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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