#43: What's Going Through Your Mind?
The Best of 2024
Welcome back to the Ambient Audiophile, the place where listening to music via laptop speakers is never really ok but we love you anyway.
I hope you all had a nice holiday. We did around here and it’s been rough getting back to normal, not gonna lie. Before we continue, we send our most positive healing vibrations to those affected by the fires out West.
So it looks the Ambient Audiophile is just about a year old now. I want to thank everyone who reads, shares and supports this endeavor. It means a lot. I’ve spent more than half of my life sharing music and trying to build community around it and 2025 will have more new expressions and horizons, so just hold tight.
I just got a load of stuff from the big 50% off UMe sale, so I’m going to write those up, probably next week, in this space. I really almost never buy new vinyl as the pressing quality is just so hit or miss but I can’t turn down a discount. I picked up three Blue Note titles (two Classics, one Tone Poet) and some classic rock I never had on LP that I was curious about in terms of the new masterings. Stay tuned for that.
I’m also looking into getting a more than respectable vinyl ripping rig set up this year. I’m open to suggestions but a one box solution is the most appealing at this point in life with two kids. Once we get that going, paid subs will get access to vinyl rips of rare/weird/obscure titles and pressings as time permits.
I got to one of the Phish shows in the city at the end of the year (12/29) and had an absolute blast and the music was fun, nostalgic, forward-thinking, comfortable and experimental, sometimes all at once. I saw them more this year than I have in the past 20 years and reconnecting with this very integral part of my musical life and extended family has been nothing short of wonderful. Besides sharing this special experience with my partner and kids, I’m able to care and comfort that lost kid I used to be at shows and tell him everything will end up being alright just like he used to hope; that there’s a path and there’s goodness and there’s beauty down every road. At shows, I look around at the crowd and picture them all as young folks and it makes me smile. I don’t know why.
Anyway, here’s the jam of the night that I caught. I like the song but if it’s not for you, just fast forward a couple minutes and enjoy some incredible music.
I did a two-part “Best of 2024” on The Trailhead and these are two of the most enjoyable shows I remember doing in years. The year was insane in terms of the great music released and I can’t thank these artists and labels enough for all the hard work they put in. I’m feeling more and more deflated when I talk to artists about how they are doing financially and it seems that Bandcamp isn’t the little oasis we all thought it was for independent musicians. I say it often but PLEASE BUY THE MUSIC YOU LOVE. This goes especially hard for the stuff on my show, as none of these folks are getting the kinds of streaming numbers that can pay an electric bill.
Links to listen to the Best of 2024 shows are below along with the tracklists.
Listen to The Trailhead 158 (Best of 2024, Pt. 1)
1. Nicklas Sørensen - Akustisk 6 - Akustisk (Self, 2024) 00:00
2. Jacob Sunderlin - Everyone Is Listening In the Bardo - In the Bardo (Flat Plastic Home Media, 2024) 03:14
3. James Elkington and Nathan Salsburg - All Gist Could Be Yours - All Gist (Paradise of Bachelors, 2024) 07:39
4. Skyminds - Western Winds - Echoes on the Shore (Inner Islands, 2024) 13:02
5. Thought Leadership - XVIII - Ace of Swords (Darkly Inclined Tapes, 2024) 17:10
6. Golden Brown - Return - Kindness (Aural Canyon, 2024) 23:30
7. David Cordero - Voice of the Forest - Important Small Details (Home Normal, 2024) 31:38
8. Total Blue - Heart of the World - Total Blue (Music From Memory, 2024) 35:26
9. YAI - The Spiral - Sky Time (AKP Recordings, 2024) 43:10
10. Tondiue - Mind - Word to the Centipede (Kelp Roots, 2024) 46:40
11. Itasca - Easy Spirit - Imitation of War (Paradise of Bachelors, 2024) 1:07:20
12. Needlepoint - Where You Two Once Held Hands - Remnants of Light (BJK Music, 2024) 1:16:45
13. Smoke Bellow - Noonian Soong - Structurally Sound (Moon Glyph, 2024) 1:23:20
14. Seawind of Battery - New Moon - East Coast Cosmic Dreamscaper (WarHen, 2024) 1:27:22
15. Shelter & Orion - Slalom Autobahn - Here ’ s Where You Understand It ’ s Only Dreaming (Les Disques Omnison, 2024) 1:35:22
16. Swanox - Old World - Rhodyrunner (Not Not Fun, 2024) 1:46:07
Listen to The Trailhead 159 (Best of 2024, Pt. 2)
1. Infinity Machine - Red River, Blue Mountain - Infinity Machine 003 (DFA, 2024) 00:00
2. Shane Parish - Journey in Satchidananda - Repertoire (Palilalia, 2024) 07:24
3. Barry Archie Johnson - Outlaw's Wand - Fortune's Mirror (VDSQ, 2024) 09:55
4. Duncan Park - Kingfisher's Refuge - Canticles of the Sourveld (Aural Canyon, 2024) 19:22
5. Elkhorn - Gray Salt Trail - The Red Valley (VHF, 2024) 28:35
6. Alan Licht - Nonchalant - Havens (VDSQ, 2024) 38:19
7. Solar Unity Ensemble - Mantra - Upstream (Mustik Motel Music, 2024) 1:03:14
8. Selcouth Quartet - Smaller Horses - Selcouth Quartet (Color Red, 2023) 1:13:40
9. Wet Tuna - Water Train - Sweet Pond Nugs (Child of Microtones, 2024) 1:19:36
10. Body Meπa - Scout - Prayer In Dub (Hausu Mountain, 2024) 1:31:50
11. Lifted - All Right - Trellis (Peak Oil, 2024) 1:48:11
Just brilliant music, listening on Mixcloud and am transported to a wonderful, trippy, unknown place
Hi Jeff, in the midst of tightening my Substack belt, I realized that you’re someone I should actually be subscribing to! I don’t listen to the show every week, but when I do I really enjoy it. I really benefit from your exploration and curation of artists that I’ve never heard.
I shared your Phil stuff, and the year-end best-ofs with a buddy of mine. Meanwhile, I also sent him interviews with both Trey and Mike about the Dead and Phil . Also really related to your one paragraph framing of your return to that scene this year; so much is so similar to what those of us a half generation older experienced with the dead. But. We’ve both found the density of Phish to be too much for us; i’ve always tended to feel like their musical launching point was more Zappa and King Crimson, both of whom I enjoyed when I was younger… But as as I’ve gotten older, that (and most of the jazz fusion I also enjoyed in that era) just feels like it has a bit too much going on for me!
It made me wonder whether you know of anyone who has put together playlists of more spacious Phish jams and/or some of their more mystical tunes (like the song that launched that jam you shared!). I’ve definitely heard Phish sequences which I found very enticing and expansive, but all too often those more spacious moments pass pretty quickly, as they do in this New Year’s jam. Any tips on this quest?
(This focus on the spacious quality, and the multi-threaded lines of the players, is the reason that I had my most fruitful internal experiences among the next generation jam bands with Railroad Earth…. The “foothills of Mt. Hunter” quality of Todd’s songwriting definitely helped there as well, with similarly evocative/ambiguous lyrical phrases to launch from in our reflective explorations during the jams; I also appreciated their grounding in so many songs about the rural life—as compared to the Dead’s fascination with the down and out and outlaws….something else I related to more in my 20s than in my 60s!)
Onward!