L: Sarah Cahlll – Eighty Trips Around the Sun
R: Roland Kayn – A Little Electronic Milky Way of Sound
Best of 2017: Noteworthy Recordings
Trying to tally the year’s “best” recordings is a thankless task, not least because there’s no realistic chance anyone has heard everything. Seeing I Am a Man by Ron Miles turn up on several lists compiled by critics whose opinions I hold in esteem, for instance, I was tempted to rush it into my list, as well… but chose instead to acknowledge that I’d simply not heard it early enough, nor invested sufficient time getting to know its soft-spoken merits. There surely are other examples I could cite. Moreover, I spent almost no time or effort on contemporary pop and hip-hop releases in 2017: not for lack of excellence, but simply because my attention was fixed elsewhere.
Therefore, the following lists comprise the new recordings and archival projects that impressed and moved me most in 2017, each category featuring a top pick marked with a star (☆). I also compiled a supplemental list of still more albums that brightened my year… which might seem like overkill, but actually just scratches the surface. Any one or more of these titles easily could have leapt to the main list; several jumped back and forth for weeks. They’re all worthy. (Ron Miles, as it happens, turns up twice: once with Jason Moran and Mary Halvorson; once with Greg Saunier and Halvorson again.)
Omitted here were all National Sawdust releases, some of which I singled out for praise in this previous list, and – regrettably – one leading contender for my top album of the year… until I learned it had been available on CD in Iceland and on Bandcamp globally in 2016: Epicycle, by Gyða Valtýsdottir. (You still should hear it.)
20 New Recordings
☆ Sarah Cahill – Eighty Trips Around the Sun: Music by and for Terry Riley (Irritable Hedgehog)
Pierluigi Billone – ITI KE MI; Equilibrio. Cerchio – Marco Fusi (Kairos)
Hafdís Bjarnadóttir – Já (self-released)
Joda Clément – TIME + PLACE (Glistening Examples)
Sarah Davachi – All My Circles Run (Students of Decay)
Nat Evans – Coyoteways (Mon Amie)
David First – Same Animal, Different Cages Vol. 3: Civil War Songs (for Solo Harmonica) (Fabrica)
Jürg Frey – Collection Gustave Roud (Another Timbre)
Rebekah Heller – Metafagote (New Focus)
Dana Jessen – Carve (Innova)
Jlin – Black Origami (Planet Mu)
Irene Kurka – chants (Edition Wandelweiser)
George Lewis – Assemblage – Ensemble Dal Niente (New World)
George Lewis – The Will to Adorn – International Contemporary Ensemble (Tundra/New Focus)
Alex Mincek – Torrent (Sound American)
Matt Mitchell – Førage (Screwgun)
Nicole Mitchell – Mandorla Awakening II: Emerging Worlds (FPE)
Kelly Moran – bloodroot (Telegraph Harp)
Áine O’Dwyer – Gallarais (MIE Music)
Tyshawn Sorey – Verisimilitude (Pi Recordings)
10 Archival Releases
☆ Roland Kayn – A Little Electronic Milky Way of Sound (Frozen Reeds)
Alice Coltrane – World Spirituality Classics 1: The Ecstatic Music of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda (Luaka Bop)
Jürg Frey – L’ame est sans retenue I (Erstwhile)
Keiji Haino – Watashi Dake? (Black Editions)
Joe Jones – In Performance (États-Unis)
Mary Jane Leach – Pipe Dreams (Blume)
Pep Llopis – Poiemusia La Nau Dels Argonautes (Freedom to Spend)
Spontaneous Music Ensemble – Karyobin (Emanem)
Sun Ra – The Magic City (Cosmic Myth)
Midori Takada – Through the Looking Glass (Palto Flats/WRWTFWW)
More Music You Ought to Hear
Sarah Angliss – Ealing Feeder (self-released)
Ellen Arkbro – For organ and brass (Subtext)
Martin Arnold – The Spit Veleta (Another Timbre)
Django Bates’ Beloved – The Study of Touch (ECM)
Bell Witch – Mirror Reaper (Profound Lore)
Bent Knee – Land Animal (Inside Out/Sony)
Tim Berne’s Snakeoil – Incidentals (ECM)
Antoine Beuger – Ockeghem Octets (Another Timbre)
Olivia Block – Olivia Block (Another Timbre)
Anouar Brahem – Blue Maqams (ECM)
Jaimie Branch – Fly or Die (International Anthem)
Kate Carr – the story surrounds us (Helen Scarsdale)
Isaiah Ceccarelli – Bow (Another Timbre)
Joda Clément & Mathieu Ruhlmann – Kindred (Marginal Frequency)
Alex Cline’s Flower Garland Orchestra – Oceans of Vows (Cryptogramophone)
Daniel Corral – Refractions (Populist)
Kara-Lis Coverdale – Grafts (Boomkat Editions)
Mario Diaz de Leon – Sanctuary (Denovali)
Elder – Reflections of a Floating World (Stickman)
ensemble, et al. – The Slow Reveal (Imaginator)
Morgan Evans-Weiler – Unfinished Variations (for Jed Speare) (Weighter)
fraufraulein – heavy objects (Marginal Frequency)
Kate Gentile – Mannequins (Skirl)
Randy Gibson – The Four Pillars Appearing from The Equal D under Resonating Apparitions of The Eternal Process in The Midwinter Starfield 16 VIII 10 (Kansas City) – R. Andrew Lee (Irritable Hedgehog)
Magnus Granberg – Nattens skogar (Insub.)
Cameron Graves – Planetary Prince (Mack Avenue)
Impetuous Ritual – Blight Upon Martyred Sentience (Profound Lore)
Incantation – Profane Nexus (Relapse)
Vijay Iyer Sextet – Far from Over (ECM)
Longleash – Passage (New Focus)
Chelsea McBride’s Socialist Night School – The Twilight Fall (Browntasauras)
Matt Mitchell – A Pouting Grimace (Pi Recordings)
Roscoe Mitchell – Bells for the South Side (ECM)
Jason Moran – BANGS (Yes Records)
Pancrace – Pancrace (Cairos Edition/Penultimate Press)
Michael Pisaro – asleep, street, pipes, tones (Hubro)
Éliane Radigue – Occam Ocean 1 (Shiiin)
Mariel Roberts – Cartography (New Focus)
Keith Rowe/Michael Pisaro – 13 Thirteen (Erstwhile)
Marc Sabat – Harmony (Another Timbre)
Greg Saunier/Mary Halvorson/Ron Miles – New American Songbooks, Volume 1 (Sound American)
Nadia Sirota – Tessellatum (Bedroom Community)
Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith – The Kid (Western Vinyl)
Linda Catlin Smith – Drifter (Another Timbre)
Chiyoko Szlavnics – During a Lifetime (Another Timbre)
Craig Taborn – Daylight Ghosts (ECM)
James Weeks – Mala Punica (Winter & Winter)
Steven Wilson – To the Bone (Caroline)
Scott Wollschleger – Soft Aberration (New Focus)
Nate Wooley – Polychoral (Mnóad)