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User
Reviews 5
Approval 96%
Soundoffs 11
Album Ratings 1082
Objectivity 81%
Last Active 05-15-19 8:04 pm
Joined 12-19-18
Review Comments 281
| Ambrosian's Top 2024 Albums
I admit that I couldn’t share in the enthusiasm that many had in the music of 2024, as I thought that the past year’s albums were chiefly defined by transience, everything just went in one ear and out the other, but there were some exceptions. Here are my favourites of 2024. | | 1 |  | Pyrrhon
Exhaust
Death Metal. Exhaust presents us with a visceral sequence of spasms masquerading as songs. Shedding much of their progressive tendencies, Pyrrhon has condensed their songwriting and upped the influence of noise rock and jazz on their sound to create what user Lvxfra described as “the love child of Today is the Day and Gorguts.” The result is an exciting collection of insane riffs, whiplash inducing tempo shifts, and bizarrely memorable melodies. | | 2 |  | Convulsing
Perdurance
Death Metal. Dissonant death metal is perhaps a misnomer for this ambitious one man project. For unlike most in the genre, he relies more on functional and harmonious sounds than straight-up atonality, and this proves to be a positive aspect of the album as it allows it to climb to greater emotional and dramatic heights. The highlights are two epics “inner oceans” and “endurance” in which Brendan Sloan (the band’s sole performer and songwriter) flexes his abilities as a composer to create a spacious and emotional version of death metal. | | 3 |  | Beth Gibbons
Lives Outgrown
Chamber pop. Beth Gibbons offers us a series of meditations on the fleeting nature of life. The album feels very much like a retrospective, and therefore has a universal theme which at times becomes legitimately poignant. This is a very tasteful album, Gibbons avoids becoming sappy or sentimental, but approaches her theme with both honesty and dignity. At its best, the songs are driven by a pulsating rhythm topped by eastern melodies and instrumentation as on the tracks Rewind, Reaching Out, and Beyond the Sun. Another highlight is the building Oceans which boasts a beautiful string section and a vocal performance which alternates between emotional verses and stately, soaring choruses. This is a very contemplative album full of restrained emotion. | | 4 |  | Cameron Winter
Heavy Metal
Indie Pop. Heavy Metal was supposedly written in a series of Guitar Centers (which banned Cameron for life), hotel closets, or in the back of taxis; but whatever the material truth is behind the lore of the album, it certainly gives an insight into the pensive and reflective sound found in these songs. Cameron – with his distinctive voice that finds itself halfway between Van Morrison and Tim Buckley – is the centerpiece of this album, he sings a litany of bittersweet and ironic reflections over economic instrumentals. The highlights are the unbelievably soulful tune “Love Takes Miles” (my song of the year) and the despairing “$0.” This album didn’t really click with me until I re-listened to it driving around one evening in a melancholic mood when I was suddenly moved by his invocation of Brian Jones in the opening track. The mix of regret and restrained hope that these songs exude gave me sickly feeling in my stomach which may be unhealthy, but I'm glad it made an impact on me. | | 5 |  | Wang Yiling
枯萎颂 (Ode to Wither)
Chamber pop. This Chinese offering is a very enigmatic one, Wang Yiling draws from folk, classical, and pop music of both East and West and blends them into a delicate array of chamber music. These pieces are understated and operate on a soft register, but periodically blossom with a varied cast of horns and strings that create moments of beauty. Even though the album takes on a more subdued tone, it is the more tense middle tracks that compose its heart. The enchanting melody of 枯萎頌 opens with hardly a whisper but grows into a tight jam with dueling violins and electric guitar interjections. 士兵 heightens the drama by proving that Ms. Yiling can actually rock with the feature of a powerful vocal performance over distorted slide guitar. | | 6 |  | Magdalena Bay
Imaginal Disk
Pop. This is a very loud and overstimulating pop album that exudes a plastic sheen. The robust production is the focus of the album, it cycles through a number of popular styles (synthpop, funk, dance) and reinterprets them in a manner reminiscent of vaporwave, at least in spirit. Over such a varied palette, Tenebaum half sings half whispers in an infantile inflection. The exterior of the of the album is cold, but there is a hidden warmth. Magdalena Bay’s whole aesthetic is built upon the age of computers/internet and more broadly, the blending of the human and technological, the vision is futuristic and trans-human, Imaginal Disk’s project is the search for the human in this digitization, but whether through overcoming or integration is unclear. I began to appreciate the album at the last track, The Ballad of Matt and Mica, which serves as the epilogue and summation of the whole project. | | 7 |  | Rhun (USA-ME)
Conveyance In Death
Black Metal. Conveyance In Death is a more pummeling and abrasive version of Falls of Rauros. This is very respectable black metal that finds its heights in the ferocious Bone Ornament and Howl of Gleaming Swords. Rhun balances brutality and melody on a knife’s edge. I liked this more when the snow was first falling than I do now on my third listen, but those two middle tracks are enough for me to remember this release. | | 8 |  | Nala Sinephro
Endlessness
Jazz. A beautifully pensive fusion of electronica, ambient, and cool jazz. Those are probably the three most “relaxing” genres out there but this album does contain enough musical edge and linear development to keep it interesting. Harmonious melodies float in the air as bubbling electronic arpeggios fill in the spaces. As evidenced by the cover, the vision of the album is cosmic, an exploration into foreign parts of the universe, or an expansion of the individual to a universal state, in this way, Endlessness resembles the jazz and electronic music of the 1970s. | | 9 |  | Trha
∫um'ad∂ejja cavvaj
Black Metal. Trha has a real knack for making riffs and melodies that shouldn’t belong in a black metal album work extremely well, which makes this hour long atmospheric bm record much more interesting to listen to. There is real creativity underneath the static-y wall of noise. | |
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