yungatita. Heart To Gold. Downey Chase. Keep For Cheap. Sinai Vessel. Darryl Rahn. Cottonwood Firing Club. Macseal. Lord Spikeheart. That Mexican OT. Uboa. The Lostines. Still House Plants. Fievel Is Glauque. Tucker Zimmerman. Mabe Fratti. Friko. Nobigdyl. The Fuzzy Robes. AceMo. Bolis Pupul. Vanisha Gould. Nappy Nina. Paolo Griffin. Ethnic Heritage Ensemble … I am stopping here because I don’t have the time - or rather, I want to pretend to be the person who doesn’t have the time - to list any more. But these are all artists whose 2024 albums have been recommended by fellow Substackers on year-end lists - artists who are completely unfamiliar to me. (Some of them, from the look of it, are anagrams of each other.) In other words, these are not just new albums, but new albums that have found appreciative ears.
There are many other year-end lists not on Substack, containing scores more unfamiliar artists. And both the Substack lists and the lists from elsewhere include artists that I have heard of whose 2024 albums I haven’t got around to listening to yet. Billie Eilish. Charli XX. Kamasi Washington. The Jesus and Mary Chain. The Pet Shop Boys. Plus quite a few I had or hadn’t heard of, whose work I have listened to. The other evening I listened to some of someone’s best-of list. - I’ve lost it now, somewhere in the bowels of Substack. The Ethnic Heritage Ensemble’s 'Open Me, a Higher Conciousness Of Sound And Spirit’ was one of the albums mentioned. It’s really great. Funky, jazzy, from a planet somewhere near Sun Ra. Its greatness maddened me. Which of these other artists is great? What if it’s all of them? Fuuuuck. I don’t want to miss anything. But yesterday I listened for the first time to the 2005 recording of Steve Reich’s Drumming, somewhat randomly. That didn’t cross anything off any list.
