The year in review begins on a different note for 2024 by introducing a new category that reflects on albums that resonated especially deeply on a personal level. To some extent that can be said of every album that appears on these pages – such has been the nature of this blog from its very inception. This year has been an especially difficult one, however. For our family, as for many of you dear readers no doubt, it has been a year of turmoil and loss. When it came time to reflect on the year in music, I could not help but think about some of the albums I held particularly close and that provided a great deal of comfort, joy, and empathy during even the darkest days. Given how little I’ve had a chance to write about music in recent months, this seemed like a fitting way to start of the journey. It’s a tough world out there, but it is a little better for having music like this to enjoy.
Ben Lukas Boysen – Falling Into Place
Info: https://benlukasboysen.bandcamp.com/album/falling-into-place-original-score
Both an original film score and an album that stands beautifully on its own, Falling into Place features two piano themes by Grammy & Mercury Prize-nominated composer/producer Jon Hopkins along with music composed by German sound designer Ben Lukas Boysen. While I’ve not had occasion yet to see the motion picture which premiered at the Glasgow Film Festival in March, I was nevertheless drawn back over and over again to these vignettes that provided a backdrop for what is described as a tender love story about two people who forge a connection during a winter weekend in Scotland only to be separated and return to London unaware they live in the same city. Performances by pianist Lisa Morgenstern and cellist Anne Müller add depth and color to the music which parallels the emotional journey of the main characters while resonating with introspection and longing in way that felt very easy to connect to.
The film in general, and therefore the score, deals a lot with reflecting on needs and the feeling of belonging. Each piece of the score is devoted to one of the many stations our protagonists visit on their journey…
Ben Lukas Boysen
Falling Into Place is available as a digital release from Erased Tapes Music. The album was mastered by Zino Mikorey and features photography by Julian Krubasik.
Glories – An Expanse of Color
https://glories.bandcamp.com/album/an-expanse-of-color
Based in Birmingham, Alabama, Glories began creating their distinctively lyrical and uplifting brand of instrumental post-rock more than a decade ago as a four-piece band. Following the tragic loss of guitarist Zachary Cooner in 2017, the band eventually began a slow journey back to recording as a trio with the first green shoots emerging in the form of 2020’s Distant After. The band followed up this year with An Expanse of Color and in rather triumphant fashion, I must say. Anyone who follows the band on social media knows they keep Zach’s memory close, and it is hard to imagine a better tribute than keeping the sound and style of the band he was an integral part of thriving as guitarist Dallas Kelley, bassist Kyle Posten, and drummer Adam Blevins have done here. A sense of melancholic reflection grounds the music without interfering with its ability to create soaring moments of beautiful catharsis.
Distant After’ was like learning to walk again. We were picking up the pieces and trying to put them back together. ‘An Expanse of Color’ is finding our footing and learning to run as a three-piece.
Kyle Posten
An Expanse of Color was released May 24, 2024, via Post. Recordings on vinyl LP, CD, & digital. The album was mastered by Nathan Daniel and features artwork once again by Merrilee Challiss.
The Innocence Mission – Midwinter Swimmers
https://theinnocencemission.bandcamp.com/album/midwinter-swimmers
Since their 1989 eponymous debut as The Innocence Mission, Karen and Don Peris have built a quietly stunning body of work that comprises over a dozen albums not to mention solo projects, singles, and EPs. Karen is a wonderful songwriter (and multi-instrumentalist) with a distinctive voice in every sense of the word while Don is an eloquent and expressive guitarist whose style is integral to the band’s sound. Their songs have been praised and covered by such noteworthy peers as Sufjan Stevens and Sam Beam (Iron & Wine). Far from resting on the laurels of the early work, Karen & Don have made some of their most moving and memorable music in the past decade with albums such as Hello I Feel the Same (2015), Sun on the Square (2018), See You Tomorrow (2020), and most recently Midwinter Swimmers. Embracing a sense of nostalgia and a deep connection to memory on a very personal level, the album’s sublime pleasures are exemplified in lead off track “This Thread is a Green Street” which muses on the different kinds of connections that run through our lives inspired by Karen’s thoughts while mending a cardigan sweater. Such finding of beauty and meaning in the fabric of everyday life is what has made the music of The Innocence Mission so precious to so many listeners over the years. May it long continue.
A sort of envisioning the landscape as a world of doorways, that might allow us to locate memory or to be nearer in some way to people we miss…One of the things about recording it was, how to find this feeling inside the sound, and how to find the half-remembered beauty of sing-alongs of our 1970’s childhoods. There’s a search in recording that goes on being elusive, in a good way.
Karen Peris
Midwinter Swimmers is available on translucent red vinyl as well as CD & digital. The album was recorded and mixed by Don and Karen Peris and features illustrations by Karen. It is distributed by Bella Union in Europe, P-Vine Records in Japan, and Thérèse Records internationally. Also highly recommended for new listeners and fans alike is a wonderful in-depth interview with Karen recently published by The Line of Best Fit.
Keaton Henson – Somnambulant Cycles
Info: https://mkx.lnk.to/SomnambulantCyclesWE
Though mostly grounded in a “bedroom” aesthetic, Keaton Henson has shown impressive range from intimate singer/songwriter albums to soundtracks and orchestral works. With Somnambulant Cycles, however, the English musician, artist & composer gave us something of a spiritual successor to his much-loved 2014 album Romantic Works and it was a welcome gift indeed. Extending his previous collaborations with cellist Ren Ford and multi-instrumentalist Dorry Macaulay and adding new artists to the mix such as brass player Daniel Herskedal, singer/composer Hinako Omori, and percussionist Angela Wai Nok Hui, Henson takes listeners on an evocative and introspective journey through the blue hours of the soul, deftly weaving haunting melodies, warm analog instruments, and delicate electronic textures into something of rare and affecting beauty. A satisfying listen sonically speaking, but it tugs on the heartstrings quite effectively as well.
‘Somnambulant Cycles’ is an instrumental album exploring the feeling of subconscious states, in some ways the antithesis to six lethargies (a work intended to create unrest and unease), this one is intended to create a sense of physiologically fertile calm, the calm where ideas come from, where emotions are felt but pass by like pedestrians…
Keaton Henson
Somnambulant Cycles is available for download and streaming via Mercury KX. The album was mixed by Fiona Cruickshank and mastered by Mark Stapleton and features artwork & design by Henson himself.
Lamasz, come le onde – Il mare cancella, di notte
https://mforsleep.bandcamp.com/album/il-mare-cancella-di-notte
“…That night, as the tide silently rose on the beach, the elderly man and the boy sat together on the rock, watching the sea shimmer in the moonlight. And in that moment, in the quiet of the island, they found the inner peace they had been seeking.“
From the story accompanying the album
Old Amica – För alltid
Info: https://dronarivm.bandcamp.com/album/f-r-alltid
As sometimes happens for reasons I am still at a loss to explain, there is an inverse relationship between how much I have enjoyed the music of Old Amica in recent years (a lot) and how much I have written about it (not very much). Originally based in Sweden, the duo of Johan Kisro & Linus Johansson is now geographically split with one member in Stockholm and the other in Genève, Switzerland, but what has not changed is the band’s enchanting way of traversing ambient, folk, and post-rock music with a keen ear for melody and a comforting aura. För alltid (forever in English) does all of that in an especially powerful way with all of its songs bound together by thoughts of the passing of time and the persistence of memory. Vocals both sung and spoken are used sparingly, but to great effect on tracks like “Mot natten” and the hauntingly beautiful closing track “Till dig”. Each time I listen, it feels like coming in from the cold into a room bathed in warm firelight.
För alltid is an album about time. The fuzzy & shapeless memories floating without coherence. Shortwave radio recordings picking up unbroken codes from the past. Hopeful voices whispering about a possible future from a hopeless now.
from the album notes
För alltid is available from the Dronarivm label in two limited cassette editions (classic and deluxe) as well as digital download & streaming. The album was mastered by James Edward Armstrong and features artwork by J.M. Almqvist.
Slow Heart Music – Hope
“I’ve struggled with my mental health ever since adolescence, and this was the music that often provided me with the most solace and comfort, that felt like it was communicating something real to my experience, that taught me that I was not as alone in my experience of deep sadness and anxiety as I often felt, and that a life of meaning could still be lived in the midst of it all.
Ben Rath
Tim Linghaus – Asche und Magnolien
The music gives everything a form. It connects the I which wants to be in the past with the I from today and establishes points of contact between everything that was and that is. The boy who I once was is also sitting at the piano and together we play pieces about the both of us and our father, about my younger self’s dreams, our fears and our questions about life and death and mortality.
Tim Linghaus
On a personal note, I developed an appreciation for the album early in the year, but then losing a parent myself over the summer, I reconnected with it in an even more meaningful way. To my ear at least, Tim has an amazing ability to infuse tremendous empathy and vulnerability into his music without ever seeming contrived or overwrought. This is a very special collection of songs that will sit with me for some time.
