(Near the end of every year your humble editor humbly invites selected musicians to contribute lists of their favorite releases as part of our year-end Listmania series. This year I asked Ayloss, the man behind Spectral Lore from Greece and the creator of one of my favorite releases of 2014 (reviewed here), to share his recommendations — because I had a strong feeling it would be very interesting, and so it is.)

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I don’t usually listen to a lot of music in the year it comes out, as not having the free time I used to have, I prefer to wait until the mediocre stuff gets weeded out and the good remains. When Islander asked me to compile a 2014 list, I realized that my selection was without much character, most likely the exact same stuff you’ll see in many other lists for this year. So I took this as an opportunity to dive back into the underground and do some research.

Yet, I still feel like I haven’t listened to enough music for this year, so this is absolutely not a “best of” list, just some albums that I can certainly attest to being great. In the spirit of discovery, I will mention the “top” stuff below (absolutely check them out if you haven’t already) and then proceed to talk about the stuff that deserves more exposure. Continue reading »