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CMU Approved CMU Playlists
Playlist: On The CMU Stereo 2018
By Andy Malt | Published on Friday 21 December 2018
With the year nearly done and dusted and the festive break incoming, we’ve put together a playlist featuring 40 of our favourite tracks of 2018, which we’ve loosely grouped into seasons.
To listen to all these tracks, click through to our ‘On The CMU Stereo 2018’ playlist now.
Here’s a rundown of our selections…
Winter
The first part of the year was incredibly fertile for new music, giving us a huge amount of great things to listen to. Some of the year’s best albums arrived in this period, including Ezra Furman’s ‘Transangelic Exodus’, Anna Von Hausswolff’s ‘Dead Magic’ and US Girls’ ‘In A Poem Unlimited’. There was also the first taste of new material from the likes of Janelle Monáe and Father John Misty, and a standalone release from the consistently great techno producer Anna.
Here’s what’s on our winter playlist:
Ezra Furman – Suck The Blood From My Wound
Moaning – Artificial
Tune-Yards – Heart Attack
Anna – Hidden Beauties
Rolo Tomassi – Aftermath
Anna Von Hausswolff – The Truth, The Glow, The Fall
US Girls – Pearly Gates
Janelle Monáe – Django Jane
Father John Misty – Mr Tillman
Natalie Prass – Short Court Style
Spring
This section of the playlist takes us off in a more experimental direction, kicking off with vocal artist Hatis Noit. She wowed us with her performance at The Great Escape in May, with her looped vocal lines reverberating around St Mary’s Church in Brighton.
Another highlight of TGE for many was Flohio, who has gone on to release a series of fantastic singles, which have in turn earned her a place on the BBC Sound Of long list for 2019. Here’s we’ve included her debut ‘Bands’.
Meanwhile, other leftfield entries on the spring list include Aisha Devi, Agar Agar, JFDR’s cover of ‘White Ferrari’ by Frank Ocean, and the always welcome return of Jenny Hval.
Here’s what’s on our spring playlist:
Hatis Noit – Illogical Lullaby
Aisha Devi – Inner State Of Alchemy
Agar Agar – Fangs Out
Flohio – Bands
JFDR – White Ferrari
Mellah – Paseo
Alison Wonderland – Church
Jenny Hval – Spells
Princess Nokia – For The Night
Aro Vana – XVII
Summer
We start out here on the same experimental slant that ran through our spring selection with Eartheater’s ‘CLIT’. However, across the ten tracks, this is probably our most varied selection.
Appearing at either end of the list are two different takes on pop – Benin City’s endlessly enjoyable ‘Bus’ up near the front and, near the end, an appearance from Ariana Grande, who really established herself as a stand out artist this year. We’ve picked her track ‘God Is A Woman’.
Jon Hopkins makes the list with the title track of his ‘Singularity’ album, which was one of our favourite LPs of the year. Plus, of course, ‘This Is America’ by Childish Gambino makes the cut, it surely being the track that 2018 will be best remembered for.
Here’s what’s on our summer playlist:
Eartheater – CLIT
Benin City – Bus
Jon Hopkins – Singularity
Childish Gambino – This Is America
Kojey Radical – Water (feat Mahalia)
Orbital – Tiny Foldable Cities
Maribou State – Feel Good (feat Khruangbin)
Kathryn Joseph – IIII
Ariana Grande – God Is A Woman
Yves Tumor – Licking An Orchid (feat James K)
Autumn
This collection of tracks features two artists we’ve already included previously, in the form of the Anna remix of Jon Hopkins’ ‘Singularity’. The original version of the Hopkins track was on our summer list, and Anna’s ‘Hidden Beauties’ appeared in our winter selection. Here they combine to show once again why they have been two of our favourite artists of this year.
These last ten tracks, I now realise, are actually almost all electronic music of some kind, and together they show how strong that broad genre has been in its various forms this year. Worth singling out in particular is Marie Davidson, whose ‘Working Class Woman’ – a techno concept album about the producer’s state of mind during the year after she relocated from Montreal to Berlin – is one of the absolute highlights of 2018.
Here’s what’s on our autumn playlist:
Bliss Signal – Surge
Amnesia Scanner – AS AWOL
Beak> – Brean Down
Qrion – GAF
Lawfawndah – Joseph
Marie Davidson – Your Biggest Fan
The Prodigy – Light Up The Sky
Jon Hopkins – Singularity (Anna Remix)
Grimes – We Appreciate Power (feat Hana)
Farai – National Gangsters
Check out all of the artists featured in the CMU Approved column in 2018 on this Spotify playlist.
