This year’s list has been unusually challenging since a number of key labels were in overdrive. Grand projects have multiplied too. So our self-constraining methodology became even more masochistic.
How, to take an especially painful example, to choose between Bethan Kellough’s Aven & Claire M. Singer’s Solas? Two exceptional releases that each expanded notions of sound palettes & what could be done with them, but both on Touch (about whom more shortly…).
& that’s to exclude Yann Novak’s Ornamentation, Simon Scott’s Floodlines, Anna von Hauswolff’s Kallan (Prototype) & Fennesz’s Mahler Remix, despite all four clearly demanding recognitition as part of the year’s ‘best’.