques from electronic music into the acoustic realm, using software to compose two pieces of austere elegance. The first, April 20, 2015, originally an electronic composition by Kirschner and here arranged for two cellos (Mariel Roberts and Meaghan Burke) and piano (Jade Conlee) by Branciforte,  finds the instruments in dialog, if not quite conversation, sliding around each other in a series of brief phrases. The second, 0123, composed by Branciforte for "low string quartet" (Tom Chiu, violin, Wendy Richman, viola, Christopher Gross, cello, Greg Chudzik, double bass), has the players work their way up an octave by exploring the same four-note cell in a ruminative fashion. Both works generate a mysterious disquiet that I think would exist even if you didn't know there was code behind them and represent a planting of the flag for Greyfade, claiming impressive territory that I look forward to exploring further on their first release, which featured collaborations between Branciforte and vocalist Theo Bleckmann, and their next one with the JACK Quartet, coming in September.

Peter Gilbert - Burned Into The Orange No one could accuse New Focus co-founder Gilbert of using the label to promote his own music - this is only his second release and the last was over a decade ago. But his dazzling command of various forces, from string quartets (both the Arditti and the Iridium are featured) to electronics to solo tuba, makes me hope we don't have to wait that long for more. Each piece grabs the attention like a great storyteller, with Channeling The Waters for flute and percussion (Camilla Hoitenga and Magdalena Meitzner, respectively) being emblematic. Opening with a heavy metal fanfare, it leads you on a labyrinthine journey that never ceases to fascinate, which could be said of the album as a whole. Join the adventure.

Wavefield Ensemble - Concrete & Void This first album from an ensemble launched in 2016 and made up of new music all-stars, including Julia den Boer, Hannah Levinson, Greg Chudzik, and Dan Lippell, was recorded at a socially-distanced concert at a parking garage in Montclair, NJ in October 2020. But you would never know it's a live performance, such is the gleaming perfection of the sound. Presented are five meaty works (the shortest is just over eleven minutes) from composers, including Jen Baker, Jessie Cox, Victoria Cheah, Chudzik, and Nicholas DeMaison, who all collaborated deeply with the players. Pushing through the COVID era restraints (no in-person rehearsals, etc.), the group has arrived at a series of gripping, cinematic soundscapes, with Cheah's A wasp, some wax, an outline of the valley over us a fall being especially involving. Like all the pieces, the integration of electronics and acoustic instruments is seamless and her use of suspense brings to mind Bernard Herrmann's work for sci-fi television or tracks from Nine Inch Nails Ghosts, as she draws you through a series of images in sound. After all of Cheah's tension, Chudzik's Silo washes over you like a hymnal, with his cello surrounded by harmonics and drones. Concrete & Void firmly establishes Wavefield as a group to watch, and I hope I can get to their next concert, especially if it has free parking!

Chris Campbell - Orison Using an array of forces including members of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, "hybrid-music" violinist Todd Reynolds, and drummer Dave King from The Bad Plus, Cambell has created a seven-movement work that brings a sense of calm and reflection for its 37-minute length. Reminiscent of some of John Luther Adams' pieces, with high, whispery tones from the violin and swirling harmonics, King's drums (often played with brushes) and repeating piano figures lend forward motion to the piece. "Orison" is a perfect title, but "oasis" would work, too, for the way Campbell's music clears space in the mind. Although there are fewer daily shocks in 2021 than in 2020, this still feels just like what the doctor ordered. During the years of its composition, Campbell came to think of the piece as "a companion" and this listener feels the same. Keep it close.

Various Artists - A New Age For New Age Vol. 3 Eventually all genres of music, from the lauded to the discredited, come around for reconsideration. "New Age" music, which I used to view as sort of the strip-mall yoga center version of ambient, has been having a nice moment over the last few years, whether in the revival of Laraaji's career or ear-opening reissues like Pearls Of The Deep, the best of Stairway. Starting in 2019, the ever-expanding Whatever's Clever label began inviting artists to submit pieces that reinterpret New Age music and curating compilations based on what they received. The first two volumes (and Vol. 4, for that matter) were wonderful, but this is the one to which I keep returning. Partly that's because it has a NEW SONG from Elana Low, which is a precious thing indeed (full disclosure: I suggested she submit something!), but also for the sheer variety that somehow coheres into a satisfying journey. Opening with the supremely witty Serenity Now by shm0o0o, with its "dee-do-dee-do-dee-do...dah!" refrain, we are also given the rain-streaked chamber music of 4385650503, a collaboration between LLLL, Mitsuhiro Fujiwara, and DaisyModern, and the sun-dazed folk of Reliable Feelings by Adeline Hotel among other explorations in mostly electronic tones and textures. Considering Whatever's Clever has released four volumes in the series without repeating artists, they have obviously struck a nerve with creators. Don't miss out on what's exciting them - you may even find a new soundtrack for your yoga practice.

Ben Seretan - Cicada Waves This dreamy series of piano improvisations accompanied by nature sounds would have been HUGE during the original New Age era - it's also the most distinctive and assured music I've heard from Seretan, the founder of Whatever's Clever and a stalwart of the indie-rock/folk scene in the northeast. He just sounds so settled, spinning chords and melodies while rain washes down or crickets sing around him, and that sense of contentment is contagious. For full immersion, watch the videos he's created or commissioned for each song. Good luck getting a cassette, though, as he's already sold out two pressings. 

You may also enjoy:
Record Roundup: Electro-Humanism
Record Roundup: On The Cutting Edge
BOAC At MMOCA: The Eno Has Landed

Note: The cover photo includes a detail of Shoshanna Weinberger's installation for the Sunroom Project Space, on display at Wave Hill.

AnEarful acknowledges that this work is created on the traditional territory of the Munsee Lenape and Wappinger peoples.