malmberg’s 2016 rekord album list

MALMBERG’S UN­ORDERED LIST OF REKO­RDS THAT WERE BET­TER THAN OTH­ER REKO­RDS AND ALSO ARE REKO­RDS THAT CAME OUT IN 2016.

This is by no means a be-all end-all list of the year’s best reko­rds be­cause who has time to hear every­thing. But these are the reko­rds that made a mark on me in The Year of Our Lord 2016 A.D.
 

Bowie Black­star
This is a tough one since I lis­tened to it a lot for one week and then was nev­er able to lis­ten to it again, you un­der­stand why.

En­tire forests of pix­el­wood trees have been chopped down dis­cussing this one and it will for­ev­er be short­hand for the sev­enth bro­ken seal that sent 2016 spi­ral­ing into the night­mare I think we can all agree it be­came. Some day I’ll be able to hear this one again but for now the wound is still, at 11 months, too fresh.
 

Iggy Pop Post Pop De­pres­sion
Such is the uni­ver­sal good­will for Mr. Os­ter­berg that I have lived through a half dozen good faith at­tempts at his ‘come­back’ and ‘re­turn to form’ and for once it ac­tu­al­ly fits. This is Iggy Prime and it’s such an un­like­ly suc­cess that it’s a won­der it ex­ists at all.

If hang­ing around with Homme was the spark Iggy need­ed to get back into East Berlin vam­pire mode then I wish they’d have met 20 years ago. In some ways it’s fit­ting that Bowie and Iggy both had such vi­tal late-ca­reer records this year and for that rea­son I hope Pop is reg­u­lar­ly tak­ing his Cen­trum Sil­ver.
 

Sam Irl Raw Land
The post-Set­tle years have been a boom pe­ri­od for records try­ing to ap­prox­i­mate the spare, dri­ving sound of ear­ly house records but of­ten tend to fall more on the side of ap­ing pre­set sounds and or­na­men­tal el­e­ments. This one felt like it lo­cat­ed the same head­space as a lot of those gold­en age clas­sics and thats where it was com­ing from and that re­al­ly res­onat­ed with me.
 

Sturgill Simp­son A Sailor’s Guide to Earth
My dad was a truck dri­ver in the late 70s through the 80s. As such I was ex­posed to a lot of coun­try mu­sic made in the pe­ri­od be­fore Garth stormed the charts with his hy­brid of 80s pop and Wal­mart tropes. The thing about coun­try from that time was the di­ver­si­ty of sounds and ap­proach­es. It hadn’t all been cod­i­fied down to genre clich­es so that made a lot of space avail­able for real peo­ple to tell real sto­ries about lives rich­er than mud­din’ in F‑150s on the 4th of July or what­ev­er dire non­sense mod­ern pop coun­try is on about. Sturgill is ab­solute­ly an ex­ten­sion of that tra­di­tion and his third al­bum has that same kind of rich­ness.

A col­lec­tion of sto­ries that can only come from some­one that ac­tu­al­ly lived a life with a few decades’ dings and scratch­es on its hull. Fur­ther: “Maybe get high, play a lit­tle Gold­en­Eye. On that old 64.” is a strong con­tender for Year’s Best Cou­plet.
 

Kay­trana­da 99.9%
Noth­ing this sum­mer sound­ed bet­ter than this record, a kalei­do­scop­ic ex­plo­sion of R&B, house, and at times (UK)Garage and hand­bag sounds that’s so di­verse yet fus­es so per­fect­ly to its whole. A breath of fresh air into the lungs of an in­die R&B move­ment that was start­ing this year to feel like a thread­bare crutch for bed­room pro­duc­ers. And any­one that gets Craig David into ears in 2016 is worth lis­ten­ing to.
 

An­der­son .Paak Mal­ibu
Dude. Dude. Du­u­u­u­u­u­u­ude. Was there any bet­ter shout of ar­rival in 2016 than Mal­ibu? This is an al­bum so con­fi­dent­ly craft­ed and so ex­pert­ly plot­ted and played that it all but grabs you by the col­lar and de­mands that you rec­og­nize .Paak as the su­per­star that he’s right on the cusp of be­com­ing.

To hear this record on, your first les­son is to im­me­di­ate­ly un­der­stand that this is a man with a point of view and sur­plus tal­ent to get it across. It’s his sec­ond al­bum but to me feels like it’s the first that’s com­plete­ly *his*. If you didn’t ride a bike in the sun­shine to Cel­e­brate this sum­mer I feel bad for you.
 

The Mon­kees Good Times
No re­al­ly. I didn’t even want to both­er lis­ten­ing to this the first time, but am glad I did. How on earth this thing works at all is a tes­ta­ment to the mag­ic of ex­cel­lent pop songcraft. Dolenz, Tork, and Ne­smith opened up the vaults and opened them­selves up to col­lab­o­ra­tion to with leg­endary pop­smiths like XTC’s Andy Par­tridge and im­prob­a­bly turned in an al­bum that can hang with any of their OG Col­gems run.

This was a per­fect sum­mer al­bum and was de­signed as such, and there was noth­ing like hear­ing Me and Mag­dale­na while ac­tu­al­ly dri­ving south to Mon­terey, which I did. Tops pop.
 

Kad­h­ja Bonet The Vis­i­tor
I don’t throw around cliche terms like ‘sin­gu­lar tal­ent’ but if I did … You’re go­ing to ei­ther know the name Kad­h­ja Bonet in 2017 or you’ll end up catch­ing her on her sec­ond al­bum, but some day you’re go­ing to love this woman.

As much an alien as Janelle and with a voice that can cut glass and melt steel of­ten with­in the same verse, Bonet is the real thing. She writes all her own arrange­ments as well so I can’t wait to vis­it every plan­et she de­cides to pi­lot us to. And she’s just get­ting start­ed.
 

Chance the Rap­per Col­or­ing Book
As a non-re­li­gious per­son who also deeply en­joys the art in­her­ent in re­li­gious ex­pres­sion, it seems like a nat­ur­al that an artist would even­tu­al­ly mar­ry the cel­e­bra­to­ry up­lift of gospel sounds with hip-hop in a way that for­ti­fies their in­di­vid­ual strengths out­side of the stock re­demp­tive tracks that we’ve had for decades.

Chance has a spir­i­tu­al­i­ty that makes re­li­gion seem in­fec­tious even to this hon­key athe­ist. And be­sides that, he’s the sin­gle fresh­est voice in hip-hop to pop up in years. I know peo­ple that don’t get his wave­length and I feel bad for them be­cause Chance is work­ing with a vir­tu­al­ly un­lim­it­ed ceil­ing and the ride so far has been daz­zling.
 

De La Soul and the Anony­mous No­body …
Per­haps Im just show­ing my age here but a run­ning theme for 2016 seems to be Clas­sic Band Makes Al­bum That Shouldn’t Be as Good as it Is. And so it is with De La Soul’s 8th al­bum in al­most 30 years.

They crowd­fund­ed it, put a band to­geth­er, wrote mu­sic to mine sam­ples from and made their best record since Stakes is High. You get the sense that they learned a lot from their Go­ril­laz col­la­bos and it only served to ex­pand an al­ready ad­ven­tur­ous son­ic palette.
 

A Tribe Called Quest We Got it From Here … Thank You 4 Your Ser­vice
I don’t rank these things but if I was pressed to crown an AOTY it wouldn’t even be a ques­tion. Ar­riv­ing dur­ing the worst week in 21st cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can his­to­ry (and yes, it’s worse than that oth­er one you’re think­ing of) the new Tribe record could not have been more per­fect­ly timed or com­plete­ly and whol­ly rel­e­vant. It’s al­most clair­voy­ant in its per­fect view of where it would touch down on the time­line. A per­fect eu­lo­gy for Phife and a valu­able shoul­der to lean on in one of our dark­est mo­ments, this is the kind of record that fu­els the rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies we’re all about to need to be­come.
 

Child­ish Gam­bi­no Awak­en, My Love!
Wow. I mean re­al­ly. Wow.

The Kauai EP hint­ed at where Glover was about to take things, and those ear­ly leaked tracks teased out what was com­ing but damn if this isn’t bril­liant and com­plete state­ment of pur­pose from an artist in­tent on show­ing us that not only can he do any­thing but that he won’t be hap­py un­til he’s done *every­thing*

This is the space funk soul al­bum you imag­ine when you’re flip­ping through the used bins and you see those great old air­brushed 12“sleeves from the 1970s. He man­ages to chan­nel Prince, Isaac, Erykah, Mar­vin and Al with­out the record ever drift­ing into throw­back or repli­ca pas­tiche. These grooves have real blood in them and the rhythms pulse with sweat.

Funky, sinewy and ab­solute­ly *vi­tal*

And that sax/flute trade­off in the mid­dle of al­bum clos­er Stand Tall is one of the favourite sounds I’ve heard all year.
 

Stuff I also liked:
bLAck pAR­ty MAN­GO
D. Dum­bo Utopia De­feat­ed
Hamil­ton Lei­thauser + Rot­sam I Had a Dream That You Were Mine
Cas­sius Ib­i­for­nia
Zhu Gen­er­a­tionwhy
Cleopold Al­ti­tude & Oxy­gen
Par­quet Courts Hu­man Per­for­mance
Févri­er EP
So­ci­ety All that We’ve Be­come
Laku­ta Broth­ers & Sis­ters
The Lemon Twigs Do Hol­ly­wood
 
 

Por­tions of ALL OF THIS are part of this week’s FLOMM playlist:
FLOM­MIS­CHEN número 152
« liste non or­di­na­ta MALM­BERG reko­rd-hilites en 2016 »
38 tracks [2hr 44 min]

 

FOR MOR FLomm músik
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feat.
WEEK­LY FLOMM Spo­ti­fy playlists
Reg­u­lar­ly cu­rat­ed by flom­mists Steve Mehal­lo + Kristin Valen­tine Buech­ler
 
 
 

—ja­son malm­berg

Flom­mist Ja­son Malm­berg is a sim­ple man who be­lieves in brown liquor and small dogs. He also makes art some­times. Copy­right © 2016 Ja­son Malm­berg. Top im­age source.

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