Pitchfork's Best Experimental Albums of 2018

Pitchfork's Best Experimental Albums of 2018

Original Source →

700 Bliss - Spa 700
February 23, 2018
Critic Score
81
3 reviews

Amnesia Scanner - Another Life
September 7, 2018
Critic Score
83
7 reviews

The Berlin duo’s debut album balances club music’s repetitive cadences with all-out chaos—an end-of-the-world soundtrack shot through with fierce, defiant rage.

Colin Self - Siblings
November 2, 2018
Critic Score
80
3 reviews

Dean Blunt - Soul on Fire
September 19, 2018
Critic Score
62
2 reviews

Eartheater - Irisiri
June 8, 2018
Critic Score
74
7 reviews

The impulse to cast off cultural standards dictating how music should sound dominates IRISIRI, which seems most interested in articulating femininity outside the constraints of patriarchal expectations.

Elysia Crampton - Elysia Crampton
April 27, 2018
Critic Score
81
6 reviews

On her fourth album, Elysia Crampton continues staking out an anti-colonialist conception of time. It blooms from big, propulsive drum patterns while conjuring a sense of profound loneliness.

Fire-Toolz - Skinless X-1
August 24, 2018
Critic Score
76
2 reviews

Jenny Hval - The Long Sleep
May 25, 2018
Critic Score
76
11 reviews

The experimental songwriter abandons the conceptual rigor of her recent albums, collaborating with a handful of jazz musicians on a loose, ambiguous EP where repetition induces a state of déjà vu.

Julia Holter - Aviary
October 26, 2018
Critic Score
79
28 reviews

If Holter’s preceding records were novellas, Aviary feels more like a meticulously organized compilation of mind-altering field notes in which a single page can be a world, and its depth is stunning.

Kelly Moran - Ultraviolet
November 2, 2018
Critic Score
78
12 reviews

Where Bloodroot bristled with bright, dissonant clusters, Ultraviolet is consonant and warm, with steady rhythms and reassuring harmonies. It is a spring rain rather than a freak hailstorm.

Klein - cc
May 24, 2018
Critic Score
84
2 reviews

cc is a brilliant work of labyrinthine twists and turns—of production trickery, degraded melody, and abstraction. But it is one where emotion always trumps musical craft.

Lolina - The Smoke
March 14, 2018
Critic Score
90
2 reviews
With chintzy synths and cryptic lyrics, the artist formerly known as Inga Copeland challenges deep-seated assumptions about musical taste and emotive songcraft.

Matchess - Sacracorpa
July 27, 2018
Critic Score
76
2 reviews

Phew - Voice Hardcore
January 19, 2018
Critic Score
75
1 review

Rkss - DJ Tools
August 31, 2018
Critic Score
72
1 review

Tirzah - Devotion
August 10, 2018
Critic Score
79
17 reviews

Tirzah Mastin’s debut album Devotion is a compelling vision of what imperfect pop music can be—joyful in both sound and feeling precisely because both seem so out-of-step and asymmetrical.

Vessel - Queen of Golden Dogs
November 9, 2018
Critic Score
78
12 reviews
Leaving behind the beats of his previous work, the Bristol producer takes up chamber instruments, choral arrangements, and digital mayhem on a dizzying album about the nature of the self.

Young Echo - Young Echo
February 2, 2018
Critic Score
76
3 reviews
Original Source: https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-experimental-albums-of-2018/
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