BlawanWet Will Always DryTernesc
Throughout the album you feel that the punchy directness of each track leaves more than enough room for you to get lost in the intricacies of the sound design and construction. On ‘Tasser’ or ‘Kalosi’, modular lines and tones that are the singing voice of machine intelligence; their syncopated crunches and harmonic shrills are in perfect tune with the deep bass and low-end booms and pulses. Wet Will Always Dry reaches a primordial inhuman sublime on ‘North’ – the album’s high point, where Roberts’ modular systems writhe and squirm, an entanglement of ever-unfolding tendrils and assemblages spewing out error bleeps, uncanny fluctuations and degenerated waveforms.
HawthonnRed Goddess (Of This Men Shall Know Nothing)Ba Da Bing!
Red Goddess (Of This Men Shall Know Nothing) is the Leeds duo’s finest works to date, a five-track, 45-minute meditation on the symbolism of the herb mugwort and “the psychic flux of the menstrual cycle.” From the opening pagan hymnal ‘A Mighty Revelation’ (in which Layla Legard’s voice, one of the finest elements here, intones a wavering refrain) this is a deeply consuming listen. Let it into your ears and the modern world is stripped away.
Chris CarterCCCL Volume OneMute
This music strikes me as yet more evidence of an enviable heads-down industriousness and, in fact, what is most surprising is not exactly how modern or old but how a-temporal most of these tracks sound tonally, given that it is a (mainly) analogue project. If there is a narrative to this record, it’s more of a personal one given that Peter Christopherson died just a few months into the project’s time span. The pair, recently reunited by TG/X-TG, had been discussing Carter’s circuit-building experiments when Christopherson passed, causing the project to be shelved for some time. Carter has since talked about the album in terms of coping with his grief.
Tropical Fuck StormA Laughing Death In MeatspaceMistletone
A Laughing Death In Meatspace, their debut album, was recorded quickly and it sounds like it, in the best possible way. The band only performed their first gigs in September of last year, and Liddiard scrambled to write songs before their shows. There’s an unhinged and feral energy that pulses through these nine songs and goes beyond the considerable demented racket that the Drones are able to conjure at their finest: it’s less full-frontal sonic assault and more auditory guerrilla warfare, full of surprising textures and scrappy tones.
Pusha TDaytonaG.O.O.D. Music
Pusha’s style includes heady rap chunks (the lyrics are consequential, line-to-line, with sudden narrative shifts and tons of wordplay), with some of the easiest lyrics being slow-burners at the least. But at about 21 minutes, this album keeps from being a daunting listen. And Kanye’s production is consistently top-notch and purposeful, matching Pusha’s focused-yet-colour-stuffed verses and highlighting his ambiguous persona with dark or strange tones paired with fluffless beats, all with a focus on samples.
Marie DavidsonWorking Class WomanNinja Tune
Working Class Woman follows on exactly two years from her last LP, Adieux au Dancefloor, and comes about after a period of heavy touring which saw her travelling with few breaks for almost two years. Much of the album was written on the road and tested live during that time as part of a show dubbed ‘Bullshit Threshold’, and the result is her best record yet. Lead single ‘So Right’ pairs Italo disco with more downbeat influences while album highlight ‘Work It’ is a hypnotic meshing of jacking drum machine grooves and Davidson’s commanding vocals that nod to her unrelenting touring schedule (“You know how I get away with everything? I work all the fucking time”).
DaughtersYou Won’t Get What You WantIpecac
You Won’t Get What You Want is an intimidating listen, full of shrieking glass, dented metal and lyrical brooding… the commanding, half-spoken vocal performances [make singer Lex Marshall] sound like an evil Jonathan Richman.
Hen OgleddMogicWeird World
Mogic suggests that the daunting advance of technology is actually no threat to the age-old and the traditional, and might easily be incorporated into it (in this they have something in common with Simon Emmerson’s Imagined Village). That said, the record ends on a sombre note with a superb, ghostly track from Pilkington. ‘Ethelreda’ (named after the Anglo-Saxon saint from East Anglia), a slow, minimal, reverb-drenched piece, laments the fragmented way relationships are conducted amid screens and data – “I stitch together tiny snippets / Small things that you do / Patterns of you” – before ending with the repeated mantra of “I don’t feel anything.”
Janelle MonaeDirty ComputerBad Boy
It’s not just Prince’s nihilism that Monáe embodies on Dirty Computer – she’s also made a record that’s overtly and proudly sexual, as evident from the opening verse of ‘Crazy, Classic, Life’ – “Young, black, wild and free / Naked in a limousine / And I just wanna party hard / Sex in a swimming pool.” That’s not to say that Monáe never explored sex and love in her previous work, but it’s been a more sanitised version – one more in line with being an android, I suppose. On Dirty Computer, she’s flesh and blood with carnal needs.
rabrotWho Do You LovePelagic
Nernes has spoken about how it can take months or years for him to ascertain what his own songs are ‘about’, but he says that many of his creative allies have pointed out the inescapable influence of his newfound fatherhood on these tracks. They were mixed while he and Park were expecting their child. On The Gospel Årabrot drew on the personal more deeply than ever before to express the turmoil of a war against one’s own body. On ‘Sons And Daughters’ and ‘Pygmalion’ they have done so again, but this time in the aftermath of that explosion, finding a deep well of vulnerability at the outset of something new entirely. If the album’s title asks Who Do You Love, perhaps in these two songs we find its answer.
AudiobooksNow! (In A Minute)Heavenly Recordings
There is nothing as completely feral as the Gothenburg EP’s ‘Kars’ and ‘Beefy Danny’, but in ‘Grandma Jimmy’ and ‘Call Of Duty Free’ there are two staggeringly immersive pieces of perplexing, thrilling storytelling – in the wild eccentric synths as much as in Ling’s winding narrative. The more usual approach would be to position these twin peaks apart from each other, to bookend the album or intensify its momentum at points when it might sag, but here the two are spaced just one track apart – either side of the freewheeling ‘Dance Your Life Away’ – around the record’s middle. The result is that as an album, Now! (In A Minute) has this bonkers middle section, before and after which the rest of the record contrasts even more starkly – a juxtaposition within a record of juxtapositions.
LowDouble NegativeSub Pop
It’s both surprising and refreshing that a band 25 years and 12 albums into their career would be bold enough to wilfully obscure their songwriting with such brazen production; credit to producer BJ Burton for helping to shape that environment. While this pairing successfully widened Low’s sonic remit on their last album, Ones And Sixes, their collective decision to really push beyond that is an utter joy to listen to, even with the darkness that runs through its core. Bands and producers working together don’t usually come up with such wild solutions.
Sons of KemetYour Queen Is A ReptileImpulse!
The record is a sonic meeting place where communities from across time can gather, plan, console. It’s the creek by the woods at midnight, the rave, the church, the political basement. The naming of the tracks offers more than just passive remembrance: it’s deliberate veneration. Each queen represents a different mode of resistance – this is music to move to, in dance and in action.
IllWe Are IllBox Records
We Are ILL is all abrasive guitars, chunky wedges of grumbling bass and off-kilter organ synths. They can pretty much out-scream any edgelord ‘extreme’ noise acts, but they also have actual songs that you can thrash around to with wanton abandon. ILL are great fun to listen and dance to – witness ‘Stuck in a Loop’, as the wrecked and crushing bass belies a stompy beat and sparkle pop harmonics, or ‘Bus Stop’, which despite the rackety noise and shouted lyrics is buoyant and full of catchy hooks.
ObjektCocoon CrushPAN
A methodical attention to detail can be heard across Cocoon Crush, which comes four years on from debut full-length Flatland. What’s most striking about this new record though – and certainly more so than its predecessor – is how such an approach doesn’t come at the expense of a certain element of human emotion, as could so easily be the case. Sure, you could marvel for days at the sound design on the ASMR-esque ‘Rest Yr Troubles Over Me’ (with its ominous incorporation of tolling bells, tinnitus tones, creeping footsteps and more) or the jittery off-grid percussion bursts of ‘Dazzle Anew’, and believe me I have. At the heart of Cocoon Crush though is a zest for rich melodies as Hertz takes a slight left-turn from the more synthetic traits of
SuedeThe Blue HourWarner
With the highly unusual theme of exploring the deathly grimness and dangers of the countryside to which Anderson has recently moved, The Blue Hour is a record quite unlike any other. Suede remain one of the most distinctive bands that this country has produced in the past few decades, something that unfortunately counts against them. It often seems that having such a distinctive sound – in terms of aesthetic, vocals, and sonic palette – can be a disadvantage when the power of the algorithms against which Suede have rebelled seems to be heralding in an era of beige indifference, shaped primarily by the global hegemony of US popular and celebrity culture. Along the flattened-badgers and soggy-tissue strewn highways and lay-bys of rural England, Suede conjure up a thrillingly twisted antidote.
Insecure MenInsecure MenFat Possum
True-life horror is rarely so completely entwined with pop music as it is on this album. When you listen to The Carpenters it is there, some gaping sadness just beneath, just like when you listen to Joe Meek you can feel some glint of the dreadful goings-on at 304 Holloway Road. Insecure Men has that, all over; something is inherently and brilliantly amiss. It is consoling, almost.
Idris Ackamoor & The PyramidsAn Angel FellStrut
Despite the heavy subject matter, the album feels optimistic and imbued with a belief in the potential for humanity’s transformation. An Angel Fell ends with the shimmering, dreamlike ‘Sunset’, a celebratory and transcendent piece which seems to point towards a renewed respect and appreciation of nature as being part of our salvation. Ultimately, this is what the album promises: redemption and collective healing are within our grasp, if only we look outward and inward to be reminded of our true place in the cosmos.
Gazelle TwinPastoralAnti-Ghost Moon Ray
Pastoral is a disquieting listen, especially for those who think we can harness any ideas of ‘the nation’ for a progressive good. Those ideas are instead the basis of a Brexit-accelerated reactionary turn that believes Middle England is under threat and must be protected (and kept white) at all costs. Gazelle Twin shows us that any romantic idea of England is a poisoned chalice, at best, and Pastoral’s jester is the fool who skips along with us towards a looming dark age.
- 1: Gazelle Twin – Pastoral
- 2: Idris Ackamoor & the Pyramids – An Angel Fell
- 3: Insecure Men – Insecure Men
- 4: Suede – The Blue Hour
- 5: Objekt – Cocoon Crush
- 6: ILL – We Are Ill
- 7: Sons of Kemet – Your Queen Is A Reptile
- 8: Low – Double Negative
- 9: Audiobooks – Now! (In A Minute)
- 10: Årabrot – Who Do You Love
- 11: Janelle Monae – Dirty Computer
- 12: Hen Ogledd – Mogic
- 13: Daughters – You Won’t Get What You Want
- 14: Marie Davidson – Working Class Woman
- 15: Pusha T – Daytona
- 16: Tropical Fuck Storm – A Laughing Death In Meatspace
- 17: Chris Carter – CCCL Volume One
- 18: Hawthonn – Red Goddess (Of This Men Shall Know Nothing)
- 19: Blawan – Wet Will Always Dry
- 20: Julia Holter – Aviary
- 21: Panopticon – The Scars Of Man On The Once Nameless Wilderness
- 22: Senyawa – Sujud
- 23: Grouper – Grid Of Points
- 24: Gábor Lázár – Unfold
- 25: Erland Cooper – Solan Goose
- 26: Eric Chenaux – Slowly Paradise
- 27: Planningtorock – Powerhouse
- 28: SOPHIE – Oil Of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides
- 29: Todd Barton – Multum In Parvo
- 30: The Yossarians – Ambition Will Eat Itself
- 31: Jenny Hval – The Long Sleep
- 32: Laibach – The Sound Of Music
- 33: Aidan Moffat and RM Hubbert – Here Lies The Body
- 34: Mouse On Mars – Dimensional People
- 35: Skee Mask – Compro
- 36: Gabe Gurnsey – Physical
- 37: Laura Cannell – Reckoning
- 38: Yves Tumor – Safe In The Hands Of Love
- 39: Szun Waves – New Hymn To Freedom
- 40: GNOD – Chapel Perilous
- 41: Blocks & Escher – Something Blue
- 42: 700 Bliss – Spa 700
- 43: Tirzah – Devotion
- 44: Guttersnipe – My Mother The Vent
- 45: The Caretaker – Everywhere At The End Of Time V
- 46: Kali Uchis – Isolation
- 47: Bruce – Sonder Somatic
- 48: Alexander Tucker – Don’t Look Away
- 49: Alison Cotton – All Is Quiet At The Ancient Theatre
- 50: Deena Abdelwahed – Khonnar
- 51: Pig Destroyer – Head Cage
- 52: Eartheater – Irisiri
- 53: Goat Girl – Goat Girl
- 54: Cardi B – Invasion Of Privacy
- 55: Ben Vince – Assimilation
- 56: Bas Jan – Yes I Jan
- 57: тпсб – Sekundenschlaf
- 58: Darren Hayman – Thankful Villages Vol III
- 59: Cucina Povera – Hilja
- 60: Big Joanie – Sistah
- 61: Nine Inch Nails – Bad Witch
- 62: Synth Sisters – Euphoria (WAV)
- 63: AJA – AJA
- 64: The Body – I Have Fought Against It, But Can’t Any Longer
- 65: Manni Dee – The Residue
- 66: Rezzett – Rezzett
- 67: Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs – King Of Cowards
- 68: The Armed – Only Love
- 69: Helena Hauff – Qualm
- 70: Jake Muir – Lady’s Mantle
- 71: ZULI – Terminal
- 72: Primitive Knot – Thee Opener Of The Way
- 73: Melting Hand – Faces Of Earth
- 74: Miss Red – K.O.
- 75: Vanishing Twin – Magic And Machines
- 76: Lucrecia Dalt – Anticlines
- 77: East Man – Red, White And Zero
- 78: JPEGMAFIA – Veteran
- 79: Warmduscher – Whale City
- 80: Xenony – Polish Space Program
- 81: Lotic – Power
- 82: Laurie Anderson & Kronos Quartet – Landfall
- 83: Gaika – Basic Volume
- 84: Jerusalem In My Heart – Daqa’iq Tudaiq
- 85: Ian William Craig – Thresholder
- 86: AMOR – Sinking Into A Miracle
- 87: Bliss Signal – Bliss Signal
- 88: Dizzy Fae – Free Form
- 89: Drew McDowall – The Third Helix
- 90: Capitol K – Goatherder
- 91: Nonpareils – Scented Pictures
- 92: Richard Skelton – Front Variations I & II
- 93: Creep Show – Mr Dynamite
- 94; BROCKHAMPTON – iridescence
- 95: David Terry – Sorrow
- 96: Gwenno – Le Kov
- 97: Hailu Mergia – Lala Belu
- 98: Anthroprophh – Omegaville
- 99: Simian Mobile Disco – Murmurations
- 100: Maryam Saleh, Maurice Louca and Tamer Abu Ghazaleh – Lekhfa
