Offie Mag

Offie Mag readers have been busy voting for their favourite independent music release of 2024.

And it is with great honour, that are a month of voting on our 15-project-long shortlist of EPs, LPs, mixtapes, albums and more, we ca reveal who won the Offie Mag Awards 2024: Readers' Project of the Year.

See the full list below, with Very Short Music Reviews provided by Greg Stanley and Matt Leppier. You can also listen to the shortlist via Offie Mag's Playlist.

#15 Fabiano do Nascimento & Sam Gendel – The Room 🇧🇷/🇺🇸

4% of the votes

A 7-string guitar, a saxophone and several intakes of Sam Gendel's breath. Quite simply, a beautiful jazz album that's greater than the sum of its parts.

#14 John Glacier – Like A Ribbon 🇬🇧

7.3% of the votes

The 2024 EP before 2025's album. It's odd to think that some people think British rap music has become static. The only thing static about this is the glitchy textures in between Glacier's prose. Prose that just happen to rhyme, sometimes.

#13 Dar Disku – Dar Disku 🇧🇭/🇬🇧

7.8% of the votes

The Bahraini-born, Bristol-based duo Dar Disku have created a stellar debut with a dance floor focus. Featured guests include artists from Algeria, Turkey, Bahrain and India, making the project international and inter-generational.

#12 Lynda Dawn – 11th Hour 🇬🇧

8.2% of the votes

Slow dance on your own to this. Or look at your partner with wet eyes to it. Gospel, boogie, disco, soul. 2024 was a new Dawn and Lynda did it again, achieving the (almost) impossible task of following up At First Light.

#10 Fatima – Love on Acid 🇬🇧

10.2% of the votes. Joint 10th.

Fatima’s vocals are intense, intimate. Whether you’re a head nodder, a feet tapper or a finger drummer, this one will move you.

#10 Sticky Dub – Never Give Weapons to a Man That Can’t Dance 🇬🇧

10.2% of the votes. Joint 10th.

A poignant title and a rare example of a project that sits in the middle of the 'makes you dance' and 'makes you think' Venn diagram. King Sticks is comfy in there. Herbs in a hot pan. Pop round and see him.

#9 Jawnino – 40 🇬🇧

11.6% of the votes

International man of mystery Jawnino dropped 40 back in May and we’re still bumping it regularly at Offie Mag HQ. An amalgamation of all the best that UK rap and dance music has to offer in 2024. Yeah, baby, yeah.

#8 Tay Jordan – Player of the Year 🇬🇧

12% of the votes

There's no recency bias here for the newest release on the list. Tay Jordan well-and-truly introduces himself as a UK P-funk rapper who is not to be tested on his debut album.

#7 musclecars – Sugar Honey Iced Tea! 🇺🇸

12.5% of the votes

Play any song from this record at my funeral and if my hand doesn't break through the coffin, wielding the blue screen of the Shazam app, then I'm really dead. Euphoric dance music with a track for every possible part of a night out. Getting ready and morning after included.

#6 Khadija Al Hanafi – Slime Patrol 2 🇹🇳

16.7% of the votes

Slime Season arrived early this year - as early as January 1st - when this incredibly versatile blissed-out footwork masterpiece from Tunisia’s Khadija Al Hanafi dropped. Sampling some legendary rap artists, most notably perhaps Waka Flocka Flame and Playboi Carti, Khadija’s ability is plain to see in these hard-yet-intricate bangers.

#5 Jadasea – Too Many Tears 🇬🇧

29.6% of the votes

Say Hi and Not Much 2 Say stand up as two of the most complete tracks that Jadasea, 10 years plus deep in music, has ever released. That shows you what sort of form the Peckham artist was in when he penned this latest edition to a catalogue we'll one day all look back on in awe.

#4 Liv.e – PAST FUTUR.e 🇺🇸

30.5% of the votes

There's experimenting with your sound, and then there's releasing a project that feels like a spooky, privately pressed record from the 1980s that fetches £649.00 on Discogs. Haunted Disco, indeed, produced by a present-day genius.

#3 SALIMATA – Wooden Floors 🇺🇸

37.4% of the votes

The wooden floors in question are those slid on by Tom Cruise in Risky Business and this will make you skank the f*ck out in your living room like TC, or, provide the protagonist with backing vocals by trying to mimic the sensational pitched-up singing sampled on this uplifting rap gem.

#2 Anysia Kym – Truest 🇺🇸

46.6% of the votes

If there was a way to phonetically spell out that car-horn-esque opening to track 2, Test Your Patience, then it would be written right here. Because once that rings out, that's your siren call to stop what you're doing and lock into this immensely detailed masterpiece... providing the intro didn't get you already, that is.

#1 Sideshow – F.U.N. T.O.Y. 🇺🇸

55% of the votes

Raw, rapped truths delivered with such style that they feel celebratory. A recording of an elderly gentleman's take on the younger generation is used as the spine of the project, with each and every track adding vertebrae-structured tangents into a lifestyle that some can understand but only Sideshow can live.