My Favorite Music of 2019

It's time for my annual look-back at the music I purchased during the past 12 months and the albums among them that I enjoyed the most. Admittedly, I appear to have gone a bit overboard by acquiring 68 new albums. That's a lot for me.  But a lot of those are me me finally deciding to buy all of Led Zeppelin's albums on CD to replace my LPs. After seeing Phil Collins in concert this year I did the same for his early catalog. Then I did something similar for The Beatles.

With that out of the way, and in no particular order, here are the albums that are my favorites from 2019.

Red Kite's Debut

The instrumental progressive rock on the self-titled debut album from Norwegian quartet Red Kite has an old soul. To my ears there's a late 1960s and early 1970s anthemic ecstasy that could be dropped comfortably into the soundtrack for Apocalypse Now. Balanced between rugged improvisation and careful composition, the albums five tracks left me wanting more. Notable tracks for me are the barely constrained crescendo of 13 Enemas for Good Luck (I appreciate the oxymoronic humor) and the jazz-tinged and soulful You Don't Know, You Don't Know (in which the frustration is almost palpable). Available on Bandcamp from RareNoise Records, I can't wait to hear what these guys do next.

Soundtracks for Winter Departures by ILUITEQ

When it comes to ambient music, I've listened to a lot. Over time I have discovered a lot of ambience that I like. Then there are the ambient albums that I love. Immediately. On the first play. And I can't put into words the reasons why. One of my all-time favorite ambient recordings is Winter Garden by Eraldo Bernocchi, Harold Budd, and Robin Guthrie. Soundtracks for Winter Departures, the debut album from the duo known as ILUITEQ, may be my favorite ambience since Winter Garden. Soundtracks is lush, rhythmically pulsing, richly orchestrated, deep and dynamic. I lack the words to describe the music properly but I can say that I'm happier for the joy this recording has delivered. Available on Bandcamp from TXT Recordings.

Everything by SONAR

This was the year I became a huge fan of Switzerland's SONAR. My fandom was triggered by 2018's album Vortex featuring David Torn, the subsequent live album Live at Moods, and guitarist Stephan Thelen's solo album, Fractal Guitar.  What did these guys offer during 2019? Only the follow-up recording to their work with Torn, Tranceportation Vol. 1. (From which I infer there will be a Vol. 2 during 2020. One can hope.) As the band describes themselves, they eschew individual virtuosity for the group's polyrhythmic, tritonal guitar sound. The result I can only describe as a highly-rhythmic form of ambience. However, with the addition of Torn's slashing lead guitar, the overall effect is heightened by an order of magnitude. Torn's guitar jaggedly weaves through the space created by the band. I'll repeat Sid Smith's words: "Had MC Escher made music instead of drawing impossible and perplexing perspectives, it would sound like Sonar." Available on Bandcamp from RareNoise Records, I really should buy their complete catalog.

What else did the band have to offer in 2019? The Bill Laswell Mix Translations are a dub mix of tracks from Vortex. And Stephan Thelen remixed his solo album into The Fractal Guitar Remixes and Extra Tracks.

Honorable Mentions

I feel bad about including some albums that I love in this section as opposed to giving them full treatment like the ones above, but in the interest of space and time...

• You Don't Know the Life by Saft, Swallow, and Previte. Saft is another artist whose work I've come to love in all its many forms.
• You Know What...? by The Aristocrats. Irreverent, raucous, refined, virtuosic. This is fun in music amplified.
• And three Markus Reuter collaborations
• Clocks Go Down in Wonderland with Stephan Thelen
• Secret Music with Mark Wingfield
• City of Memories with Mark Wingfield

I also want to thank the folks at RareNoise Records for their annual "Leap of Faith" offering which allows you to buy in advance all their new releases in the coming year (and not have to pay for shipping). This may be the best thing that's happened to my music listening in the last decade. 2020's LoF should be announced soon.

Coda

Even after everything I've written above, I still feel bad about not mentioning other artists and albums from 2019 that I have really enjoyed. So here's the complete list of all my new music from 2019. And as I like to say, "I don't know much about music, but I sure like the sound it makes."

We're fascinated by words...

Here are some of the animated short films nominated for an Academy Award. If you watch only one on this page make it be Hors Piste. It's hilarious.

My favorite issue of Aviation Week each year is their photo contest and this year is no exception. Here's a look at some of the finalists.

I can't find any mention of this on the museum's website, but it has been reported that The Science Behind Pixar exhibition is coming to the Perot museum in Dallas beginning next 25 April. I'll declare this a "must see" right now.

Julie Mehretu, Stadia II, 2004. I see Joan Miro with a 21st century tech influence. source

Mondrian shares some of his insight into abstract art. "The emotion of beauty is always obstructed by the appearance of ‘the object’; therefore the object must be eliminated from the picture." Read more from Piet and other artists here.

Make Weird Music (or read about it).

How many of these progressive rock concept albums do you own? Many people own Pink Floyd's The Wall. I only own 4 of them.

How deep is the sea?

Can green light cure migraines and headaches?

Solve the traveling salesperson problem and create art at the same time.

Elevate your Excel game with with these shortcuts. Or these. Or the official ones from Microsoft.

Probably only the most hardcore Disney fan will want to read this article about the layout manual produced for in-studio use during the production of films for the War Dept. during WWII.

Even the great Chuck Yeager crashed a plane every once in a while, like this F-104 in 1963.

Brent Wadden, Untitled, 2019. Woven abstraction. source

Read 'em and weep: He Who Must Not Be Named's wildest statements of 2019.

The origins of figurative art by humans just got 7,000 older with the discovery of 44,000 year-old cave paintings in Indonesia.

I recommend my Paris friends see the Barbara Hepworth exhibition at the Musee Rodin. Her work is what got me interested in sculpture.

Barbara Hepworth, Contrapuntal Forms, 1965. source. From the collection of the Dallas Museum of Art. I think I prefer her work in marble to other materials. She not only makes it organic, but she makes it human. And in person, the desire to touch and stroke the pieces is palpable.

...but where we meet is the silence behind them. ~Ram Dass

Predominance of the Christmas Spirit

Mondrian himself said that Composition in Black and Gray has a Christmas mood "if one understands the Christmas idea in a really abstract way... the predominance of the spiritual."

As an abstraction, the painting utilizes a simple motif of diagonal lines to divide the canvas into 256 triangles. Mondrian's use of thicker lines to trace out an irregular arrangement of squares produces a twinkling effect at the intersections.

The painting's spirituality derives from the overall visual effect in which the eye wanders across the canvas, an infinite sky full of stars, especially relevant for a particular starry night. Its small size makes this a joyful intimacy, as though this vista is for you alone.

Piet Mondrian, Composition in Black and Gray, 1919. source

Merry Christmas to all.

What we hate most in others...

Markus Reuter and Mark Wingfield (recording under the name TEAR) have released two EPs on Bandcamp: Secret Music and City of Memories. And both EPs are freely available for download. What better way to give these two musicians a try?

You can also freely stream The Undivided Five, the new album from A Winged Victory for the Sullen.

Rolling Stone reports that beginning in 2020 Steve Hackett will perform Genesis' classic live album, Seconds Out, in its entirety. That show is scheduled to start late in 2020 in the UK. No US dates on the schedule. Yet.

Robert Mangold, Four Color Frame Painting No. 11, 1985. I had the pleasure of hearing the artist speak several years back and he explores a motif like this one for many paintings in a row until he loses it.

And the latest from Sonar and David Torn, Tranceportation Vol. 1,  is a keeper. Check out the teaser.

Colin Edwin has a new album coming out in January. Here's the trailer.

Here's a 2-fer from DJ Earworm.

• I always recommend his annual United State of Pop.
• And now we get his Decade of Pop.

We're getting close to award season for movies.

• Check out these Oscar-candidates for best animated shorts.

Lovers of the seven seas will adore Chris Bryan's film MOCEAN.

ONext spring will see a new exhibit installed in the Disney Family Museum: The Walt Disney Studios and World War II. Given my fascination with their wartime film Victory Through Airpower, I would like to see this.

Speaking of WWII, Godsend was the Soviet's code name for a spy within the Manhattan Project. We now know his name: Oscar Seborer.

Some thoughts on multi-cultural, multi-language communication.

The protophobic X boson may exert its force only across the width of an atom's nucleus but if it truly exists it will upset the entire standard model of particle physics.

Have you heard that the 2nd law of thermodynamics (i.e. entropy) controls the fact that time only moves forward and not backward? Not so fast.

Three Red Bull Air Racers fly by Mt. Fuji. From a photo gallery of the Red Bull Air Race. Still can't believe they ended it.

Houston's Rothko Chapel has suffered the same fate as those home renovation shows on HGTV. During its remodel they found a problem with the walls that must be addressed resulting in a 4-month, $1 million delay. Reopening now planned for late spring 2020. “It’s like resoling your shoes, while you’re standing up, without lifting them.”

This one particular black forest cake is the best dessert in Fort Worth. And it's not German, it's Swiss: Schwarzwaldtårta. (Why this article includes a 3D interactive rendering of a black forest cake is beyond me.)

The so-called "creative class" consists of techies, creatives, and knowledge workers. Fort Worth's creative class is growing the second fastest in the country.

Screen shot from a video showing the relative size, appearance, and rotation of the planets. MUST SEE.

Are you a fan of nature and landscape photography? Then checkout the work of Jeff McDonald (on Instagram and Etsy) and George Buxbaum.

2D animation is not dead as evidenced by Klaus. Click through if only to watch the video showing how a scene progresses from rough to final.

I'm not certain it qualifies as history, but here's a history of the poop emoji.

Your essential cured meats. Loves me some mortadella. Saucisson smells like feet.

Five reasons why smart doesn't mean successful. #3 Smart people attach a lot of their self esteem to being smart which can lead to avoidance.

In Ohio, the house of representatives passed a law allowing students to give wrong answers for religious reasons. Any politician who voted for this should be ashamed. Hopefully, the senate will kill this thing dead. Kill it with fire.

Vanadium dioxide, a metal, conducts electricity but not heat.

Have you ever been eating a pop-tart and wondered what whiskey would pair well with it?

I guessed that Oreos' mystery flavor was churros. I just didn't win the prize.

Ze Frank does it again with True Facts: Stinkhorns. And again with Mudskippers.

Sometimes the title says it all: You Can Finally Spend the Night in a Hotel Shaped Like an Anus.

I leave you with Emoji Storm, a real-time animation of every emoji being used on Twitter.

...we fear in ourselves.

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge...

One Rothko Per Hour is pretty much what its name says.

Ze Frank has released more True Facts videos: the sand bubbler crab and leafhoppers.

After bookmarking the Bandcamp page for ILUITEQ's Soundtracks for Winter Departures about a year ago, I finally pulled the trigger and bought it based on recent praise for the album from Eraldo Bernocchi. And as I listen for the first time, I regret having waited so long.

Did you know the USS Fort Worth, the U.S. Navy's Littoral Combat Ship LCS-3, has a local support committee?

There's no better time for beautiful news. For example, a 100% biodegradable maxi-pad has been developed.
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Ed Clark, Untitled, 2005. The painter recently passed away at age 93.

Science has finally observed the magnetic bridge between galaxies.

You may need to spend time with this but I think it's a live, interactive map of trains in Tokyo.

The schedule for the next year's worth of runDisney events was posted to the Disney Parks blog.

The geographic fandom of baseball teams. Those poor Mets.

B-52 nuclear alert missions are not historical artifacts of the cold war. They still happen today as this video shows.

Here's a nice video epilogue to 2001.

Or how about a 360-degree, 4K video of an F-35 flight over San Francisco?

Even more aviation pr0n, this time in the form of the annual Strike Fighter Ball video

Let's bring together aviation and animation in this video survey of Miyazaki's portrayal of flying machines in his films.

A handy reference to all those things on your dashboard. (Never knew there was a gas-cap warning light.)

Sorry, no poop.

...faster than society gathers wisdom. -Isaac Asimov

The only easy day...

The best fast food in every state. Ohio = Gold Star Chili?

Science tells us what happened the day the dinosaurs died.

The Comet, a video about comet 67P.

Disney Docs is where a guy shares his collection documents related to Disneyland, Walt Disney World, and more. (It's nice to see a focused collection.)

It's still difficult to understand how the Red Bull Air Race can be over. But it is. So they share some memorable moments and some best moments.

Richard Diebenkorn, Ocean Park No. 22, 1969. From an article by Tony Berlant on Diebenkorn's influence. "A yin-yang balance between impulse and revision is felt in all his work."

Mark your calendars. The Modern will host the exhibition Mark Bradford: End Papers from 08 Mar 2020 to 09 Aug 2020.

Imagine an entire magazine dedicated to the periodic table of elements. You don't have to imagine it - just read the 28 Aug 2019 issue of Businessweek.

Money only motivates when tasks are simple and formulaic. Otherwise, money demotivates. So what do we want? Autonomy, mastery, purpose.

What's rarer than the collision of two black holes? The collision of three black holes.

Innerviews features Genesis keyboardist Tony Banks. Interesting to hear him be open about feeling a wee bit inferior to the solo careers of band mates Phil Collins and Mike Rutherford.

Robert Fripp said that music is the goblet that holds the wine of silence. Read more about the history of silence in music.

• Clocks Go Down in Wonderland, a 1-track, 20-minute EP by Markus Reuter & Stephan Thelen
• Event Horizon Live 2019 by Kollar/Chojnacki
• A mash-up of hits from 1979 by The Hood Internet.

Got a tech (programming) interview coming up soon? Don't forget to ask your own questions. What kind of meetings happen every week? How do you prepare for disaster recovery?

What's most interesting to me in this announcement from D23 of a 50th anniversary celebration by the Walt Disney Archives is that the exhibit will be traveling with an announcement of locations promised in 2020. DFW?

The fall foliage map for 28 Sep 2019. It looks like North Texas has nothing to get excited about until the end of October and beginning of November.

Excel mavens rejoice. XLOOKUP, the successor to VLOOKUP, is coming. The article claims that VLOOKUP is the 3rd most used function in Excel behind SUM and AVERAGE. (I guess I might as well learn what the hell VLOOKUP does.)

Fort Worth's Near Southside is primed to be an innovative economic force.

What are the most important leadership competencies? #2 is "self-organizing," provides goals and objectives with loose guidelines and directions.

The first ever photograph of light as a particle and a wave.

A golden toilet named America was stolen from a gallery where it was being exhibited. How?

You are looking at the world's oldest fossilized turd, the Lloyds Bank Coprolite. It's from a 9th century Viking.

Science proves that knives made from frozen poop don't work. (Who thought they did?)

...was yesterday. ~U.S. Navy Seals

Those who can make you believe absurdities...

OK, jazz lovers. Kind of Bloop is an 8-bit tribute to Miles Davis' classic album Kind of Blue. Genius.

The long-ish article How Art Transcends Logic and Language ends with a short-ish insight: the unique nature of art can show us what's implicit in the gaps between our certitudes of rationality.

by Hans Kleinsman. source

True aviation pr0n - this year's video salute to the EA-18 Growler.

User Inyerface is a frustrating, game-based homage to bad user interface design.

As an antidote to that last link, here's a page full of (good) design principles. #1 for interaction design is "anticipation."

Ugly Gerry is a font comprised of gerrymandered congressional districts.

Excellent video with insight into the animation of Cinderella's dress. Seriously.

An introduction to particle physics. Go ahead: read it. It's OK.

See, I'm putting the music links in the middle.

• Rico Casazza - Vapor Pad (Eraldo Bernocchi Remix)
• Brian Eno and J. Peter Schwalm, Live in Milano from 2002
• Colin Edwin has a new album coming out with Jon Durant and Inna Kovtun.
• 4TH, the new studio album from DFA
• Become the Discovered, Not the Discoverer by Merzbow, Haino, and Pandi
• Slowburn by Security Project
• Innerviews' interview with Bill Bruford
• Lorenzo Feliciati's new website
• Tycho's set from Burning Man

How to kill cancer cells? Disguise chemo drugs as yummy fats.

Science has found a way to grow new tooth enamel. No more cavities?

Richard Serra, sculptor, makes the massive become ethereal.

Visiting an art museum makes you happy. I could've told you that.

Believe it nor, they did consider adding external munitions to the stealth fighter.

Quick: how many engines are on a B-17? Four? At least one had 5 with a T-34 mounted in the nose for testing.

Greg Bustin's 25 leadership lessons includes #20 Have Fun. Humor in the workplace is vital.

Disney's pressed penny machines now charge $1 instead of 50 cents. So I can no longer call pressed pennies "fifty ones." And the machines don't take coins. I bet soon the machines will all lose their hand cranks.

Can you limit all your email responses to 5 sentences?

Next year will be Syracuse University's 150th birthday.

Mortality rate by county and cause.

Unko, poop in Japanese. When in Japan visit the Poop Museum.

Buttsss, a collection of butt illustrations.

And the best thing on teh interwebs. A soundboard chock full of affirmations from Alex Trebeck.

...can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire