Glitchy IDM with nice melodies. Sounds very old school for a record in 2022, but also brings me back to a great era of rhythmic experimental music. It could have been a major Warp release.
lynyn – lexicon
Minuit Machine – Don’t Run From The Fire
It’s so strange that I haven’t made note of Minuit Machine before considering how much I listen to their records recently. It’s a constant item in my cyberpunk playlists. It’s an amazing blend of electro and goth moods resulting in this beautiful dark wave atmosphere that I just strive in.
Overlook – Lost Souls Club EP
This is unexpected. I haven’t heard of Overlook before and this music is so much up my alley that it’s like the literal avenue in my city center. Jazzy moods and urban sounds with drum & bass. It’s like DJ Krush but instead of triphop blues having some more tempo to breakbeat and onwards. This is so not 2022, but it’s so amazing.
Plant43 – Unknown Structure
Electronic music with some IDM and melodic edge. He’s citing Kraftwerk as influence, and the German electronics is definitely there.
Top of 2022
This year instead of spending hours digging my memories I just snatched the data from IMDb and Last.fm, and took it at face value. Well, kind of. Last.fm is taken as is, the only trick I did was looking at Top 11 instead of Top 10 for artists and albums, because I just couldn’t let Moin miss the showcase. As for IMDb, I created lists of everything I ranked 7+, dropped the ones I was okay to not list, and moved around the items that had the same rating. Still, I got this done in about an hour.
Disclaimer: this is not a list of things released in 2022, but the experiences I had in 2022. Music is fairly recent, but movies and series go back a while.
Some conclusions and notes:
- I need to find a way to save less or listen to more music. My “Play Later” list is ever growing, I barely managed to get the 2021 albums listened to, which puts me in this constant fomo of not listening to what’s on right now. At this moment I have 63 hours of music on that list, which is getting more added to every week as the new releases are dropping in.
- Calibre ending as my top artist is related to him playing at the Boiler Room Festival, which I luckily attended and ended up being my top event of the year. It was a great experience and a reminder how little I make use of living in one of the most amazing cities of the world.
- Besides the Boiler Room party my highlights in events were 1) listening to Solomun on a festival after a recent falling in love with that god-of-a-dj, 2) marvelling at Milkie Way performing with Wargasm, and 3) the most random drum and bass party presented by midnite in the most random summer night in recent history.
- We started doing a movie night series with the wife where either of us present a movie and the other cannot say no. Three of my top 12 are from these events. (Two of which are in my top three.) And many more in my broader top list, too. We should do more of these.
- I had this determination at the beginning of the year to work through a portion of my IMDb watchlist this year. The momentum didn’t hold up until the end of the year, but it got me to watch quite a few from my long-last backlog. Four of my top 12 are from this list.
- And some well-picked recent releases make the rest five of the top 12. Fun fact, I apparently consistently rated DC movies higher than Marvel flicks.
- Six out of my top 12 movies I watched alone. I should listen to my inner compass more.
- For series, just quick notes: 1) Andor made Star Wars into everything I’ve always wanted it to be. 2) Sandman was almost perfect, but that Gwendoline Christie character was a strong no for me. 3) I did like the Cowboy Bebop live action series, I loved the atmosphere and fun of it. 4) RuPaul’s All Stars season 7 was absolutely epic, like an all stars should be and never has been.
My top albums in 2022
My top artists in 2022
My top tracks in 2022
My top movies in 2022
My top TV in 2022
Update (10-01-2023): I’ve realized two items were missing badly from the above lists becaused they were pretty impactful, I just missed to checked them in on IMDb. Adding them as quick errata now:
- Office series (US version): I binged through the whole thing first time this year, it was quite an impactful experience, lots of fun. Should come in at 2nd spot in the TV list.
- Three Thousand Years of Longing: best new movie I saw in 2022, beautiful and fun and Tilda Swinton. Should come in at 2nd spot in the movies list.
Significant Other – Club Aura
I really don’t know how to categorize this genrewise, so when I saw on Bandcamp the label “leftfield” I jumped, yes, that! I honestly don’t care about the tracks for the most part, but Drum Therapy just had to be saved somewhere for future reference, that’s an amazing beat. I ended up adding it to my wierd house playlist. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Deap Vally – Marriage
Such cool girl power rock from the indie-garage axis, but mostly just hot rock and roll.
Walton – Maisie by the Sea
This is some fine IDM, mostly on the ambient side, sometimes broken beats. Working Title is a track that invokes some great masters of IDM with modern mastering—when the melody kicks in at 2:25, that’s goosebumps.
Torn – Borderline
Drum and bass and jungle and breakcore.
Дeva – Csillag
Hungarian folk-infused electronic downtempo.