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At the year's half-way mark, all of tQ's editorial staff, core writers and columnists have voted for their essential 2021 albums released between mid-December 2020 and mid-June
I went through a mix of emotions recently when I read The Melancholia Of Class: A Manifesto For The Working Class, Cynthia Cruz’s highly personal polemic published this month by Repeater. I can identify with much that the author says. My childhood, spent growing up in the suburbs of Liverpool in the 1970s as part of a household financed solely by the paltry wages of a factory floor worker who had overextended simply by buying a house instead of renting, was punctuated by periods of not particularly discreet poverty by the 1980s.
Shoes resoled until the leather uppers shredded and tacks pierced young feet; jumble sale cardigans recycled for knitted school jumpers; socks darned so many times, they ended up close to ship of Theseus-like, few threads from the original garment remaining. My family were inveterate coupon clippers, unpluggers and cadgers; givers of careworn, recycled Christmas and birthday gifts (not to mention reused cards and wrapping paper), and one particularly grim year the givers of no gifts at all. There was a lot of sitting round in what I (but not my father) perceived to be the cold and the dark. We knew exactly when to get to supermarkets on a Saturday in order to buy marked down goods.
My birthday meal on my 16th birthday was a plate of boiled potatoes. My girlfriend at the time assumed my parents hated her, which was far from the truth. It just felt inevitable when I ended up in a series of dead end jobs, simply because that’s what my school trained me for and I had always subconsciously expected it would happen.
But what of it? It was hardly The Road To Wigan Pier and I’m pretty much middle class now. I haven’t lived in rented accommodation since I turned 40, I finally got out of debt by 45 and now that I’ve just turned 50, I don’t mind admitting I’m no longer a couple of missed pay cheques away from financial ruin (though this is solely due to a recent insurance payout after a road accident). My stretch of working in factories, warehouses, pubs, clubs and yards; as a roofer, gardener, barman, pot washer, cleaner and call centre stooge ended a quarter of a century ago this year.
Plus, it is at best unhelpful me taking up too much space talking about this stuff. As Cruz says, the largest growth in numbers of working class people today is among those who are “women and non-white.” While Cruz might well be American, Reni Eddo-Lodge, the author of the incisive and necessary Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race, isn’t. She suggested that the avatar for working class people in this country should no longer be an old White man in a flat cap but a young Black woman pushing a pram. I’d be the first to agree that a lot more needs to be done to break down the problematic assumption that working class is a synonym for White and northern or White and cockney etc. and I also hope we can achieve some balance without erasing anyone’s experience or story. My genuine wish is that as soon as humanly possible we will abandon ideas of simple horizontal or vertical solidarity and achieve a unity that travels in all directions, encompassing everyone who has felt belittled, or marginalised, or left behind, or undervalued, or discriminated against; and that we will recognise the clear and obvious enemy whom we could unite against.
At this point I want to apologise for the support this site has given to Noel Gallagher in the past. It was my fault entirely and I take full responsibility. Buoyed by his association with the Chemical Brothers and Amorphous Androgynous, I genuinely felt at one point that he might make good on the “goes experimental in the mainstream” bit of his Beatles obsession. I concede that in retrospect this was a risible hope. But still: selling an exclusive front page story to the progress-destroying Sun newspaper, all but coming out as Tory and declaring himself the enemy of the marginalised? What an irredeemable arsehole, and a class traitor to boot.
When I look at this top 100 chart – probably the strongest Albums Of The Year So Far chart we’ve ever compiled, thanks to our core team of editors, staff, columnists and most regular writers – I see many vital voices that speak clearly and loudly about the 21st Century experience of social class and financial instability not just in this country but around the whole world. And none of them, as far as I’m aware, are indulging in woeful working class/ precariat cosplay. It is especially gratifying to see former album of the year artist, Loraine James back near the top of the chart next to one of our favourite groups, Sleaford Mods, as both give realistic voice to lived experience at the margins in a way that some multi-millionaire, decades spent living in a Primrose Hill town house, obviously can’t dream of. They help to drag the conversation some distance away from unhelpful stereotypes concerning regional accents and geographical birthplace back towards the sphere of circumstance; but not totally. As much as lack of inherited wealth and assets, an inability to afford a mortgage and having nothing to sell bar one’s labour are all of primary importance, we can’t ditch the social aspect of class altogether as it’s still the neighbourhood, family and school that help shape aspirations and mindset to an important degree.
Some may draw a distinction between Sleaford Mods and Loraine James. Don’t the former live in nice houses now? Don’t they have a few quid in the bank? It certainly seems that way but so what? Let them speak their truth, after all, telling working class people they cannot record their experiences in the form of art because the process would render them middle class, is simply another form of class erasure. Let us instead ask who the people who hand these diktats down to us actually are. After financial position and social background, memory is the most important factor we must consider when talking about what defines class. If you can remember what it was like with clarity and urgency then why not tell people about it? Those who have clearly forgotten on the other hand should clearly have their class status reassessed.
There are many people on this list who probably don’t identify as working class or even think about class full stop, but still face an existential threat to their livelihood regardless, thanks to COVID-19 and the continued collapse of the music industry at the edges. The artists of New Weird Britain, DIY artists the whole world over, rappers, grime producers, hurdy gurdy psych freaks, post rock revivalists, grindcore ragers, modular synth wranglers, transcendent metallers, techno punishers, hardcore experimentalists… nearly every single person on this list has a bandcamp page, please show your appreciation for their work if you enjoy it by putting your hand in your pocket. And if it’s a keeper, think about buying a slab of wax or CD from Norman Records.
And if you come away from this top 100 feeling like you have gained something – a new favourite band, some thrilling sounds that are going to soundtrack your summer – please consider taking out a subscription to this website if you can afford it. Membership to the Quietus comes with a host of perks, including exclusive podcasts, essays, playlists and music, plus the fuzzy warm feeling that comes from helping us remain one of the few large independent online music magazines left in the world who will carry on supporting and reporting on the counterculture into 2022 and beyond.
We love you! You’re a genuine class act. John Doran
This chart was voted for by Anthea Leyland, Kez Whelan, Adam Quarshie, John Doran, Noel Gardner, Aaron Bishop, Peter Margasak, Jennifer Lucy Allan, David McKenna, Christian Eede, Jaša Bužinel, Patrick Clarke, Luke Turner, Robert Barry, Ella Kemp, JR Moores, Stephanie Phillips, Daryl Worthington, Sean Kitching, Bernie Brooks, Fergal Kinney. The feature was built by Patrick Clarke and Christian Eede.
Simultaneously coarse and polished, the transfixing palette of ZULI’s latest EP makes for a tour de force in what Simon Reynolds describes as texturology. The producer’s rhythmically convulsive tracks may be tailored for forward-thinking dancefloors but they’re also a commentary on the perpetuating orientalisms that plague the music industry, encapsulated in the self-referential skits on closer ‘Bro! (Love It)’. An amalgam of both global and regional electronic subgenres, All Caps has everything one can expect from a contemporary vanguard producer: a signature style, ultramodern sound design, inventive recombinations of past forms, and socio-political references to the here and now.
Breaking down systems through sound has come to define the approach of a producer, who since the early 2000s has been one of the most important voices to come out of the Palestinian electronic music scene. One of the founding members of hip hop collective Ramallah Underground, Muqata’a now works as a solo artist. Over almost two decades, he has been developing a sound characterised by stuttering beats, grainy samples of traditional Arabic music, and field recordings documenting daily life in the streets around him. “There are a few things that unite these tracks and I’ve figured out that it’s the errors in them”, he says of his new record, Kamil Manqus, which is Arabic for ‘whole imperfect’. “The beats are not exactly on the grid, things are changing the whole time. When you feel like you’ve got into a certain groove, it’s gone all of a sudden. It’s this inconsistency, and the constant breaking of any kind of system – that’s the connection I found.”
While BIG BRAVE’s previous records often chose one mood and one mode of attack – like the static but growing drones on 2017’s Ardor or the harrowing sonic punches of 2019’s A Gaze Among Them – Vital sways between styles, surrendering form to matter. The album embraces Robin Wattie’s self-reflective lyrics about identity and race completely, becoming an exploration of the dynamics between individuals and a (hostile) society. Take the opening ‘Abating The Incarnation Of Matter’, for example, which guitarist Mathieu Ball and drummer Tasy Hudson explode with the impact of a thousand drone and doom metal bands playing a folk song in unison. Above, within and around them, Wattie’s voice soars with the stirring mixture of fragility and venomous spite of a person needing to tell their story and wanting to be heard even when it seems no one is listening.
Eilien is Helsinki-based Ellen Virman, and on Digital Lovers, released on Czech label Genot Centre, they make music which sounds like sweet nothings transmitted through code and liquid crystals. Virman created these tracks using a text-based audio coding platform, but the real story is the sweeping allure Virman’s compositions have. ‘There Is Someone Who Looks Like Me’ sounds like the exact midway point between Enya and Holly Herndon, a strident love song to the digital ether, while ‘Blue Skies’ and ‘SMS’ come across like synthetic odes to synthetic panoramas. It feels intimately connected to that imagined space Sterling described, an attempt to chart the network’s emotional coordinates and possibilities.
Mysterious guy gothic post punk hypebeast project out of Philadelphia which is henceforth a multi-person band, one understands, but on these ten songs – two tape EPs compiled into a long player – was all the work of one Mac Kennedy. He likes donning medieval fancy dress for photoshoots, interspersing his hook-heavy rockers with creepy synth intros, and cooking up a vibe equal parts anarcho punk, early NWOBHM and proto-hardcore.
Sketchy plays on the themes of generational trauma, white privilege, and the climate crisis without losing any of the bombastic, DIY charm Tune-Yards are known for. It is a record that allows pop sensibility to flow naturally through the band’s curiosity for the world and the future of humanity. Politics with a side of avant-garde funk.
If you are one of the Bardo Pond Believers, here’s the latest recording from the band’s sibling guitar-and-effects maestros, John and Michael Gibbons, under their Vapour Theories alias. You probably know what to expect by now. You’ll be right, and you will not be disappointed. Beautifully thick, intertwining guitar tones, yanked down from heaven itself and presented to you on a golden turntable. ‘High Treason’ has an acoustic hippie-folk vibe to mix things up a bit but it’s the surrounding heavier and denser numbers that really fool your brain into thinking you’ve died and are now floating in lysergic limbo. There’s something about the wonkily melodic guitar line that bobs around below the fatly distorted surface of ‘The Big Ship’ that really brings a tear to my (third?) eye.
On Conflict Of Interest, we see Ghetts battling between himself (J.Clarke) and his alter egos, Ghetto and Ghetts, almost like there is an angel and demon on his shoulders. On ‘Proud Family’, the warmer side, J.Clarke shines through, whereas on the phosphorous, Stormzy-assisted ‘Skengman’, Ghetto returns. On the otherworldly ‘Mozambique’, with Jaykae and Moonchild Sanelly, Ghetts emerges once again, perfectly balanced between the ferocious Ghetto and the family man, J.Clarke.
The architects of Manslaughter 777 are two drummers: longtime buds and collaborators Lee Buford, of genreless doom mutants The Body, and Zachary Jones, late of Braveyoung, now of MSC. That this rhythmic crusher has essentially nothing to do with metal or any related or complementary subgenres – but is instead more closely linked to, say, dub and dancehall and jungle – might come as a surprise, depending on your point of view, on how closely you’ve been paying attention.
Blush is a deeply evocative listen, like a wanderer’s dream, fit for tranquil early morning contemplation, quiet city saunters and offline weekends spent in nature, the only exception being the eldritch-tinted jittery track ‘Brushes’. It’s hard not to write purple prose when describing the album, to not mention the feeling of a light breeze on one’s sun-kissed face, but why should there be any embarrassment? I couldn’t ask for a better soundtrack for walks through the floating petals of the blossoming cherry, peach and apricot orchards of my home region.
When looking back through my notes I have written the phrase “wonderfully wonky.” This must have been an important thing as I underlined it three times. After giving myself a break and listening back to the latest release from Goat Girl, the evocatively titled On All Fours, I think I might have been on to something. The thirteen tracks that make up the album are wonderfully wonky. They are also incredibly catchy, with subtle sci-fi tinges to them. But this is what we’ve come to expect from the South London post-punk outfit.
89.
Resist to Exist قاوم لِوجودكAvon Terror Corps
Hulkingly large digital compilation of weird electronics jointly devised by the Bristolian label/collective/organism Avon Terror Corps and a self-described countercultural festival in Palestine; it costs a tenner, all of which will go straight to the Palestinian Medical Relief Society. These sorts of charitable Bandcamp enormities often end up feeling fatiguing, frankly, but a really high quality is maintained over three hours here. A wealth of Bristol heads (Harrga, Ossia), plus buds from further afield, stand with multiple Palestinian producers who were mostly new to me and consistently exciting.
88.
Leather RatsNo Live ‘Til Leather ’98Bokeh Versions
Leather Rats is like Hasil Adkins on tour with Suicide when Craig Leon was on the desk; it’s Lux Interior and Keith Hudson for On U Sound. This is dub music for sewer dwelling punks. Think Escape From New York dystopia dancehall emanating from a subterranean basement club – damp and rotten, infested with low echo and sound seepage – only with a Wembley-sized audience green screened in. Apparently Leather Rats were a psychobilly punk act but Bokeh is going for psychodubilly and I can dig the concept, big time, if not quite get behind the neologism. The story is they never made it into a studio – these live recordings are allegedly from Japan in the late ‘90s where they also allegedly had a huge following… but make of that what you will. I can enjoy any fictional backstory if it comes with zombie licks like this.
The breadth of Shame’s sound is a key contributing factor to Drunk Tank Pink’s appeal. It’s not one for complacent listening as they are quick to pull the carpet from under you. Songs have a tendency to morph into storms. It’s turbulent, but also exhilarating. You cannot help but feel rejuvenated after listening to it. With this record, there’s certainly a good time to be had.
There isn’t really anyone making music like Nick Hudson at the moment – grand, romantic and overwrought (in a good way). Last year we praised his work as part of Brighton-based band The Academy Of Sun, for its “richness and lavishness,” and this follow-up is no less full for being a DIY, self-released, solo affair. That this is so defiantly unfashionable and of the now is its greatest strength, somehow combining the vocal dexterity of Brett Anderson with the sonic invention of later-period Coil and the dramatic oddness of Marc Almond – an unholy trinity that pretty much ticks all of my boxes and desire for the kind of high-tension sonic flouncing (in a good way) that feels so sadly absent in these times.
Don Dada sees Alpha Wann opening up the floor to collaborators new and old, frequently trading verses but quite often letting them have the spotlight to themselves. Another former member of French rap group 1995, Nekfeu (hugely successful in his own right), tackles the rainy-day beat of ‘Malevil’ alone, while Ratu$ stomps all over ‘Velux’, but Alpha Wann still gives himself plenty of space for his own technical but effortlessly engaging flow on the gleaming ‘Apdl’, the melancholy piano ripple of ‘Farenheit 451’, and the fried funk of ‘Carrelage Italien’.
84.
AhmedNights On Saturn (Communication)Astral Spirits
The third searing album from this European quartet continues to investigate the compositions of the American bassist and oud player Ahmed Abdul-Malik, who connected traditional Arabic modes with jazz in the 1950s. Pianist Pat Thomas, reedist Seymour Wright, bassist Joel Grip, and drummer Antonin Gerbal deconstruct a pair of their namesake’s tunes — cited in the piece’s title — as a launch pad for its own feverish journey, a single 41-minute track cut live at Cafe OTO in December of 2019 that collides simple Arabic modes with a series of riveting, almost violent trances. In this particular iteration Grip and Gerbal hold steady with buoyant rhythms that swing and stutter, giving the pianist and saxophonist a platform to explode a couple of terse patterns.
A solo venture despite the name, Nothing New Under The Sun is Helena Celle, AKA Kay Logan’s, first double LP, and its rigid concept (“24 parts of equal length, the collection cycling through each key of the musical scale”) harbours a remarkably expansive, ambitious and moving confluence of ambient drone and modern classical.
Kevin Martin says he was drawn to the film Solaris’ “struggle between organic, pastoral memories of a lost past, and the harsh, dystopian realities of a futuristic hell.” But Return To Solaris mostly avoids those two obvious extremes. A drift through alien space, it feels distant from the pastoral mood common to ambient music. Less visions of forests and oceans; more the oily protean mirror of Solaris itself. Equally, there is enough human warmth and feeling left in it to avoid the caustic finality of a “futuristic hell.” There’s more stillness, more space, less abrasion. The fear that all may be ruined and lost is not yet a certainty. Overall the album is more akin to purgatory, a suspension, a purifying reckoning with human failure. A volatile mix of drone calm and paranoia.
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