10 Standouts 2018

Maybe because I'm getting older or maybe because this year was a fantastic one for music (or maybe both), I had more than 70 albums highlighted with the Best Music tag in 2018. So, as you can imagine, narrow the list down to just 50 wasn't an easy job, and that's why I wanted to create this section in which I take a moment to appreciate some albums that somehow couldn't make it to the final cut, but that are nonetheless brilliant in their own ways. This is the list I prepared for that purpose...

Clarence Clarity - THINK:PEACE 

This weird, utterly charming experimental pop artist will always have a special place in my heart because he made me think that other worlds are actually possible to make. This is his second release, another superb example of just how capable we humans are when we rely on our imagination and sense of joy.

Death Grips - Year Of The Snitch 

There hasn't been a more consistently good band over there in a long long time, and Death Grips continue to marvel, jaw-drop and enchant with their schizophrenic approach to experimental hip hop. This time around, they favour glitch, rock and electronics but, oh surprise, they still manage to sound as urban as angry.

Ezra Furman - Transangelic Exodus 

Queerness has been a topic where lots of artists could express themselves on, but few others did such a magnetic and brilliant job as Ezra here. There's a rebellious sense of independence but also a gravitational force that indicates that everything, everything is going to be okay in the end, no matter how hard the present might look like.

Hailu Mergia - Lala Belu 

The Ethiopian composer delivers a gorgeous set of songs that set the mood for trippy, energetic and sweetly familiar adventures. The artist finds a way to sound like an extension of his instruments, and the record benefits a lot from its own sense of cooperation and communion.

Jean Grae x Quelle Chris - Everything's Fine 

The marriage combined forces here to perform an album that's sarcastic, dark, humourous, perplexing and moving in all its consistency. With gut and wit, they also managed to concoct one of the most potent social critiques on modern society that we could have asked for in a year as comboluted as 2018.

Jon Hopkins - Singularity 

Jon Hopkins has always found ways to reach out for the stars while creating suffocating macro beats that tackle techno and ambient in equal measures, and his latest release is no exception. Humanity and machines can cohabit, yes, but the electronic producer makes them best friends.

Lump - Lump 

The collaborative project between Laura Marling and Mike Lindsay is a nocturnal and heavily experimental approach at indie folk/pop. It also delivers some heart-felt and sometimes awe-inspiring lyricism that synchronises perfectly well with the odd synths. Plus, the album cover and its creature are the cutest thing I saw all year long.

Mammoth Grinder - Cosmic Crypt 

The heavy metal outfit breaks jaws and spirits with their latest release: a record so immersed into obscurity and eternal flames that agonizes the listener and puts them in a disjointed trans that's easy to exit from but not so effective to un-linger apart. A cosmic journey to the bombastic crypts of the sublime.

Miya Folick - Premonitions 

The singer-songwriter and producer created a universe so raw, honest and mundane that nonetheless reaches the stars in both production, musicality, lyricism and sense. The pace might change, the mood might move, but it's Miya's undeniable talent the most precious gem we're more than happy to see being exploited.

S U P E R F L A T スーパーフラット - Midnight Ads 

There aren't as many records this year that sound this funny, this entertaining and this hyper-kinetic. I love it for its plastic happiness, its moving sensitivity and its magnetic force towards the chirpy dancefloor. Another reason why Bandcamp is one of the best inventions in humanity when it comes to discovering new talents out there.

50 Best Songs 2018

Going on with the year-end lists, it's time to mention my 50 favourite tracks of 2018. Some of them were released as promotional singles, while others belong to proper albums, and even some of them exist in solitude. The genres, as you'll be able to see, reflect my versatility and my expansive taste on music; something I'm proud of and continuously working on.

The year was marked with political unstability, economic doom and gender-based problematics. As a consequence, such a complex and agitated year deserves good music to give a fight to. And these are the best weapons I could find in the process...

1. SOPHIE - Immaterial [Best Pop Song] 

Celebrate diversity. Celebrate love. Celebrate freedom. This tracks explodes celebration.

2. Childish Gambino - This Is America [Best Hip Hop Song] 

The USA weeps as it can't believe its present time. And Donald makes the best representation of it.

3. Empress Of - When I'm With Him 

A shimmering capitulation on bittersweet young love and disdain. Exquisite.

4. Janelle Monáe - Make Me Feel [Best Funk Song] 

It's groovy. It's heavily felt. It's got gut. It's got soul. It's got you and me. It's the here.

5. Robyn - Missin U 

There's an enormous sense of forgiveness and compassion on Robyn's music, and this track simplifies and magnifies it all.

6. Rosalía - Malamente 

The blend between flamenco, pop, trap, electronic and experimental music is delightful. This is the threshold to an impeccable world. You're welcome.

7. MGMT - Little Dark Age 

The inclination towards dark wave and 80's synth-pop suits the duo more than well. It's hella amazing, to be honest.

8. Nathy Peluso - La Sandunguera 

Nathy destroys standards and canons with her beauty and idiosyncratic mixture in music. And this track is the culmination of all her flow, blood and charisma.

9. Sons Of Kemet - Your Queen Is Mamie Phipps Clark [Best Jazz Song] 

Going deeply dubby and mnemonic, the British duo slaps the dancefloor with this rotten piece of retrofuturistic chamanic chant.

10. Dirty Projectors - Break-Thru 

How sweet and joyful can David Longstreth be when he's in love, right?

11. Chancha Vía Circuito - La Victoria [Best Electronic Song] 

12. A.L.L. (Against All Logic) - Some Kind Of Game 

13. Let's Eat Grandma - Hot Pink 

14. Yves Tumor - Honesty 

15. Poppy - X [Best Metal Song] {yes} 

16. Superorganism - Something For Your M.I.N.D. 

17. Tune-Yards - Heart Attack 

18. Kali Uchis ft. Jorja Smith - Tyrant 

19. Ibiza Pareo - En Una Cita 

20. Charli XCX - No Angel 

21. Courtney Barnett - Nameless Faceless [Best Rock Song] 

22. Young Fathers - Toy 

23. Parquet Courts - Wide Awake 

24. Melody's Echo Chamber - Desert Horse 

25. Valdes - Gris 

26. Mai Lan - Pumper 

27. Fischerspooner - Topbrazil 

28. Dead Can Dance - Dance Of The Bacchantes 

29. J Balvin - Brillo [Best Reggaeton Song] 

30. Bándalos Chinos - Canción De Susana 

31. Tirzah - Devotion 

32. My Brightest Diamond - Me On The Dancefloor 

33. Marlon Williams - Party Boy 

34. Idles - I'm Scum 

35. Kimbra - Top Of The World 

36. Altopalo - Mono 

37. Christina Aguilera - Accelerate 

38. Lolina - A Path Of Weeds And Flowers 

39. Kids See Ghosts - 4th Dimension 

40. Clarence Clarity - W€ CHANG£ 

41. Mitski - Why Didn't You Stop Me? 

42. Ariana Grande - No Tears Left To Cry 

43. Mon Laferte - El Mambo 

44. Miya Folick - Leave The Party 

45. Ghost - Rats 

46. Malphino - Molienda [Best Cumbia Song] 

47. Jack White - Corporation 

48. Camila Cabello - Never Be The Same 

49. Courtney Marie Andrews - Kindness Of Strangers 

50. Denzel Curry - CLOUT CO13A1N

25 Best Album Covers 2018

Going into this actual year that's coming to an end, it's time to start celebrating what I consider was best in different categories. The first of them will be related to the covers that are shown in both physical and digital releases.

Some say that art first enters throughout the eyes and I certainly agree: there were a lot of instances where I clicked on an album just because I was feeling rather curious of its album cover. Some are mysterious, some are awe-inspiring, some are weird and awkward yet irresistible, some are true works of art, and some are just perfectly placed and neated and composed. Whatever the case, the front cover can say a lot about what's on the inside.

It's an interesting list I came out to create, since this departs a bit from the auditory sense that holds this blog together and favours the visual aspects of musicality. Behind the pictures, I will write a short explanation telling why each piece moved something inside me, and why I cannot wait to have them all locked onto my bedroom walls. Let me start.

1. Tim Hecker - Konoyo 

All these months and I still can't figure out what the artist meant with such an absurd image: you can see a piano set on fire, parts of a car's engine being shot at or swam into, a dead-end suburb street and some apparently terribly organised Photoshop objects that don't make any single sense. And besides that, here it's my favourite album cover of the year. Art needs to strike you to impact you, and this revolved my stomach and mind like no other.

2. Idles - Joy As An Act Of Resistance. 

The British post-punk group has thrown an old picture of a wedding celebration to make their point: are they cheering and dancing? Are they fighting and enjoying it? Why are they all white? What the hell is going on? Plus, the glittered and old-fashioned JOY in the corner. As they say, whether we laugh or cry, we cry laughing! We're all scum! And the more we embrace it, the thicker it will stick.

3. Rosalía - El Mal Querer 

The Spanish singer and producer has given us the best album of the decade, and her artistry is even more elevated because she accompanies her immaculate music with imagery that's as striking. The album cover here is iconic, as if she was an angel coming down from the heavens, all in white and golden. There are tons of symbolisms behind it, and that's enough excuse to honour and praise the exhibit.

4. Yves Tumor - Safe In The Hands Of Love 

Yves Tumor drenches into hypnagogic experimental pop and shows us his most horrifying demons throughout the album cover. It feels creepy, weird, even disgusting to look at, and yet it's phenomenally addictive. Bad taste can be so bad it can be transformed into post-goodness, and the avant-garde necessarily has to go through the ridiculous stage of self-shame to coronate its meaning. Here's an example.

5. Metric - Art Of Doubt 

The experienced dream pop/rock band comes with an album cover that's as minimal and simple as tracklingly engrossing. The line that seems to be aiming at tracing a circle does it with such impresition that it becomes obsolete and crisp clear. Empty as it gets, the big void that's left in the middle turns out to be a terrifying reality and an abyss of thoughts and intentions that only music may fill up until being safe.

6. Parquet Courts - Wide Awake! 

The post-punk outfit has always presented their iconoclastic approach to music with vivid imagery and their latest record is definitely no exception. The three headless people dancing around the moving square do that with such careless improvisation that it's clear to say the band knows we're all doomed as hell, but we can escape the torture by fighting back and giving our best while still alive.

7. Vessel - Queen Of Golden Dogs 

The mysterious British electronic producer turns baroque in his latest record, and he seems to dwelve into medieval imagery to pronounce his message. The picture is as mesmerising as nerve-wracking, and the interaction between the young maid with the anthropomorphous hall that contains birds and threads retells melancholy, desperation and inevitable suffering. Look at her expression: there's passive life there, but behind the layers there might be soul.

8. Daughters - You Won't Get What You Want 

The most apocalyptic and densely engrossing record of the year feels penetrating in vision, too. The scary face that's shown seems like the one you're likely to have in your darkest and worst nightmares; the expression of depression, extreme solitude and angry horror. It's a simple, almost-cavernous trace that can lead to unexpected places in the psyche and turn your head around to check you're surely alone in the bedroom.

9. Earl Sweatshirt - Some Rap Songs 

As with Yves Tumor, Earl goes fully experimental and abstract on his latest record. He literally seems to dig up his own mind in order to interact with his darkest ghosts and shadiest thoughts, and a person this confused, this unstable and this willing to go to the subconscious might look like the picture above. Again, bad taste is relative, and sometimes emotions are expressed through truly curious means.

10. Jlin - Autobiography (Music From Wayne McGregor's Autobiography) 

The acclaimed coreographer and dancer Wayne McGregor recruited the prolific footwork producer Jlin to score the music for his autobiography and, judging from its cover, she was completely able to express the artist's life as well as her own approach to music in a picture: hyper-kinetic and complex elaborations on movement and synergy seem to connect into a space where the everything becomes the nothing and the nothing is everywhere.

11. Dead Can Dance - Dionysus 

After years of silence, the Australian/British outfit returns with pieces of ambient tribalism that mingle on Eastern European and neo-Bizantine chants and melodies to concoct ethereal and menacing voids. The album cover reflects a typical mask from a Mexican people and it possesses such level of detail and colour that it's hard to see the profound sadness and mystery in the eyes. This is just how trapped you get while listening to it.

12. Valdes - Gris 

The Córdoba-based indie pop band Valdes came out with one of the most perplexing releases of the year, and the greatness amplifies while looking at its unsettling, heavily iconic album cover. A human figure dressed in navy blue holds a mirror where another one's being lighted upon; the curious thing comes when you see that none of their faces or heads are shown, but instead replaced with big dots. Cryptic and sensational as the music itself.

13. Blood Orange - Negro Swan 

The newest release from the wonderful producer Devonté Hynes is a fantastic exploration into black modernity and youth, and is packed up with sweet, joyous R&B. The cover shows an androgynous person dressed like a white angel sitting on the side of a white car. The contraposition of colours might seem obvious at first, but it's clear the artist saw it necessary to address topics that seem obvious as well, but wouldn't be so in reality.

14. Visigoth - Conqueror's Oath 

Metal bands are widely known for their thoroughly design album covers that usually depict glorious rises from the death or beyond the living, or apocalyptic pictures that scare and marvel at equal parts. The latest release from Visigoth seems to fall in the former, showing a victorious and highly furious attitude towards problems in life. And the image is perfectly connected with the music; what else can it be asked for?

15. Anna Von Hausswolff - Dead Magic 

The magnetic and maximalist album from the Swedish auteur feels simbiotic with its cover: rotten, raw and creepy at the edge of obscenity. One may look at it and feel the same as if you were looking at a 19th-century lost picture, and the juxtaposition between the infra-red light makes it the more obscure and shady. Anna finds more than one way to destroy our psyches, and music is just the beginning of it.

16. serpentwithfeet - soil 

This cryptic, idiosyncratic new voice booms spheres with his melancholic, galactical release, and the picture that serves as presentation is the perfect simplification to his approach to music. Magical to the point of chamanistic and spiritual to the extreme of levitating, the carton-based dress, the castagnas-like handplays and the two moons make up for a rare, cataleptic experience.

17. Ash Koosha - Unnamed 

One of the many releases the Iranian electronic producer threw out this year seems utterly mysterious in form and shape, and its album cover does nothing more than amplifying the intrigue. Almost everything in the picture look pristinely white, but the spectrum that touches the top of his head creates an alien, haunting atmosphere that accurately simulates the pieces that one can listen to.

18. Dommengang - Love Jail 

The newest album from the American indie rock band Dommengang might look overlooked this year, but its simple, almost mundane cover stroke me for its beautiful composition. Pastel colours mingle into a sunny day, and a palm tree with a monoblock house create the perfect scenario for music made from and for people from the suburbs; people like you and me, people one can easily relate to.

19. Low - Double Negative 

The thickest, most absorbing and regurgitating release of the year seems to have nothing to do with this seemingly optimistic cover, with pink background and an unknown piece of plastic that looks like having two big eyes. It's this contradiction what makes the record even more appealing and interesting to analyse at, creating another layer of substance into a record that's mesmerising and pluri-facetic.

20. Chris Corsano / Bill Orcut - Brace Up! 

The thirty-minute explosive piece of free improvisation, avant-garde jazz and experimental rock from the duo is a free-willing experience that's relentless and maniac in form and execution. Its cover reflects that austere sense of recklessness with a terribly-made collage in which Corsano the part that may hang all together, Orcutt the mad man and Brace Up! the chaotic result. And we're the crowd experiencing all in the first row.

21. Louta - Enchastre 

The Argentinian character Louta is refreshing in all the aspects of his artistry, and the album cover from his latest record couldn't have been the exception. The aesthetics are tinily thought-out and executed, with blue shades illuminating the scene and reinforcing the singer's head and features, and the pins all over his face are the necessary part that reflects his uninhibited, extravagant personality.

22. Sons Of Kemet - Your Queen Is A Reptile 

The sophomore release from the British jazz outfit is exhilarating and wholly vivid, but the concept behind it is a fierce recapitulation that pays homage to important female figures throughout history and geographies. The cover shows a couple of them, enlisted in a sort of militaristic position but still holding great traces of humanity, care and tenderness. A sincere testament to woman's force is perfectly captured in the engraving.

23. Snail Mail - Lush 

In my opinion, Lush can be the most overrated record of the year, but I can't deny the strong attraction of its cover. The luminous colours are so well-intermingled while the fonds are thin but fulled with personality. Besides, we can see the singer in a kind of numb, awkward position, not looking at the camera and looking lost in time and space. That position reflects the attitude she takes towards the music on her album.

24. Rival Consoles - Persona 

The electronic producer under the name Rival Consoles creates an ambitious and robotic micro-universe on his latest release, one where technology and humanity seem to have no borderline. The cover art, on the same line, appears to be expressing this comparison between a livelier and rougher side (the red one [humanity?]) and the starker, stabler one (the black one [technology?]).

25. Alex Anwandter - Latinoamericana 

The latest release from the Chilean singer-songwriter and producer fits perfectly into our modern society and its constraints, but it's nonetheless a furious and heavily empowering record about identity and fearlessness. The album cover is pleasant to look because all the elements on it seem in perfect synchrony: the jungly background with the artist's outfit and serious look, without forgetting the wavy fond and the boundary-pushing album title. It's exquisite and rich art in and from all perspectives.

Bonus: Beastmaker - EP.2 

It's more than worth-it to check the eight short EPs that the heavy metal band has modestly threw out this year to see just how adventurous and inviting their music is. And, if that's not enough, all the covers are breath-takingly ugly. In particular, I got lost on their second chapter and its mysterious, creepling characters, as well as with the terrorific purple, grey and black that simulate an old-school horror comic book.