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The Quietus Albums Of The Year So Far Chart 2020
At the year's half-way mark, all of tQ's editorial staff and columnists have voted for their essential 2020 albums (as well as some EPs)
This mid-year chart was voted for by Jennifer Lucy Allan, Robert Barry, Tristan Bath, Aaron Bishop, Patrick Clarke, John Doran, Christian Eede, Fergal Kinney, Noel Gardner, Ella Kemp, Adam Lehrer, Anthea Leyland, Peter Margasak, David McKenna, JR Moores, Eoin Murray, Luke Turner, and Kez Whelan. It was built by John Doran with help from Patrick Clarke and Christian Eede.
100.
Satan have been going for ten years now, evolving from shrieking grindcore to a sound they call ‘possessed punk’ – a combo of full-throttle aggression, darkly chiming arpeggios and spidery lead lines. Toutes Ces Horreurs means ‘All These Horrors’ if you want a further idea of what you’re letting yourself in for. ‘Confiture Pour Cochons’ is an unusual intro which blends a tribal folk sound with free-jazz sax and a spoken-word vocal. Then ‘La Guerre Lente’, with its surging chorus, arrives at a gallop, and the ‘Le Sang Du Poète’ hits at an even more blistering pace. ‘Triste Soeur’ fuses spiralling melodic sections with hypnotic riffing, while ‘Zone D’Inconfort’ clearly wraps hardcore punk in a black metal fog, veering into a blast beat spree midway through…SatanToutes Ces HorreursThroatruiner
99.
AYAare eye pea ell oh eff teaSelf-Released
Those who are only just getting to know AYA now for supremely having it drum & bass-parallel tunes like last year’s ‘that hyde trakk’ will love this anthology of LOFT material produced between 2009 and 2019. Drawing acid, funky, dubstep, UKG, and more into an extremely dynamic and transportative place, it’s clearly a palate cleanser for whatever comes next, but absolutely avoids any kind of throwaway or cobbled-together feeling.
98.
You might liken Beams From A Spiritual Panorama – AP Macarte’s first solo AHRKH outing since 2015 – to a vast, calm ocean. Its two longform ambient tracks feel boundless, their changes almost subliminal. ‘Pralaya’ occupies side A, a sea of wordless chants and throaty drones. Side B features ‘Paramita’ – more chants, more drones, but this time the sonics at hand feel reminiscent of Emptyset or MY DISCO’s metallic reverberations.AHRKHBeams From A Spiritual PanoramaGolden Ratio Frequencies
97.
dvsnA Muse In Her FeelingsOVO Sound
After being away for three years, DVSN returned with arguably their best album to date with A Muse In Her Feelings. Nostalgic and airy synths are paired with more contemporary sounds alongside a host of features from some of the best in this modern era of R&B including Summer Walker, PARTYNEXTDOOR and Snoh Aalegra to name but a few. It results in a concoction of moods and ideas that are exceptionally weighted, with the duo never being overshadowed or lost amongst the stardom of their peers, in turn making the album one of the years best thus far.
96.
WranglerA SituationBella Union
The times have changed and so have Wrangler. The coming decade, which looks set to be dubbed the Terrible Twenties, may be the last time that bands actually get to release albums. Ecological collapse, climate crisis, food shortages and the disintegration of the fabric of society will mean that the slow devolution of the music industry isn’t even one of the main things that musicians (or anyone else) should be worrying about. So the trio have thrown everything into their third (but hopefully not their last) album. The result is simultaneously their bleakest and funkiest release to date.
93.
Lee RanaldoNames Of North East WomenMute
Carrying with it all the meant-to-be character of, say, The Bug and Earth’s Dylan Carlson coming together to sonically conspire, this record doubles up as testament to Ranaldo and Refree being straight-up kindred creatives. Rather than simply throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks, together, the pair throw a lot, all while investing time and a marked sense of freedom to what each track could eventually become.
92.
Fra FraFuneral SongsGlitterbeat
Apropos the album title, Fra Fra’s main gig until now has been as live soundtrackers of such ceremonies – which is the correct term: celebration before sorrow, sparing no effort to give the fallen a send-off. They’ve been performing together for decades, says Brennan, and bandleader Small (so named because… he is) is now in his early seventies. Small steers Fra Fra’s songs via grizzled vocals whose lyrics apparently emerge off the dome, and plays kologo, a two-string lute-type instrument.
91.
Nine Inch NailsGhosts V: TogetherThe Hull Corporation
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross continue to prove that there are second acts in the top tier of American music… for the select few at least. While all of Reznor’s contemporaries from the alternative rock boom of the mid-’90s are either languishing in self-parody, resting on laurels or pushing up daisies, Nine Inch Nails have effortlessly carved out a meaningful and beguiling space for themselves in the current cultural landscape. The strength of Ghosts V: Together lies in a generous supply of clearly expressed musical ideas, completely eschewing the gauzy ambient slop that is the usual hallmark of a rock musician making instrumental music.
90.
The Transcendence Orchestra Feeling The SpiritEditions Mego
Anyone who had their spirits lifted and minds blown at the recent discovery of the ring of ancient pits in the Wiltshire landscape around Stonehenge might want to get their ears around this latest release from Anthony ‘Surgeon’ Child and Daniel Bean’s Transcendence Orchestra project. Highly cosmic, deeply intense, astoundingly celestial, it’s a record that sites very nicely alongside Teleplasmiste’s latest, also on this chart, as an example of how to explore the mystical and the droning without sounding like you’ll soon be on the sale rack in the Avebury woo-woo shop.
89.
Richard SkeltonLASTGLACIALMAXIMUMCorbel Stone Press
The title of Richard Skelton’s latest record refers to the period in Earth’s history, 20,000 years ago or more, where the proportion of ice sheets covering land and water was at its highest. Accordingly, these compositions are extraordinarily sparse and austere, paper-thin layers of isolationist drone which I assume to have been created via synthesiser but which often have the feel of a scarcely-processed field recording one might find on the Touch label. LGM makes Skelton’s last album proper, Border Ballads, look equivocal and accessible by contrast: certainly, none of its agreeable ripples of piano are reprised on this effort.
88.
Bruxa MariaThe MaddeningHominid Sounds
If the metal scene has anything to offer this month that can genuinely match the intense heaviness of Bruxa Maria’s The Maddening, then it will come as a surprise. From the opening title track onwards, the London outfit’s second album offers oomph after oomph after spine-jabbing oomph. Just by themselves, the hulking low-tuned riffs are enough to make that bloke from Helmet run away and hide behind the sofa.
87.
BulbilsInvaderSelf-Released
Bulbils is the project of Hen Ogledd bandmates Richard Dawson and Sally Pilkington. Locked down together in Newcastle during the COVID-19 pandemic, they’ve filled the time producing albums in their living room, releasing them all for free via Bandcamp. Currently approaching their 50th LP, which they say will be their last (for now), pretty much everything they’ve put out over the last few months has been beautiful, but the 37th, Invader, is our pick of the lot. Made up of three long pieces, the opening title track is an intoxicating, gently psychedelic and hypnotic drift, the second ‘Dodecahedron’ introduces a deeply weird and wonky beat and winsomely daft robo-vocals from Dawson, while the last, ‘Companion’, is simply an unbelievably beautiful piece of music, the couple trading delicate, wordless vocals over a gorgeous ambient beat.
86.
ConcentrationI’m Not What I WasGlobal Terror Corps
This EP can definitely function as party music, coming on like amyl and torn speaker cone paper converted into soundwaves, but the lugubrious side of Concentration heard on 2018’s Premature hasn’t been totally excised. As well as the ‘stare into the abyss of your ethnicity’s history and laugh’ vibe of ‘Circumcision’, there’s ‘Spiderfucker’, on which vocalist Zachariah Kupferminc scowls something about miserable pricks and little boys who keep repeating his name; “Disgraceful! Disgraceful!” crows Thrush over spacey, tinted-windows electro.
85.
Morusquethe end of musicwabi-sabi tapes
As conceptual concrète goes, the end of music by Morusque – AKA Montpellier-based artist Yann van der Cruyssen – is about as fun, beautiful, and listenable as you can get. Comprising solely the final notes of recordings, it’s a self-dubbed “reconstruction of the signifier,” using teeny samples as foundational building blocks for all kinds of maddened musical mishaps.
84.
Sonic BoomAll Things Being EqualCarpark
What’s particularly notable about All Things Being Equal is that, for an album so grounded in electronics, it sounds remarkably organic. Perhaps it’s the lyrical intent, or the fact that Kember’s been cultivating its growth over some time, but the record’s connection to the earth is unmistakable. In making his grand statement, Pete Kember has succeeded in creating his magnum opus and an album for the ages.
83.
J HusBig ConspiracyBlack Butter
It seems like a lifetime ago now, but when you press play on J Hus’ second, No.1 charting album Big Conspiracy, you are tapping into a more introspective and thought-provoking version of the East London artist. With a lot to talk about after being imprisoned for eight months for carrying a knife and with a lot of time to think, he manages to combine with long-time collaborator Jae5 (among others) to release the perfect follow up to the ground-breaking Common Sense.
82.
ArbouretumLet It All InThrill Jockey
By rights the down home, gently psychedelic country jangle of Arbouretum should be anathema to the raging, swivel-eyed, everything weirder than everything else, tradition/melody/fun hating modernists at tQ, but it’s really hard to find fault with this band sometimes. Let It All In is their greatest moment since 2009’s Song Of The Pearl, and anyone who manages to draw together such disparate strains as Television, Shirley Collins, Fairport Convention, early Stone Roses, Grateful Dead, CSNY and träd gräs och stenar, while still sounding exactly like themselves, must be doing something right.
81.
TrrmThe Earth’s Relief577 Records
There’s something solid and sculptural about Trrmà tracks. Like Cubist paintings, their unfolding seems to offer a succession of angles on the same thing. Quite what manner of thing is harder to determine. Each cut arrives like some impossible, unfathomable object – something out of the Strugatsky’s Zone, or one of Borges’s hrönir, lost in one dimension only to emerge surreptitiously into another. Like the great Brooklyn maximalist Charlemagne Palestine, with whom Trrmà have collaborated, their combination of surface simplicity and inner mathematical complexity is as beguiling as it is rich.
80.
DJ LycoxKizas Do LyPríncipe
Slouching towards bangers but never quite getting any demanding momentum up, the pace of this EP from the familiar hand of DJ Lycox on the impeccable Príncipe label has a melancholy and sloth to it that is very welcome. It is about the pace I’m able to work at right now, which is to say, that of an electric milk van – a few miles an hour and stopping every minute or so.
79.
The ChiselDeconstructive SurgeryLa Vida Es Un Mus Discos
Deconstructive Surgery takes in five songs of exceedingly spicy London (via Blackpool and Merthyr Tydfil) punk holler. The Chisel love hardcore, anarcho and Oi!, hate bastards, and are still fighting Thatcher, as are we all effectively.
