Weval – Remember
So, here we go – in reverse alphabetical order: the top 10.
I really enjoyed Weval‘s debut album back in 2016 and have kept up with them since. This is another classy effort, marrying fizzy electronic production with inventive song-writing. This is vibrant, colourful music (not unlike the cover!) and there’s plenty to hold the interest – I particularly enjoy the occasional bursts of live percussion augmenting the digital.
Weval – (self-titled)
I am amazed that this superb album didn’t get more exposure this year. It is a compliment that I have been really struggling to find comparisons: the closest touchstone I can come up with is Caribou‘s excellent Our Love (2014), although this is definitely the shade to Caribou’s light. Both share a similar restraint, employing aural spaces to allow listeners to fill in the blanks. These spaces exist in time but also across the aural field, with Weval employing a limited number of instruments – clipped electronic beats (brilliantly augmented by crisp live percussion), often just a single synth and voice, often down-pitched (a nice contrast to the frequent chipmunk-ed high-pitched vocals in dance music).
LostMeow 