Every year brings more music than could neatly fit into a list of ten. Each time you pick something, it displaces another equally valid from someone else, often from a different place in the world – testament to just how diverse and accessible adventurous music is today. As usual, The Wire published the top tens* of its contributors that form the charts for its annual Rewind issue, including myself, here, but these are ten more that might on another day have made it in my chart.

Tamarisk Comes From Far Away From Here (Notice)

This striking meeting of free-spirited rock and free improvisation was one of the most surprising recordings of the year. The new-ish trio of Christina Carter (voice, guitars?), Andrew Weathers (piano, lap steel?) David Menestres (bass…?) circled each other before following fragile paths to unknown destinations. There’s elements of blues, folk and torch song, but these are picked up and discarded along the way. It’s rare to hear an album where you have no idea where a song will be when it gets to its end. Comes From Far Away From Here felt like a kindred spirit to Ava Mendoza’s openended guitar jams on The Circular Train, also from this year. I wrote a piece about the label Notice Recordings for The Wire, with a playlist on their website. Via Bandcamp, see also Insta

Eszelős Meszelős L​é​gbegy​ö​kerezve (dióbél)

Eszelős Meszelős aka Balázs Kovács has created a significant body of adventurous and fertile sound work, all the more tantalising because, as with much on the Hungarian dióbél label itself, it seems to lurk outside much of the European experimental music radar. After previously exploring the folk/work songs of rural places, L​é​gbegy​ö​kerezve saw Kovács improvising with physical modelled instruments to find the uncanny valley between the real and not. These are placid, harmonious instrumental sketches with a sense of the uncanny. Via Bandcamp, see also artist website

Tijana Stanković Folk Songs (FRIM Records)

The Serbian violinist, currently based in Budapest, is a collaborator with the riotous noise rock unit Lenhart Tapes, but Folk Songs went back to the Balkan songs of her background. This is hardcore solo violin music, both in its sense of non-idiomatic freedom, and the deep reservoir of history which it taps. Brilliantly recorded by John Chantler over at Fylkingen in Sweden, there’s faint echoes with the sound world of White Mountain Apache violinist Laura Ortman’s work over in North America. Via Bandcamp, also see my piece on Tijana here

Piia Rinne River Eye (Artsy)

This artist from Pori is a new name to me, but their debut record is more evidence of the porous and fertile relationship between visual and sonic art that endures in Finland, and another exciting artist thrown into the mix by the super-cool Artsy label. River Eye/Jokisilmä is a collage of tantalising weirdo loops and wordless vocal science, like a funky People Like Us or a trash culture Oval. Via Bandcamp

Matt Krefting Finer Points (Open Mouth)

Albums by Matt Krefting, another poet of the loop, are few and far between, but worth waiting for because of the emotional weight and intimacy he creates from simple materials. “Just To Have Him Around” and “Eye On The Future” have a wistful melancholy that feels like it’s been honed with the care and attention of a love song. Like many releases on Bill Nace’s Open Mouth label, it feels both approachable and full of limitless possibilities. Via Bandcamp

Multiples Two Hours Or Something (Stoor)

In which old masters Speedy J and Surgeon brilliantly manage to capture the pure fun of spontaneously throwing down bleeps and bass in the studio. How did they possibly manage to connect all of that electronic hardware together? Somehow the looseness of Two Hours Or Something, which rarely hit a straight beat but a bunch of wonky ones instead, was what made it so infectious. Via Bandcamp

Tzu Ni 4 Methods Of Loci (presses précaires)

presses précaires brings together DIY design, printing and textile know-how, sensitive mastering and the multidisciplinary activities of Anne-F Jacques. Together, it makes the Montreal label one of the most adventurous publishers of intimate improvisation, spacious field recordings, domestic sound art, and more. Tzu Ni’s album carries the imprints of four “auditory temples”, including a blacksmith and a potter, and the sense of air and space withphysical gestures can be almost dance-like. Via Bandcamp , see also artist website.

Salo Ra II Viptronic (Ektro)

The first album from Finnish veterans Topias Tiheäsalo and Jussi Lehtisalo invoked the industrial history of the city of Salo and harnessed the noises of homemade electric zithers, but at heart was the kind of infinitely languorous strumming duet that called to mind Loren Connors with Keiji Haino, or Tom and Christina Carter, etc. “Dedicated to whoever who has ever been in love with stringed instruments.” Via Bandcamp

Manja Ristic & Mark Vernon Calypso’s Dream

Some soundscape compositions can be like a private language game on the part of the artist. The beauty of Calypso’s Dream, a project centred on the island of Mljet in the Adriatic Sea, was precisely that its elements were so opaque and ambiguous (recordings taken from a nature reserve, the sea bed, etc) that they took on the character of a modern fantasy, or a poeticisation – Homer’s Odyssey in the age of Margaret Atwood. That haunting melody was wrought out of the mysterious resonance of a small bridge the pair encountered. Via Bandcamp, also Manja’s blog or Mark’s website. You can find a piece by my about Manja in The Wire.

Mike Majkowski August (Gustaff)

The work of this Berlin based bassist, who has played as part of Splitter Orchester and Gunter Hampel European-New York Quintet among many others, is as much about deconstructing his instrument as using it as a building block. The twin albums August and November (with correspondingly chronological covers) were exacting constructions of loops, modular synth tones and sounds of the instrument that recall the precisely measured experiments of Nicola Ratti and Andrea Belfi, or the electronic-acoustic environments of Ben Vida. Via Bandcamp