As I write this introduction to our annual list of our favourite albums of the year at the halfway mark, I’m on a minibus bound for Glastonbury. The transport has been organised by a number of journalists from several publications due to nationwide rail strikes. Amid the small-talk, one of them asks me how things are going at the Quietus these days.
My immediate thoughts are about how, the previous day, the entire website had crashed for 24 hours because of a rogue piece of HTML code – the back end of our website is still so outdated that the slightest issue can cause the whole thing to collapse. Her question instigated a Pavlovian response, flashbacks to all the times in my six-and-a-half years and counting here that the existence of the site felt like it was genuinely on the precipice, our skeleton editorial crew – all of us working at least two other jobs in order to supplement the site’s meagre incomings – spending as much time bailing out water to keep the ship afloat and batting away sharks as actually sailing it.
But then, I thought again. The site might still crash from time to time, but things for the website seem to me at least to be going better than at any point since I came here for a work experience placement in 2016. In terms of the writing we’ve published since then, tQ has always remained consistently great despite whatever technical disasters we may be facing, but in terms of the day to day business of running the site I have never experienced such a sense of optimism. Where in the past it’s no exaggeration to say that we rarely looked further than a week ahead, and though the work to save the site is by no means over, there are even whispers of long-term forward planning.
The only reason we’re still here is because of the launch of our subscriber platform with Steady almost two years ago. The fact that hundreds of readers like you chose to back us did not only completely saved our bacon during the coronavirus pandemic, but it was also incredibly validating. It is an amazing feeling to know that people care about the same kind of music and culture that we do, enough to donate their money each month, and at a time where disposable income is dwindling more than ever, to support the kind of coverage that we don’t think is provided anywhere else.
However the Quietus has faced two existential threats over the last half a decade and only one of them has been defeated. While we now have just about enough money to cover our day to day operation costs, without a new website that works properly we will cease to publish… and probably sooner rather than later. With no big money backing, and with Google and Facebook hoovering up most of the proceeds from online advertising that were once upon a time able to keep us going, we’re now more or less totally reliant on our subscribers. Enough of you have signed up already to keep us stable, for which we’ll always be grateful beyond words, but the more of you that continue to sign up – should you be in the financial position to do so – the more we can keep building tQ up. The immediate concern might be a new website, but beyond that we believe that with your backing, the sky could be the limit. Nor would your generosity go unrewarded. Obviously I’m biased, but the exclusive music, monthly essays, podcasts, playlists and other bonuses our subscribers receive are more than worth your while; where else would you receive an expert guide to the world of post-Tito Yugoslavian pop, disco metal and Scandinavian balearic; exclusive new music from some of the best bands and producers on earth which can’t be heard anywhere else; essays on the life-lessons learned from the video game Crusader Kings 3, TV show Satellite City and sword and sorcery films; and podcasts on the tyranny of Whitney Houston’s ‘I Will Always Love You’, the Enfield Poltergiest and Time Team?
Those who want to help support what we do can sign up here.
There is a running joke that gets posted in the comments on Facebook or our mentions on Twitter whenever we post our albums of the year and half-year charts – or in my case as a Quietus editorial staff member, said directly to my face at family gatherings by snarky relatives – that we’re making up half of the acts that are included. I tend to take that as a compliment; the reason our lists contain some of the names that are not included in other publications, is that those names are rarely written about at all by other publications… yet many of the same publications will be writing extensively about these names in years to come. We hope that in the 100 records below you find something new that you love as much as we do, and that you continue to lend us your crucial support.
Patrick Clarke
This chart was compiled by John Doran and built by Patrick Clarke and Christian Eede. Ballots were taken from Robert Barry, Bernie Brooks, Jaša Bužinel, Patrick Clarke, John Doran, Christian Eede, Richard Foster, Noel Gardner, Sean Kitching, Ella Kemp, Jakub Knera, Anthea Leyland, Jennifer Lucy Allan, Peter Margasak, David McKenna, Mariam Rezaei, Alex Rigotti, Luke Turner, Kez Whelan and Daryl Worthington.
Sam Slater’s latest for Bedroom Community is a cyclical exercise in transfixing slowness. Made up of two seamless suites, ‘Darn!’ and ‘Kintsugi’, this deeply affecting, intoxicating LP transports traditional orchestral instrumentation – woodwinds, strings, percussion, and voice – into the realm of the uncanny. Aided by his collaborators – Hildur Guðnadóttir and JFDR among them – and with Emptyset’s James Ginzburg on the mix, Slater envelops his listeners in a luxurious sound world of slurred, syrupy sonics. They’ll want to return.
MYTH0L0GY draws on many influences and ideas. The mysterious RSS b0y 1 combines a reading of Siavash Kasrai’s text about the heroic archer figure from Iranian mythology with urban noise (‘B0W AND ARR0’). He explores electronic synthesis leading to a tribal rhythm, offering a modern soundtrack of the 21st-century metropolis (‘P00CH’). He even reaches for hip hop in the style of Clipping. or Death Grips (‘NE0 NE0 T0KY0’ with Japanese rapper Judicious Broski). Using different rhythmic patterns, RSS b0y 1 leaves plenty of space for his guests to demonstrate their sound.
From their beginnings as an impromptu house party band amid the debauched so-called ‘South London scene’ of the mid-2010s, there’s always been a seediness to Warmduscher. On
At The Hotspot, however, they’re revelling in that sleaze like never before, taking the energy of the hotspot circuit in order to push themselves into a universe of their own making, Baker conjuring indelible characters like the impotent saucepot ‘Baby Toed Joe’, the coked-up insomniac ‘Hot Shot’, or the viagra-shilling ‘Fatso’. At times it’s wilfully ridiculous, but that’s kind of the point.
Advertise Here is a very enjoyable listen, managing to produce enough sonic bon mots to fill a plagiarist’s notebook. A track like ‘Sen Yen For 30min Of Violin’ manages to sound like a lush outtake from
Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) and a hundred memories of pre-decimal British art rock, the sounds packed away like mothballed coats in a backroom wardrobe. For instance: a line from the song ‘Take An Educated Guess’, swims up out of a non-memory like a carp taking the bait, sounding for all the world like a phrase in a long-lost Barrett track – sung by Syd, too.
Image Language doesn’t wash over you or immerse you. It doesn’t fixate on details in the same way as an Alvin Lucier composition, yet Félicia Atkinson has a similar knack for wielding sound to temporarily fill psychic and physical space. Lucier’s most well-known piece, ‘I’m Sitting In A Room’, used speech and language to explore the materiality of sound. Atkinson tangles words into music to change the properties of both. By doing so, she throws up riddles that stop you in your tracks. There’s ambiguity, but with just enough clarity to encourage you to step in and explore. To try and understand another’s perspective without disguising the fact it’s almost impossible to fully do so.
Like so many things made during the pandemic,
Alter Schwede was the product of remote collaboration, in this case, between MY DISCO and collaborator Boris Wilsdorf at his Berlin Studio, AndereBaustelle. Straightaway, the difference between this album and its predecessor is clear: there’s just more
there there. While by no means a maximal affair, almost everything, including the silence, is
thicker. There’s a dub-like density. As an album, previous record
Environment was almost diaphanous. It had to be, really. The space between things was so important. Here, the room is generally less empty. There’s more furniture.
A dense and complex record,
Ibtihalat crackles with angular glitches and polyrhythms, many of which are drawn from diverse musical styles from across the Middle East and North Africa. These include gnawa, raï and zar from Morocco, Algeria and Egypt respectively, and leywa, samiri and sea music, which all have their origins in the Arabian Peninsula. On the album, these rhythms morph into something altogether more alien through complex sequencing and algorithmic processes. The aggressive style that defines much of the album also signals an interest in the histories of colonialism and resource extraction that have shaped the region.
At once tender and explosive, furious about the state of things and impossibly delicate about the way things are, Obongjyar’s debut album is a thing of beauty. As mercurial as his work with afrobeat producer Saz across his
Sweetness EP, and his feature on Little Simz’s ‘Point And Kill’,
Some Nights I Dream Of Doors escapes genre and goes straight to the soul: with a shot of love on ‘Sugar’ and fury on ‘Message In A Hammer’. As you go deeper with every listen, the major arrival from the artist only gets better.
The sensuous pop gems on
Consistency are doused in warm glows, effortlessly switching between languid beats, mournful tapestries of woodwind on the title track, and slippery funk on ‘Zeemo Has No Nuts’. ‘Are You Delusional’, meanwhile, sees Yousef El-Magharbel turn producer for BLANNCHE’s verses, creating a heady delirium as the bassoon weaves through accelerations and crashes into beats and rhymes. More than anything, this tape brings to mind Arthur Russell, not that I-sef U-sef necessarily sounds that much like him, but in the way he weaves a new texture into pop’s fabric. Where Russell centred the cello and used it to expand what was possible in a pop song, El-Magharbel does the same with the bassoon. And, like Russell, the result is absolutely joyous.
Now at his seventh release with Constellation, longtime listeners of Eric Chenaux will find in
Say Laura the distinctive sonic palette that the Montreal-born, France-based songwriter generated in his career, made of trumpeting guitars, fuzzy reverbs, and distorted picking; melding (semi-)improvised, jazz-adjacent guitar and a full songwriter croon; and once again enriched by the help of Ryan Driver, providing lyrics and the occasional Wurlitzer. There is an untethered quality to Chenaux’s music. Vocals and guitars play a game of tag in his tracks, only with the pursuer at times swerving abruptly away from the one who is chased, and taking the listener with them, down the same unexpected directions that the greatest works of improvised music have taken.
In the early 90s, Derek Bailey would sit at home in Hackney, London and practice guitar by playing along to pirate jungle stations. He found the pace of much free jazz at the time lugubrious, so the 150 BPM – then brand new – pulse of drum & bass was ideal for exciting solo sessions. Most of the tracks on this compilation were home dubbed on shonky equipment and posted out to pals, with the two ‘Lower Clapton Nocturne’ tracks eventually finding their way onto a David Toop compilation,
Guitars On Mars, in 1997. The idea of Bailey’s wild improv meeting jungle breaks was eventually formalised with the release of the disappointing (if still ear-boggling)
Guitar, Drums & Bass EP with DJ Ninj, where the pair all but fail to connect. The real excitement generated by this idea can still be felt in these scrappy, lo-fi home recordings, however.
There is a presence conjured up by Trupa Trupa’s music. And it seems to have made itself more manifest on
B Flat A. Maybe the new cover image is a key. Trupa Trupa have previously enjoyed skulking behind symbols, filtered photos or woozy Floyd-esque snapshots, but now we see what looks like an eroded Easter Island head, or an imprint, akin to the Turin Shroud. It’s humanoid, impassive and unbending – much more in keeping with the band’s oeuvre. Is this the band’s truculent soul finally appearing, the genie that they have turned to face? To paraphrase Wittgenstein, it must be there if we are looking for it.
Now happily residing in Ghent, Andy Butler closes a five-year gap between albums with a masterful turn with
In Amber. It’s the most musically stark and affecting work of his career. Adopting a far more sombre tone than his usual infectious dance numbers, Butler summons a gothic air which permeates the record and heightens the darkness underpinning much of the work. With this new record, which Butler has said took longer to make than previous Hercules & Love Affair releases, he has explained that he wanted to explore themes atypical of dance music.
Although the music of Loraine James – one of the hottest electronic prospects in Britain to come along in the last five years – usually evokes a basement club, the air thick with deadened kick drums and busy, chuntering percussion, her new Whatever The Weather project seems to gesture towards something cleaner and airier, though with less of a sense of place. There’s something enjoyably knotty and awkward about this debut release. Even the song titles – various temperatures celsius – seem designed to dislocate you from any preconceptions about the music. Similarly, the beats – where present – can feel gutted, like they’re missing a vital percussive element that will link the whole groove together; this fragmentation means they seem jagged and spiny, sticking out at right angles from the skeletal ambient workouts.
The product of four years of personal discovery,
Redefines comes across as a culmination of BFTT’s adventurous sonic explorations found on labels like AD 93, Gobstopper and Polity. Despite the obvious flirtation with the dancefloor (the track ‘Disp’ being my favourite club weapon on offer), there is an intimate quality to his productions, reflected in his artistic choices – be it quirky vocal samples, fragments from YouTube videos or personal recordings – making it a rewarding, albeit intense candidate for armchair listening sessions. Like a true sound sculptor, BFTT bends, breaks, cuts, glues together and reassembles his sound material making it sound scarily hyper-realistic. A tasty blend of bubblegum bass nostalgia, intricate syncopated beats, ASMR-esque frequency modulations, gargantuan basslines and masterfully processed cyber vocals, despite its obvious lineage in the UK bass tradition,
Redefines is the epitome of shiver-inducing futuristic club music.
Norwegian ensemble Dei Kjenslevare are front-loaded with string players, drawing out fascinating connections between traditional Norwegian folk music and experimental impulses, particularly with its exploration of just intonation. The group, who include violinists Ole-Henrik Moe and Kari Rønnekleiv of the sublime Sheriffs Of Nothingness among their ranks, develop their bowed long tones and sparse, skittering percussion overlays with exquisite patience, pulling the listener into their transcendent sound world slowly and seductively.
Following last year’s
Rings, Nikolaienko has recorded an album that’s like an archaeological excavation in musical terms, referring to prehistory and its imaginary soundtrack, as well as visits to a wild forest and a museum of curiosities. The aqueous electronic passages remind me of the achievements of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and the innovative solutions devised in the 80s by experimental studios in Cologne or Warsaw. Sometimes there are melodic outlines reminiscent of the hauntological expeditions and trance-like repetitions that can be found in early Sun Araw records (‘Tryglodydes’). Alchemical combinations of musique concrète, samples, synthetic parts with fairy-tale melodies (‘Muzak For Mesozoic Showreel’), and sound-art (‘Dark-Archeo’) produce a varied, fascinating and original music narrative.
As composer, conductor and curator, Jack Sheen has been so prolific on London’s New Music scene over the last five years or so that it feels almost strange, in the year of our lord 2022, to be reporting on his debut album. But
Sub is a delight of subterranean, brackeny sounds for chamber ensemble and tape, like so many woodland creatures scurrying through the brush on a cold, dark night.
A sense of community has been a perennially important part of Gnod’s odd genetic make-up, and this has always extended beyond the band itself. It’s wound in the spaces they’ve inhabited, their fluctuating all-doors-open approach to the group’s lineup and a willingness to collaborate with artists from disciplines other than their own.
Hexen Valley sees this sense of community playing out on a more parochial level: odd snippets of Hebden Bridge life, from fragments of pub conversation to ads thumbtacked onto shop noticeboards, seemingly giving credence to the old saw that it takes a village to raise a (mutant) child.
Glasgow producer Lady Neptune’s debut LP is a hyper-destructive rave banger. Mixing gabber with industrial tech and happy hardcore, the hybrid-hardcore pop of
NOZ embodies the wild new sound of Glasgow, and it’s gonna change shit up.
