My favorite musical discoveries of 2024

I first discovered The Olllam (note the 3 l's) when I acquired their first album in 2014 and loved their blend of traditional Irish pipes with groovy beats from jazz and rock. As the years passed, I sadly accepted they would be a one-album band, and was delighted to find my error with their second album this year.

Ão is a four-piece band from Belgium that have blended the otherworldly vocals of Brenda Corijn with trip-hop electronica. Corijn comes from a Mozambican-Portuguese background and fronts the band with vocals that bring to mind fado-inspired sounds (such as Madredeus). The rest of the music is part guitar, electronics, and imaginative percussion. The overall effect has that haunting, melancholic sound which I associate with Portugal.

Iceland has given the world a few quirky musical innovators, unafraid to push into new territories. Here Jakob Magnússon combines a crew of such characters with a rhythm section from the royalty of American Jazz-Fusion. The result has the driving drums and imaginative bass of Weather Report injected into a 2020s setting. It's rather unhinged and a lot of fun.

Get the Blessing describes this album as “The culmination of 4 days of recording, 3 years of gigging and 12 years of drinking tea and gin.” It's one of the most distinctive sounds I've heard recently, layering a couple of horns routed through electronics, layered over foundation of rhythm sections and more electronics. The result is distinctly a horn-led jazz sound, inspired by Ornette Coleman, with solid melodic sense and a finish that's vaguely unsettling.

The over-reaching feeling I get from this album is playfulness, three women from Brussels taking a delight in gentle music that blends vocal harmonies, guitar, accordion, silky clarinet, and a dash of slam poetry. It's full of little surprises, like a walk though a cheerful, yet unknown city, smiling at the oddities we bump into.

Indian classical music has an eminent lineage, which I've dabbled with listening but usually without any great excitement. I've enjoyed it more Indian musical traditions mesh with western ones, and I've found several good examples of that in jazz. This time it's a classical mix as a sitar and sarod interplay with a string quartet, urged on by the beat of energetic tabla players.

Emel is a Tunisian singer whose fame rose from her protest songs during the Arab Spring. Her work adopts many mainstream musical elements, complementing her haunting voice (singing in English, Arabic, and French) with danceable beats, electronic funk, and rap. She strived to make this album with an entirely female team and their concoction takes those mainstream elements into an adventurous package.

A mesmerizing jazz album that entangles me in the interaction of bass, sax, guitar, and vibes. Carlos Bica is an established Portuguese bass player, and formed a quartet with three younger musicians. I enjoy music that's about texture, and this quartet weaves a delightfully soft sound playing around and accentuating the warm resonances of the vibraphone.