39.
From the tape rewind melody, vortical harp motifs and jerky beats of the overture ‘Basmala’, Julmud promptly lets us know we are in for a special treat with Tuqoos | طُقُوس. A representative of the contemporary Palestinian progressive music scene, the Ramallah-based producer, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist has collaborated with innovative compatriots, such as Haykal, Al Nather, Muqata’a, Makimakkuk and Walaa Sbait, and has now gone on to crystallise his vision on this debut for the label Bilna’es. Tuqoos is an album characterised by a clear ambition to go beyond any genre-based expectations both in terms of form and aesthetic, all the while retaining an utterly alluring sonic aura. Most productions are instrumental, but when he raps, he spits his bars in a commanding tone that grabs you by the throat.JulmudTuqoos | طُقُوسBilna’es
38.
At first glance, Sonancy is an album that couldn’t be made by anybody but Loop. Fuzz guitars? Check! Repetition? Step right this way, sir! A subtle garnish of ambient sounds to stretch out the sound and experience? Ambassador, you are really spoiling us! But hold it right there because dig that little bit deeper and that’s where you’ll find the real truffles: what we’re talking about here is precision.LoopSonancyReactor
37.
Whilst this EP is less blown out than predecessor And Salford Falls Apart, there is still a rage at the heart of it. Here, however, that fury is angled internally rather than at the listener. Venomous bitcrushed power electronics are replaced with pensive drones and booming kicks. Whether it’s mangled piano clinks adorning the forlorn line “I already know where my grave is” on ‘Pavements’, down-tuned strings adding a cinematic bent to the climax of ‘Waiting Room’, or the paranoid thickets of deep bass creeping out like a sluggish ferry turning in an underground tunnel during ‘Stained Materials’, the production from Tom Heyes’ former classmate Rainy Miller is lean, potent and focused. It creates space for vocally spat malice and allows for sonic growth far beyond speaker-busting distortion.BlackhaineArmour IIFixed Abode
36.
Leeds is peppered with independent venues that host its thriving jazz scene, including the roster of Tight Lines, a label lauded by the likes of Gilles Peterson, and an ever-expanding cast of bands and eclectic electronic nights, such as the UK’s (allegedly) longest-running club event Back To Basics. Listening to Carmel Smickersgill’s We Get What We Get And We Don’t Get Upset immediately transported me back to this particular, Northern musical context – one that’s infused with jazz’s freewheeling experimentation, the plodding punctuation of house, and instrumental oddities. Carmel smickersgillWe Get What We Get & We Don’t Get UpsetPRAH
35.
Most impressive about Batu’s debut album, Opal, is that the producer sidesteps the expectation of loading it with simple club cuts. Sure, many of these tracks will turn heads on fairly adventurous dancefloors (‘Convergence’ with its pummelling, scattershot drums, ‘Squall”s dancehall-indebted swagger), but ultimately they all service a wider sound world as each cut flows effortlessly from one to the other. ‘Atavism’ experiments with throat singing as a rhythmic and melodic tool, while serpentwithfeet contributes a striking, delicate vocal turn on one of the record’s more restrained moments, ‘Solace’. This is the sound of one of the UK dance music scene’s finest producers and DJs at the top of his game.BatuOpalTimedance
34.
The joy, the lifeblood fulfilment of listening to Black Country, New Road’s second album will one day turn bittersweet, as the band responsible for it seem unlikely to return as we know them after singer Isaac Wood departed the project. These songs will never again be fleshed out in South London pubs, provincial concert halls or European fields. Of course that is a shame, but it is certainly good to end this phase of the band’s existence on such a high.Black Country, New RoadAnts From Up ThereNinja Tune
33.
Frank carries over all the hallmarks of a great Fly Anakin project: there’s a lavish yet minimal approach to beat selection, a consistent woozy atmosphere that never threatens to kill the vibe, and stellar rapping that’s slippery and forceful in the same breath. Still, this is a heftier project that earns the expectation that comes with that ‘debut solo album’ tag. There’s no obvious world-building or self-contained story to give Frank the pomp and circumstance you might expect from a major breakthrough rap record in 2022, but Fly Anakin doesn’t need one. The subtlety and detail of his songwriting does that on its own. The world is his for the taking.Fly AnakinFrankLex
32.
It says a lot about the progress Nicos Kennedy has made as a producer that with Kill Alters’ debut album proper now finished at last, it doesn’t sound at all like the product of a laboured and fragmented recording process. Rather, Armed To The Teeth L.M.O.M.M. is a record that blazes with momentum, flowing effortlessly from one song to another, ascending peaks of intensity and plummeting into deep wells of meditation in smooth sweeps. It’s the kind of music that you’d imagine as being recorded in exactly the kind of frenzied burst that Baxter was so reluctant to depart from in the first place.Kill AltersArmed To The Teeth L.M.O.M.M.Hausu Mountain
31.
In moments of quietude that blanket us, imagine the piercing yet melodic trills of a bird song that grow louder and stronger to drown out any touches of stillness – this is the moment that UK composer, performer and improviser Laura Cannell captures in her striking seventh solo album Antiphony Of The Trees.The layered collection of eleven tracks is framed by Cannell’s trademark pull of experimental semi-composed, semi-improvised soundscapes which tease the lines of perfectly polished and deeply organic as she draws inspiration from the crisp melodies of birdsongs and channels it through the raw power of a recorder.Laura CannellAntiphony Of The TreesBrawl
30.
With the exception of ‘Flight To Sodom’, which is four minutes of psychedelic electronic (heartbeat beats; delayed keyboards, choir-like choral bits), each song on Regards is less a song than a collection of moments which generally fades into or out of those bookending it. In this way, the album is a faithful take on Bogusław Schaeffer’s avant-garde compositions, and the album picks up where Matmos’ last record, the three-hour The Consuming Flame, left off. Sure, Regards clocks in at a relatively brisk forty-ish minutes, but it’s not forty minutes of neatly wrapped two-minute Ramones songs. Instead, it’s forty minutes of songs like ‘Flashcube Fog Wares’, a shifting phantasmagoria of mechanistic feedback that sounds like having one’s brain pulled out through one’s ears. Which I mean as a compliment.MatmosRegards / Ukłony dla Bogusław SchaefferThrill Jockey
29.
They Hate Change channel British post punk textbook knowledge, name-checking X-Ray Spex’s Poly Styrene, and junglism with Miami bass and regional subgenres in a way that is organic, exuberant, and fun to listen to. Finally, New feels coherent and honest. This is a record that doesn’t respect any traditional genre boxes and sticks to the vision the duo have created for themselves.They Hate ChangeFinally, NewJagjaguwar
28.
At times, Ghosts evokes Bill Callahan in the mist, or Low. It has the sort of mid-Atlantic, lo-fi presence of the great Duke Garwood too, before finally reaching these shores with folk guitar reminiscent of Bert Jansch. On ‘I Think, I Think’, the accelerating reel and squirling brass suggests Haress are fellow travellers of One More Grain, whose Beans On Toast With Pythagoras is another highlight of 2022. ‘Time To Drink’ begins just on the right side of dirge, like a slowed down funeral march played on hurdy-gurdys, before the reflective guitar starts pattering over the top, like raindrops dislodging dust. It’s a fitting image given that Ghosts was recorded in a disused water mill. This blissed-out psychedelia is not quite pastoral – there’s nothing twee about these unwinding grooves – yet evokes water and wood, light and shadow, a place of forgotten labour and the absent human form with a beguiling grace.HaressGhostsWrong Speed
27.
While King Cobra works well as a collection, each track manages to stand on its own because of the attention that is paid to melody, harmony and orchestration by Infinity Knives. Sometimes you get little vignettes of action over Nils Frahm-like piano (‘Theme from King Cobra’) or 80s-sounding synths and rhythms, as in lead single ‘Death Of A Constable’. The latter also shines a spotlight on Ennal’s skilful rapping as he calls out issues from injustice against Black people to police brutality. His lyrics pack a punch but they can be funny too, like in the anti-capitalist anthem ‘The Badger’, where he tears into landlords, billionaires and male models, amongst others. But tracks like ‘The Badger’ also emphasise the power of his storytelling and his occasionally sermon-like delivery – ‘Headclean’ being another excellent example.Infinity Knives & Brian EnnalsKing CobraPhantom Limb
26.
Debuting on Stones Throw, Maylee Todd delivers science-fiction soul music that borrows from undersung electronic greats. She rolls out a soft rug of synth tones to croon placatingly atop, the same cute sounds that throwback new-age artists were working with. Tracks like ‘Age Of Energy’ and ‘Tiny Chiffon’ make the hypnotic world of Japanese ambient composers like Hiroshi Yoshimura more bubbly without losing its sense of whimsy, and the latter portion of the album gives way to Mort Garson-like synth calligraphy.Maylee ToddMalooStones Throw
25.
Steve ‘Snooker’ Davis, Kavus Torabi and Michael York return with their finest work yet on International Treasure, a blissed-out and escapist nine-track excursion that, despite this being a second album, seems to glow with a feeling of naive joy in experimentation. It’s a wholesome cleansing of the third eye by psychedelia’s oddest supergroup.The Utopia StrongInternational TreasureRocket Recordings
24.
Emerging as a key figure among the consistently brilliant West Mineral Ltd. and 3XL stables of artists who explore various submerged and smudged electronics (see also: Huerco S., Ulla Straus, Perila, Special Guest DJ and Exael), Philadelphia producer Pontiac Streator’s latest album finds him in a distinctly blissful mood. Dealing in hypnotic, aqueous melodies, as well as disorderly drum patterns that might frequently have you wondering where exactly the ‘1’ is, Sone Glo finds a midpoint between the most soothing moments of the ’90s label Fax +49-69/450464’s back catalogue, and the headsy IDM of old imprints such as Isophlux and Suction. What that means to say is it’s quite simply gorgeous from start to finish, and one of the finest electronic music long-players you’ll hear all year. Pontiac StreatorSone GloWest Mineral Ltd.
23.
This is definitely a London record (probably the only one this year to reference Patrick Hamilton’s 20,000 Streets Under The Sky trilogy of the mid-1930s and the controversial Woodberry Down development), with all the euphoria and melancholy that the city brings, the lyrics often speaking of a city where the quest for the party increasingly has to keep a step ahead of rapacious landlords and moaning neighbours. Part of what makes it such a great album is how the the sound of the record might most immediately suggest Burial or The Streets, but the feel of it is closer to Suede’s masterpiece, Dog Man Star. Like that album, Lad Ash is a homage to the “love and poison of London.”Real LiesLad AshUnreal
22.
Syd knows how to turn naivety into an asset. Broken Hearts Club chronicles a relationship from untrusting beginnings to blissful romance to agonising breakup. Calling to mind Lianne La Havas’ self-titled record from 2020, Syd hits the same narrative beats as that album but spends more time soaking in the sensual highs of her first real romance. That feeling rubs off on the record like graphite, as the LP dances around the dial of modern R&B with a lovestruck glee.SydBroken Hearts ClubSyd Solo
21.
As tQ’s Luke Turner previously somewhat paid heed to in a Baker’s Dozen piece, it seems inexplicable that the gatekeepers of indie ‘cool’ haven’t taken this strange group to their hearts in the same way they have a Pictish Trail, a Jane Weaver, or a Richard Dawson. Perhaps it’s because Daniel Patrick Quinn and One More Grain are just a bit too strange, a smidge too sly, just on the wrong side of experimental pop. Or perhaps because they have a LinkedIn page. Perhaps they’ll wait another seven years to release an album, or Quinn will stay in Java teaching creativity and climbing volcanoes and being, as one of his friend’s blogs so brilliantly dubbed him, an “extremely odd ball.” Whatever happens, Beans On Toast With Pythagoras will remain as a strange shining beacon in this gloomy and certain age, a will-o’-the-wisp we all might follow up marshy pathways and rocky ascents.One More GrainBeans On Toast With PythagorasSelf-Released
20.
Mary Halvorson has released a near impeccable run of albums over the past year or so: Never Is Enough with her trio Thumbscrew, Artlessly Falling with her lyric-based quintet Code Girl, Searching For The Disappearing Hour with Sylvie Courvoisier, and my personal favourite out of the bunch (along with this new release), John Zorn’s Bagatelles, Volume 1 as the Mary Halvorson Quartet. Even if Halvorson were to release no further new music, a strong case would have already been made for her being one of the most inventive and distinctive voices of her generation. With this latest set of 11 tracks, her most compelling release since 2016’s Away With You, Halvorson establishes without any doubt her position at the vanguard of jazz and modern composition. For anyone who is yet to get on board with her work, this stunning ‘post-genre’ release offers the best chance to date to start appreciating her multifarious musical activities.
