Musical highlights of 2018:
- Buying a print music magazine (Chickfactor), reading an interview with an artist I’ve never heard (Girl Ray), being totally charmed by it and hurrying to buy their record, which did not disappoint, and for a fleeting moment feeling like it’s 1998.
- Discovering new music on Bandcamp and being able to support artists like Kermes, Laverne, Slow Spirit and Renata Zeiguer immediately and directly, before I get distracted by atrocities or shiny things.
- Getting into records by artists like Lithics, Empath, and Patois Counselors because my brilliant and enthusiastic colleagues won’t shut up about them.
- Seeing Circuit des Yeux play Reaching for Indigo at the Empty Bottle, then again the next day at Pitchfork, and again later in the year at Hopscotch, and promising that I will never complain again about an artist “just playing the new album” live.
- Having a local radio station like WMSE with impeccable taste and passion for supporting new music, like Sundial Mottos, and a tendency to remind me on a daily basis how much I don’t know about the old (why had I never heard Polyrock before?).
- Appreciating a few already beloved artists who outdid themselves this year: Matthew Dear, Frog Eyes, Shopping, Negative Scanner, Exploded View, Amber Arcades.
- Making a playlist consisting of Chic's “At Last I Am Free”, Robert Wyatt's cover of “At Last I Am Free”, and Elizabeth Fraser’s cover of “At Last I Am Free” and, to be honest, listening to that as much as anything else this year:
