80.
Any day there’s a new Bill Orcutt out is a good day. Listening to him twanging those strings is like being smacked in the face with a tin plate loaded with meat from a carvery serving up nothing but manly emotions. Orcutt’s guitar tone is clear and lustrous, and radiates a prickly heat. It sounds here like expensive hand cream in winter; like a freezing plunge pool after a sauna; like fur coat against bare skin. I could continue, but I ought not to. I probably lost you at ‘hand cream’.Bill OrcuttOdds Against TomorrowPalilalia
79.
In this age of cultural whiteout, every year there’s a record that you’d have completely missed had it not been for a kindly intervention, and so thanks to Quietus writer Ed Gillett for mentioning this on Twitter a while back and thus encouraging me to backtrack and give it a listen. I’m glad he did for this, the cellist’s finest work to date, is a pure tonic for these times, an often emotional, beautifully constructed layered solo recording of the work by composer John Luther Adams. Stunning and transportive.Oliver CoatesJohn Luther Adams’ Canticles of the Sky / Three High Places
Luke Turner
78.
A band from São Paulo who make psych-y garage that borders on gothic, these ladies know how to create a spooky, captivating atmosphere that seems to draw people in. Spacey, immersive percussion, a dark, dissonant edge and a discernible vitality to it all: this is very impressive music. RaktaFalha ComumNada Nada Discos
77.
Sharon Van Etten’s fifth album presents her richest emotional palette yet, a record that is delightfully varied but tied together by the force of the musician’s talent. At times its subtly hypnotic, at others brilliantly brash, poppy and direct – Van Etten casts the same shadowy spell over it all. A towering achievement.Sharon Van EttenRemind Me TomorrowJagjaguwar
76.
Water runs throughout this project, finding tribunes in each track. As a sonic theme it permeates the project as a reminder of the fluidity of life and the potential for change. In the final cut, ‘In a Small Valley’, a river is splashed in amidst – and often over – the instrumental, asserting its importance. Ringing metallic chimes play a wondering melody, soon infiltrated by a small church choir. This gradually grows in presence before once again falling away and drowning in the stream, before sparse chimes re-emerge to strike an unsure duet with the semi-melodic gargles of a baby.Ana Roxanne~~~Leaving
75.
An exercise in rigorous minimalism, Environment employs a necessarily limited palette. After ‘Act’, you’ll have heard nearly every sort of sound, tempo, and approach you can expect to. What saves the album from being unbearably austere or monotonous is the way MY DISCO attack with nearly every single sound they employ. If not exactly violent, each carries with it the threat of violence, and with that comes tension.My DiscoEnvironmentDownwards
74.
Tyler’s songwriting has continued to progress since his last album, Flower Boy. ‘RUNNING OUT OF TIME’ and ‘GONE / GONE, THANK YOU’ demonstrate his ability to deftly abut on hip-hop, pop, and jazz through complementary shades of convention and experimentation.Tyler, The CreatorIGORA Boy is a Gun
73.
It begins with a tinkling and the soft blow of a recorder. But then the beat kicks in, and then the guitar and the air starts coming down hard on the double recorders and then the beat changes and the recorder doesn’t keep time and it doesn’t go where you think it’s going. Laura Cannell’s recorder isn’t conjuring an avian tone like the title suggests, but something more pressing and useful like a medieval work song or ancient woodland march. You wouldn’t have ever thought that music like this had been made before, but in his liner notes, Stewart Lee suggests that ‘Cuckoo’ sounds a bit like The Fall’s ‘Hip Priest’ and actually, he’s pretty spot on.Whistling ArrowWhistling ArrowGod Unknown
72.
Headie OneMusic x Road
71.
TriplegoYeux RougesTWAREG
TripleGo seem to exist in a permanent nocturnal other-place, a Paris that not too many visitors would recognise. In this fluid environment languages and cultures flow into each other; Panama, Arabic and Spanish mingle with French; amorous or aggressive impulses crystallise briefly then dissolve. With a few listens you start to pick up on the variety within the rhythms – TripleGo deliver their own takes on R&B, dancehall and even UK bass on ‘No conozco’ – and the constant tweaking of Sanguee’s interaction with autotune. From the fluttery to menacing, via some kind of throaty, grainy sweet spot in between, it’s a sound that will take control of your nervous system by stealth.
70.
Walshe pulls from a confounding variety of sources for inspiration, everything from Johnny Cash lyrics to 4Chan to “the collective unconscious as evidenced by Googull Autocomplete”. At times, it sounds as if the listener has left too many browser windows open, with audio running in each. It would be maddening, were it not arranged in such an engaging, entertaining fashion.Jennifer WalsheALL THE MANY PEOPLSMigro
69.
Cate Le Bon is well versed in the connection between music and emotion because it’s at the heart of everything she does. Reward is Cate Le Bon’s most emotionally astute record to date, and her melodic prowess is the strongest it’s ever been. With that, Reward sounds like a modern classic, because it has a longevity that very few records possess.Cate Le BonRewardMexican Summer
68.
This is not the kind of record that explores sound for sound’s sake; it attempts to create a specific narrative through the work. While found sounds are exposed and developed to add depth and dark pigments, Klein posits the record as deeply personal, to be listened to as you would read someone’s diary.KleinLifetimeijn inc.
67.
High camp and dark despair are favoured weapons in Shortparis’s war. The ridiculous interplay with falsetto warblings and a mental guitar break on ‘Otvechaj Za Slova’ (Stand By Your Words) makes it as arch a song as you could ever wish to hear. As well as being a very creepy one. The song feels like the soundtrack to some nightmare where you can’t find your shoes.ShortparisSelf-Released
66.
“When I made music for EPs, sometimes I felt restricted,” Shanti Celeste has said of her past work. I would think too much about creating the moments on the dance floor I love.” Using the freedom of a full-length album, Tangerine, her debut album, sees Celeste pushing beyond the summery house music and bright electro that has dominated her back catalogue to date. Those moments are still present in some of Celeste’s best club cuts to date (‘Want’, ‘Sesame’, ‘Infinitas’), but they’re surrounded by gorgeous explorations of new age and ambient music (‘Sun Notification’, ‘Moons’) that vitally serve a purpose as far more than filler in the context of the full LP.Shanti CelesteTangerinePeach Discs
65.
Dis FantasyDis FantasyDeathbomb Arc
2019 wouldn’t have been the same without Deathbomb Arc. The Burbank, California label has put out so many good records this year – brutal, eviscerating cuts by DEBBY FRIDAY, clipping, Shadi – that it’s tempting to just give up and let them run music from now on. Dis Fantasy shows another side to the label: bright, joyful, even kind of cute. The debut tape from duo Brittany Love and Margot Padilla may not be all smiles, but it has a summery, almost daisy-age zing to it with its finger snaps and organ stabs, its kooky bleeps and sassy harmonised rhymes. This is rap-driven bedroom pop as its finest. Totally addictive listening.
64.
An album as dense, varied and mysterious as Reach the Endless Sea will mean different things to different people. It’s a journey and an experience, something to surrender to or pick apart depending on your character and emotions. At key moments, such as the brief but stirring industrial techno midpoint of ‘Rückschlag / Rising, then Resonant’, Tunes of Negation hits pure transcendence. This album sounds like little else out there right now. Strap in to fly towards the stars that sit in your mind’s eye.Tunes Of NegationReach The Endless SeaCosmo Rhythmatic
63.
You could call this kind of music ‘industrial’, but I don’t really believe Giant Swan have ever been anywhere near the kind of heavy industry that once inspired Shostakovich’s Second Symphony or the steel city tape music of Cabaret Voltaire. Their debut album is the migraine you didn’t know you needed. It is every sweaty, gurning night. Bright white lights in motion, glinting through dry ice off bare skin and exposed concrete. A gleaming, multi-faceted crystal made of muck and broken glass.Giant SwanGiant SwanKeck
62.
When Liberty Bells start ringing in your ears and tell you to head West, by all means load up your booze and heartache and set out chasing the legacy of Mark Twain’s comet or Peter Garland’s Americas. Zoe Burke & Jason Crumer of Buck Young, flush with the wild success of “Proud Trash Sound,” wallow through two full LPs on a sentimental Grand Tour, and it doesn’t take long for freedom to unravel.
