DestroyerHave We MetMerge / Dead Oceans
A desolate narrative woven throughout Dan Bejar’s imagery often creates claustrophobic songs which, from the offset, are not for the faint-hearted. Bejar, our conduit in this realm, see-saws in his invitation to listeners to observe this place: “Just look at the world around, actually, no don’t look,” he intones on ‘The Raven’. This stark lament is continued when Bejar further implies that “the idea of the world is no good.” Despite this cautionary exclamation, it’s impossible to divert your attention away from the many atrocities that make-up Destroyer’s most dynamic record. Here, your chances of encountering the Boston Strangler are as good as coming across a gaggle of “chicken-shit singers paying their dues” or “another dead rich runaway.”
DJ PythonMas AmableIncienso
New Yorker Brian Piñeyro, AKA DJ Python, regularly describes his sound as “deep reggaeton.” Past releases for labels such as Proibito and Dekmantel, as well as 2017 debut LP Dulce Compañia, have seen him blend the low-slung dembow rhythms of reggaeton with breakbeats and wistful melodies. It’s a deeply hypnotic combination that only grows more entrancing on his second album, Mas Amable. This is partly down to Piñeyro’s decision to pull the record together as a continuous piece. (The album has eight tracks but no separations between each.) Opening on five beatless minutes of lush synths and field recordings, Piñeyro soon finds a downtempo 92 BPM groove which he maintains for the remainder, the rhythms occasionally contorting as the LP enters a new movement.
Headie OneEdnaRelentless
It doesn’t matter if you joined Headie One’s journey at Headz Or Tailz or GANG, his debut studio album provides something that every drill and rap fan can salute. It also comes with many moments of introspection scattered between his unique punchlines, flows and storytelling ability. Not to mention the fact that he holds his own with established features such as Skepta, Mahalia and Future (who even jumps on a drill flow). The North London rapper effortlessly expands his sounds, showcasing his diversity throughout the 20-track experience.
Kylie MinogueDISCODarenote / BMG
Cards on the table, right up front: I believe Kylie Minogue is a pop genius. And before we go any further, it’s necessary to clarify exactly what is meant by that. The rockist, hippy notion of ‘genius’ involves the self-made auteur, toiling away at the coalface with their bare fingernails, carving out a monolithic monument to their own ego. In pop – which is where Kylie Minogue utterly excels – the skill set is different. Pop, by its very nature, is synthetic and collaborative, and therefore pop genius is about having a vision of exactly what you want, and knowing exactly who you need to work with (songwriters, producers, video directors, costume designers, choreographers) in order to create a heightened uber-self, a perfect pop THING to send out into the world.
Mary LattimoreSilver LaddersGhostly
There is no momentum or force that drives Silver Ladders onward. No direction in its stirrings of mood and sound that flutter and beat like a leaf caught between walls of wind. The beauty of the album is in that feeling of organic spontaneity, in the movements that suddenly depart and retreat into lightless caves before assimilating back into their icy harmonies. In Silver Ladders, Mary Lattimore brings the harp back down to earth still covered in clouds, but also threaded with veins of gloom that marble its silvery glow.
Oranssi PazuzuMestarin KynsiNuclear Blast
Mestarin Kynsi‘s opener, ‘Ilmestys’, welcomes the listener with waves of throbbing synths and stark, repetitive rhythms like Cluster’s evil twin. ‘Kuulen Ääniä Maan Alta’ hides a thoroughly malevolent riff behind sparkling John Carpenter-style melodies and a stuttering, techno-inspired drum beat before it finally erupts into a blizzard of filth, but ‘Uusi Teknokratia’ is even more bizarre, as it dashes madly through cascades of erratic bleeps and pulsating keys, what sounds like a skipping Neurosis CD played at an uncomfortably high frequency, galaxies of twisted Lustmord-ian ambience and sparse dubby basslines, and a crazy lead passage that sounds like Ron Asheton cracking open the Ark of the Covenant and peeling out one final ear-bleeding solo before he melts away.
Shirley CollinsHeart’s EaseDomino
Critics often praise the purity of Collins’ commitment to folk music – that she honours the inherently political quality of folk music by preserving the word-of-mouth stories of the lives of ordinary people. Pregnancy, death, toiling at shit jobs – they all show up in the album. She gets described as hailing from another time, as if she were a herald from a wet bog under the reign of Robert the Magnificent, which really isn’t fair, and feels a little reductive. There are a handful of non-traditional tracks on Heart’s Ease, each surprising in its own way.
AlgiersThere Is No YearMatador
Algiers’ previous record, 2017’s The Underside Of Power, was a doubling down on the dense wall of noise of its self-titled predecessor. There Is No Year isn’t exactly a retreat from that; the four-piece’s loosely post-punk template is still based around vocalist Franklin James Fisher raging against the dying light, as he fights to find space amongst the claustrophobia of his bandmates’ juddering industrial hisses and thuds. This time round, though, he’s starting to win the battle. His lyrics – taken entirely from a self-penned poem called ‘Misophonia’ – sound clearer than ever before.
Phantom PosseForever UndergroundOrchid Tapes
After several attempts, New York producer Eric Littmann – the Phantom Posse collective’s linchpin – has accidentally made an album for the times, a warped reverie of a soundtrack for empty urban landscapes. That’s what these fourteen cuts of disorientating ambience feel like, anyway – or does everything feel like that these days? Everything feels like that these days. Really, Forever Underground falls into a continuum we’ve enjoyed for decades now, drifting electronica working its way through hip-hop, Balearic house, glitch and dubstep, always a sense of gauzy nostalgia even as it’s pointing a way forward. It’s like Boards of Canada settling on a melody, or Burial – on acid! Hypnagogic, it used to be called.
Ana RoxanneBecause Of A FlowerKranky
Ana Roxanne’s origin story has two distinct phases. The first was when she was a child growing up in the Bay Area and encountered the video to Alicia Keys’ ‘Fallin” on MTV. The second came during a trip to India where a teacher introduced her to Hindustani music and singing. These worlds do not so much collide on Because Of A Flower as they do enter a fugue state of mutual empathy, held together by Roxanne’s voice which comes swirling in as if from blowing down from a forbidding mountain top. The effect is wildly, irresistibly esoteric. And yet the sense of wonder that infuses the project is merely one of several components.
MxLxSerpentSelf-Released
MXLX, AKA Matt Loveridge, has mellowed, slightly. This is evident on ‘Fuckin’ Had it With You Lot’. A monotone synth drones on in the background as Loveridge rambles on about losing his confidence in people and being sick of it. The final third of the song grows to a distorted crescendo before abruptly stopping. Then the album’s standout moment kicks in. On ‘Being A Bomb’, MXLX just lets rips. It’s sheer noise from the beginning. Throughout Serpent, you could feel the tension bubbling under the surface, but Loveridge showed restraint to keep the songs from descending into chaos. On ‘Being A Bomb’ though, he just unleashes six minutes of pent up aggression and perfectly measured turmoil.
Meridian BrothersCumbia Siglo XXILes Disques Bongo Joe
One of Colombia’s greatest contemporary musicians, Eblis Alvarez’s latest album with his Meridian Brothers project is a kaleidoscopic, wholehearted exploration of his nation’s long tradition of Cumbia music, picking up where the genre’s 1980s re-invention at the hands of modernising groups like Grupo Folclórico, 2000 Voltios and Cumbia Siglo XX left off. Utilising ultra-modern production techniques, and inspiration from the methods of proto-electronic innovators like Kraftwerk, he’s created a record that is as infectious as it is innovative, a record that is full of movement, joy, history and colour.
Jeff ParkerSuite For Max BrownInternational Anthem
Jeff Parker’s last album, The New Breed, was a tribute to his father who passed away while the album was being made. This time, Parker dedicated new album, Suite For Max Brown, to his mother, Maxine. Tender riffs interplay with gentle tones to create an album that oozes with admiration. Given the subject matter, his mum, this makes perfect sense. But what sets Suite For Max Brown apart from similar releases is how honest and raw it feels. There are times when the project could have drifted into a schmaltzy affair, but Parker sticks to his avant-garde roots and delivers his strongest album to date.
Hen OgleddFree HumansWeird World
Free Humans is an ambitious, progressive, intelligent and experimental take on pop music, complete with jazz interludes, a nearly nine-minute penultimate number about the very real possibility of humanity’s extinction, an ode to a nine-foot giant, and a song that channels the primal spirit of the Loch Ness Monster. The references that crop up in the press release are not those you’d spot in your average pop band’s promotional campaign. The twelfth-century Christian mystic Hildegard von Bingen? Moral philosopher Mary Midgley? Backstreet’s Back this ain’t.
UpsammyZoomDekmantel
There’s an interesting playfulness to the rhythms on upsammy’s debut album, which share a close lineage with the kind of bumpy IDM that you can frequently expect to hear in her DJ sets. Curious, fizzing melodies shine throughout, from the dubby ‘Extra Warm’ to the percussive, rolling energy of ‘Subsoil’ and chunky electro of ‘Overflowering’. I’ve long admired upsammy’s willingness to eschew obvious club functionality in the rhythms and melodies that typify her productions and DJ sets, and Zoom, her latest act in doing just that, is undoubtedly her best record yet.
Howie Lee7 Weapons SeriesMaloca
This release might also be Howie Lee’s jazziest and funkiest – heck, you’d have to conclude jazz-funkiest – one yet. ‘The Wriggled Wind’ starts off on an almost jazz-house tip and develops into something still more upbeat, lengthy drum-free periods trading places with some Herbie Hancock key-noodle. And then you have ‘The Border-Walking Monk’, whose robust syncopated drums and confident electro-grime bassline sounds more like something you might find on a label like Gobstopper.
Beatrice DillonWorkaroundPAN
In a smart but not obtuse way, Beatrice Dillon’s tracks are woven through with the musical genres in which she has found inspiration, along with nods to the grid-like abstractions of visual art and the scored frameworks of Labanian dance. Locked in at 150bpm, swipes reminiscent of micro house are meshed with Afro-Caribbean polyrhythms and the tresillo beat of Latin America. Carefully placed (but not constant) gut-rattling deep bass dips in and out unexpectedly. There is dub without echo and there are grooves without things getting too wiggly. There are hints of jungle’s micro-engineered fragments being torn down and rebuilt – but with more space to catch your breath Workaround‘s assemblies have a human scale too.
Horse LordsThe Common TaskNorthern Spy
The Common Task has a liveliness and tempo that lends itself to running, dancing, speeding joyfully. It opens with ‘Fanfare For An Effective Freedom’, which feels like four concurrent tracks in unison, ripplingly overlaid against one another and resulting in a building, structured, wall of rhythm. This is really not like any other guitar music. Guitarist Owen Gardiner has lavishly praised krautrock band Neu! in the past, and you can see their shadow here and there – the punchy, disciplined minimalism, the gaps in sound and then tight, woven hits of noise.
Perfume GeniusSet My Heart On Fire ImmediatelyMatador
If you’ve had the pleasure of seeing Perfume Genius live or watched his meticulously choreographed music videos, you’ll know that Mike Hadreas’ body becomes an extension of the song. This physicality is palpable across Set My Heart On Fire Immediately. Here, the correlation between body and movement steers the songwriting into storied explorations of trauma, violation, love, singularity and celebration of self. This transforms roaring pop arrangements and intimate soundscapes into visceral multi-sensory experiences, making this Hadreas’ finest body of work to date.
AnnieDark HeartsAnnie Melody
It’s a bold move to release your first album in a decade in a year when promoting it is virtually impossible, and yet that’s what Annie has done. Though EPs and standalone singles have followed, Dark Hearts marks the Norwegian pop singer’s first full length album since 2009’s Don’t Stop. But then this version of Annie is very different from the artist who only five years ago was still releasing electro pop songs meant for the dance floor. Dark Hearts marks an astute shift away from the energy of the clubs, focusing instead on hazy synth pop.
