Looking over the last few years, I go back and forth between posting year-end recaps in December vs. January. Outside forces (of my own making) pushed 2024’s into January, but if I think about it too much, I do wish year-end list season was early January. I get all the reasons it isn’t (everyone needs money to pay the bills), but there’s not much of that around Foxy Digitalis so hey?! (I’m not going to lie, I would be floored if you joined the Patreon or subscribed to The Jewel Garden so there’s a little more of it around!).
With that, 2024 was a weird year. I posted these general sentiments over on Instagram last week, but it’s a year I still haven’t quite figured out. Good things, bad things, a lot of in-between things. I met some great people, made some new friends, lost a fair few as well. I made a lot of art and music that I am proud of, had my first ever solo exhibition, and the biggest thing – my wife and I built a micro art gallery called The Bird House in our backyard and opened it in December.
Looking ahead to 2025, I only have a vague idea of what to do. The Bird House will feature prominently, and Foxy Digitalis will continue soldiering on (perhaps with some renewed vigor that got lost in the back half of 2024). But I also feel a bit lost and untethered. I’m moving on from some things I thought held a lot of promise and collaborative potential, leaning heavier into DIY than ever, and also certain there are plenty of unexpected dead ends and disappointments ahead. A reminder to believe behaviors over words, to reach towards hands reaching back instead of backs walking away (as I write a mountain of words – ha!).
Every year is a great year for new music and 2024 was no exception. This a small selection of things I heard, and quite liked, over the past 12 months, but they left the deeper marks.
A note: There are a bunch of obviously great records that are not on this list because they have been extensively covered and written about, which is great. Myriam Gendron, Rosali, Arooj Aftab, Nala Sinephiro, Helado Negro, JLIN, etc. All great artists who put out great records last year.
30 Favorite Releases From 2024
Bizhiki Unbound (Jagjaguwar)
I haven’t stopped listening to this album since I first heard it in late Spring. Joe Rainey, Dylan Bizhikiins Jennings, and Sean Carey’s debut is an intimate listen, layers of time peeled back and left to bloom under a new sun. Life’s rhythms sing, fists raised to the sky whether in mourning or celebration, intertwined with ageless melodies and contemporary production. Unbound is a stunner. Listen to Joe Rainey on Songs of Our Lives.
Alma Laprida Pitch Dark and Trembling (We Are Time)
Laprida’s latest glows white with guttural viscosity, sound bellowing within space, using low frequencies to resonate her tromba marina, turning the instrument into sonic ghosts in the void. Strings shake out notes buried under debris, hinting at trembling melodies humming deep within the abyss. Read our interview with Alma Laprida.
Yatta Palm Wine (ptp)
Palm Wine is simultaneously heavy and effervescent. Yatta’s crafted an album full of lithe earworms, mystery sunlight, remembered histories, and exultant sonics, all built on buoyant, pressing rhythms. There’s nothing quite like it, but the trip Palm Wine takes us on is long and winding and utterly transfixing. Listen to Yatta on Songs of Our Lives.
Bill Orcutt How to Rescue Things (Palilalia)
This album still doesn’t seem real to me. A decade into Orcutt’s rebirth, he has covered plenty of ground, but the dichotomy of his charred, searching riffs saturated with reverence set against a luminous backdrop dripping with sacred echoes. Two separate parts of my brain get massaged and interwoven trying to connect the dots. I end up lost in the warm glow, the fire down to coals and hot as ever. How to Rescue Things is the perfect coda to a strange, hard year; a moment of imperfect grace undeterred by the impossibility of its bones.
Tomin A Willed and Conscious Balance (International Anthem)
I came to this conclusion years ago, but it was fully cemented with A Willed and Conscious Balance: I love, love, love Tomin’s music. This record sounds like something unearthed from an alternative history while still feeling like music from the future. Compositionally adventurous and playful while still tethered to the ground, A Willed and Conscious Balance is a beacon that always draws us closer. (Plus, the band Tomin put together for this is incredible). Listen to Tomin on Songs of Our Lives.
Gretchen Korsmo Silhouettes, Spires (Full Spectrum)
Whatever form it takes, Korsmo’s work always engenders an unexpected gravity. Silhouettes, Spires paints in a restrained palette but uses complex emotive layering to fill the emptiness with tonic colors. Slow-moving arrangements become submerged in aqueous dronescapes that simply can’t spiral. A steadiness emerges. There is still languidness in droves, but even smothered in sentimentality, it feels good. Time starts again and the page is turned.
more eaze & kaho matsui computer and recording works for girls (Full Spectrum)
I said elsewhere last month that nobody made more music I truly loved than more eaze in 2024, but computer and recording works for girls is the album with its claws deepest in my arm. Somehow, it’s intricate and fragile while still finding ways to smash me in the face. I love it so much. Listen to more eaze on Songs of Our Lives (going to try and have Kaho on in 2025!).
Ka Baird Bearings: Soundtracks for the Bardos (RVNG Intl)
I’m not sure there’s anybody out there frying minds and opening portals to different dimensions at the rate of Ka Baird. Bearings is dizzying and invigorating. I never know what wormhole Baird’s taking us down – spectral vocal rhythms, hypno-microphone sorcery, or the spidery electronic lacing tying everything together – but I want to feel all of it. Incredible. Listen to Ka Baird on Songs of Our Lives.
A Thousand Plateaus Definition of a Procedure Against Being (Self-Released)
Sometimes someone makes an album that is a short list of all the things you love/have been obsessed with in recent years. In this case, A Thousand Plateaus crafts a sonic exploration of feral ecologies using field recordings, modular synthesis, and bassoon improvisation (and he also made an accompanying photo zine – again, the exact kind of thing I am into right now). Musically, it’s mesmerizing and engaging – a quiet tension burns in the margins as birdsong flickers above angular drones, whimsical electric bounce, and shades of dark ambient drift. This is dense, haunting music that keeps me coming back.
Olivia Block The Mountains Pass (Black Truffle)
Block’s voice sinks through the atmosphere like elegiac breaths, casting shadows that etch out messages in a buried mirror. Inspired by time spent in the mountains of New Mexico, stoic undercurrents intersect with the life-affirming catharsis she unlocks with Mueller and Thomas Madeja (trumpet) on the massive “Hermit’s Peak.” It’s like coming up on those secret messages, unearthed and staring us in the face, making us realize the landscape was within the whole time. This music bursts forward and skyward, but the tension still hangs in the traces left behind.
Leila Bordreuil 1991, Summer, Huntington Garage Fire (Hanson)
The opening minutes of “1991, Summer, Huntington Garage Fire” isn’t preparation for the hellstorm Leila Bordreuil’s about to unleash. Gentle oscillations and sound samples from a VHS tape hum with restrained tension. Harmonics begin to sing like distant live wires inching closer sending an electric hum into the air. Once all the blocks collapse, distorted, angular washes suck all the oxygen from the room. Cello convulsions spew more fire, upping the intensity further. It’s full speed until the wall finally emerges, and then we’re stuck in this exhalation that slowly breathes life back into our lungs. Incredible. And that’s only the A-Side! On the flip, Bordreuil ghosts into multiple dimensions, stretching the limits of sound from that same VHS tape. Resonant drones gloss over charred, splintered frameworks, a sonorous cocoon with no sharp edges. Other parts feel more familiar, parts of us pulled out through sorcery and built into phantom casts and blackout memories; heartbreak and horror distilled into sonic glass. This is among my favorite albums of 2024.
Rhodri Davies Telyn Wrachïod (Self-Released)
Rhodri Davies’ playing is instantly recognizable. There is such a distinct timbre and cadence to the sounds he conjures from whatever harp he’s playing that immediately, I am captivated. Telyn Wrachïod is no exception as he winds through sharp-angled spinups and darkly melodic aural intrigue. It’s an album in constant motion, only stopping to catch a breath every so often, pulling us toward an unknown destination on pliant strings.
Fan Club Orchestra VL_Stay (12th Isle)
The sound of densely-layered, underwater dreams. Synthetic worlds unfold in reverse, VL_Stay moves backward like a misplaced memory. Reality is blurred into submission through repeating motifs and arpeggiated elegies, a strained vision of an adventure behind glass. Even at its most wistful, VL_Stay gives us a soft embrace.
Pat Thomas and Bleyschool BleySchool: Where (577 Records)
There were so many great Pat Thomas projects in 2024 (obviously, and understandably, [AHMED] gets a lot of the plaudits – I mean, Giant Beauty is crucial), but Bleyschool: Where captures a gentler, more inquisitive side of his work settled alongside sharper elements that have me smitten. Along with Dominic Lash and Ton Orrell, Thomas creates a joyful set of approachable work that still ventures deep into the weeds (“Ida Lupino” is one of my favorite pieces of music I’ve heard this year). Bleyschool: Where is ebullient, cascading.
DJ Anderson Do Paraiso Queridão (Nyege Nyege)
If an album were a relentless, world-devouring monster, it’d be Queridão. Even in its more relaxed moments (hard to call them that), there’s an unyielding push that underlies every charred rhythm, every sinuous bassline. Beyond anything, though, it doesn’t sound like anything but itself – unflinchingly experimental and sonically expressive, massive, with a sense of humor. Incredible.
Panghalina Lava (Room 40)
This trio of Helen Svoboda, Bonnie Stewart, and Maria Moles lives in the spaces between echoes. Clattering rhythms scratch out messages with the sonic detritus, casting long shadows across ecstatic movements. A lilting framework draws breath from the intangible, voices rising with effervescence, adrift on emotive electronic soundscapes. Through inward explorations, bright timbres glow for moments and fade away before repeating the pattern, like a warm, luminous heartbeat. Lava dances in the rhythmic grooves, cut through like a knife through the damp, clay earth. Panghalina create a world held in restraint, knowing the instant to cast off and break free. It’s an engaging and exhilarating album that hides surprising stories in the details.
SUNJIRŨ blue on a green world (Self-Released)
Dimensions are bent together on blue on a green world as the enigmatic SUNJIRŨ scours multiple sonic realms in search of what it means to be home. Obscured views manifest through lush, deconstructed synth arrangements and hazy atmospherics. Rhythms cluster in bunches like our shadows scattering against unfamiliar ground filtered through the Nairobi-based artist’s technological framework, sounding simultaneously distant and immersive. Each passage disintegrates into alluring forms, inviting us into this world of exploratory electronic arrangements and fragmented cadences. Serrated basslines don’t upset the illusions, but they build out the foundations so we can glide through faded neon arches as though we’re weightless and free. This is excellent.
Semay Wu Unsteady Stones (scatter)
scatter archive put out a mountain of great sounds in 2024, but Semay Wu’s Unsteady Stones is the one I return to most. Textural and whimsical elements shine brightest, but an unsettling thread runs through its heart that is absolutely beguiling. Wu picks apart the strains of various improvised performances (strings, percussion, voice, etc.) from the last few years and stitches them together in unrecognizable ways with an array of field recordings. It’s gently chaotic and captivating, like being in the middle of the water in constant motion, splashing and tickling skin, but with the knowledge that it can pull us under at any moment. Dichotomies bloom and break apart, and the answers are never clear, but Unsteady Stones has real magic in its bones.
Patrick Shiroishi Glass House (Otherly Love)
I’m fully convinced Patrick Shiroishi can do anything. Glass House is a departure, musically, and an invitation into this full, fragile world. Beauty is embedded in the soft-worn textures and reverberant holler. Even with plenty of saxophone staining all corners of this sonic map, Glass House isn’t a horn record. Lithe drones echo underneath a familiar, chaotic world. Exhales come in buoyant rhythms while we crowd to the back, still keeping the faded neon melodies at arm’s length. A requiem will come and midnight never forgets, this time in the form of emotive piano expositions with a melancholic sting. The sun always rises, though, with cinematic urgency in gilded string arrangements plastered with illuminated arpeggiations, alive and still singing. Shiroishi keeps making essential records, but this may be the most potent marker yet.
Jamaaladeen Tacuma and Odean Pope The Lighthouse (Jam All)
There’s nobody out there like Jamaaladeen Tacuma, and on The Lighthouse, one of the all-time great bassists joins up with sax hero Odean Pope for a cross-genre runaway. Joining the duo is a stellar ensemble of G. Calvin Weston, Paul Giess, Marc Cary, and Ru-Deep, all of which amplify the cosmic energy on The Lighthouse, creating new sonic worlds. Crawling basslines bounce on Weston’s lithe, exploratory rhythms while Pope moves skyward, leaving Giess to cover the ground level with trumpet ruminations. Everywhere these pieces go, Tacuma finds the pinnacle. His bass cuts are electric. Every run will get bodies moving and heads shaking, all the while giving a lane for spacious guitar stints and brass-colored reverie. Every time I listen to The Lighthouse, I want to get up and move and scream “hell yes” until my voice is gone. Essential.
Funken, Chergui et Hateau Daniel dans la nuit (unjenesaisquoi)
Whimsy morphs into spiraling, multilayered reveries throughout Daniel dans la nuit. Aqueous atmospheres slip between synth patterns and glistening arpeggios, crystallizing beyond the ether like dancing sunbeams encased in glass. An overwhelming melodicism creates sun-kissed, capricious magic tricks that distract us on the one hand while turning our insides pastel. Asynchronous rhythms feel delightfully on edge, teasing us by jerking the wheel in one direction, playfully threatening to plunge this whole amorphous sonic submarine into the abyss. Daniel dans la nuit is light and airy. Once it ends, I wonder if it even existed in the first place.
Gerald Cleaver The Process (577 Records)
Cleaver is one of the best drummers on the planet, full stop, but his recent forays into making electronic music have been fantastic. The Process is my favorite of the bunch (his fourth down this rabbit hole). The single, 37-minute piece unfolds and morphs itself around cascading rhythms and fading melodies. At times, it’s relentless – the thudding bass drum and grayscale, claustrophobic atmosphere, but Cleaver cuts through all the grime by building intricate aural enchantments and leaning into the mystery of it all.
Darian Donovan Thomas A Room With Many Doors : Night (New Amsterdam)
As an album, A Room With Many Doors : Night is a fully-formed, dense sonic epic. There’s narrative stitched in its bones; every inch of space is permeated by wonder and awe. Darian Donovan Thomas’s debut is magic – so much life in every note, vulnerability, and inner worlds reflecting outward through intricate, emotive aural channels. Thomas covers so much ground – everything from ambient experiments through a new classical lens, pop inflections, rhythmic pomp, and epic soundtracks – but it’s a cohesive, memorable ride from beginning to end. Love it.
Sarah Hennies Motor Tapes (New World Records)
I don’t know where to start with Motor Tapes because it’s such a stark exclamation in Sarah Hennies’ incredible discography. She works in new approaches and frameworks here – detailed, expansive on a micro-level, mind-bending, and meticulous; three pieces related to brain activity, mood disorders, and circadian rhythms. There are so many moments that stand out, that leave tiny etchings that by the time the title track runs its 55+ minute course, I’ve lost all sense of the world. Motor Tapes isn’t immersive in ways I expected – there’s a realness in each movement that feels familiar, rooted in a space that’s intransigent while the shapeshifting nature of these compositions leaves the rearview mirror showing something entirely alien. Listen to Sarah Hennies on Songs of Our Lives.
Julia Sabra Natural History Museum (Ruptured)
Natural History is quiet and intimate. And its honed, gilded edge carves me into the tiniest of pieces. Her voice floats above hazy atmospheres and plucked guitar melodies, a spirit watching over us while the world collapses. I haven’t felt so gently destroyed since Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill came out, but Sabra’s work has such a distinct spirit. She carves mountains into empty voids, making the space left behind barren yet inviting, permeated with ghostly warmth. Music like this stops time for me to where I can’t do anything but listen from beginning to end with rapt focus. Absolutely beautiful.
Matt Weston Communism Has Appeared On The Scene (Self-Released)
Every year, Matt Weston’s work grows another unexpected limb. Communism Has Appeared On The Scene (also, what a great album title) comes from all directions, firing fizzing electric shards at mangled percussive escapades, all while looping back on itself in a subterranean feedback loop. Weston ups the intensity, scouring all surfaces with charred cadences built atop dissonant drones and failing alarms. This rips.
Zachary James Watkins Affirmative Action (SIGE)
As soon as the electronics crackle into existence on opener “Black Love,” Zachary James Watkins has us. Harsh reality clouds the melodic turmoil buried in these roaring sonic incantations. Resonance shatters into a thousand glass forms throughout Affirmative Action, spilling emotive glances through vibraphone embraces and fragmented rhythms. While Watkins digs deep into resonances – guttural bass echoes melting into feedback; warm, encompassing reverb – the sharpened points of distorted drones and percussive jangle bring everything into focus. Layers stratify into solid aural shapes, dense and textural surrounded by a harmonic halo. It’s like this music is crawling across my skin, finding every tiny entry point to infiltrate and turn my body into a transmitter. The physicality of these pieces is irresistible. Watkins worked with a cache of stellar composers – Morgan Craft, Ava Mendoza, Ravon Chacon, and Sharmi Basu – for the central composition here, but he ties it all together and lets it howl.
Mark Trecka The Bloom of Performance (Beacon Sound)
Every corner of The Bloom of Performance feels heavy and permanent. Trecka grinds us down – not to destroy, but so we can become a part of the world forever. This space between the present and an unseen future is a minefield, its claws scratching out sacred marks in the ether. While Trecka croons, moving between his upper and lower register at the root of closer “Go Through,” waves of texture cascade from the tops of progressive rhythms and grinding bass repetitions. The theatrics are muted, and the weight begins to lift. We may hope for one last explosion, one last circle around the sun, but The Bloom of Performance disintegrates, leaving us alone to reckon with our evisceration.
DANIAILYAS Enough For Me To Remain (Geographic North)
The dream team collaboration I never knew I needed. Ilyas Ahmed is a longtime, all-time favorite and Dania Shihab has done nothing but melt my brain over the last few years. So together? All day. Guitar stirrings echo against chamber vocals, all of it swirling in ethereal shapes against smoke and shadows. Enough For Me To Remain is a sonic cocoon, a place for slow, considered movements, an extended moment for dreaming. Beauty and darkness intertwine to blur our periphery, creating a separation between the imagined and real. A stunner. Listen to Ilyas on Songs of Our Lives.
Mélodie Blaison Avant le Rivage (wabi-sabi tapes)
When glass turns into dripping melodies, cast out from sunbleached skies and filtered through entangled prisms, it ends up sounding something like the beguiling Avant le Rivage. Patterns coalesce from synthetic serenades and scattered flute remnants, but their emergence stops in the shadows. Blaison is a puppeteer, pulling diverging sonic strings like ghosts dissipating in the light. Avant le Rivage glows in its empty spaces where notes bloom and stretch, singing in resonant textures that never fully tail off. When voices start beckoning, intersected by sharp whistles and electronic skittering, imagery rises through bubble-like tonal maps and rippling soundscapes. Erratic arpeggios imbue these pathways with movement. Blaison’s music is small and close, but that only heightens its emotive power and the deep marks it leaves on us, clawing out space with each playful spell—another slice of crucial listening from wabi sabi tapes.
A Few More Methods For Blasting Off
Tony Rolando Imagine A Dolphin… (Self-Released)
Zosha Warpeha silver dawn (Relative Pitch)
Ted Byrnes & Michael Foster Solfege (Torn Light)
Loula Yorke speak, thou vast and venerable head (quiet details)
Jonathan Sielaff Coral City (Self-Released)
Thorn Wych Aesthesis (Hood Faire)
Farah Kaddour Badā (Asadun Alay)
Lord Spikeheart The Adept (Self-Released)
Rush Falknor/Natty Gray split (Cult Love Sound)
Fabiano do Nascimento & Sam Gendel The Room (Real World)
Felix Machtelinckx Night Scenes (Subexotic)
Early Fern Memory Garden (Aural Canyon)
Marlo de Lara cannae (scatter)
Catherine Sikora, Susan Alcorn Filament (Relative Pitch)
Antonina Nowacka Sylphine Soporifera (Mondoj)
W. Realrider & Kole Galbraith s/t (Obscure & Terrible)
Manja Ristić & Murmer The Scaffold (Unfathomless)
Free Tala Underwater Sounds to Lure the Fishes (SATATUHATTA)
marine eyes to belong (Past Inside the Present)
Amkarahoi Uncle Reed In The Purple Mine (Patience/Impatience)
Labels That Released Many Things I Listened to Many Times
Randomly pick anything any of these labels have released and it’s likely to scratch an itch. Dive in.
A quick shout-out to the Full Spectrum crew and their incredible run. It’s hard to know when to walk away from a label/thing that has longevity and gravity (ask me how I know – ha!), but it’s great to see them do it on their terms and to marvel at the legacy left behind. What an amazing discography!
That’s a wrap. This list is bananas, and yet I don’t even feel like I covered everything I wanted to, so if your album isn’t here – I’m still so happy you made it and shared it. The world needs more of us putting things out there, sharing and conversing about it. Everything might be burning down no matter what, but let’s make it a little better in our tiny, little corners while we can. Thanks for reading, and everyone who has thrown a few bucks Foxy’s way – my endless gratitude in helping sustain this thing. Onward.
