As we enter December, the month of end-of-year lists galore, I’ll be focusing more on summarizing my favorite music that I heard this year rather than reviewing new things—among obvious other reasons, I need a break from the constant new music! For me, December is not too early to assess the year as a whole, because I won’t be able to spend enough time with anything that comes out this close to the end of the year to confidently put it on a list. As with everything on this site, these lists and features will be intended to encourage discovery of new things; the fact that they are my opinions is secondary.
2018 was a year in which I discovered lots of new artists and got to hear new music from artists I already love. There were, however, several artists who managed to occupy both voids due to their prolificacy throughout the year. These are my personal picks for the “most valuable players” in music this year.
Carlo Giustini
I first encountered Giustini’s work when ACR released La stanza di fronte back in January. It was one of the first tapes I heard this year and introduced me to the Italian cassette slinger, whose love for tape goes beyond his collecting and DJing and seeps into his fractured, hiss-marred ambient music. Giustini has released tapes on five different labels this year, including Purlieu (Sant’Angelo), Bad Cake (Eden), and Lontano Series (Manifestazioni), with each exploring a unique nuance or theme that keeps his style fresh and exciting. The frigid, frosty Non Uscire, released by No Rent just a few weeks ago, may be the most fitting for the winter months, but you can be sure to find a tape of Giustini’s to fit almost any state of mind.
Manja Ristić
January’s Fairy & the River Teeth, released by net-label Sonospace, was one of the first things I formally reviewed for this site. Since then, Serbian musician and researcher Manja Ristić has darkened her already indelible mark on the field of contemporary sound art. She’s released several albums that explore phonography in more musical contexts, such as the breathtaking The Nightfall on Naviar and Further East, a collaboration with guitarist Mirian Kolev (also known as E.U.E.R.P.I.), published recorded sound maps on her Sonic Matter Bandcamp page, and given lectures on topics like “the culture of sensing.” She also improvises and composes on the violin, working with Urša Rahne on the multimedia release Dead in April and an entire host of performers to produce The Struggle of Man.
Dosis Letalis (Nemanja Nikolić)
My final pick also hails from Serbia. Nemanja Nikolić releases most of his music as Dosis Letalis, and is arguably at or near the forefront of a fast-expanding outbreak of creativity in the wall noise genre. Nikolić’s walls are not made with the nihilistic philosophies that are commonly associated with this approach to noise; instead, he seeks to express emotion and a want for change. Confronting the Inhuman, released by Breaching Static in January, conjures a thick but calming atmosphere of soft, insectile sounds, while Hellscape HN’s The Culture of Fear crashes against the ears (and our society) with a cathartic blast of harsh frequencies. Nikolić’s productivity this year is impressive even for a HNW musician, with a roster that includes splits with Bug Catcher and Phyllomedusa as well as the arresting Smisao Života Je Sloboda and meditative Scales of Justice.
Noise Not Music 