Old stuff you loved in 2014

Little Feat – Feats Don’t Fail Me Now
Uncle Tupelo – No Depression
Laraaji – Celestial Music 1978-2011
Judas Priest – British Steel
Electric Wizard – Dopethrone
Fela Kuti – Music Is The Weapon/He Miss Road
The Sea and Cake – Oui
The Futureheads – News and Tributes
Cocteau Twins – Treasure
Native North American Vol. 1
Lewis – L’amour
Soul Jazz “Rise of Dancehall” comp
Trio- s/t
Can – “Soundtracks”
Thin Lizzy – 1st album
Mark McGuire - A Young Persons Guide
The Fall – Country on the click
JJ Cale – Naturally/5/Really/Okie

Rediscoveries:

Goldie – Timeless
Dinosaur Jr – Where you been?
The Fall - Imperial Wax Solvent

VA - Balani Show Super Hits: Electronic Street Parties from Mali (Sahel Sounds)
Mamman Sani - Taaritt (Sahel Sounds)
VA - Calypso: Musical Poetry in the Caribbean 1955-69 (Soul Jazz)
VA - Haiti Direct: Big Band, Mini Jazz & Twoubadou Sounds, 1960-1978
VA - 1970’s Algerian Folk and Pop (Strut Records)
Nawa - Ancient Sufi Invocations & Forgotten Songs from Aleppo (Lost Origin Sound Series)
Les Ambassadeurs, Salif Keita - Les Ambassadeurs Du Motel De Bamako (Sterns Africa)
Mdou Moctar - Anar (Sahel Sounds)
Malombo Jazz Makers + Jabula - Next Stop Soweto presents Spirit of Malombo: Malombo, Jabula, Jazz Afrika 1966-1984 (Strut Records)
Verckys et l’Orchestre Vévé - Congolese Funk, Afrobeat & Psychedelic Rumba 1969-1978 (Analog Africa)

keep meaning to check out that Haiti Direct comp

VA - Balani Show Super Hits: Electronic Street Parties from Mali

sounds pretty sweet too

yeah! i think all those albums are great but check out the Mamman Sani 'Taaritt' as well which only got a release this year and is one of my favorite things i've heard:

http://sahelsounds.bandcamp.com/album/taaritt

Cosmic synth. Polyphonic analog synthesizers and drum machines interpret ancient Saharan folk ballads in an imagined science fiction future. A proposed relaxation guide, sonically lying somewhere between ambient library music and minimal wave. Recorded in Niger and France in the late 1980s and never before released.

Nina Matvienko / Ancient Music Ensemble of Konstantine Checheni (haunting Ukrainian folk / early music) http://youtu.be/91IwUR0R9JQ
Halina Frąckowiak - Idę (mid-70s Polish funk) http://youtu.be/3xnTdQbX8rM
Claudine Longet - Complete Barnaby Sessions (adorable covers from slightly murderous French legend) http://youtu.be/wy9f4HFw7FI
Skryabin - Tanets Pingvina (late-90s Ukrainian synth pop that sounds a bit like Etienne Daho in places) nhttp://youtu.be/oCQIOYJXYWw
Shelagh McDonald - Stargazer (early 70s Scottish prog-folk) http://youtu.be/zdKVt1g_EwA
Coven - Witchcraft Destroys Minds And Reaps Souls (you can probably guess that one) http://youtu.be/nn31rnq8eTc
Folque - Folque (Norwegian folk-rock) http://youtu.be/gaEVxMlCrD0
Video Liszt - Ekatrom Killer (idk much about it, French space-synth) http://youtu.be/4VpiI8hVWAE
Zsuzsa Koncz- Elunk Es Meghalunk (dramatic Hungarian folk-pop) http://youtu.be/xZP9lOugEMU

Lots of folk, prog, soundtracks, etc as well.

Ariel Kalma - Osmose
Luciano Cilio - Dell’Universo Assente (This is too good to miss, doomed Italian minimalist leaves haunting, strange masterpiece)
The Thelonious Monk Quartet - Monk's Dream (2nd year running)
Paul O'Dette - Jacaras - 18th Century Spanish Baroque Guitar Music Of Santiago De Murcia
Peggy Lee - Mirrors

this year i have deliberately tried to follow current music so not as much as usual, so not alot apart from classical

lately very fond of noel coward's recordings from the 1940s

90s autechre

asmus tietchens

donnacha costello's colorseries, this is about ten years old but i only got around to it this year thanks to the ilxor clouds, some of it is exquisite and for provincial reasons it is good to have some irish music that i really like other than my bloody valentine

pvmic but i've also been listening to a lot of Imam Alimsultanov (http://youtu.be/2XkZDVZ_Eko) recently. He was a poet / bard who sang about legendary Chechen heroes and was probably murdered by the FSB in the nineties.

arrigo barnabé
eberhard schoener's meditation
belgian techno youtube channel
early morning hush comp
henry flynt

Flynt is da bomb!

yeah I grabbed a load of his stuff in an ubuweb binge a couple of years ago but slept on it, downloaded a flac this year and actually paid attention & loved it

that Mamman Sani album is lovely. cheers mordy!

Biggest discovery: wow, I really like Robin Trower

Old stuff I've reconnected with for whatever reason, or finally "got":

Kinks' Muswell Hillbillies (mostly due to CD reissue with bonus DVD)
Gene Clark records that aren't No Other or White Light
James Brown - The Payback
King Crimson - Discipline
David Blue in general
Donald Fagen - The Nightfly
Joe Jackson - Beat Crazy
Ike and Tina deep cuts
the "bad" John Martyn albums (which are p much the very opposite of 'bad' imo)

Do reissues and comps count? Because I adore that Native North America comp on LITA.

Lastly, my wife's been binging on Eno most of this year, so I've been hearing a lot of latter-day Eno I wasn't familiar with.

Biggest discovery: wow, I really like Robin Trower

His '73-'76 albums are great.

I've been listening to a lot of Free this year. Also, I just started getting really into Earth, Wind & Fire's actual albums, having previously only owned a 2CD best-of. There's a ton of great, weird shit on their albums—they're a lot jazzier than the singles.

Some 80s new age reissues and an obsessive search for a piece of Japanese music used in a PBS commercial for an Asian art exhibit (which I never found) led me to some good stuff this year.

Jon Hassell's Aka / Darbari / Java
the Vangelis Katsoulis reissues - especially Minimal Suite / Double Image and The Slipping Beauty

Steve Roach's Mystic Chords & Sacred Spaces
DJ Spencer D's Fairlights, Mallets and Bamboo mixes
Skyramps's Days of Thunder
various Eno, Moebius, Roedelius tracks - possibly from the same album, some Cluster, some Moebius (a lot of this maybe triggered by the Eno/Hyde releases)
Michael Stearns' Planetary Unfolding

I think this is the year I really dug deep with Spotify and it lead me down some weird nostalgic paths...

Cinematic Orchestra's Motion
Funki Porcini various songs
Neotropic
Flanger's Outer Space / Inner Space
Jimpster's back catalog
Journeyman/Woob/Paul Franklin

other random things...

World Standard - Country Gazette
Various - London is the Place for Me 3
Mark McGuire - Various albums
Motorpsycho - Various
Yoshida Brothers - Ibuki
Haruomi Hosono - Fossil Of Flame
伝統音楽デジタルライブラリー　箏演奏 「讃歌」 and a bunch of other performances by the same artist

DJ Spencer D's Fairlights, Mallets and Bamboo mixes
Michael Stearns' Planetary Unfolding

yessssss to these

Joe Farrell - Quartet w/John McLaughlin
Joe Farrell - Penny Arcade
Joe Farrell - Upon This Rock
Joe Farrell - Canned Funk
Joe Farrell - Benson & Farrell w/George Benson

middle 3 feature guitarist Joe (not Jeff Beck) just about the funkiest CTI releases

Joe Beck - misplaced parens

I guess "old" is relative. These were records I discovered this year:

Alice Cooper - Love it To Death
Autopsy - Mental Funeral
Kvelertak - Kvelertak

Oh, forgot perhaps my favorite of the bunch:

Celtic Frost - Monotheist

Don't know how that slipped past me originally, but getting into Triptykon led me to it.

Joe Farrell - Quartet w/John McLaughlin
Joe Farrell - Penny Arcade
Joe Farrell - Upon This Rock
Joe Farrell - Canned Funk
Joe Farrell - Benson & Farrell w/George Benson

middle 3 feature guitarist Joe (not Jeff Beck) just about the funkiest CTI releases

― Pontius Pilates (m coleman), Monday, December 22, 2014 8:23 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Bought Quartet and Penny Arcade on your recommendation, and loved them both! I generally dig CTI and rank two Freddie Hubbard albums from this period (Red Clay and Straight Life) as two of my all time faves, so this was no real push. Sorta can't believe I never listened to these before. I see Canned Funk everywhere - how does it stack up to these two?

Black Oak Arkansas
Blue Oyster Cult
Focus
Jethro Tull
Nektar
Caravan
Parliament/Funkadelic
The Pretty Things
Savoy Brown
UFO
Uriah Heep

xpost

Canned Funk is a bit slicker than Quartet, pretty much along the lines of Penny Arcade though w/o Herbie Hancock. go for it!

Bert Jansch and Jackson C. Frank, spearheading a major mid-1960s folk phase - and I caught up with a lot of Jackie Leven's stuff.

xp cool, thanks! Penny Arcade is my favorite of the two, so this definitely sounds worth seven bucks

Beyonce - Beyonce