Airwaves
More than in previous years, I can identify four distinct trends in my listening behaviours that correlate with one another in some way or another. The first two are that I listened to a lot of extreme (mostly black) metal and also harsh noise this year. At the same time, I somehow rediscovered pop, or at least the song as an artform; perhaps because that felt like a good counterweight to those Incapacitants reissues or, like, Weakling. Lastly, I barely went looking for new stuff outside the Western-centric circles (that is, if you do not count Japan) since a lot of my for-fun listening didn’t focus on new music but caught up with artists and records from the past and the promos I’m being fed still come from North America and Europe.
According to my last.fm account, I have listened to around 2.652 (2023: 3.150) different music releases by and with around 2.623 (3.220) artists in 2024, and in total roughly 16.048 (18.500) individual pieces of music. The artists whose music I had scrobbled the most were, in that order, Julia Holter, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Astrid Sonne, Songs: Ohia, and Lil Peep. None of this of course includes the music I’ve streamed on various platforms, that came with incorrect or missing metadata, or that I listened to on tape and vinyl—and it only takes into account the amount of plays, not the time spent playing them. This helpful lil’ tool tells me my top 5 last.fm artists in that regard were actually, in that order, Kevin Drumm, Merzbow, Julia Holter, Jute Gyte, and Donnacha Costello.
So yeah, it’s been a busy year, though apparently not quite as busy as the last one. My folder with music that I have received as promo, have purchased, or that I just kind of stumbled upon consciously or not has ~ 1.550 sub-folders (that is, single artists or compilation albums) even though I tried to be more cognizant of how many promos I download and to reduce the overall amount. That didn’t work out, but that’s also because a lot of great stuff came through. Let’s dig in, then. As usual, I have put together a sort of gigantic mixtape, which is a tricky endeavour and very much a vibe-based thing to do, but if you find a record tucked in between some other ones that you liked—perhaps it’ll also be up your alley. I hope so!
— Reissues or records that comprise archival material are marked with an asterisk [*].
— Records in whose release I was somehow involved or with whose makers I casually hang are marked with a tilde [~] in addition to the qualifier per or pro for personal relationships or professional engagement with the artists and/or labels, respectively, so [~per], [~pro], or indeed [~per+pro] because I sometimes collab with the homies.
— Artists that should not be supported or at the very least should be looked into before you support them financially are marked with the Cross of Saint Peter (⸸) because obviously this is a black metal-related thing.
Rekerds’n’Choons
If I had something like a definitive favourite in 2024, it was Astrid Sonne’s »Say You Love Me.« I could say a few words about that song here, but she’s already talking to you. Anyhow, let’s go:
Spectra Ex Machina: A Sound Anthology of Occult Phenomena 1920-2017 Vol. 2 (Sub Rosa)
harkening critters (forms of minutiae)
Felix Hess – Frogs, a Selection of Field Recordings (DMR)
alëna korolëva – Premonitions (forms of minutiae)
Akio Suzuki – KA I KI (Experimental Rooms)
sun yizhou – typewriter in the rain (Aloe)
Cedrik Fermont – K7 (Syrphe)
Forest Management – New York Seltzer (No Rent)
Gavin Vanaelst – Takeaway Loops (Edições CN)
Sawako – Sounds (12k)
Emiter – Symfoniaki (Szara Reneta)
Kiyoshi Mizutani – Cemetery (fernsrecordings)
Tránsitos Sónicos – Música electrónica y para cinta de compositores peruanos (1964-1984) (Buh)
Patrick Gallagher – Live From Labyrinth (No Rent)
Elsa Justel – L’ombre du pont (empreintes DIGITALes)
Kevin Drumm – Everything
Hunter Brown & Eric Wong – Si Distributions + Seiji Morimoto / Eric Wong – Dzan-puku (Aloe) [~per]
Tim Olive – Sintered (Spleen Coffin)
Treriksröset – Sexregler (White Centipede Noise) [*]
BYDL – Venster99 Bleibt! (DIY) [~per+pro]
The Rita – Nancy Weston (The Rack Sessions) & The Rack – Extended Version (Handmade Birds)
Aube – Huile sur l’eau (advaita) [*]
Noise Forest (Cold Spring) [*]
Merzbow – Oersted (Urashima) [*] and everything else, as always
C.C.C.C. – Amplified Crystal (Helicopter) [*]
Incapacitants – LIVE INCAPACITANTS 2000 / 2023 (advaita) [*] & Toshiji Mikawa – Encounter When Pigs Fly (Grubenwehr Freiburg)
Kazumoto Endo – While You Were Out & Brick and Mortar (Skeleton Dust) [*]
Yuko Araki – Zenjitsutan 前日譚 (Room40)
Meat Beat Manifesto & Merzbow – Extinct (Cold Spring)
Leila Bordreuil – 1991, Summer, Huntington Garage Fire (Hanson)
Thorn Bug / Astro – The Other World and This World (Grubenwehr Freiburg)
David Wallraf – Everything
Angelo Harmsworth – Without Blinking (Warm Winters Ltd.)
Rudolf Eb.er & Controlled Death – Serenità per i morti viventi (Phage Tapes)
Martina Berther – Bass Works: As I Venture Into (Kit) [~pro]
Delphine Dora & Anaïs Tuerlinckx – L’oeil de la tigresse (Possible Motive)
Ira Hadžić & Cedrik Fermont – KENOPSIA (Syrphe)
Hanno Leichtmann – Outerlands (Discrepant) [~per+pro]
louie.lou – Ljusår (Lamour)
Mazy Day – Go ‘Swish (Kit)
Jun Konagaya – Organ (Urashima) [*]
Fuji||||||||||ta – MMM (Hallow Ground) [~pro]
Yan Jun & Eric Wong – dichotomic language (Vintage Vinyl Hong Kong) [~per] / Kai Fagaschinski & Yan Jun – Graveyard Processions (Ni Vu Ni Connu) [~pro]
Ehsan Saboohi – Concerto for Solo Actress: The Legend of Yush’s Poet (Post-Orientalism)
Antonina Nowacka – Sylphine Soporifera (Mondoj)
Marta Forsberg – Sjunger För Varandra (Warm Winters Ltd.)
Landless – Lúireach (Glitterbeat)
Christina Kubisch & Trondheim Voice – Stromsänger (Important)
Access Frame: Authority (Kamizdat)
Carla Boregas – Absência Tape (The Tapeworm)
apologist – Philadelphia (No Rent)
Katharina Schmidt – One Day (Midira) & If & When (Elm)
Schweben – BIRDS (Grisaille)
Samuel Reinhard – Movement (Hallow Ground) [~pro]
Microtub – Thin Peaks (thanatosis)
Phill Niblock / Anna Clementi / Thomas Stern – Zound Delta 2 (Karlrecords)
Driftwood – Driftwood (Room40)
Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard & Quatuor Bozzini – Colliding Bubbles (Important)
Splitter Orchestra – splitter musik (Hyperdelia)
Sophia Jani – Six Pieces for Solo Violin (Squama)
Kenneth Kirschner – April 27, 2023 (Room40)
Marcus Fjellström – The Last Sunset of the Year (Miasmah) [*]
Meemo Comma – Decimation of I (Planet Mu)
Lea Bertucci – Hold Music (Dinzu Artefacts)
Ali Balighi – Qaf Mount Ballet (Noise à Noise)
Khôra – Gestures of Perception (Marionette) [~per]
Giridhar Udupa – My Name Is Giridhar Udupa (!K7)
Valentina Magaletti – Lucha Libra (Permanent Drift)
Marina Rosenfeld, Greg Fox, Eli Keszler – Greatest Hits (INFO)
James Tenney – Postal Pieces (Blume) [*]
Jon Mueller – Duality (Room40)
Burkhard Beins – eight duos (Ni Vu Ni Connu) [~pro]
Garth Erasmus – Threnody For The KhoiSan (TAL)
Eiko Ishibashi – Evil Does Not Exist (Drag City)
El Jardín de las Matématicas – El Jardín de las Matématicas (Penultimate Press)
Sheida Gharachedaghi & Mohammad Reza Aslani – Chess of the Wind (Mississippi) [*]
Ya Hasra: Jewish-Tunisian Jewels, Originals & Reworks (Akuphone)
Synthesizing the Silk Roads: Uzbek Disco, Tajik Folktronica, Uyghur Rock & Tatar Jazz from 1980s Soviet Central Asia Ayo Ke Disco: Boogie, Pop & Funk From The South China Sea (1974-88) (Ostinato/ Maqom Soul)
Socialist Disco. Dancing Behind Yugoslavia’s Velvet Curtain 1977-1987 (Fox & His Friends) [*]
Dinosaur – Kiss Me Again (Week-End) [*]
Operazione Sole – Italian Pop Reggae, Dub & Summer Love Affairs (Maledetta Discoteca) [*]
Pino d’Angiò – …Balla! (Rifi) [*]
Michelle Gurevich’s »Kosovo« (It Was the Moment, DIY)
Loma – How Will I Live Without a Body? (Sub Pop)
Aerial M – The Peel Sessions (Drag City) [*]
Still House Plants – If I don’t make it, I love u (bison)
Bonnie »Prince« Billy, Nathan Salsburg & Tyler Trotter – Hear The Children Sing The Evidence (No Quarter)
Duo Falak – Tira-Tira (ТОПОТ Ʇ TOPOT)
Tashi Dorji – we will be wherever the fires are lit (Drag City)
Wukir Suryadi – Siklus Dan Doa (Discrepant)
von jeglichem Wort – Everything
David Dellacroce – Peperomia Obtusoundscape (DIY)
Léo Dupleix – Resonant Trees (Black Truffle)
Jules Reidy & Andrea Belfi – dessus oben alto up (Marionette) [~per] & Sun Kit – All The Patterns Inside (Hyperdelia)
Elio Martusciello – AKOUSMA-MOTHER (em-music)
Fractal Void – Elemental Collection (Intergalactic Research Institute for Sound) [~per]
TAU – Chants (Fun in the Church)
Scanner and Neil Leonard – The Berklee Sessions (Alltagsmusik) [*]
Beings – There Is a Garden (No Quarter)
MM Works – Park (12k)
Forgetting You Is Like Breathing Water – Forgetting You Is Like Breathing Water (unheard of hope)
Not Music – Kraanerg Heart of a Cherry Pit Sun (DIY)
Body Meπa – Prayer in Dub (Hausu Mountain)
Frédéric D. Oberland, Grégory Dargent, Tony Elieh, Wassim Halal – SIHR (Sub Rosa)
Gordan – Gordan (Glitterbeat)
大鬼眾 Ghostmass –鬼之冥想 Ghost Meditation & 大抱散 Improvisation for Dusty Ballz (WV Sorcerer/Dusty Ballz)
Haino Keiji – Black Blues (Room)
Les Rallizés Dénudés – 溺れる飛べない鳥は水羽が必要 Yodo-Go-A-Go-Go Flightless Bird Needs Water Wings Volume 1 Life Goes On / Blind Baby Has Its Mothers Eyes (Bootlegs)
Dope Purple & Berserk – This is the Harsh Trip for New Psyche (WV Sorcerer)
Hijokaidan / Junko & The Dustbreeders – Struppig Tanzen Split (licht-ung)
Drug Searching Dogs – Zwinger (Interstellar) [~per+pro]
Angel Hair – Insect Immortality (Three One G)
کوان (Akvan) – سووشون (DIY)
Conifère – L‘impôt du sang (DIY)
Spectral Wound – Songs of Blood and Mire (Profound Lore)
Ὁπλίτης – Παραμαινομένη (DIY)
Deinonychus – Fatalist (Ván)
Agriculture – Living is Easy (The Flenser)
Bonjour Tristesse – The World Without Us (Supreme Chaos)
Givré – Le Cloître (Eisenwald)
Solbrud – IIII (Vendetta)
Árstíðir Lífsins – Aldrlok (Ván)
Gråt Strigoi – The Prophetic Silence (DIY)
Sadness/Thrä – Everything
Victory Over the Sun – Dance You Monster to My Soft Song! (Fiadh) [*]
Oranssi Pazuzu – Muuntautuja (Nuclear Blast)
Akhlys – House of the Black Geminus (Debemur Morti) [⸸]
Krallice – Inorganic Rites (Gilead)
Liturgy – Immortal Life II (DIY)
Scarcity – The Promise of Rain (The Flenser)
Botanist – VII: Beast of Arpocalyx (DIY)
Locrian – End Terrain (Profound Lore)
Winter – Into Darkness (Svart) [*]
Spectral Voice – Sparagmos (Dark Descent)
Slimelord – Chytridiomycosis Relinquished (20 Buck Spin)
Blood Incantation – Absolute Elsewhere (Century Media)
Khanate – Capture & Release & Clean Hands Go Foul (Sacred Bones) [*]
Thou – Umbilical (Sacred Bones)
Föhn – Condescending (These Hands Melt)
Tylo – Of Rot and Rebirth (DIY)
Big Brave – A Chaos of Flowers (Thrill Jockey)
Zelienople – Everything Is Simple (Shelter Press)
Moin – You Never End (AD 93)
Kara Delik – Singularities IV (DIY)
Kim Gordon – The Collective (Matador)
K. Yoshimatsu – Fossil Cocoon. The Music of K. Yoshimatsu (Phantom Limb) [*]
Dead Sound – Into the Void (Music From Memory)
Oppenheimer Analysis – Oppenheimer Analysis (Minimal Wave) [*]
Wolfgang Tillmans – Build from Here (Fragile)
Fears – affinity (Tulle)
+SHE+’s »Saturn« (DIY) [*]
Tristwch y Fenywod – Tristwch y Fenywod (Night School)
Bruce & Eris FM – The Fool In Reverse / Red (Pain Management)
Jabu – A Soft and Gatherable Star (do you have peace?)
Beth Gibbons – Lives Outgrown (Domino)
sinonó – la espalda y su punto radiante (Subtext)
otay:onii – True Faith Ain’t Blind = 信仰看見了我看見了它 (WV Sorcerer)
Arooj Aftab – Night Reign (Verve)
ganavya – Daughter of a Temple (LEITER)
Julia Holter – Something In The Room She Moves (Domino)
Mariana Sadovska, Max Andrzejewski, Trio Kurbasy & Ensemble – Outernational: Songs of Wounding (Pantopia)
Rosa Anschütz – Interior (Klangbad)
Abdullah Miniawy – NigmaEnigma أنيجم النَجم (Hundebiss)
Rotem Geffen – The Night Is the Night (Thanatosis)
Ellen Arkbro & Johan Graden’s »Postcard greetings« (Thrill Jockey)
claire rousay – sentiment (Thrill Jockey)
wjerstean – Raspad (NEN)
Mark – Stains All Over (2023) & Coming Off (2019) (DIY) [~per+pro]
Kaboom Karavan – Fiasko! (Miasmah)
SPECIO – SPECIO (Prohibited)
Kush K – Drum Therapy (subsidized time/Irascible)
Red On – Phantom Easy (Präsens Editionen)
XDR (Verydeeprecords)
Tujiko Noriko – From Tokyo To Naiagara (Keplar) [*, ~per+pro]
su dance110 – Shang Can (3087)
SABIWA, Queimada, Nathan L. – Sons of _ (Phantom Limb)
ZULI – Lambda (Subtext)
Nicolás Jaar – Piedras 1 & 2 (Other People)
Anatolian Weapons – Beyond (Subject To Restrictions)
Dreamlogicc v SW. – Seny (Kimochi) [~per]
Peverelist – Pulse Phase (Livity Sound)
Viola Klein – Confidant (Meakusma)
Mr Raoul K – Sinkere (Compost)
Frank & Tony – Ethos (Scissor & Thread)
Molly – Island Flow (Stólar)
Soela – Dark Portrait (Scissor & Thread)
The Marx Trukker – The Constantly Inevitable (NOORDEN) [*, ~per+pro]
Shinichi Atobe – Everything
Bluets – Tiwala (Kimochi) [~per]
Loidis – One Day (Incienso)
Rising Sun – The Eternal (Echocord)
Vril – Saturn Is a Supercomputer (Omnidisc)
CJ Bolland – Camargue / Tokyo (STROOM) [*]
devi.g – Milk! (Pudel Produkte)
Mad Rider – fmrann8 (vierundvierzig)
AAAA – X Scroll Era (Umor Rex)
Brendon Moeller – Further (Samurai) & Signal (Constellation Tatsu)
Braindance (Die Orakel)
Djrum – Meaning’s Edge (Houndstooth)
Prayer – Now I Know Paradise (YUKU)
Low End Activist – Everything
DJ Strawberry – Versatile (Defrostatica)
Christoph de Babalon – Ach, Mensch (Midnight Shift)
Xylitol – Anemones (Planet Mu)
Jlin – Akoma (Planet Mu)
Nídia & Valentina – Estradas (Latency)
Holy Tongue / Shackleton – The Tumbling Psychic Joy of Now (AD 93)
Space Drum Meditation – Four Tusks (DIY)
Al Wootton – Everything
HJirok – Hjirok (Altin Village & Mine) [~pro]
Hanno Leichtmann & Valerio Tricoli – Cinnte le Dia (Ni Vu Ni Connu) [~pro]
Andrea de Witt – Andrea de Witt (Undogmatisch)
Shuttle358 – Optimal.lp (Keplar) [*, ~pro]
Kristoffer Lislegaard – Subsupra (DIY)
The NRG – Stadium Ambient & Live in Japan (Muzan Editions)
Szary – Datei (Edition DUR)
PYUR – Lucid Anarchy (Subtext)
Unknown Me – Bitokagaku (Not Not Fun)
Flight Coda – there’s a planet on your chest (Contact The Emotion Ocean) [~per]
A Lily – Saru l-Qamar (Phantom Limb)
Robert Lippok – Open Close Open (Morr Music) [*]
øjeRum – Everything
Franciska – Noter om angst (Vaknar)
Nakashima Motohiro – Dialogue (DIY)
Mads Emil Nielsen + Chromacolor – Heartbeats (arbitrary)
RinniR – Messy Silence (Epileptic Media)
Daniel Craig – Diljin Rising (rohs!)
Stefan Goldmann – Scale and Scope (Edition Kymata)
Klara Lewis – Thankful (Editions Mego)
Jute Gyte – Synthemata (DIY)
Driftmachine – Sonic Behaviour (Umor Rex)
KRM & KMRU – Disconnect (Phantom Limb)
Simina Oprescu – Sound of Matter (Hallow Ground) [~pro]
Jasmine Guffond – Alien Intelligence (OOH-sounds)
Musique Infinie – Earth (Hallow Ground) [~pro]
In case you’re wondering, yes—yes, this list is way more extensive than those in the years before. And yes, I have once more forgotten about 30 to 40 more records and pieces of music that would have been worth including. And yes, I am very sorry that I have forgotten about yours.
((Belated (Re-))Discoveries
Donnacha Costello
Mono für alle!
Kate Bush, of course
fka twigs’ »Cellophane«
Jordan Christoff’s Wombs
Rosaceae & Ladonna’s »37°2«
Katzenstreik’s Emowürstchen
Songs: Ohia, especially Didn’t It Rain
Rodriguez’ »Cause«
Akio Suzuki
Toomaj
Simon & Garfunkel
The Ruins of Beverast & Nagelfar
TEMBER Ensemble
Generic Shit
Altar of Plagues
Franco Battiato’s »Cuccurucucu«
TLC’s »Waterfalls«
Say Anything
Orchid
Songs: Ohia, especially Didn’t It Rain
The Marx Trukker’s This Ain’t Pop (Though It Could) [~per+pro]
Malör’s »Bali«
The Gerogerigegege’s >(decrescendo) and 今日という日が生まれた時から決まっているように = As If It Had Always Been Determined Since This Day Was Born
Karate’s Unsolved
Blut Aus Nord’s 777 trilogy
Hildegard Knef
Urfaust
Eshima & Takeda’s Inheritance for Soundscape
Runzelstirn & Gurgelstøck’s Asshole / Snail Dilemma
Skeletons
Nick Drake
Kourosh Yaghmaei
Gotye feat. Kimbra’s »Somebody That I Used to Know«
Lifelover
Googoosh
Sarcófago
Mariah Carey
Gaby Losconcy
The Swifter
Xasthur’s Subliminal Genocide
Claro Intelecto
Bersarin Quartett
Songs: Ohia, especially Didn’t It Rain
Live and Alive
I can’t really say that I went to many concerts this year, and I’ve only seen clubs from the inside twice in 2024 besides some open-air things that were nice. This was alright, and I still managed to have some amazing experiences along the way, so no regrets.
— Lucie and the Sluts @ Loge, January 5th
Over the years, I have forgotten how amazing it can be to see a punk/hardcore band in the sweaty basement of a Friedrichshain bar. This potentially last show ever by Lucie and the Sluts, whom I didn’t know before and for whom I care very little, gave me those seeing-Ceremony-at-Cassio-in-2011 vibes that I hadn’t felt in ages.
— Marco Donnarumma @ Radialsystem, February 2nd
I feel like I’ve said everything that I needed to say in this piece.
— Junko & The Dustbreeders @ Hinterraum, March 21st
I think I enjoyed going to that space more than I liked the actual performances. The experience of stumbling through four or so hinterhöfe until a towering figure with a cape and top hat (that steampunk, not Sisyphos resident kind of look) lets you know that you should proceed to the fourth floor, which then is little more than an abandoned office space with a makeshift bar at the end felt … very Berlin in the late 2000s/early 2010s to me. Finally seeing Junko live, this time with the Dustbreeders, was a charm, too. Someone filmed it.
— Aleksander Wnuk @ Radialsystem, March 23rd
I worked a little for MaerzMusik, but unfortunately this was the only concert that I managed to attend. Aleksander’s take on Zbigniew Karkowski’s »Form and Disposition,« a piece that had never been transcribed by the composer and instead has just been kind of passed on from one performer to the next until Aleksander together with Piotr Peszat got that done, felt both monumental and intimate. There was a little kid in the first rows who started a sort of epileptic dance, and I loved it.
— Red On & Subrihanna | Point No Point @ ausland, May 18th
I didn’t go to ausland as much as I should have done this year—I didn’t attend a single biegungen gig!—which is a bummer because 2024 marked somewhat of an end of an era at my favourite little neighbourhood joint, if only for me personally. But seeing Point No Point and Red On & Subrihanna on the same bill felt like the essential ausland in a nutshell: forward-thinking yet fun music that drew a friendly crowd.
— Dmitri Schostakowitsch’s Symphonie Nr. 7 C-Dur op. 60 @ Philharmonie, May 23rd
This fucking slapped and I should go to more concerts with classical music more often. Thanks for taking me, R.!
— Silvia Tarozzi & Deborah Walker @ Spreepark, July 27th
I also missed a few Kiezsalon editions that I would have loved to attend, but at least I got to see Tarozzi and Walker perform their takes on some Canti di guerra, di lavoro e d‘amore on this beautiful Summer evening somewhere in the middle of nowhere near the Spree. It was a lovely setting in which to finally see one of my favourite 2022 albums come to life.
— Evishen @ Casa das Mudas, December 2nd
Victoria Shen’s thing seemed a bit shticky if we’re being honest: She had a table full of gadgets and used them one after the other during this performance at MadeiraDiG’s (second to) last evening. But the result didn’t feel gimmicky and there were many, many fantastic moments in this sets, an obvious highlight being the use of her contact-miked hair brush and that last bit where she was hurling around a fucking whip. Sonically, this was one of the most riveting and interesting noise performances I’ve seen in my life.
— Call Super b2b Objekt @ Backsteinboot, December 14th
I didn’t really care much for the music, but honestly good raves are really about the people you’re with—and their dilated pupils.
Pages
According to my Goodreads account, I’ve read 24 (2023: 34) books with a total page count of around 9.400 (a little more the year before) this year, though I think I couldn’t find a book or two to the database and, contrary to what many might think, don’t actually read apparatuses. While the first half of the year saw me working very slowly through some absolute units about, broadly speaking, economic history, in the second one I picked up some speed when I picked up some (relatively) slender books about music history and (the history of) the music industry or music technology and its impact on culture as well as, well, history more generally, with Iran/SWANA as well as Yugoslavia being of particular interest to me. I’ve written two ad hoc reviews on books that I didn’t really like, USBM – A Revolution Of Identity In American Black Metal by Daniel Lake and 1999: The Year the Record Industry Lost Control by Eamonn Forde, but who gives a shit? That’s right, which is why here’s the ones that stuck out positively.
– Ed Conway – Material World. A Substantial Story of Our Past and Future (2023)
This seemed to make sense after David Graeber’s Debt and Adam Tooze’s Crashed as something that would, er, ground me a little. Conway is a little bit too much enamoured with his own idea that we all do not realise that we still rely on, you know, stuff to live our modern lives. However, when he’s not being smug about that, this is all killer, no filler. Very entertaining and full of lovely trivia, too!
– Darren Mueller – At the Vanguard of Vinyl. A Cultural History of the Long-Playing Record in Jazz (2024) & Howie Singer and Bill Rosenblatt – Key Changes. The Ten Times Technology Transformed the Music Industry (2024)
Speaking of, well, stuff and how it affects us, Mueller’s fantastic account of how the introduction of the LP changed the production and distribution of jazz music forever, giving Black artists more agency (while also putting new constraints on them) in a racist industry, is an absolute banger. I’ve enjoyed it a lot even though I hardly listen to jazz and was not familiar with some of the records he cites as examples, but I didn’t have to be. I picked up Key Changes after that, though it would have made sense to do this the other way round. Singer and Rosenblatt provide a pretty tight and schematic overview of how music and culture changed after the introduction/mass adaption of different playback and distribution technologies from the phonograph to AI. Writing still in 2022, the duo spends an awkward amount of pages to discuss the blockchain, but the chapter on the rise of video streaming alone was worth it.
– Dan Charnas – The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop (2011) & Liz Pelly – Mood Machine. The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist (2025)
Here’s a fun bit of trivia about me: I am pretty sure that I have more books about hip-hop than actual hip-hop records on my shelf. However, the one that I considered to be the most educating and riveting is missing—please let me know if you have my copy of Jeff Chang’s Can’t Stop Won’t Stop! While Chang focuses on the socio-economic background from which the genre and culture emerged, Charnas tells the entire story by focusing on the business side of things, from the first record stores supplying DJs with breaks to rappers helming their own fashion brands and doing soda commercials. It’s one of the most well-written books on music I have ever read, absolutely entertaining and incredibly well-researched. Charnas has apparently sort of advised Liz Pelly while writing her first book which, following up on her many mega-viral articles on the subject, does a similarly amazing job at picking apart the Spotify system. As someone who is dealing with this company and platform pretty much every fucking day, I am in absolute awe about how she managed to turn all this into a coherent narrative while staying witty and providing some hard-hitting journalism at its best. Here’s another bit of trivia about me, an article of mine that I am somewhat embarassed about is quoted in this book. Cool!?
– Sonja Vogel – Turbofolk. Soundtrack zum Zerfall Jugoslawiens (2017) & Matthew Collin – This Is Serbia Calling. Rock’n’Roll Radio and Belgrade’s Underground Resistance (2001)
Music books like those by Mueller and Singer and Rosenblatt as well as of course Charnas and Pelly don’t simply tell stories about playback technologies or music industrial developments, but very much about our cultures, societies, and the politics that shape them. This is even more so case with these two, obviously. Vogel’s brief German-language overview of the history of turbofolk was very intruiging and Collin, an international treasure for sure, of course also did an absolute fantastic job chronicling the terrible decade that were the 1990s for Serbia (and with the person who led the country for most of that time). Both Vogel and Collin keep it relatively short and vividly explore social and political issues through their respective lenses—the story of a genre and its codes here, the alternative radio station that rallied against the status quo there—to provide you with nuanced panoramic views of sweeping cultural and social changes. Not an easy feat to pull off.
Screens
Movie-wise, 2024 was a very busy year for me. According to my (brand-new!) Letterboxd account, I have seen 109 movies this year while I have only watched half a dozen or so TV series according to my IMDB one. One reason for this is certainly that I made a pact with R. earlier this year to subscribe to Mubi Go and try to catch as many movies as possible. Thanks to that, I’ve seen a lot of crap, but also some wonderful films that I would otherwise not have watched and I really appreciated a) exposing myself to the unfamiliar, b) having a sort of fixed appointment with one, two, or three great folks almost every week, and c) regularly partaking in the communal experience of watching a film in a cinema. I think I might have been to the movies more often in 2024 than in the entire decade before, and I loved it every time—yes, even when the movies were a flaming pile of trash (I write about some that were especially bad below). The other reason why movies dominated 2024 for me is probably that while I’ve had a few shows on my watchlist—most notably Shōgun and thanks to T. now also Silo—it didn’t really feel like there was … a lot going on in that department!? While this of course might also be strike-related, even the return of The Bear this year felt somewhat half-arsed. Maybe that is part of a cultural shift, maybe this has to do with the economics of TV-making these days, or a combination of the two—that it’s because we’re entering the second-screen/slop era for good. Or maybe it’s just me, really. Oh, I also had a Disney+ subscription briefly for work-related reasons, and it sucked.
Liked Watching
– La Haine (1995)
Shoutout to W. for having that poster in her kitchen, otherwise I would have still ignored this absolute banger.
– Angst essen Seele auf (1974)
Sorry, N., I see it now, having seen it now.
– Los Colonos (2023)
I’ve never left a cinema with this many questions and an inability to really put them into words. Not quite the same on the small screen, though.
– Where Are You, João Gilberto? (2018)
A few words on that one here.
– Beau Travail (1999)
It felt very apt to watch this in two sittings.
– Entertainment Made by North Korea (2024)
The best YouTube video on that dumb platform.
– Anora (2024)
I’ve never laughed so hard during a movie, and it is the perfect for film to watch in a packed cinema.
– DJ Mehdi: Made in France (2024)
The most impressive use of music and sound effects in any documentary ever.
– Independence Day (1996)
– Reality (2023)
– Zone of Interest (2023)
– Fleabag (2016-2019)
– La Chimera (2023)
– Vampire humaniste cherche suicidaire consentant (2023)
– Mindhunter (2017-2019)
– Good Will Hunting (1997)
– Kokomo City (2023)
– The Bear (2022—)
– Crossing (2024)
– Martín Rejtman’s filmography, or at least what I’ve seen from that
– Googoosh: Made of Fire (2024) and Son of the Mullah (2023)
– Between Sisters (2015)
Also wrote about Priscilla and authority as well as Past Lives and how it compared to Return to Seoul. Would like to do that more often.
Disliked Watching (Very Strongly)
Poor Things (2023) and Kinds of Kindness (2024)
The former is a what-if-Tim-Burton-but-steampunk costume film that people will definitely watch because it provides them with a thoughtful analysis of gender norms and totally not because it obsessively portrays its lead actress Emma Stone a.k.a. Effy Stonem BUTT-NEKKID AND/OR HAVING S-E-X ALL THE TIME, while the latter movie … honestly, I forgot most about it and only remember that I left it with possibly the worst mood of 2024 (sorry, N.). Please stop encouraging Giorgios Lanthimos to make these.
Back to Black (2024)
»Amy Winehouse’s Wikipedia Page: The Movie« (Letterboxd user Rein Vieira)
Drive-Away Dolls (2023)
I have rarely been this angry while watching a movie, taking particular offence with the sound effects. Every other little detail—like, the plot for once, and also the characters, dialogues, and the acting—made me furious, too. Truly the most second-screen movie to ever make it to cinemas. It made me want to play Subway Surfers with the sound on to make the experience more bearable.
Oppenheimer (2023)
What the fuck were you folks banging on about!? What the fuck, man. Fuck. Shit. FUCK.
Longlegs (2024), Cuckoo (2024), and The Substance (2024)
Look, I am no connaisseur of horror, I am in fact barely interested in the genre. But even if I tried my very best to approach this triad of terrible trash with as much benevolence as I have inside me, I would still come out the other side telling you that they are objectively Very Bad for various reasons. Longlegs and Cuckoo are just completely incoherent movies, neither able to work with familiar tropes nor capable of subverting them. These films were so bad that the former serves as a perfect case study that Nicolas Cage is only being booked these days so that people can say »oh wow, didn’t expect Nicolas Cage to be doing this« after leaving the cinema, five minutes before forgetting the remnants of plot they have just been exposed to, and then meme about it online as part of the marketing strategy, while the latter might irreparably damage Hunter Schafer’s career if anyone watches it—which I seriously hope they don’t. And then, ah, The Substance. The movie after which people in the ¾-empty cinema clapped as if their EasyJet had just hit the tarmac of Milan-Malpensa. I have never felt as alienated by everyone else in the room than in this situation, and I have lived through 13 years of school, attended a conference on club culture this year, and went to actual clubs several hundreds of times. Anyway, Broey Deschanel has provided the most astute analysis of the film’s inherent contradictions so what I would like to add is that it’s also about two hours too long and that critiquing the male gaze by showing loads of ass ‘n’ tiddies is not as smart as you think it is—also looking at you, Poor Things. The Ruben Östlund approach to social commentary taken by this movie is just inherently flawed and results in terrible movies. Please make it stop.
My First Film (2024)
»And hopefully the last« (Letterboxd user seantek6)
Work
I went into 2024 with the genius plan to work less for more. I think I achieved that. Milestones were leaving field notes after more than three years as an editor there, leaving Groove after a dozen of years, starting to write regularly about the city’s club scene for Berliner Zeitung, doing a lot of radio stuff in the first half of the year and then very little in the second half. A few pieces I wrote that felt significant for different and in some cases completely personal reasons:
Lange Nächte, kurzer Atem? Berliner Clubs in der Dauerkrise (Berliner Zeitung, March)
konkrit – Groove Podcast 420 (Groove, May)
„Star Wars – The Acolyte“: Katholikin im Ruhestand, Jedi in Wartestellung (ZEIT Online, June)
Zwischen Konkurs und Monopol: Die Zwei-Klassen-Krise der Festivalbranche (Der Freitag, August)
SoundCloud: Der Aufstieg und Fall und Aufstieg und Fall und Aufstieg einer Plattform (DJ LAB, November)
I also moderated/took part in some interesting panels and gave a presentation at the Vienna After Dark conference that helped me put order to some chaotic thoughts I had, wrote my Quartalsbericht column for DJ LAB and a new monthly series about different clubs in Germany and did tonnes of translation work. Boring, I know.
Food, in no particular order
Didn’t eat out much, would like to change that in 2025. Have relied mostly on my standard recipes for cooking, so … same. Anyhow, I have eaten on most days in 2024 and it was mostly fine. However, do yourself a favour when in Porto and in desperate need of a vegan meal: that Hare Krishna restaurant gave me food poisoning. Certainly a lowpoint.
Cardamom
Lammsbräu alkoholfrei
Small pears
Sahara Vegan Teller, gerne extrascharf
Whatever Randolf would recommend
A zimtschnecke, for once
That one khoresh
A cherimoya that I didn’t eat
Finally, good vegan pastéis de nata
LIU 成都味道面馆 Nudelhaus
Roasted bell pepper
Quiche, gluten free with chickpea flour filling
Cynar sprizz
Those Canadian rice crisps
Artichoke, French style
Mint
Scallions
All that ice cream I. had in Vienna
Venetian focaccia
Genovese focaccia
Trofie & pesto & patate
That broth with potatoes I didn’t make for myself
Topinambur (fried)
Mulberries (dried)
Yoghurrrt, preferably the coconut one
Those potatoes we picked up from the road
Mustard on tofu
Mustard with enerBio Vegane Bratwürstchen
Mustard in general (Kühne, not Bautzner)
Cauliflower
Sezuan Tofu by Treiber
REWE Beste Wahl geröstete Mandeln ohne Salz
Mango (dried)
Birthday focaccia
Maracujás
Bananas (dehydrated)
Poncha with freshly squeezed lemons
M.’s espressi
And of course that spicy soup
Spaces, in chronological order (yes)
Travelled often, often had that ruined for by some kind of malady or the other. Not a lucky year in that regard.
Müller
The four lakes North of my home
Müggelsee
Her apartment and bed
A table by the river Douro
Hinterraum
An empty hockey rink while it was pouring outside
The Niagara Falls, surprisingly
Toronto Islands
A rooftop hatch in Moabit
A tram from Dresden’s Industriegebiet back to the hotel
Those orange seats in the park
Lichtblick
Prater and that leftist dive bar we visited with S.
That old train that took us from Southern Austria to Ljubljana while I was listening to Didn’t It Rain on repeat before it did start to rain
Ljubljana as a whole
A vaporetto that took us around the laguna
A balcony in Sanremo, regardless
The Elbstrand
Bernsteinsee
The carwash
The river Main while that cruise ships passed us by
The winding roads that took us back from Leipzig to Berlin
Krankenhaus Waldfriede, weirdly
ausland
Naturpark Barnim / some lakes around Wandlitz
That street when the Atlantic came in full view over the banana trees
The infinity pool, obvi
The sunbeds from which we watched the sky when the sun wasn’t shining
That jacuzzi with a view
More generally and consistently, Reza
Life
I can confidently say that I tried.
+++
Previous editions: 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019. The others have either never been finished or were lost in the blogosphere.