As audio engineers and audio software designers/testers/specialists, we spend most of our days with headphones on. Most of the time we’re listening to sound related to our current projects, but once in a while we unplug and dance around to the music that moves our bodies and souls.

Without further ado, here are some of our team’s favorite albums of the last year:

Aesop Rock – The Impossible Kid

“The Impossible Kid combines hallucinatory wordplay with disarmingly forthright autobiography–a combination that enhances the impact of each mode.”

–The AV Club

 

Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats – A Little Something More

“Rateliff has managed to succeed in breathing life into the classic soul sound by opening himself up and remembering that it is possible to dance your blues away.”

–musicOMH.com

 

David Bowie – Blackstar

“The way the lyrics alternate between ambiguous introspection and dark whimsy can also confuse the sense of the album as a whole, but hunting for patterns or for humanity on Blackstar is less the point than enjoying the majesty of David Bowie, even on the verge of his death, sounding this incredibly alive.”

–Slant Magazine

 

Bon Iver – 22, A Million

“Not since Kid A has an album so superb pushed away and pulled closer its audience, simultaneously and with such aplomb.”

–Pretty Much Amazing

 

James Vincent McMorrow – We Move

“We Move…is a definitive step toward pop, but one that also demonstrates the Irish belter’s willingness to take risks and tear out of his sensitive-soul comfort zone.”

–PopMatters

 

What was your favorite music of 2016? Let us know on your preferred social platform.