The Japanese 80s ambient comp at #38 is particularly good

December 23, 2019 6:20 PM

Unlike most other year-end best music lists, Bandcamp Daily's 100 Best Albums of 2019 lets you listen for free to every recommended album in its entirety. The site's best-of-2019 lists for specific genres like Contemporary Classical, Hip-Hop, Jazz, Punk, Electronic, Soul, Metal and Experimental also let you listen for free to all of the recommendations in full.

You can click the play button to start a playlist that samples one selected track from each of the 20 albums, or use the small arrows to skip back to the first track of any album and listen to it from beginning to end.

1 thru 20
21 thru 40
41 thru 60
61 thru 80
81 thru 100

posted by mediareport (5 comments total)

Sweeeeeeeet. This one (in hip-hop) is so intriguing

In the weeks leading up to the release of There Existed an Addiction to Blood, progressive L.A. rap trio Clipping told Bandcamp they’d always intended to record a horror-themed album. To do that, rapper Daveed Diggs and producers William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes dug into the rap archives, connecting the dots between horrorcore hip-hop—a cult ‘90s sub-genre that included artists like Flatlinerz, Gravediggaz, and a gaggle of Memphis rappers—with the eerie audio tricks of vintage horror movies. The 15 cinematic songs on Blood all have self-contained narrative arcs: “He Dead” turns police officers into werewolves, backing the action with grinding synths; on the chilling “Run For Your Life,” Memphis rapper La Chat hunts the song’s protagonist through a maze of bleak streets—made all the more vivid by the inclusion of field recordings; and “Blood Of The Fang” depicts radical activists from the ’60s and ’70s as undead warriors, striking back at oppressive social structures over samples from cult vampire flick Ganja & Hess.

posted by spamandkimchi at 8:11 PM on December 23, 2019 [2 favorites]

It's Bandcamp so I'm not surprised but I do love how wildly diverse the Top 100 is. Some current faves among the ones I hadn't heard before:

- Auma by the Kenyan/German duo Odd Okoddo, a beautiful mix of traditional and future sounds
- WAHALA by YATTA, with great broken-open song structures and beautiful experimental vocals
- Jaime, the new Brittany Howard, is such a sweet record that really stretches out from Alabama Shakes territory
- And yeah, Kankyō Ongaku: Japanese Ambient, Environmental & New Age Music 1980​-​1990, that fantastic compilation of Japanese ambient artists

Of the genre-specific lists I've only gone through the contemporary classical top 10, but wow there are some fascinating, unusual sounds on that one. That Meara O'Reilly EP is gorgeous.
posted by mediareport at 9:34 PM on December 23, 2019 [4 favorites]

Second the rec on Odd Okoddo. I am also glad to have discovered Empath.
posted by tofu_crouton at 10:18 AM on December 24, 2019 [1 favorite]

mediareport, YATTA is bar none maybe the best live act I've ever seen in my life; if you ever have the chance to see them, do not miss it!
posted by Cpt. The Mango at 11:41 AM on December 27, 2019 [1 favorite]

Thanks, Cpt. The Mango; I'll keep an ear out. I've been going through the Best Soul list tonight and I cannot recommend Cage & Aviary, the debut from Bryony Jarman-Pinto, highly enough. It's a beautifully gentle, funky and smart mix of jazz, electronica and sweet early 70s acoustic R&B. 'What's Going On?' and 'Astral Weeks' are in there somewhere, too. Great find.
posted by mediareport at 6:42 PM on December 27, 2019 [1 favorite]