3. Julianna Barwick - Nepenthe
People often forget that a voice is an instrument all to its own, that can be as full and deep as anything our hands can play. Julianna Barwick understands this concept better than many other experimental musicians out there and puts her talent with vocals on full display with Nepenthe, her excellent third album. Julianna layers stacks and stacks of her angelic vocals and shapes them into full-on soundscapes. It is all very ethereal, like a cosmic interpretation of what heaven sounds like. What's great is that through all of the layers, a strong sense of melody is still present; some of her melodic lines are downright catchy. There are other instruments interspersed but they are used sparingly and only when necessary. For all of the walls of sound Juliann puts up, there is still a sense of cutting each track down to the bone, reducing them to small nuggets of emotion. The sky is the limit in regards to where Julianna will take us next.