2022: albums of the year

John Luther Adams – Lines Made By Walking (JACK Quartet)

For all that That Thing is over, it’s been a stressful year for a bunch of reasons; this was a perfect balm.

Barbie Bertisch – Prelude

Sticking with the theme of the sublime and the relaxed and maybe the Vangelis-esq – this apparently long-time coming album from Love Injection’s Barbie Bertisch is maybe casually transcendent, let’s say? Very, very good, regardless of verbiage

Hudson Mohawke – Cry Sugar

Not sublime at all, yow! HudMo storms back into form with a grip of bangers, stormers, stompers and heaters, all of which are worth your time

Hannah Read – Cross The Rolling Water

Really, this is a grip of heaters and neck-snappers as well (check ‘Old Kentucky Whiskey’ for reference), with a few sneaky-good pop/folk tunes around as well.

Olivier Messiaen – 8 Préludes (Yvonne Loriod)

And back to the sublime. Ominous cover art aside, these are lovely preludes, and are Messiaen at some of his most luminous.

Honorable mentions to Overmono – Cash Romantic, the Toucan Sounds Playground Volume 3 compilation, Noori & His Dorpa Band – Beja Power, Greta Morgan’s Desert Lullabies, and Terry Riley’s Keyboard Studies, played by John Tilbury.