This Week's Playlist #148 - The Albums of 2024 edition
Some of my heavy rotation albums of 2024
Hello everyone!
This Week's Playlist - Season 3, Episode 44.
A final newsletter for 2024. Another year has gone by. A weird and roller-coaster one in many ways.
I hope you can all rest with your loved ones during this festive period.
It has been three years since I started this newsletter as a little hobby while in between jobs, and now I'm working full time, a more demanding one.
I wanted to thank you all for your readership this year again, for the replies, comments, and shares, both longtime readers and newcomers. Thank you all, really.
Thank you again this year for the guests who took the time to dig into their favourite tracks and share them with us all.
Don’t worry, I’m not stopping the newsletter yet: I am just making some slight arrangements for 2025 - which will bring some personal (good) changes - more on that in due time.
I’m moving to a monthly curated playlist with featured guests in between. :-) So expect the same level of weird geeky playlists, just less frequent.
Back to the music:
So for the last episode of 2024, here are some songs from artists I listened to a lot, who released albums this year.
As an end-of-the-year bonus, I’m adding 5 tracks, for the less faint-hearted-heavy-metal junkies of the audience.
I hope you enjoy it and see you next month :-)
There is a YouTube link for each of the songs on the cover, and here are the playlists for each streaming platform:
5 of my favourite albums of 2024
1. Godspeed You Black Emperor - GREY RUBBLE - GREEN SHOOTS
Godspeed You! Black Emperor released a new album this year, with an unambiguous title “No Title as of 13 February 2024 28,340 Dead”, referencing the Palestinian death toll during the Israel-Gaza war (and sadly the title is already out of date).
GYBE has been an influencial band in my musical journey. Their epic, repetition-oriented chamber post-rock result to a meditative and hypnotic loop.
“A kind of perfect soundtrack to a society on the edge of all-out war, of the push-and-pull between total doom and inextinguishable hope for something better.”
2. The Bambir - Trnenq (Jump in)
The Armenian rock stars released another album this year. This is their second single.
According to their own words: Titled “Mankakan Khagher” (Children’s Games), the band’s 12th studio album hints at the mindless atrocities and sufferings that adults endure by not having maturity towards others and to themselves. Adults are children full of cruel desires, as no one is truly matured into grown ups.
3. Ulver - A City in the Skies
I wrote about Ulver when one of their members passed away earlier this year.
In the meantime, they released a new album (which was recorded for years). Some elegant electronic pop music, while keeping their original maverick mindset.
4. Sanam - Bell
The debut album of the Beirut based SANAM was released in 2023: “A feast for the senses—an amalgam of krautrock, free rock, Arabic maqams (melodies), and poetry.”.
However, they released a live album in 2024 and I was able to catch them on stage last summer in London and it was one of the best gigs I’ve been to in 2024.
5. Tigran Hamasyan - The Curse
The piano virtuoso colossus is back with a new concept album around Armenian mythology.
This album, recorded with a whole rock band, and brings his very characteristic fusion sound of jazz music and Armenian traditional tunes to another level, adding more influences from Baroque dance to hip-hop, djent and heavy metal.
5+1. Kendrick Lamar - Reincarnated
Like everyone else, I got hooked on Kendrick Lamar’s surprise release.
5 of my favourite heavy metal albums of 2024
Lowen - Najang Bah Divhayeh Mazandaran
Doom / progressive metal from London. Really cool fusion of Iranian music and mythology with doom metal. The Iranian women vocal lead is remarkable.
My Own Private Alaska - All The Lights On
Piano core from Toulouse, France.
We had Mathieu, the singer, in the newsletter earlier this year.
Trelldom - The Voice Of What Whispers
Experimental and avant-garde black metal with a saxophone
Spectral Wounds - Fever & Suffering
Punk and raw black metal from Montreal
Heriot - Siege Lord
The new cool kids of the British industrial / death metal core scene
Some great albums I covered in previous episodes:
Until the next time, Godspeed!
Thomas
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