While I’m certain sharing a ranked list of my favorite albums from the past year would be mostly fruitless, I’m hopeful some might revisit some of the 2007 which really struck my fancy. Every year, thanks to the wonders of the world wide web, I’m introduced to a slew of heretofore unfamiliar microcosms of the musical universe. Mapsadaisical’s recommendation of A Broken Consort — and the Sustain-Release label in general — is easily my favorite recommendation from the year. Seems mapsadaisical enjoyed Richard Skelton’s soft mossy A Broken Consort field-acoustic over the more electric, lumbering ambient beastliness of Skelton’s Harlassen recording.
Pumice is my clear favorite this year. I somehow managed to tragically and completely avoid Stefan Neville’s work until uncovering 2006’s ‘Yeahnahvienna’ late last year. ‘Pebbles’ can be an exhausting listen. Its grimey notes are grating. Lo-fi certainly isn’t new, but there’s something uniquely beautiful about Neville’s dingy diy-folk rock. Pumice is far from a simple emulation of the Mountain Goats/Neutral Milk Hotel guttural approach. PJ Harvey’s ‘White Chalk’ and Gultskra’s release share some of that tattered, dusty, yellow-wallpaper aesthetic that I find so appealing.
Lest you think I’ve chosen only the dreariest of the year’s releases, my Robert Wyatt selection should be the perfect antidote. Arve Henriksen, Skelton’s two projects, and CoH fit somewhere in the middle of this emotional spectrum. Higgs is unclassifiable as usual, releasing two albums in 2007. I preferred the gentler of the two, ‘Metempsychotic Melodies’, an album of swirling, song-oriented spazz psych, sharing much in common with his earlier 2006 release, ‘Ancestral Songs’. Big Blood is another of my recent obsessions, psych-folk very much in the spirit of weirdos like Higgs, Brad Rose, Steven R. Smith, and a continuation of the (apparently) legendary Cerberus Shoal.
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