What were your top musical discoveries of 2024?


Looking for music that was new to you and your collection that lit you and your system up last year.

Here’s my list:

Vinyl - 

UHQR version of Steely Dan “Asia”

Original Master Recording of Grateful Dead’s “Workingman’s Dead”

Digital files - 

Mac Miller “Circles”

Iron & Wine “The Shepherds Dog”

Jacob Collier “Djesse Vol.2”

Mokave “Afrique”

Skrillex “Quest for Fire”

Beyonce “Cowboy Carter”

CD -

Sinead O’Conner “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got”

 

This is at least what is top of mind.

kn

knownothing

Showing 4 responses by simonmoon

@mksun

Great call on Muriel Grossman!

You should also check out Ingrid Laubrock. I think she is a better composer.

Checkout "The Last Quiet Space".

@mksun 

I also love spiritual jazz, old and contemporary. 

Ingrid Laubrock is not spiritual jazz, but more in the progressive jazz vein. 

Here are some new discoveries for me. These are artists, bands, musicians, composers, that I was unaware of until 2024.

My tastes in music tend to lean toward the progressive and avant-garde, so, YMMV.

Prog:

Greco Bastian - With a Little Hell from MORE Friends / avant-prog composer. This is complex, challenging stuff. With very high levels of musicianship.

Weather Systems - Ocean Without a Shore / New band formed by the remnants of the band, Anathema. Beautiful melodies, loads of emotion.

Lux de Riada - Rizoma / Another avant-prog band from Mexico. A bit of 80’s King Crimson sneaks in.

At Night I Fly - collision/fusion/division / Very good prog-metal band from Hungary. Lots of emotion on this.

Viima - Väistyy Mielen Yö / Folky prog from Finland. Beautiful melodies, great flute and Hamond organ playing.

Jazz:

Ingrid Laubrock - The Last Quiet Place / Progressive, verging on avant-garde jazz.

The Pneumatic Transit - Forbidden Trinkets / Creative jazz-fusion band from Chicago.

Aurora Clara - IV / Fusion band from Spain heavily influenced by Mahavishnu Orchestra, and they have the chops to pull it off. They even have Jerry Goodman on violin on a few of their earlier albums.

Classical*:

Felipe Lara - Portals / Brazilian-American composer / Avant-garde and atonal.

Elizabeth Harnik - Someone Will Remember Us / Austrian composer. More avant-garde classical.

Anthony Cheung - Music for Film, Sculpture, and Captions / American composer.

*This is where my tastes get really "out there". I seriously love thorny, angular, contemporary classical music.

@dlevi67

ARCHORA / AIŌN

Album by Anna S. Þorvaldsdóttir, Eva Ollikainen, and Iceland Symphony Orchestra

 

Þorvaldsdóttir (Thovaldsdottir) is a pretty recent discovery of mine too.

I am not usually a fan of the Spectralism school of classical music, but her stuff is so haunting and beautiful, with great building tension and intensity, that it sucks me in.