Hey and haha, this list is me restraining myself — but I tried to carve a path through what 2018 sounded like for me. It's a wide curve that goes from private moments to club moments, pressurized to ecstatic, re-releases to new releases. If you’re down for the ride, come along. While I definitely want you to BUY MUSIC I also want to encourage you to SEE MUSIC. Whether it’s a live show or DJ night or experimental situation where you could be lying on your back for an hour, experiencing music with other people and in different spaces feels amazing and is necessary to our local / global health and economies for many reasons <3 Usually these albums and shows are just the cost of a fancy drink or two. Treat yoself. Every single one of these artists, labels, engineers, visual artists, curators and promoters need our support. And we need them to keep our ears and minds open to the world around us. Guide/Notes: Re-release: Susumu Yokota’s 1994 masterpiece Acid Mt. Fuji. <3 Let Wata Igarashi ring your mind out like a wet rag. And all of Midgar’s catalog for that matter. Here's to bbs tearing apart club music and putting it back together again - these cut (LSDXOXO to Yaeji) Pure Rave & additional grinders (Scalameryia to Kamila Govorcin) Hold hands with your depression (Varg / Northern Electronics) Microtonal release via Aleksi Perala & trip records Extended Journeys (Adrian Younge to Kelman Duran) UK deconstructions, with Bristol just taking a bat to the knees (Burial to Batu) Tirzah - Devotion is probably the most beautiful album I’ve heard all year. As they put it “straight-up love songs”. Soundscraping - ambient or apocalyptic these women are carving every edge (Pan Daijing to Felicia Atkinson) From Dar Es Salaam, Houston, Pittsburgh, London, Los Angeles, Sydney and NYC these slices and samples are like pepperoni pizzas for my ears.(Bamba Pana to DJ Katapila) Electronic Afro-Caribbean, Andean, and tropical rhythms from Portugal, Ecuador, New York (DJ Lilocox to DJ Python) Montreal is unpacking it (Pierre Kwenders to Ginger Breaker) Vancouver - I’m curating a festival there in 2019 - here are some folks who are keeping the mountain air fresh (Roza Terenzi to Debby Friday) Cassettes & Benefits (Terry Planet for RAICES & PTP for Puerto Rico) Mastered by masters - Heba Kadry mastered Ryuchi Sakamoto’s 1998 BTTB re-issue, here in 2019 >> https://milanrecords.com. Madeleine Campbell (Accessible Recordings / Women in Sound) is behind Pittsburgh heroes The Lopez, who had the tragic loss of Jesse Flati this year (RIP). Album out in the spring. <3 Hopes & Visions from Russell EL Butler - The Home I’d Build for Myself and All My Friends