Top album of the year:

Oneohtrix Point Never: R Plus Seven [Warp Records]

From Boomkat:

Daniel Lopatin debuts for Warp with an eagerly awaited ninth solo album. ‘R Plus 7’ follows the increasingly complex vectors of his ‘Returnal’ and ‘Replica’ sides with an ambitious fervor, scoping ten dazzling planes of hyper-reality framing analog/digital productions. While the grand scale of his hypersonic architectures has increased, it’s not at the expense of emotional impact: it’s just that the route to those breathtaking widescreen moments has become more intricate, labyrinthine, and the resolutions more pretentious, striving ever higher for the crenellated heights of sacred ’70s prog. Wrenching us between massive organ crescendos, strobing trance arpeggios and vaulted space-station sim-deck zones with rapid cuts and scene changes, he really allows his imagination and technical expertise to run wild from the pseudo-classical ornamentation of ‘Boring Angel’, through the playful new world optimism of ‘Americans’ and the intra-planetary soul of ‘He She’ to the glitched flux of angelic synth choirs and lush, sprawling panoramas of ‘Inside World’ and ‘Zebra”s kaliedoscopic strobes. At its zenith, the lush ‘Along’ affords a rare respite from it’s fragmented chaos, and works all the better for its relative simplicity and sweetness, presenting a tipping point which follows the cyber-sensual soul stasis of ‘Cryo’ and the divine, prismatic reduced R&Boogie/rave-like fractals of ‘Still Life’, and the tantalising closing sequence of ‘Chrome Country’.

 

The rest, in no particular order…

Home listening:

Queens: End Times [Dial]

 

Christian Fennesz: 17.02.12 [Song Cycle]

 

Tim Hecker: Virgins [Kranky]

 

Mountains: Centralia + Live At The Bottletree, Birmingham, Alabama [Thrill Jockey]

 

Koen Holtkamp: Liquid Light Forms [Barge Recordings]

 

Harold Budd: Perhaps [Root Strata]

 

Steve Hauschildt: S/H [Editions Mego]

 

Julianna Barwick: Nepenthe + Pacing [Dead Oceans]

 

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: Devotion [Devotion]

 

 

On-the-Go:

Arcade Fire: Reflektor [Merge Records]

 

Wild Nothing: Empty Estate [Captured Tracks]