Today I’ll be playing and talking about my favorite records from this year. Records that kept my spirit curious and invested in possible futures nascent in a present deluge of despair, that lit a sense of the potential for other kinds of life or at least got me going fast and outside, running hi speed towards a shore I cannot see. Part of imagining new worlds is re-defining our relationship to the past, both to the centuries of violence and exploitation that are at the heart of western civilization and to the musical forms this civilization produced? The common refrain that I hear that has its genesis in the work of mark fisher, is that Nothing new ever happens, musicians are stuck endlessly retreading past cultural forms, reliant on recreating aesthetics from past eras wholesale to generate seemingly novel compositions or combining styles from distinct eras in a kind of postmodern bricokage. Nothing ever happens here, capital continues its domestication of man, the song remains the same. But I disagree. And think many artists from this year attempted to wrestle with re examining our relationship to the past aHow do we integrate and bear the dead weight of a past n present that is structured around the immiseration of workers, the degradation of the biosphere, the industrialized slaughter of living beings? How do artists integrate the styles and problematics from previous eras into something wholly new, that makes dreaming up new worlds feel possible? And how, quite simply, does one go on?
Playlist
-
Dallas by Cindy Lee on Diamond Jubilee (Realistik) -
Leafless by Michelle Moeller on Late Morning (AKP Recordings) -
508 by Color Green on Fool’s Parade (New West Records) -
Transcendental Medication by Risa on I (Self-released) -
Kali by Leonore Kandel on Dial-a-Poet (City Lights) -
Pale Moon Flower by Lynn Avery, Cole Pulice on Phantasy & Reality (Moon Glyph Records) -
Future Tense 3 by Hits on World of Dirt (Paisley Shirt Records) -
Superior Mirage by Chuck Johnson on Sun Glories (Western Vinyl) -
Port Costa by Desiree Cannon on Radio Heat (Long Road Society) -
Requiem in Dust by Bill Orcutt on How to Rescue Things (Palililia) -
Gum Loop by Matt Robidoux on Mesh Songs EP (Self-released) -
Meet Me in the Ruins by Tashi Dorji on We Will Be Wherever the Fires are Lit (Drag City) -
Our Lady of Fatima Solar Phenomenon by Sadie Greyduck on Sky Will Learn Sky (Cone Shape Top Imprint)