Villancicos y Danzas Criollas de la Iberia Antigua al Nuevo Mundo 1550-1750 La Capella Reial de Catalunya/Hesperion XXI/ Jordi Savall Uncovered Treasure: Not a new release, but discovered this year, Swirly, hypnotic washes of sound, with an unsettling mix of non-Western tones and a rush of bat wings over your shoulder, Goat manages to sound both vaguely familiar and deeply alien at the same time. If you threw Gong, the Casiokids, the Strawberry Alarm Clock, some traditional Andean musicians, and a couple tabs of purple microdot in a blender, you would get something like the Swedish commune/band Goat. It is pure rhythm, designed to make you move in ways that foot-washing Baptists guarentee will send you straight to hell. This year, they teamed up with Angolan electronica wiz/producer Batida to create my favorite record of the year. When these Congolese street musicians exploded on the scene a few years ago with their car-battery amplified likembes (thumb pianos) and beat boxes made from old packing crates and toaster ovens (I’m guessing here), their sound grabbed my ass and threw it around the dance floor like it was possessed by something delightfully unholy. Beautiful, moving, slyly witty, and full of grace. Plenty of ink has been spilled picking this one apart I can only add that Blackstar would make the top of most ‘best of’ lists this year, even if Bowie had blessed us with a couple more decades of music-making. The following is a small representation of some of the sounds that made my life endurable in 2016.Īs a coda for a creative life well-lived, you couldn’t do better than Bowie’s final studio album. Proust (Thirty Tigers)Īlejandro Escovedo Burn Something Beautiful (Fantasy)Ĭhris Robinson Brotherhood Anyway you love, we know how you feel (Silver Arrow)ĭuring a year which brought profoundly tragic news in the music world, I am once again reminded of the redemptive solace of that music – the power of rhythm and melody to restore balance and meaning to our psyches in the face of seemingly unrelenting despair. He may be just as visionary, though less hungry, but either way… this is the time to get on the Ryley Walker bandwagon.Ryley Walker Primrose Green (Dead Oceans)įranklin Kiermyer Closer to the Sun (Mobility Music) If the world catches on, the Ryley that follows up this album may be a different sort of person, one who knows the taste of better liquor and comfortable bedding and isn’t nearly as driven. A short lifetime of interminable practice and discipline have resulted in Primrose Green, an album of a sort that hasn’t been seen since the 1970s. Hardship and setbacks and dilapidated housing only seem to spur him on creatively. No one knows what the future holds for young Ryley Walker. ![]() The core of Ryley’s band continues to be Brian Sulpizio, guitar, Ben Boye, piano or harmonium, and Whitney Johnson on viola and intermittent background vocals. ![]() The board was barely reset from the All Kinds of You sessions before Ryley was corralling his by-then-rejiggered band back into Minbal studios in Chicago to solidify a totally new direction in his creative vision. His 2013 recordings, that resulted in The West Wind EP and All Kinds of You LP, fully express these Anglophilic tendencies. He was finding a new path refracting the British traditional spectrum, from Bert Jansch to Nick Drake, and defying all the limitations of the genre. Both efforts were impressive displays of fingerpicking prowess.Īfter a 2012 bike accident, Ryley began practicing more diligently he began lacquering his fingertips at cheap salons, permanently giving his playing aggression and tone difficult to achieve with naked fingertips or finger picks. Evidence of Things Unseen and Of Deathly Premonitions (with Daniel Bachman) appeared briefly as limited cassette releases. By 2011, at age 21, he finally began issuing recordings from his already impressive catalog of compositions. ![]() Ryley transitioned slowly into the finger-style playing in 2008. His personal life might be tumultuous and his residential status in question, but his bedrock is disciplined daily rehearsal and an inexhaustible wellspring of song craft. Ryley Walker is the reincarnation of the true American guitar player.
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