My Favourite Albums & EPs of 2024

Here's an alphabetically ordered list of my favourite albums from the year that has almost been.

Selected Works is a weekly (usually) newsletter by the Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa (Wellington, New Zealand) based freelance music journalist, broadcaster, copywriter and sometimes DJ Martyn Pepperell, aka Yours Truly. Most weeks, Selected Works consists of a recap of what I’ve been doing lately and some of what I’ve been listening to and reading, paired with film photographs I’ve taken + some bonuses. All of that said, sometimes it takes completely different forms.

Surprise! I’m not actually done for the year. Below, you can read an alphabetically ordered list of 32 of my favourite albums from this year. 2024, you’ve been a rollercoaster. You were fun at points, but I’ll be very happy to see you gone. Fingers crossed for 2025 - but you know, all good if not! In other news, Rolling Stone ANZ just published my Wellington 2024 scene report. You can read it here.

Aaradhna, Sweet Surrender

Eight years in the making, Sweet Surrender is the sound of the New Zealand Indian-Samoan singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer Aaradhna taking full control of her creative artistry. Expect an immaculate melange of throwback soul, rhythm & blues, bossa nova and lounge music, all fleshed out by vivid live instrumentation. Sweet Surrender is music-making as personal healing, and we’re lucky to reap the benefits. I love that the only vocal feature on this record is Ladi6.

AJA, K​Ā​WAI

More than just music, AJA’s debut is a heartfelt journey through whakapapa, resilience, and motherhood, blending Indigenous soul with bilingual storytelling. Produced with Mara TK, the album is deeply rooted in whānau and Aotearoa. - Sarah Downs, Rolling Stone ANZ

Arooj Aftab, Night Reign

The title of Arooj Aftab’s latest album might suggest we’re about to plunge down the tenebrous spiral staircase of the soul. But there’s also a lightness of touch that infuses Night Reign, even lifting us up at times. These are deep, emotional, sometimes bruising songs, though the insinuation of total darkness belies the exquisiteness of its spiritually rigorous forty-eight minutes. - Jeremy Allen, The Quietus

Borrowed CS, Rise & Shine

For the Rise n Shine EP, his second Borrowed CS release through Sydney’s Planet Trip Records, the Wellington, New Zealand-based musician expands the infectious outsider boogie sound he explored on ‘Mystic Shuffle’ (off 2020’s Balance/Ascend EP) into a six-song suite of neon-lit machine funk, mutant post-disco and uptempo future soul. Draped in synthesisers that sparkle and glitter like summer sunlight hitting the harbour waters, the programmed Roland TR-606 drums and keyboard bass on these club tracks absolutely snap, wobble and groove.

Cassandra Jenkins, My Light, My Destroyer

The New York-based musician Cassandra Jenkins, who recorded my favourite song of 2021, ‘Hard Drive’, returns with her third full-length album, My Light, My Destroyer, released through Dead Oceans. Aside from being a remarkable stylist with an ear for effortlessly ethereal indie-rock and ambient-pop, Jenkins knows her way around a lyric and has the ability to depict a situation or context with an economy of phrase. There are a few lines on here that stopped me in my tracks while I was out walking earlier today (sample: It's a thin line / Over the planet / Just a thin line / Between us and nothingness).

Cindy Lee, Diamond Jubilee

This may be the greatest radio station you’ve ever come across. Unless it’s multiple stations talking over each other, in and out of range. Sounds arrive in strange combinations; nothing is quite exactly the way you remember. Did that classic rock band really have a synth player, and why did they pick a patch that sounds like a mosquito buzzing through a cheap distortion pedal? And those eerie harmonies swirling at the outskirts of that last-dance ballad by some 1960s girl group whose name ends in -elles or -ettes. Did they hire a few heartbroken ghosts who were hanging around the studio as backing vocalists? Or are these fragments of other songs, other signals, surfacing like distant headlights over a hill, then disappearing once more? - Andy Cush, Pitchfork

Christoph El Truento, Dubs From The Neighbourhood

Building on the playfulness, naivety, and innocence of Peace Maker Dub, Dubs From The Neighbourhood is the work of a studiously well-listened and practised producer who has managed to not just recapture the wide-eyed optimism of hearing dub for the first time as an eight-year-old but successfully balance those feelings with the weight of adult life. Simply put, it’s a masterpiece that deserves to be heard by young and old, far and wide. “I’m always trying to approach music from that childlike place,” James said. “I was making it during a time of grief after one of my brothers passed away. Dub and reggae can take sadness and give it a happy undertone. When you mix the two, it can get quite psychedelic.”

Doechii, Alligator Bites Never Heal

Artist of the year? You tell me.

DORIS, Ultimate Love Songs Collection

What makes Ultimate Love Songs Collection so rewarding, even relatable, is the way it wears this bare, ragtag enthusiasm on its sleeves—stripping away pretense so all that’s left is a snapshot of the moment DORIS decided he fucked with a certain song. Today’s underground hip-hop is less interested in consistency than radical, relentless knob-pushing: dialing up the echo, amplifying the distortion, kindling flames of anarchy and fetching gasoline. DORIS shares his contemporaries’ knack for frenzied creation, but he also doesn’t move like there’s anything especially shocking or marketable behind his madness. No occult poses, no indie sleaze revival, no punk aesthetic rehashed for a new generation: He just wants to wail his own love songs over the ones stuck in head. - Samuel Hyland, Pitchfork

Ekho Laliah, Runes

I caught Ekho Laliah playing a live set in Wellington at a Chinese tour fundraising gig for Vera Ellen and Birdparty and was blown away by her live electronica set. The word “ethereal” doesn’t mean much anymore, but she hit that dreamy magical zone and unintentionally threw in some sinogrime vibes for added impact. Runes captures her sound very well.

Fazerdaze, Soft Power

“I’ll find it like soft power”, Fazerdaze‘s Amelia Murray says knowingly at the start of this metamorphic journey through her musical mind. A long-awaited follow-up to her acclaimed 2017 debut Morningside, the Aotearoa artist broadens her lush sonic palette with heavier synths, electronics, and scuzzy rock touches, pushing the boundaries of her indie-pop while retaining the raw intimacy that defined her quietly brilliant earlier work. - Sarah Downs, Rolling Stone ANZ

Greatsouth, Greatsouth

On his self-titled debut EP, the Auckland musician Payton Taplin, aka Greatsouth, sings introspectively about themes of economic hardship, aspiration, hometown pride, and the ongoing implications of colonisation in New Zealand through an urban indigenous lens. The results are a slow-cooked boil-up of indie rock, punk and lo-fi R&B that feels equally indebted to 2010s internet music, classic UK/US alternative rock and Te ao Māori (the Māori world). Opening with the breezy, jangle-pop of “Please!”, Greatsouth builds to a crescendo on Taplin’s cost-of-living crisis anthem “Nada In My Wallet” before closing out on an electronic note with “SPEEDSTAR”.

Hannah Everingham, Siempre Tiene Flores

Christchurch, New Zealand-based singer-songer Hannah Everingham really knows how to use devices and tricks in her music. On her second album, Siempre Tiene Flores, she sings in English and Spanish, employs some very clever feats of melodic sleight of hand and brings a new set of colours to New Zealand’s storied modern country/folk scene. I can’t get enough of ‘Maria’ and ‘Don’t Be Crass’.

How To Dress Well, I Am Toward You

Krell’s latest album, I Am Toward You, is his first release in six years and undoubtedly his most difficult yet. He constructs an idiosyncratic world of field recordings and ephemera, muffled soul singing and glitchy guitar samples, mournful melodic detours and buzzing electronic drops. It’s frequently blissful and self-consciously beautiful, yet its hooks are elusive—you won’t find a new “& It Was U” or “Repeat Pleasure” here. Lead single “No Light” is dominated by a harshly distorted lead riff that offsets the magic of its dance-pop backbeat, the vocals overdriven to the point of erasure. Even when his choices are less abrasive and more tuneful—like the straight-line strutter “On It and Around It” or the hymnlike a cappella “The Only True Joy on Earth”—the songs have an opaque, hazy quality. They seem to creep their way to transcendence, as if they’ve been floating in memory and are just now announcing their presence. - Brady Brickner-Wood, Pitchfork

Jess B, Feels Like Home

Ostensibly, it’s a hip-hop record. In reality, though, the Kenyan New Zealand rapper, vocalist and songwriter Jess B’s Feels Like Home album splinters into a vivid antipodean exploration of modern RnB, dancehall, ragga, afrobeats and beyond. The lens Jess writes her songs through is very specific - and, in my humble opinion, rather unique within the genres she works within. It’s cliche at this point, but I just know there are people out there who are going to feel completely SEEN by her.

Jessica Pratt, Here in the Pitch

Nostalgia is a heck of a drug, and plenty of music - maybe most of it - is simply recycling what has come before. The songs of Los Angeles singer-songwriter Jessica Pratt draw on the past with plenty of self-awareness, increasingly so on her latest album.

They still mostly orbit her acoustic guitar and pinched vocal tone, but, continuing down the path started on 2019’s Quiet Signs, are drenched in reverb, looking to the production innovators of the ‘60s, and the way they could make a tiny sound feel titanic. - Tony Stamp RNZ

Ka, The Thief Next To Jesus

REST IN PEACE TO THE GREAT KA. NO SKIPS.

Lontalius, How Can We Lose When We're so Sincere

A decade after his breakout single ‘All I Wanna Say’, Lontalius delivers the nocturnal vibe music album we always knew he was capable of making. If you like Eddie with the melodies (over drum machines and synths), this How Can We Lose When We’re So Sincere is the one.

Mach-Hommy, #RICHAXXHAITIAN

Across its 17 tracks and 47 minutes, #RICHAXXHAITIAN feels like the closest to a biographical work for Mach-Hommy. That’s not to say the album is rife with sordid details and tell-all tales. His signature caginess and opacity remain; personal histories are contained to topics already known to fans, like his immigration journey from Port-au-Prince to New Jersey. - Matthew Ritchie, Pitchfork

MOKOTRON, WAEREA

If you’re ready to look at jungle and breaks through an Indigenous lens, look no further than Tāmaki-based Māori producer MOKOTRON’s long-awaited Waerea album. Once you pass through what he’s created here, it’s hard not to hunger for more. Simply put, this is bass music as soul food.

mu tate, wanting less

Jazz-tinged, sub-aquatic ambient music from London-based Latvian producer mu tate. A subtle dubwise approach runs through this entire ambient record with field recordings, samples, and virtual synthesizers put through heavy echo and reverb treatment. I especially love “sweat” which cruises through dripping, almost rainforest ambience, while a deep sub bassline propels the track forward. You can almost feel a four-to-the-floor kick drum coming, but the experience ends up much more transportive without it. Highly recommended for fans of the 3XL, Purelink, Topdown Dialectic, Motion Ward worlds of post-club experimental ambient music. – Phil, In Sheeps Clothing

Nídia & Valentina, Estradas

On Estradas, London-based composer and percussionist Valentina Magaletti and African-Portuguese producer Nídia Borges seamlessly blend acoustic and digital beats. Simple melodic moments swirl in and out through polyrhythms and perfectly placed pauses, creating a mutant kuduro-post-punk-tinged global beat. – John, In Sheep’s Clothing

Nilüfer Yanya, My Method Actor

If this world were fair and just, Nilüfer Yanya would be one of the biggest artists on the planet. Three albums in, the London-based singer-songwriter and guitarist continues to shock, awe and wow.

Private Joy, Desire

After fronting and producing the Manchester soul band Lovescene and collaborating on some remarkable street soul, house and jungle/drum & bass records with Ruf Dug, Hidden Spheres, Finn and Lenzman & Redeyes, Pops Roberts, aka Private Joy steps into centre stage with her debut EP. Released through London DJ Bradley Zero’s Rhythm Section International label, Desire! sees her explore the intricacies of intimacy through a short collection of soft and sensual jams for the lovers and the lovesick. From uptempo harp-house on “Let Love Find A Way” to the 80s synths of “Pure Love”, Desire! plays out like a yearning daydream.

Rapsody, Please Don’t Cry

Despite being hailed by critics as one of the finest lyricists in hip-hop, and being backed by Jay Z’s label, Rapsody hasn't achieved commercial success like Megan thee stallion, Cardi B, or Nicki Minaj. In Interviews about the record, she says she wanted the album to be a lighthouse for people to find their way back into themselves. A worthy and authentic intention for any body of work. - Maggie Tweedie, RNZ

Revulva, Revulva

Over the last five years, Wellington octet Revulva has won over audiences around New Zealand with their frenzied, high-energy stage shows. Taking their cues from Talking Heads, Tom Tom Club, Jamiroquai, Steely Dan, Herbie Hancock, Minnie Ripperton, and Prince, their self-titled debut album reimagines the anything-goes energy of New York City’s 1970s downtown scene and London’s 1990s funk and soul renaissance through an antipodean perspective where awkward, deadpan humour goes hand in hand with the band’s social concerns and inherent feminist politics.

Riki Pirihi & Abigail Aroha Jensen, Tūpiki

If you like the idea of songs as the soundtrack to places and the concept of an album as a journey through a series of ascending realms or levels, this one goes dumb hard. If you like layered percussion on top of percussion, that's even better.

Soren Skov Orbit, Adrift

Staggeringly good Ethio/psych-inspired modern jazz from Danish saxophonist Soren Skov Orbit and friends. Seriously, this album is outrageously good. I hope some of you beatmakers out there sample these tunes. The whole record is absolute gold.

Still House Plants, If I Don’t Make It, I Love U

You can feel a subconscious assimilation of early 00s R&B mixed with slowcore and Midwest emo. It’s comparable to a no-wave D’Angelo or Lauryn Hill. On their third album, Still House Plants embrace, not shun, sounds absorbed from childhood in working-class environments. Here, the trio integrate skeletal post-rock with soul and jazz, deconstructed by a presiding impulse to blur lines between terms or genres, allowing it all to collapse and collide. It’s harmony clashing with disharmony, the musicality of concrete sound. - Hayley Scott, The Quietus

Th Blisks, Elixa

From the opening synth drones, slow-motion breakbeats and torch song refrains of “Enchancity”, Elixa reveals itself as the work of a group of extremely well-listened musical lifers. The collective project of the Hobart-based ambient pop duo Troth (Amelia Besseny and Cooper Bowman) and Sydney punk musician Yuta Matsumura, The Blisks, dropped their debut How So? in 2022. Since then, they’ve been hard at work mapping out a spectral soundworld that sits comfortably alongside fellow Australian acts such as Hydroplane and YL Hooi while also sharing sonic signatures with early 90s trip-hop and the dubby post-punk that proceeded it a decade earlier.

Total Blue, Self-Titled

If you’ve ever enjoyed a vaporwave record or found yourself digging into obscure 1980s ambient music via the YouTube algorithm, you’ll want to spend some time with Total Blue’s self-titled debut. Released via the remarkably curated Music From Memory label, Total Blue sees three longtime Los Angeles-based musician friends, Nicky Benedek, Alex Talan and Anthony Calonico, teaming up for an ode to late 20th century home studio production and the colour blue. Through a glorious confluence of digital synthesisers, fretless bass, guitar, and MIDI wind instruments, they welcome us into a vivid dreamscape where the sky meets the ocean. Stay awhile.

WAIWHAI., Slowdown World

Rāhana Tito-Taylor (Te Parawhau, Te Uriroroi, Ngāti Māhuta), aka WAIWHAI from Noa Records, returns to the recorded music playing field with an absolutely heroic effort, Slowdown World. Self-described as a “psychedelic cumulation of collective compositions guided by the philosophies and aesthetic expressions of sci-fi screw-jazz, eco-noise, and puoro punk,” Slowdown World’s twelve tracks slowly open up and reveal themselves to be worlds within worlds. It’s the music an artist can only make by tapping out to truly tap back in. Even better, the list of featured musicians is absolutely bonkers. Aotearoa experimental music super-group level stuff.

FIN.