Andreo:

Jennifer, at this year's Venice Biennial war, refugees, and destruction were inescapable. Has the biennial ever been this filled with sound? The experience felt all-encompassing – I heard wrenching, unfamiliar sounds everywhere. Even Björk sailed into Venice to give a secret DJ set in a palazzo. 

All the chaos there felt right for a year that has been an annus horribilis. Do chaotic times call for chaotic music – has any been on your mind this year?

Jennifer:

Wide-ranging horror on a global scale, in addition to a lot of unsavoriness in my own personal life, induced in me a yearlong craving for sensory obliteration that I mostly addressed by blasting Brat. Not a few other chaotic records also made a dent in me: Icelandic composer Bára Gísladottír and flutist Björg Brjánsdóttir’s GROWL POWER (Smekkleysa), whose title track concludes with Brjánsdóttir simultaneously flute-ing and woofing at the top of her lungs, a cathartic listen for humans and hounds alike. Another find for me was the supermassive guitar choruses of Joshua Chuquimia Crampton, who has a record from this year (Estrella Por Estrella), though I was more taken by 2023’s more eclectic Profundo Amor (Puro Fantasia Music). The mere existence of the deliriously polymathic Australian violinist Jon Rose fills me with joy, and I found many rewards in his record Band Width (Relative Pitch Records), an improvisation with bassist Mark Dresser that manages to be both vigorous and lackadaisical at once.