The 11 Best Experimental Albums of 2022
Music not only has the power to transport but transform. "Experimental" music, a nebulous grouping of difficult-to-classify sounds, provides us lovely, sometimes challenging fractal windows to jump through — to escape, commune, blister and rattle, to try and express our edges and witness the unknown. In 2022, for us, this encompassed microtonal rock jams, tender ambient, woozy nostalgia, Egyptian ghosts and an epic synth symphony.
Below, find an unranked list of the year's most exploratory music, along with some personal favorites, by NPR Music staff and contributors.
Lucrecia Dalt, ¡Ay!
is 's sci-fi missive from space to Earth; or vice versa. The Colombian experimentalist tells an through bolero, salsa, mambo, son and jazz submerged in a colloquial, nostalgic haze. The alien Preta's interpretations of home, love and the limits of having a body resonate exponentially against a textured, acoustic backdrop, a product of human imagination seeking to operate outside of its chains of time, form and grief. Dalt's world-building in sound and theme are jarring in
