2021 in Review: Highlights of a Headphone Commute

As I am sure many of you dear readers are already aware, Headphone Commute is an online resource of candid words on electronic, experimental and instrumental music that has long been setting the bar to which many independent blogs aspire to including this one. In fact, it was my own early encounters with and lessons…

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2021 in Review: The Art of the EP

The EP is often overlooked when it comes annual round-ups, but this format continually proves it can provide us with outsized moments of wonder and delight and the year in music would not be the same without them as these 16 releases demonstrate.

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2021 in Review: Modern & Post Classical

From the intimacy of a solitary piano to the harmony of an ensemble or the mysterious alchemy forged in the studio where the analog is fused with the electronic, here is a selection of some especially memorable journeys in modern & post classical music released during the past year.

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2021 in Review: Electroacoustic & Experimental Folk

A selection of memorable releases from the year from the musical edgelands where electroacoustic ambient and field recordings meet acoustic, folk, and other analog experiments in sound.

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2021 in Review: Ambient & Drone

Music can be a great companion allowing us to feel connected, comforted, and even transported through just the sounds that fill the space between our ears. From their cinematic vistas and atmospheric soundscapes to their a generous embrace of stillness, beauty, and self-reflection, the albums in this category are especially well suited to do just…

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2021 in Review: A Sense of Place and Time

The act of creating a sense of a place or capturing a moment in time is a fairly common motif in a great deal of instrumental music, especially ambient, but it is intrinsically at the very core of these works released in 2021. Some are personal narratives or depictions of landscape either real or imagined while…

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