Best music of 2019
Well, that turned out to take longer than I thought it would. Back before I quit my job at the end of 2019, I mostly listened to music while I was in the office, when I needed to put on headphones to concentrate on writing code in an open-office plan. But in 2020, I basically stopped writing code, and I spent most of my media-consumption time listening to podcasts and watching TV. I did some amount of reading, mostly for an online non-fiction book club I've been a part of for the last couple years, and that's when I did most of my music listening too. But, I spent much of that time keeping up with two college-radio-show podcasts: Jon Bernhardt's Friday Breakfast of Champions show, and the biweekly Sunrise Ocean Bender show (both highly recommended, by the way). So that took up an average of 3 hours a week of my already small amout of music-listening time.
Anyway, on this the last day of 2020, I've finally finished re-listening to, and sorting, all the music I was interested in that came out in 2019! Here's the list of my top 20 favorites:
Swervedriver - Future Ruins
Zip-Tie Handcuffs - Warm Shadows
Chris Forsyth - All Time Present
Tropical Fuck Storm - Brain Drops
Dommengang - No Keys
Versus - Ex Nihilo EP
Ulaan Kohl - Collapsing Hymns
King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard - Infest the Rats' Nest
Garcia Peoples - Natural Facts
The Chemical Brothers - No Geography
Julia Kent - Temporal
The Claypool Lennon Delirium - South of Reality
Vivian Girls - Memory
Elkhorn - Sun Cycle / Elk Jam
The Hair and Skin Trading Company - I Don't Know Where You Get Those Funny Ideas From
Ladytron - Ladytron
Khana Bierbood - Strangers from the Far East
In Gowan Ring - Moonlit Missives Compendium
Major Stars - Roots of Confusion Seeds of Joy
Wand - Laughing Matter
Here's all the other stuff I liked:
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Here's all the other stuff I listened to but was more ambivalent about:
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I realize that a big flat list without comments may not be all that compelling, but I don't want to delay this post any further by trying to write up specific thoughts about each of my favorites. But if there's something about which you're particularly interested in hearing what I think, feel free to let me know in the comments.
...But I will say one general thing: Yes, I realize this is a painfully Gen-X list. I'm still struggling to discover more music I like that's made by people under 40. Let me know if you have any tips about that! This entry was originally posted at https://dougo.dreamwidth.org/158163.html. Please comment there using OpenID.