We’ve reached my top 15 albums of the previous year, so let’s get to it.
#15: Skull Practitioners – Negative Stars
This one came to me fairly early in the year and was an immediate favorite. It’s full of jagged guitar lines, weird drum fills, and plenty of power equal to the cosmic cover imagery.
#14: Auralayer – Thousand Petals
Speaking of heavy cosmic riffs, this album from Auralayer is full of them and plenty of Buddhist philosophy to boot. This trio about floored me when I first heard this album and were one of my favorite discoveries of the year.
#13: King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard – The Silver Cord
Would it be a “best of” list without a King Gizz album? I mean, they release at least two albums a year, and this year they released an electro / krautrock album full of synths and drum pads that turned out to be a fun time. You can tell they enjoyed stretching muscles they don’t often use, and they filled it with references to Egyptian mythology, which just made it weirder and cooler.
12: King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard – The Silver Cord extended version
Yes, that’s the same cover image, and it’s almost the same album, but KGATLW decided to release two versions of the same record, with the extended version having long mixes with additional lyrics for each song – the short of which is just under eleven minutes long. It’s even better than the regular edition of the album and lets them do lengthy synth-jams that often move into rave territory.
#11: Ki Oni – A Leisurely Swim to Everlasting Life
Speaking of long synth-jams, Ki Oni‘s tribute to his deceased grandmother and his meditation on peace and death has tracks with minimum lengths of seventeen minutes, and all of them are beautiful. This is the kind of record that takes you away from anything you’re doing and drops you into a warm pool of peace and presence.
Who’s in the top ten? Come back soon and find out!
Keep your mind open.
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