Favorites of 2022 | Hugh Wilikofsky

Below are five albums that stuck with me from the moment they dropped and will surely continue to for years to come. Still, there were plenty more that I could say the same about, so further down you’ll find a long list with fifty more favorites.

Short List

Autumn Fair – Autumn Fair (Recital)

Like its spiritual predecessor Simple Affections, Autumn Fair is built on a simple concept: Sean McCann, the album’s mastermind, solicited audio contributions from an intergenerational who’s-who of experimental music luminaries—many of whom have graced his Recital imprint in the past—with seemingly little to no instruction before assembling it all into this, his label’s hundredth release. Elements of chamber music, sound poetry, smooth jazz, ambient, and noise intermingle with film samples, field recordings, casual conversations, screams, hums, pops, whistles, squelches, and more, and that’s barely an adequate summation. Yet the sum of all these disparate parts is at turns serene and surreal, funny and moving, reveling in the unexpected without sacrificing its inviting warmth. In other words, unmistakably McCann.

As experimental as it may be, anyone who’d dismiss this music as too cerebral need look no further than McCann’s program notes to dispel this misconception. There is no air of self-seriousness to them, just simple explanations of each sound and their provenance, along with the occasional personal aside, as if he’s there listening along with you, feeling proud and a little self-conscious. Of opener “The Devil’s Violinist,” he admits, “Not really sure what we are going for with this album.” In the notes for B-side opener “HITG” where he confides, “I think this side is probably better.” Describing “Three Pastorals,” he notes that he added “Frankenstein zaps and owls and other October things,” acknowledging, “I don’t think Halloween is so important/nostalgic to many people (esp. non-Americans), so this may seem to miss the mark, but fuck that. I find it comforting.” This light-hearted, affable tone carries over into the music, welcoming the listener into the confusion, doubt, and joy one can find following their muse far out on a limb.

Courtney and Brad – A Square is a Shape of Power (Dear Life Records)

When Courtney Swain and Bradford Krieger holed up in the latter’s Big Nice Studio to record they had nothing planned, just a commitment to improvisation and building arrangements in one-take performances. The longtime friends and collaborators had worked together in the past as musician/engineer, but had never co-written anything. What they emerged with would be released as Our First EP and the debut full-length A Square is a Shape of Power, and it’s a testament to these artists’ inventiveness, adaptability, and ingenuity that the fruits of this ad hoc labor are so fully realized, at once eclectic, coherent, and deliriously fun.

The album marks the first time Swain has sung on record in Japanese, her first language, and with that come echoes of enka, classic J-rock, and J-pop. Lead single “Mayonnaise,” a bittersweet ballad about memory and that tangy condiment, recalls Happy End with its pedal steel and a country-rock twang. “Hand Cream” finds the narrator wanting to tell someone “I love you” but continually getting sidetracked by trivial annoyances— an egg shell in an omelet, a parking ticket, no more hand cream—and its conversational deadpan and keyboard preset lounge sound gives off discount Miyako Koda vibes in the best way. It’s less space age and more internet age, that is before its explosive final stretch. The way it immediately smashes into the karaoke club boogie of “New Onion Smile” instantly called to mind The Gerogerigegege’s Uguisudani Apocalypse. But by the time you reach the album’s arresting final stretch, with the spectral folk and slowcore stunners “Moongazing” and “The Whale and The Scorpion,” respectively, it’s hard to compare this short, sweet burst of musical brilliance to anyone given all the ground this pair has covered, and off the cuff at that. As Swain sings on “Moongazing,” “Coincidence is so strange / You can’t take it lightly.”

Sam Esh – Jack of Diamonds/Faro Goddamn (Penultimate Press)

This is probably the toughest release on this list; a tough sell and a tough listen. Hear me out though, because like so much minimalism and noise, you kind of just have to sit with it, sink into it, let it swallow you whole. At first it may seem like someone haphazardly wailing on a guitar and babbling in tongues, because it kind of is. And yet, the verve of his attack, the commitment to riding the same chords to the end of the line and then right off the tracks is strangely enthralling. And as it turns out, the language he’s muttering may in fact be some murky blend of English, French, and Swedish that Esh’s longtime champion and former bandmate Mike Rep has dubbed “Esh-ese.” All this is to say, there’s more going on in this noise than one can comprehend on first listen, and plenty more they probably never will.

Most of the tracks across this collection’s two discs are of the relentless, roaring, monolithic variety—I wouldn’t not call it drone music—but there are gentler moments as well that allow you to appreciate the nuances of Esh’s primal approach. Tracks like “ARKANSAS ‘music For FlANKED military movemeNTS’” [sic] has the laidback feel of other eccentric street bluesman like Little Howlin’ Wolf or even the rougher sides of Abner Jay, albeit with much less to no concern for melody. Closer “FAYETTESVillE DANCE SONG” [sic] lights up the same parts of my brain as a good freak out from Caroliner. Moments like these had me leaning in closer through the whole collection, hearing all the subtly shifting structures under the squall. Of course, I find it just as enjoyable to sit back and let it barrel over me. Simply put, it’s bloody red dripping raw blues like nothing else out there.

Charles Stepney – Step on Step (International Anthem)

This collection of lo-fi funk jazz grooves from the Chicago legend Charles Stepney was my uncontested feel good favorite of the year. As a brilliant producer and arranger for soul legends like Earth, Wind & Fire, Minnie Riperton, Rotary Connection, Terry Callier, The Dells, the whole Chess Records roster, and many more, he’s perhaps best known for his stunning, lush arrangements with swells of strings and horns. Yet the music of Step on Step is about as homespun as you can get: simple 4-track tape recordings with keys, synths, drum machines, and the occasional vibraphone, just a genius at work alone in his basement. Despite their slight means, these warm and inviting jams have the same richness and depth as his best known “baroque soul” hits. It’s easiest to hear this when comparing the trio of demoes of Earth, Wind & Fire’s “On Your Face,” “That’s the Way of the World,” and “Imagination” to the studio versions, but the grand vision is there in just about every cut.

Interspersed throughout are recollections from Stepney’s three daughters Eibur, Charlene, and Chanté, who have been working for years to spread this music. Commentary generally isn’t something I’m looking for when I throw on a record, but these interludes are charming and evocative, like flipping through your family’s photo album and listening as all the old stories come flooding back. Given his untimely passing and relative anonymity, it’s hard not to hear a little melancholy in these small scale cuts, as if they’re yearning to be fully realized, but I still I find them all the more inspiring and endearing for their raw ingenuity and cozy domesticity. That, and there’s comfort in knowing Stepney’s finally getting the recognition he’s due.

Voice Actor – Sent from My Telephone (Stroom)

Spanning over four hours and 109 tracks, all sequenced in alphabetical order, the mammoth debut of Voice Actor—aka Noa Kurzweil and Levi Lanser—is as much a challenge to frayed attention spans as it is a monument to them. Initially conceived as a radio show, its a haze of soft focus song sketches, spoken vignettes, whispered musings and recollections, and more set over low-lit dub, murky ambient and musique concréte, and narcotized beats, one that’s not always easy to follow but a pleasure to get lost in. If those descriptors don’t make it clear, this is essential listening for those of us who were forever changed by the Inga/Dean era of Hype Williams, but don’t expect the same degree of menacing opacity. There’s a strange intimacy to many of these tracks, as Kurzweil relays moments of romance, shame, fantasy, despair, and intimacy in her hypnotic deadpan, like an ASMR confessional. There’s humor too, the combination of delivery and absurdity (for instance, “Beautiful Burglar” is a fantasy about welcoming a sexy robber in her home) reminding me of Blue Jam at its driest and most surreal.

I can’t help but note that the runtime is 4 hours and 20 minutes long. That’s maybe telling (as is, say, what sound like bong rips in the background on the opening of “Pocket,” or Kurzweil’s unconvincing assertion “I’m not high by the way” on “New Keyboard Out”), but also not what I wanted to lead with here because it doesn’t feel like a stoner album, at least not in the traditional sense. It’s far less chill out than it is low-level freak out. Given that the album’s genesis spans the pandemic, it’s not hard to imagine this as the beautifully amalgamated fragments of a self-medicated mind in isolation. What they amount to is as singularly searching and oddly hopeful a statement as I heard in 2022.

Long List

Dewa Alit & Gamelan Salukat – Chasing the Phantom (Black Truffle)

Oren Ambarchi – Shebang (Drag City)

Auto Lola – Sonata Faction Presents: Idiomatic (Future Times)

Lynn Avery & Cole Pulice – To Live and Die in Space and Time (Moon Glyph)

Linda Ayupuka – God Created Everything (Mais Um)

Derek Bailey – Domestic Jungle (scatter)

Bitchin Bajas – Bajascillators (Drag City)

Natalia Beylis – Prophecy of the Beetle (Diatribe Records)

Blanche Blanche Blanche – Fiscal, Remote, Distilled (La Loi)

Cate le Bon – Pompeii (Mexican Summer)

Caroline No – Caroline No (Ba Da Bing)