2016 was the year many people later pointed to and said: this is where it started.

Across Europe and the United States, political shockwaves disrupted assumptions that had seemed immovable only months earlier. Brexit shattered the illusion of permanence, while the US election exposed fractures that had long been ignored. Certainty became a fragile concept. Confidence dissolved into disbelief.

And yet, amid this global disorientation, 2016 was also a year of immersion — in sound, in movement, and in place.

Collective Strength in Uncertain Times

Minor Victories – a collaboration between members of Slowdive, Mogwai, and Editors – released their self-titled album „Minor Victories“.
The record felt like a gathering of forces, proof that collaboration could still produce something powerful in an era increasingly defined by division.

Its layered textures and restrained intensity mirrored the political moment: controlled on the surface, restless underneath. Minor Victories wasn’t about grand triumphs – it was about persistence, solidarity, and finding momentum where certainty had evaporated.

Distance, Isolation & Signals from the Edge

With Blueneck and their album „The Outpost“, isolation became an atmosphere rather than a theme.

The music sounded remote, almost extraterrestrial – transmissions sent from the edge of something vast and unknowable.

In a year where political narratives grew increasingly abstract and detached from lived experience, The Outpost felt eerily appropriate. It captured the sense of watching events unfold from a distance, aware that something fundamental was changing but unsure how close the impact really was.

Unknown Harbours & Emotional Navigation

Sophia released „As We Make Our Way (Unknown Harbours)“, a record steeped in introspection and emotional cartography.
Its title alone felt like a mission statement for 2016 – moving forward without maps, trusting instinct where direction was unclear.

While political leaders spoke in absolutes, Sophia focused on vulnerability and quiet resolve. The album didn’t seek answers; it acknowledged uncertainty as a condition of movement. In retrospect, it feels like one of the most emotionally accurate documents of the year.

Returning with New Blood

And And Also The Trees came with „Born Into the Waves“ – a return that marked both continuity and renewal.
With new musicians in the lineup, the band didn’t dilute their identity; they sharpened it.

The album surged with momentum, elegance, and atmosphere, sounding like a group reinvigorated rather than revived. In a year obsessed with rupture, Born Into the Waves demonstrated how transformation could strengthen foundations instead of erasing them.

Brooklyn, New York — Learning the Rhythm

Beyond politics and records, 2016 was profoundly shaped by another journey to New York City – living in Brooklyn, absorbing the multicolored rhythm of an extraordinary place.

Brooklyn moved differently.
Fast and slow at once.
Chaotic but precise.
Endlessly layered.

It was a city that taught rhythm not as tempo, but as coexistence – cultures overlapping, sounds colliding, lives unfolding in parallel. That energy seeped into everything: listening habits, perception, even thought itself.

In a year when the world felt increasingly binary, New York insisted on complexity.

A Prelude to Everything That Followed

Looking back, 2016 feels like a threshold year — not yet broken, but undeniably cracked.
The music of „Jahresgutachten 2016“ reflected that tension.

And Brooklyn provided the pulse – a living reminder that movement, diversity, and contradiction can still form something coherent.

If 2016 was the beginning of a long unraveling, it was also a year that sharpened listening –
to cities, to music, and to the world as it truly is.