Amy’s 2015 Music Highlights
2. Bjork – Vulnicura
Bjork left the experimentation of Biophilia to write about the heartbreak of separation, which would generally be boring [1], but her heartbreak is so real and the strings so painful. Vulnicura is a beautiful journey. Just listen to Black Lake [MV] and feel your heart falling apart bit by bit. Like- I’m just hear to pick up the pieces, mop all these tears that inundate your surroundings.
You can get the album on iTunes, Amazon and Google Play.
1. Sa Dingding (萨顶顶) – The Butterfly Dream (庄周梦蝶集)
I find it weird that The Butterfly Dream has such a low rating on Xiami, but people are usually assholes fanboys or fangirls. Think of it as IMDb ratings. For a while now, probably since the release of The Coming Ones (恍如来者) [Cn version][Eng version], her sound has moved more towards a more traditional style away from the sleek over-produced electro-folk that once made her show up in the iTunes World charts. Long are gone the days of the Paul Oakenfold ways.
In The Butterfly Dream, which apparently takes inspiration from the Zhuangzi (莊子) [1] to create a carefree experience that embodies the Daoist wisdom. In here, she chants those incredibly high-pitched cries that are so very Sa Dingding, but she’s also quite playful— the first track alone is called “The Distinguished Dingding” (大名顶顶), though the official title is Ding Ding Sa; I haven’t been able to find lyrics, though, so I can’t tell you what the lyrics are about.
Sa Dingding also explores crazy beat-driven songs such as Play (大小孩), which seems to be based on a children rhyme and mixes sounds that sound South Asian to me. xD So yeah, this is my favorite album of the year.
At the moment this album is only available through the Taiwanese iTunes store, but you can keep an eye on it or Google Play. It’s also available on Xiami.
In the meantime, I thought you should all know that Sa Dingding has a verified Facebook account (which I didn’t know about)!
That is IT, you guys! It’s been a long journey…
What have been your favorite albums of the year?
Please, also look forward to my Top50 Songs of 2015 list!
Albums I really liked this year were in no particular order: Marina & The Diamonds – Froot; Du Blonde – Welcome Back To Milk; IU – Chat-Shire and A-Mit – AMIT2. I also really enjoyed Björk’s Vulnicura and discovering Suiyoubi no Campanella and Gesu no Kawami Otome. :)
:) I also enjoyed both IU’s and AMit’s — there’s also a bunch of Indian soundtracks I enjoyed. Particularly Amit Trivedi’s Shaandaar, and A.R. Rahman’s Tamasha.
I really liked ‘Tamasha’, too! :) Will now check out ‘Shaandaar”. Thanks :)
Thanks for introducing me to “Zipang!” I’ll work on my year-end posts after I try to catch up on movies for the poll. But some favorites in music were the latest album by The Dead Weather the debut album of the …punk soul? group Algiers, the gothic organ folk rock “Come Wander With Me/Deliverance” by Anna Von Hausswolff, various tracks from Battles’ latest album, some psychedelic rock from Pridjevi, and “Motherfucker” by Faith No More. I liked the looks in Shiina Ringo’s latest videos but the music didn’t quite catch me. I really liked Ga-In’s “Paradise Lost” but I felt a little betrayed when it seems like some of the choreography was copied without credit…
Always a pleasure! Suiyoubi no Campanella is bit long, no? xD There’s a lot of Zipang’s out there… one of them the punk rock opera that Yu Aoi did a couple of years ago, which I’m trying to find online subbed….
It’s hard to list albums because many artists are just releasing singles or minis, and then after two-tree years of touring, they release an ‘album’ that contains all those tracks… so when it’s time to come up with a list, they all seem kinda last year. Happened to me with Shiina’s. I wasn’t a big fan of GaIn’s mini, I liked Paradise Lost enough, but it sorta got lost for me.
Will be, of course, queuing your picks for listening~
Good to see Grimes at #10 😃