Packing it all in for the final Recommended Albums posted in 2022. I will still highlight December, but that comes in January. In short, there were some lovely releases that made my job of crystallizing my Top 50 Albums of 2022 very hard. So much so that I had to break the 10-album limit and throw in another extra. Just for you. Why not.

Also – I still need to listen through all the SAULT records. There’s no way I was going to be able to get to all of them while still checking out other artists. 11 was pretty good though!

Daniel Avery – Ultra Truth [Mute]
Descending to the center of the Earth in a thin capsule with a sheetrock-boring drill attached, then emerging from your claustrophobic containment in deep space, seemingly after taking a wrong turn somewhere.

Daniel Bachman – Almanac Behind [Three Lobed]
Finding a house destroyed by a landslide with a radio on inside, broadcasting a severe storm warning.

Duval Timothy – Meeting With A Judas Tree [Carrying Colour Records]
Two friends project their memories of each other onto a massive, curved screen, both recollections and emotions overlaid onto the same surface and meshing shared experiences together.

Fievel Is Glauque – Flaming Swords [MATH Interactive]
Prototypes of various inventions litter the floor of the home of an eccentric scientist who’s nowhere to be found upon a missing person’s investigation, because their latest contraption worked this time.

Horse Lords – Comradely Objects [RVNG Intl.]
A heady potion that will grant you the ability to be in two places at once at the cost of not being able to pay attention.

Malibu – Palaces of Pity EP [UNO NYC]
Dissolving your body into icy seas and spreading yourself upon the frozen beaches of the northern hemisphere.

Old Fire – Voids [Western Vinyl]
A western town entirely lit by ever-burning embers that line footpaths and major meeting places can be seen from the mountain view on clear nights, but most it remains obscured by churning smoke.

RAMZi – hyphea [Music From Memory]
Fresh fruit grows and hot springs gurgle peacefully within an enclosed geode deep within a polar mountain range. You sit nonchalantly on a cushioned beach chair inside, sunglasses on.

Tenci – A Swollen River, A Well Overflowing [Keeled Scales]
A watercolor painting for every night you couldn’t sleep, a needlepoint for every morning you didn’t want to end, collected in a box in the back of your closet, and just now discovered again.

Ulla – foam [3XL]
Reading a book with cracked glasses; the fragmented and shifting words illuminate forgotten insight like a sunbeam entering through a freshly-parted curtain.

Weyes Blood – And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow [Sub Pop]
Murky light of a winter sunset creeps into your exclusive realm of a closed-canopy bed, with its heavy velvet shell in royal purple insulating you from the outside world.

GR8 TRACKS OF 2022::

• AKAI SOLO – “S.O.M.”
• Ami Dang – “Bālnā | ਬਾਲਣਾ”
• Ami Dang – “Circuit”
• Coco & Clair Clair – “The Hills (feat. DEELA)”
• Daniel Avery – “Devotion”
• Daniel Avery – “Wall of Sleep (feat. HAAi)”
• Daniel Bachman – “540 Supercell”
• Daniel Bachman – “Wildfire (Smoke Over Old Rag)”
• Emily Nenni – “Matches”
• Horse Lords – “May Brigade”
• Horse Lords – “Mess Mend”
• Isla Craig – “Weather”
• JIMMY EDGAR – “DREAMS 1000000 (feat. Milk)”
• Malibu – “Iliad”
• Malibu – “So Far Out of Love”
• RAMZi – “Megafauna”
• rRoxymore – “Fragmented Dreams”
• SAULT – “Higher”
• Smut – “Supersolar”
• Special Interest – “Cherry Blue Intention”
• Tenci – “Be”
• Tenci – “Out of Body”
• Ulla – “blush”
• Ulla – “gloss”
• Ulla – “marina”
• Weyes Blood – “God Turn Me Into A Flower”
• Weyes Blood – “Grapevine”
• Weyes Blood – “Hearts Aglow”