Best music in 2022


I'm a little late getting started this year.....

St. Paul & The Broken Bones "The Alien Coast"

I love this album. Wish the bass wasn't so prominent.

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Green Asphalt - Swedish band with more than a nod to prog legends, Gentle Giant. Complex, thoughtful melodies, layered vocals.

Yang - Designed for Disaster - French band, with prog guitar great,  Frédéric L'Épée, with their modern take on heavy prog. Gets pretty dark and intense at times, with a touch of dissonance.

Tony Malaby - The Cave of Winds - excellent progressive jazz, with avant-garde leanings, by this NY sax player. Even thought they can get pretty out there, they don't lose sight of the melodie.

Pelkkä (Petra) Poutanen - Pyhä Veri Vuotaa - modern Finish folk, maybe loosely in the Dead Can Dance sort of realm. Haunting stuff, with beautiful female vocals. 

Scatter The Atoms That Remain - Emancipation Suite - extremely good 'spiritual' jazz. Think, modern take on what Pharaoh Sanders was doing in '69.

Adam Shead Quintet - Full Cycle, Thread New.- killer contemporary avant-garde jazz. YMMV.

Unsuk Chin – Shards of Silence, for violin and orchestra - This woman can do no wrong, IMO. Very modern sounding, yet still approachable.

John Corigliano – Triathlon, Concerto for Saxophonist and Orchestra - I am not usually a fan of sax as a solo instrument in concertos, but this one is growing on me. 

 

Unlimited Love by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Every element that makes them unique is in the album but their maturation is so obvious. 17 tracks and there isn't one I want to skip over.