Just like last year, I read a bunch of books in 2024 and most of the time had some kind of jazz/experimental/ambient music on in the background while reading them. For me, best case scenario, this setup heightens the experience of both the book and the album, as they work together to tune out distractions; think of it as passive listening but like, more intentional or something. Once again I’ve gone ahead and put together pairings of eight of my favorite (mostly) wordless albums released in 2024 and eight of the best books I read this year, none of which were published in 2024. Sometimes they share common themes, sometimes it’s just a cool book and an even cooler record. 

If any/all of these albums sound appealing to you, you might be interested in checking out a Spotify playlist I made featuring tracks from all eight albums. Once you find something you’re excited about, please support the artists directly by purchasing their music on Bandcamp or through their label (links to support the artists are found in the piece below). Anyways, let’s get into it!

Is This Water by divr and Libra by Don Delillo

Don DeLillo’s theoretical accounting of the vast conspiracy around and subsequent coverup of the Kennedy assassination follows an imposing cast of characters both real and imagined across midcentury America as their paths slowly and inevitably converge. It takes familiar names and events and presents them in new situations that may sometimes strain credulity but always feel grounded in reality. Swiss jazz trio divr’s loping, oblique arrangements similarly invent a sort of alternate history made from familiar components: piano, double bass, and drums. Late in their debut album, Is This Water, they drop a pair of covers: Radiohead’s “All I Need” and Broadcast’s “Echo’s Answer,” a surprisingly accessible left turn that paints the band in a new light, like a gesture of goodwill offered up to patient listeners. Grappling with a fictionalized take on the very real ascent of the CIA in the 20th century while having your mind quietly turned inside out by three jazz guys from Switzerland is what this list is all about, baby.

Eleven Fugues For Sodium Pentothal by Adam Wiltzie and The Vermont Plays by Annie Baker

Stars of the Lid co-founder Adam Wiltzie’s work is defined by quiet resolutions that unfurl slowly, with endless patience. Eleven Fugues For Sodium Pentothal, his first album released under his own name, features nine (not eleven) tracks that mine various subgenres of ambient and contemporary classical music, each experimenting with a different kind of stillness. Annie Baker’s work is also marked by silences, an awkward, contemplative quiet that signals communication breakdown, as her misfit characters struggle for connection. Janet Planet, her debut film and my favorite movie of 2024, inspired me to pick up a collection of her first four plays, all of which seem to exist in a world marred by miscommunication and hesitation. Her characters misunderstand each other and rarely say what they mean, with silences betraying their true intentions. Wiltzie and Baker make a great pair, both operating at a glacial pace to explore the hidden meanings behind interpersonal tensions.

Mirror Music by Michael A. Muller and The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño

A decade-spanning story of a collective of insurgent Mexican poets, Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives continuously changes perspectives as we hear about the rise and fall of a creative community from collaborators and acquaintances that they encountered, influenced, and fucked over. Bolaño examines their impact from every conceivable angle except head on, never ceding the spotlight to the two poets at the novel’s core. Michael A. Muller’s Mirror Music too is a work of genre agnostic, international collaboration, described as “a study in reflection.” For each of the album’s ten tracks, Muller shared recordings he’d made for synthesizer and organ with a variety of artists, folks like post rock legend Douglas McCombs, Polish singer and composer Hania Rani, and Indonesian-Australian percussionist Rama Parwata. The result is a shifting, moody state of the union address for global experimental music in 2024. 

Moves in the Field by Kelly Moran and Sweet Days of Discipline by Fleur Jaeggy

Sweet Days of Discipline, Fleur Jaeggy’s stark, delicate novella, feels like it was crafted through excision, as if it’s made up of stray bits from a much longer book. Things may at first feel frustratingly monochromatic and impenetrable, but the book eventually reveals itself to be an engaging, troubling portrait of youthful obsession. Jaeggy asks readers to fill in a lot of blank space as our narrator reflects on her adolescence spent stashed away at a Swiss boarding school, struggling for connection. That same kind of delicate, pointillist approach can be found throughout Kelly Moran’s Moves in the Field, an album full of mind-bogglingly complex and precise solo piano pieces. Moran wrote and recorded the album on the Yamaha Disklavier, which as far as I can tell is essentially a very technologically advanced player piano, making for a familiar but oddly supernatural sounding collection of balletic lullabies that perfectly accompany Jaeggy’s chilly prose.

Endlessness by Nala Sinephro and The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy 

Nala Sinephro’s Endlessness is a lush, luxurious collection of textures and moods, blending modular synthesis with jazzy harp and piano compositions. The ten tracks flow elegantly into one another, each movement featuring a different collective of musicians, Sinephro the only constant. It’s the perfect soundtrack to The Dud Avocado, which follows the misadventures of a young American woman in Paris in the 1950s as she attempts to find both love and work as an actress. Elaine Dundy’s semi-autobiographical debut novel is, knowingly, a tale of privilege (our hero’s European trip is funded by her wealthy and socially connected Uncle), but remains charming and self-aware, the ideal late summer read backed by Endlessness’ worldly, ornate ambient jazz.

Activator by Gerycz/Powers/Rolin and The Big Clock by Kenneth Fearing

Kenneth Fearing wastes no time in getting his characters into a tough spot in his pressure cooker noir, constantly turning up the heat as we change perspective across seven different characters connected to a brutal murder. It’s the sort of pulp classic that doesn’t take its foot off the gas until the final page, all pressure and stress. The five instrumentals that make up the Gerycz/Powers/Rolin trio’s latest collaboration are also an exercise in tension, with Jayson Gerycz’s jittery drumming laying the backbone for Matthew Rolin’s twinkling, cyclical guitar playing and the insistent textures of Jen Powers’ hammered dulcimer. 

Meridians by Fuubutsushi and The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector

Clocking in at under 100 pages, Hour of the Star is a quick but dense read, a circuitous, self-referential cosmic joke of a novella. Lispector pushes boundaries from multiple angles in her brief and final work: the book has *twelve* alternate titles you can contemplate while reading the musings of an unreliable narrator who is distractible and discursive, seemingly wanting to talk about anything other than the ostensible plot of the book. You can probably finish The Hour of the Star in the time it takes to listen to all of Meridians, the latest sprawling document from atmospheric supergroup Fuubutsushi. The double album covers a lot of ground, from jazzy post rock to folk-tinged ambient, even slipping in a few tracks with gentle vocals here and there. You’ll find something new to love embedded in Meridians with each listen, whether you’re throwing it on when making dinner with your wife or as you grapple with Clarice Lispector’s postmodern deconstructions.

In E by Water Damage and Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor

Wise Blood is a story of con men, religious zealots, and charlatans, all of whom may or may not believe their own bullshit, set in the American South. O’Connor’s aimless ensemble searches for meaning in post-WWII flyover country, repeatedly trying on different belief systems and obsessions, a few willing themselves into bizarre religious awakenings. Water Damage channels a similar mindset, wrangling warped beauty from obsessive repetition across four hypnotic sidelong compositions. A twelve person ensemble playing minimalist rock music with tracks as long as an episode of Seinfeld, these Austin DIY legends channel an ethos of “volume, repetition, volume, repetition, volume and repetition” to craft walls of sound somewhere between Steve Reich and Les Rallizes Dénudés, a group of prophets following their muse all the way down the rabbit hole.

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