The year is coming to an end, it is the inevitable period of the balance sheet. Just Focus has decided this time to leave the columnists free to draw up their list. In order not to rewrite what others can do very well, and the 2016 tops already published on JF (here or here), here are my free impressions hot and very personal of what has been my musical year.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeoH7BPp2ZjzI-FbTA-seD4h7chk9xd6O
Quiet…
"Why Did You Separate Me from the Earth?" asks Anohni, ex Antony and the Johnson? Separating someone from Earth, it is better to think about moving to Mars given the past year that has again broken a record of nihilism and global clowning. Without kidding, this year it would have been very brave to read the news AND to be aware of the regression that it represents in terms of our achievements of the following decades AND to think about a passage towards a better possible (there is a feat).This song by our androgynous friend speaks to disappointed idealists as well as to those disappointed by the ideal man (or woman). Basically, it's the same emotional, right? So "Dry Your Tears" sings us the benevolent Atili Bandalero, in this cozy little reggae that keeps warm ears. We only have one life, and this David Bowie understood it well, until the last second: his album "Blackstar" was a hit, and facing his own end by singing it as well as him, it is the sign of a total artist. Total, such is the spell when we hear again and again the voice of Hope Sandoval, who from the top of her Mazzy Stars spins again and again milk records, an eternal feminine 
way (voice) against the finitude of bodies and honoring the powerful cycle of nature. The romantic and naturalistic relationship of things within "The Salt of the Sea", or indulge in a intoxication of nature and bodies. I vote for Hope! Or Iggy Pop, who still deploys verve and who does not make a lizard in front of this damn finitude of bodies precisely. He feels like a fish in water on stage, plays his role as (Iggy) pope of punk, rock 'n roll. While, another atmosphere, James Blake, a romantic type tortured this time, tries to make nihilism beautiful and desirable (another feat).Complex, convoluted. But with a heavy electro counterpart and well-placed auto-tune, an artillery of musical effects to sprinkle his black mind with principals, to push the melancholic far, there, outside. The very definition of art, this James Blake? Nick Cave has understood it well, he who in the wake of the accidental death of his drug-addicted son, he writes in one go "Skeleton Tree", he describes the exhausting contradiction in these moments, when to surpass oneself one makes oneself insensitive ("Nothing Really Matters"), and that one exclaims that one still needs you ("I Need You"). It is indeed the most powerful tribute we have heard this year.
Louder…
Here, more aces, Radiohead, but this time we move on to the slightly more sinful part of the playlist. Yes, well, we go quietou anyway, finally, the bad tongues will say that the latest Radiohead are boring, only not "Identikit" (for the studio version streaming gratos, good luck). No, really not this one, it is full of air and fire, solidly, it swells you with pleasure, in the slightest rhythms and choruses, a perfect classic that was lurking there, in their discography (and in some concerts where the title was played for quite a year already), and above all, it is positive. And when Thom Yorke has the sin, he shows it (in his own way) and gives the banana. The banana is an essential ingredient to enjoy the dancing and demonic Rebolledo from Mexico. At a label of the German nebula Kompakt, it simply comes out more than an hour of fury, making human or animal sounds (I should say AND because we are, in short, animals) an ideal canvas to produce the best recovery from cold and dark nights. It is the North-South cooperation that goes perfectly, the somewhat barred exoticism 
that invades the harshness of the North, and the world that is better. Because yes, time passes, but when it is at this tempo, at which you can run as well by running to take your bus as on the dancefloor, you will like the time that passes. Closer than Mexico, it is the Francilien Wax Tailor that reminds you in this exquisite instrumental hip-hop. The author of Que Sera has fun with this notion of time, which plays for him at a tempo never out of breath. May 2017 then be the year of the new breath!
The names of the respective albums can be found in the playlist at the top of the page.
