The CaretakerEverywhere At The End Of Time – Stage 3History Always Favours The Winners
“I think I’m coming to the end of The Caretaker. I just can’t see where I can take it after this. My final idea has been to give the whole project dementia. Originally I was going to make one recording and take it down into the abyss over a period of three years. So the idea would have been to do one recording and degrade it, to process it down so you would get a continuation from the start to the end point. But then I thought, “Wouldn’t it be better to give the whole project dementia?”
The Granite ShoreSuspended SecondOccultation
There is never a dull moment here. By the time you get to the standout track, ‘The Performance of a Lifetime’ (what a Distractions song that would have been) you are left in no doubt that, above all else, this is an album offering great and wholly affecting beauty.
Chloe x HalleThe Two Of UsParkwood Entertainment
There are moments that recall the choppy, haphazard control of ‘Say My Name’-era Destiny’s Child, spliced with some of the more brazen sounds from Pitch Perfect (this is meant in a positive way). The unrelenting sense of confidence, their striking vocal ranges, and the immersive production all make this a fascinating, thrilling pleasure to listen to.
Kemper NortonHunganSelf-Released
In case it needs spelling out, Hungan is a masterpiece. Kemper Norton has plugged into tradition to produce genuine innovation, refreshed a legend to outpace most producers working today. We could pick the tale apart and look at what grabs us: the wild power of the berserker, the thrills and damage wrought by transgressive self-advancement, the destructive power of greed.
JlinBlack OrigamiPlanet Mu
More than footwork, then, Black Origami feels closer to the spirit of Photek, Squarepusher or Aphex Twin in the mid 90s, when these producers took the rhythmic intensity of drum and bass and squeezed and contorted it into fascinating new shapes and it is notable that Aphex played a couple of Jlin tracks at his recent US DJing comeback.
RetrosBefore The ApplauseModern Sky
Re-TROS hop from one genre to the next, always with the devotion to do each of their influences justice – as they did in the past with post-punk – but this time with an added bite of something that is entirely their own. This is a remarkable album, and easily good enough to send them global.
Thurston MooreRock N Roll ConsciousnessCaroline International
This is Thurston Moore’s nine millionth record. And it’s a peach. From the cosmic, matriarchist poetry (supplied by London-based artist Radieux Radio), to the chiming waterfall interplay between Moore and James Sedwards, to the intermittent rupturing and reverberant doom chords, to the luxurious structural dynamics that unfurl like an exhalation of smoke in a large room, eventually seeping into all corners, this one’s a keeper.
ArcaArcaXL
Where frenetic electronics had previously held court on an album like Mutant, Arca puts Alejandro Ghersi’s voice, gifted to us in Spanish throughout, thoroughly at centrestage – illuminated under a single, high-intensity spotlight in a room otherwise cloaked in total darkness.
BjrkUtopiaOne Little Indian
Björk lets her voice unravel, she is forceful and vulnerable at once. She moves from describing an abstract moment of sexual intimacy towards intimacy of friendship and beyond that. Björk would never lie to us, and that honesty is a golden intimacy.
Vince StaplesBig Fish TheoryDef Jam
There is so much to unpack here, particularly for an album that clocks in at 36 minutes. Staples has a lot to say – perhaps unsurprising given the urgency of America’s race problem and his relatively recent rise to fame.
VanishingVanishingTombed Visions
His words come flowing dynamically out of him in an East Yorkshire accent as heavy and blunt as a cosh; a necrotic black metal shriek; a granular baritone drawl; a tremulous whisper that rises and rises towards an ever ascending note of anxiety ringing clear like a struck bell.
Nicole MitchellMandorla Awakening II: Emerging WorldsFPE
Nicole Mitchell’s Mandorla Awakening II: Emerging Worlds is one of the year’s most remarkable albums, a visionary Afro-futurist suite that takes in electro-acoustic improv, avant-rock, gospel and blues.
hit hineTotal Shit!Diagonal
It’s probably best we skip over the cavalier (but excellent) use of sampling here and simply observe that Total Shit is $hit & $hine’s best album, but as with The Fall, by now you should expect that from the current one.
BNNTThe MultiverseInstant Classic
There’s a point about halfway through ‘The Last Illiterate’, the first track of the BNNT’s excellent new record The Multiverse, where the Polish duo slip into one of the most gurn-inducing furrows of devastating groove I’ve heard in a very long time. I’m listening to it as I type, and the man across me on the train looks genuinely concerned for my wellbeing as I try to suppress the all-consuming power of it.
Justin WalterUnseen ForcesKranky
Putting to use the EVI (electronic valve instrument), a rare wind-controlled analogue synth, Walter employs a mostly improvisatory process across Unseen Forcs, something which he describes as “exploring melody through intuition”. Opener ‘1001’ sees the EVI and Walter’s trumpet merge seamlessly in a collision of melody and drones. The title track takes on a jazzier tone, a piano and the EVI pummelling you in the gentlest way possible.
AlgiersThe Underside Of PowerMatador
The blending of seemingly disparate, cross-generational, pan-century styles of music – Franklin’s gospel vocals that veer into screams, Mahan’s sulking bass, Tesche’s grubby guitars and Tong’s rhythmic pounding – and the omission of any real, tangible references to current events beyond subtext points to something much deeper. Something much older. And something much, much darker in its nefarious reach and longevity over the course of human existence. It is a nod, to quote Frantz Fanon once more, to the fact that “Imperialism leaves behind germs of rot which we must clinically detect and remove from our land but from our minds as well.”
EndonThrough The MirrorDaymare
Through The Mirror – Endon’s second album proper, with some EPs, compilations and a collaboration with Boris in the middle – sprang from nowhere for me, and is just sickeningly overwhelming. Equal parts strafing electronic noise and chaotic old-skool emo violence/metallic hardcore, all 47 minutes bulge with operatic bombast, and amount to something ineffable and stunning.
MadonnatronMadonnatronTrashmouth
‘Mother’s Funeral’ is zippy and cheery, full of glee. There’s rock ‘n’ roll organs, knee trembling and hip swinging, a lumbering horror-film beat. It is grotesque and manic, it has that old-fashioned, sticky postwar Englishness of fairgrounds and paedophiles. Second single ‘Tron’, though, is The Go-Go’s playing with The Cramps. They’re singing in the round, with incantations and layers, there’s a chiming alarm on the guitar, sex and witchery. Dizzying and unsettling, carnal and viscous, with a steady thud on drums.
Man ForeverPlay What They WantThrill Jockey
Man Forever have crafted something truly unique: a spiritual jazz album for agnostics. Where Coltrane – and more recent voyagers such as Kamasi Washington and Hypnotic Brass Ensemble – look to the stars and the heavens for inspiration, Man Forever’s muse is grounded in the spit, brick and steel of New York City. Play What They Like searches for glimpses of the infinite in the sunlight breaking through a tenement fire escape, in the brash horns of the morning traffic and the clatter of the trains on the ‘L’. But what makes it such a genuinely startling and unique record is what it finds there. Nothing less than miracles.
RwhneIfriqiyya ElectriqueGlitterbeat
The Ifriqiyya Electrique project was formed in the Djerid Desert in southern Tunisia, home to the Banga ritual of Sidi Marzuq. The Banga is a key annual event for many in southern Tunisia, seeing people accommodating the concept of a possessing spirit rather than expelling it. The Banga is also a musical tradition, built around percussion and commanding voices, with an element of ritualism, encouraging people to feel the music in a state of trance more than anything else.
