NOTE: Compiling a list of my favorite releases of any given year often strikes me as an especially artificial exercise, given the way I usually find music– always discovering and exploring new genres, I am constantly playing catch-up. So my favorite discoveries of 2017 may well have come out in 2015, if not 2010 or 1997. My favorite album released in 2017 will probably be something that I first hear in 2018 if not later. All that said, I bought more music in 2017 than possibly any other year of my life, most of it not in the traditional “album” format (Bandcamp singles and EPs dominated), and limiting it to the stuff that came out last year, artificial or not, makes narrowing down my choices that much easier. So here is a list of…

Ten releases from 2017 that blew my mind in 2017

Ancestral Voices, “Divination” (Samurai Horo)

Liam Blackburn, the artist formerly known as Indigo, started his Ancestral Voices project as a pivot from straight Drum’n’Bass to a more experimental, tribal sound. 2015’s “Night of Visions” was a manifesto, steering clear of any set BPM while incorporating elements of ambient and IDM. Two EPs released in 2016 returned Ancestral Voices to a more dancefloor friendly mode, thus doing absolutely nothing to prepare his audience for what was to come. 2017’s triple LP “Divination” does away with beats almost entirely, diving into 104 fully immersive minutes of ambient electronics, by turns meditative and terrifying

DJ Jayhood, “KING” (Local Action Records)

Aptly titled: 15 down-n-dirty tracks, few of them sticking around for much longer than two minutes, make a convincing argument for Jayhood as the undisputed king of Jersey Club. The songs define the template (mid-130s BPMs, distinctive kick-drum pattern, ubiquitous samples) while grafting all manner of breaks and beats over top of it. Looking over this list, I notice that I seem to enjoy describing albums as  “manifestos,” but “KING” feels more like a club music dissertation

Jlin “Black Origami” (Planet Mu)

Gary, Indiana’s queen of footwork puts out an album that splits the difference between transcending the genre and redefining it. Jerrilynn Patton takes the crazed polyrhythms of footwork and somehow makes them even more complex; incorporates the sounds of world music; and creates tunes suitable for chin-scratching home listening while never losing sight of dancefloor function

Lardo “SINKING” (self-released)

Like many sophomore releases from bands whose premieres seemed to come out of nowhere with an unexpected new sound (Joanna Gruesome’s “Peanut Butter” springs immediately to mind), SINKING doesn’t quite pack the raw shock power of its predecessor. It makes up for its lack of novelty the way albums from great bands do: powerful songs that tell interesting stories. Here, the songs pull you in by deepening the first album’s already mordant humor with unsettling darkness

LCD Soundsystem “american dream” (DFA Records)

For all that 2017 could feel like the end of everything good, it sure did see a lot of great comebacks (see also: the next two entries on this list). James Murphy and co. pick up right where they left off, taking the Talking Heads worship of “This Is Happening” and injecting it with some David Bowie. Appropriately, the album trades in ruminations on mortality with a spoonful of funky beats to help them go down

The New Year, “Snow” (self-released)

The ever-meticulous Kadane brothers, on the other hand, never actually went away. They just spent nine years carefully crafting this beautiful, powerful album. If you know, then you already know. And if you don’t, seriously just go back in time to 1994 and start with Bedhead’s “What Fun Life Was.” “Snow” took its time getting to you, it’ll wait

Ryuichi Sakamoto “Async” (Milan Records)

The electronic maestro returns with his first solo release in 8 years (during which lacuna he went 12 rounds with cancer), which he describes as his attempt to write the soundtrack to an imagined Tarkovsky film. In this he is shockingly successful, creating music not only of eerie strangeness and heartbreaking beauty, but of eerie beauty and heartbreaking strangeness

Strange U, “#LP4080” (High Focus Records)

The trajectory of UK politics in 2016 was a harbinger of things to come for America, if only we had noticed. The Brexit vote gave British artists a several-months headstart on us in creating responses to a victory for fear and xenophobia. By the time 2017 rolled around, UK horror/SF rap duo Strange U already had its over-the-top parodic/dystopic soundtrack for the year ready to go

Various Artists, “Club Chai Vol. 1” (Club Chai)

A toolbox/manifesto for dismantling the bleached-white EDM hegemony over dance and club music. 21 tracks from the San Francisco-based party-turned-label that return dance music to the cutting edge and reassert the importance (if not primacy) of queer and minority (especially Latinx) voices in its creation

Wildkatz “Holy Moley” and “Jeepers Creepers” (Hot Mom USA)

I don’t even know what the to call the genre here. “Jeepers” and “Creepers” share a Footwork tempo, though with few of the genre’s other rhythmic signifiers, while “Holy” and “Moly” cleave to Reggaeton. Wildkatz uses these as mere starting points for four tracks that cram albums’ worth of energy, surprise and sonic innovation into 3-4 minutes each

HONORABLE MENTIONS

• Air Max ’97, “Vessel” (Decisions Records)
• Bean, “Dextro” (Ashida Park)
• Dasychira, “Immolated EP” (Blueberry Records)
• Hungry Man, “Kind” (self-released)
• Objekt, “Objekt #4” (self-released)
• OUT, “Swim Buddies” (Comedy Minus One)
• Sega Bodega, “Ess B” and “Nivea” (Crazylegs)
• Suda, “Hives” (HER Records)
• Thoom, “Blood and Sand” (Club Chai)
• Various Artists, “CyberSonicLA Vol 2” (CyberSonicLA)
• Various Artists, “mono no aware” (PAN Recordings)
• Various Artists, “Visceral Minds 2” (Fractal Fantasy)

Records from 2016 that blew my mind in 2017 (slept-on list, part 1)

• Dumbfoundead, “We Might Die” (self-released)
• Elon Katz, “The Human Pet” (Diagonal Records)
• Equiknoxx Music, “Bubble” (Equiknoxx Music)
• Le Makeup, “Esthe” (Ashida Park)
• Lil Taty, “Marabu EP” (Ashida Park)
• Nocturnal Habits, “New Skin For Old Children” (Glacial Pace)
• Jeff Parker, “The New Breed” (International Anthem)
• R Y K T, “Thunderbyte EP” (TAR Recordings)
• Steve Lehman and Sélébéyone, “Sélébéyone” (PI Recordings)
• Various Artists, “A New Tribe” (Lightless Recordings)
• Various Artists, “Co-Op Compilation” (Co-Op)
• Various Artists, “HER Records Volume 4” (HER Records)

Records from 2017 that I expect to blow my mind in 2018 (slept-on list, part 2)

• The Effects,  “Eyes to the Light” (Dischord)
• Kelela, “Take Me Apart” (WARP)
• M.E.S.H., “Hesaitix” (PAN Recordings
• Pan Daijing, “Lack” (PAN Recordings)
• Vince Staples, “Big Fish Theory” (Def Jam)
• Ziúr, “U Feel Anything?” (Planet Mu)