Sex SwingType IIRocket Recordings
There is a cathartic religiosity to the music of Sex Swing. During this era of sorrow and anxiety, Sex Swing remind us of the restorative powers of rock. Julia Kristeva said that melancholia results when religion fails to rationalise the immensity of one’s loss. But Type II, with all its ritualised cathartic sound, can also be a last line of defence between you and infinite sorrow. It forges a protective layer of blissfully thick and psychedelic rock ‘n’ roll that lends you its strength and grasps you tight, preventing you from slipping deeper into that black abyss. This is violent and chaotic rock music that can help you make sense of the world.
Keeley ForsythDebrisLeaf
At first, Keeley Forsyth’s voice is the only thing you can hear. The title track immediately invites comparison to the timbral registers of Marianne Faithful and Nina Simone, and the vibrato characteristic of ANOHNI. Forsyth’s voice is front and centre of her debut release, supported with grace and deference of a compact but terrifically expressive musical mise en scène played by Sam Hobbs, Mark Creswell and Matthew Bourne; making it a beautiful balanced and confident entry into the music world.
SAULTUntitled (Rise)Forever Living Originals
Given all of the very important things to be said about SAULT (which are being written about elsewhere by people a lot more qualified than me to speak on these subjects) including their relationship to the Black Lives Matter movement and the renewed need to foreground the primacy of Black creators, especially in dance music, it feels almost gauche to speak of them in terms of comfort (and that’s mine or anyone else’s). It’s always a mistake to talk about music being timeless as it will always bear some kind of novel trace element in the production that will ultimately reveal its provenance, but SAULT smash away at temporal confines in a breathtaking and joyous manner. And who doesn’t need some comfort and joy right now because of illness or isolation or dreadful psychic pressure? When I listen to Untitled (Rise), I could be stepping the echoing flags and cobbles of D-Percussion, or queuing outside Electric Chair in Manchester, or ensconced in a grimy nook at Turnmills, or trying to attract the attention of the bar staff at the Blue Note in London. What does it remind you of? No doubt something entirely different, but no doubt with some great immediacy while representing something wonderful that you’d really like to experience again, right about now.
Richard SkeltonThese Charms May Be Sung Over A WoundPhantom Limb
It’s difficult to summarise Richard Skelton’s output, there being so much of it, but it might be useful to think of him as a composer who has often been preoccupied with stringed instruments both bowed and fretted. Here though, he has shifted gear somewhat and the bulk of this new work is built around sine and square waves. And it has the distinct feel of the digital. This is interesting given his interest in the natural world, decay and geology (in this case we are at the Scottish borders). And apparently the album title and track titles are translations of Anglo Saxon ‘Leechdoms’, making the pieces here quite literally charms to remedy sickness or injury.
DumaDumaNyege Nyege Tapes
Not everyone would think of Duma as a metal album – I’m not sure I do – but these are extreme sonics, and to the extent that the listener can extract recognisable emotions from the wreckage, it certainly feels like guts-on-the-table music. Concessions to dance(able) styles come and go, like the great hoofing kickdrums within ‘Sin Nature’, but often spill over into something more like digigrind meets noisecore, such as the weird, slippery ‘Kill Yourself Before They Kill You’.
Land TranceFirst SeanceDense Truth
One of the biggest reasons Land Trance are such a successful project is the cohesion that constituent members Benjamin D. Duvall of Ex-Easter Island Head and Andrew PM Hunt of Outfit have established when combining their two voices; you can hear the former’s psychedelic instincts being pushed further outside of the box by the latter’s driving spirit and his innovative approach to instrumentation. The result is an unfathomably gorgeous album, lush and layered with a powerful and personal core.
AutechreSIGNWarp
It might seem guileless to describe contemporary Autechre in traditional terms of beats, bass and melody. More often it’s a matter of timbre or texture, or something in between. But on SIGN, there’s a noticeable return to prominent tonal sounds not heard since 2010’s Oversteps. Indeed, SIGN‘s second track, ‘F7’, with its peal of squealing dew drops could have been cut from a similar cloth to that album, which is no bad thing. ‘gr4’, perhaps the prettiest track here, showcases see-sawing synths that keen like a string quartet. I don’t think I’ve been struck in such an emotionally direct way by an Autechre tune since ‘Pir’ on 1999’s EP7.
Einstrzende NeubautenAlles In AllemPotomak
Alles In Allem, translated as ‘All In All’, is Einstürzende Neubauten’s most compulsively lisenable album to date. The group’s first full-length of new material since 2007’s Alles Wieder Offen, Alles In Allem finds Neubauten at their most melodic, lush and textured. The apocalyptic industrial of early masterpieces like Kollaps or Halber Mensch has been subbed out in favour of lush string arrangements, majestic synth melodies, and Blixa Bargeld’s refined singing. The elevation in the sophistication of its musicality has been a persistent theme for Neubauten since the late ’90s, and those that still fetishise the band for the pulverisations of its early albums are robbing themselves of the joys associated with Neubauten’s more compositionally inclined later career phase.
Alison CottonOnly Darkness NowBloxham Tapes / Cardinal Fuzz
Alison Cotton’s second LP contains mysteries that unwind at the pace of a season changing, a time lapse of a record. Consisting of one long track and four shorter pieces, this is an expressive and thoroughly absorbing album, which envelops the listener and takes them to places that seem both familiar and terrifying, halfway between inner and outer worlds. Like Laura Cannell, with whom she shares both instrumentation and a powerful ability to communicate the uneasy groans emerging from the earth, Cotton has tapped into a rich vein of music that seems urgent and essential.
NazarGuerrillaHyperdub
Yes, one can identify a few constituent parts, trace the shadows of various influences here and there, but when consumed as a whole, Guerrilla is a singular experience. Through the feverish blur that lingers around most of the LP, snatches of the familiar are occasionally audible: footwork and breakbeat clearly inform much of the percussion, for example; tracks like ‘Fim-92 Stinger’ nod towards early house and techno, though their danceability is constantly disrupted by bursts of noise and dissonance; vocal samples and field recordings provide the record’s underlying humanity even as they’re warped and inverted beyond recognition.
Pa SalieuSend Them To CoventryWarner
Send Them To Coventry is an album bursting with life. Pa Salieu sounds confident and convincing whatever style he turns his hand to. Ragga-influenced ‘B***K’ sees Pa Salieu celebrating his skin tone, music and culture on a flute melody interspersed with grimey blips and snares. He joins up with singer Mahalia on the project’s final track, ‘Energy’, an ode to motivation and self-belief – “they just want your fall ’cause of jealousy/ Protect your energy,” he raps on the hook.
Nadine ShahKitchen SinkInfectious
On her fourth full length release, Nadine Shah engages with the gendered politics of interpersonal arrangements, keeping her gaze fixed on the time pressures of maturing womanhood. Kitchen Sink is an album imbued with the outsider experience, filling the great pop cultural songbook with the missing stories of various othered perspectives, characters whose lives haven’t unfolded as imagined, expected, or socially prescribed. “Predominantly the album is about choice,” Shah says, “to respect everyone’s choice of how they live their lives.”
SquarepusherBe Up A HelloWarp
Be Up A Hello is Tom Jenkinson’s strongest album for a decade and is easily up there with his best work. After the initial euphoric bounce of ‘Oberlove’ and ‘Hitsonu’, the album delves into classic territories. Wonky jazz and acid breakdowns all feature, making Be Up A Hello feel like a greatest hits album. And in a sense it is. In a perverse way, by using the same equipment he started out with, Be Up A Hello feels like his debut 2.0. He’s taking everything he’s learned over his 24-year career and putting it to use with his original gear, making for an album that has hints of nostalgia, but none of the awkwardness.
Duval TimothyHelpCarrying Colour
Help is an immersive, relaxed window into the landscape of contemporary music. Traversing minimal jazz, soulful R&B, edges of glitch, hip-hop sampling, voice modulation and ephemeral field recordings, it’s a welcome addition to Duval Timothy’s growing body of work. His minimalist take on the sprawl means nothing here is finished. Much is left in transit, on the edge, for a future-to-come, or a present that embraces the abiding possibility of the colourful everyday.
UKAEAEnergy Is ForeverHominid Sounds
Energy Is Forever is an album of aesthetic undulations, heavily influenced by the way Dan Jones chooses to foreground his collaborators. Still, he never loses the plot, unifying the record, at least in part, through a canny shuffling of his co-conspirators. In fact, the only tracks that don’t feature one or more of collaborators Amdeep Sanghera, Deyar Yasin, or Marion Andrau are ‘Vampire Moth’ and ‘Huntress’, and they, of course, feature Jones, a unifying factor in and of himself. It is his record, after all, which funnily enough, is often easy to forget, as he somehow slips into the background despite his sonic signature and bracing beats being all over the place. Welcome to UKAEA, your one-stop source for ego death, 2020.
Lyra PramukFountainBedroom Community
Fountain, Lyra Pramuk’s captivating debut album, is composed completely of sounds fashioned from her own voice. There are songs, some with words, but primarily there are extralinguistic utterances that are processed, augmented, deformed, and re-organised technologically to create timbres and textures that bear little resemblance to anything human-made. The result is a conceptual and smart album that also refreshingly succeeds as an aesthetic object.
Special InterestThe Passion OfNIGHT SCHOOL
If or when Special Interest find themselves regularly playing to audiences of several hundred or more, The Passion Of‘s penultimate track, ‘Street Pulse Beat’, feels like one which will come into its own. Its sonics are clashing, metallic, technoid-industrial, but there is an expansive wistfulness taking it as close as this group have come to a ballad (which is still not that close, to be fully clear). That is until Logout fires off the blasphemous curveball, “I go by many names/ Such as mistress, goddess, Allah, Jah/ And Jesus Fucking Christ!” I mean, it’s not that it wouldn’t be a wrench for this band to outgrow DIY punk culture, but you want to hear that shit proclaimed on the lip of a platform stretching 50 metres onto the pitch at a stadium gig, right?
The Soft Pink TruthShall We Go On Sinning So That Grace May Increase?Thrill Jockey
Shall We Go On Sinning is an album designed to both inspire calm as well as disrupt it; one continuous piece of music split into tracks to appease the streaming gods. In a tQ interview this year, Daniel explained that, to him, the album’s title – taken from Paul’s Letter to the Romans – boils down to, “Are we going to keep doing what we’ve always done and assume that change can happen? Like, why are we so stuck in our patterns?” In response, he has created a deeply humane, humanist record that seems to acknowledge both humankind’s ability to fuck up abysmally – over and over again, through both malignant action and placid inaction – and our need to come together, reject the status quo, and change as both individuals and as a community. My parents would approve.
Hey ColossusDances / CursesWrong Speed
Across this 75-minute double LP, Hey Colossus weave a rich sonic tapestry in which the wealth of ideas, clarity of vision and keen eye for detail makes for a highly rewarding, consistently unpredictable, and, at times, utterly transcendent experience. Dances / Curses – just like Four Bibles and The Guillotine before it – is neither a band flexing its technical muscles for the sake of it nor attempting to break into what remains of the mainstream music industry. It’s a distillation of the cumulative experience of a staunchly DIY band with nearly two decades of hard graft under their belt. It’s a honing of their considerable abilities in crafting a nuanced, detailed record that carries all of the weight, urgency and emotional pull of their early work while continuing to push inexorably forward into invigorating new territory.
The Quietus Albums Of The Year 2020
- 1: Hey Colossus – Dances/Curses
- 2: The Soft Pink Truth – Shall We Go On Sinning So That Grace May Increase?
- 3: Special Interest – The Passion Of
- 4: Lyra Pramuk – Fountain
- 5: UKAEA – Energy Is Forever
- 6: Duval Timothy – Help
- 7: Squarepusher – Be Up A Hello
- 8: Nadine Shah – Kitchen Sink
- 9: Pa Salieu – Send Them To Coventry
- 10: Nazar – Guerilla
- 11: Alison Cotton – Only Darkness Now
- 12: Einstürzende Neubauten – Alles In Allem
- 13: Autechre – SIGN
- 14: Land Trance – First Seance
- 15: Duma – Duma
- 16: Richard Skelton – These Charms May Be Sung Over A Wound
- 17: SAULT – Untitled (Rise)
- 18: Keeley Forsyth – Debris
- 19: Sex Swing – Type II
- 20: Annie – Dark Hearts
- 21: Perfume Genius – Set My Heart On Fire Immediately
- 22: Horse Lords – The Common Task
- 23: Beatrice Dillon – Workaround
- 24: Howie Lee – 7 Weapons Series
- 25: Upsammy – Zoom
- 26: Hen Ogledd – Free Humans
- 27: Jeff Parker & The New Breed – Suite For Max Brown
- 28: Meridian Brothers – Cumbia Siglo XXI
- 29: MXLX – Serpent
- 30: Ana Roxanne – Because Of A Flower
- 31: Phantom Posse – Forever Underground
- 32: Algiers – There Is No Year
- 33: Shirley Collins – Heart’s Ease
- 34: Oranssi Pazuzu – Mestarin Kynsi
- 35: Mary Lattimore – Silver Ladders
- 36: Kylie – DISCO
- 37: Headie One – Edna
- 38: DJ Python – Mas Amable
- 39: Destroyer – Have We Met
- 40: Dua Lipa – Future Nostalgia
- 41: Heather Leigh – Glory Days
- 42: Lamin Fofana – Blues
- 43: Bill Callahan – Gold Record
- 44: Teleplasmiste – To Kiss Earth Goodbye
- 45: Baxter Dury – The Night Chancers
- 46: Young Knives – Barbarians
- 47: Still House Plants – Fast Edit
- 48: Junglepussy – Jp4
- 49: Katie Gately – Loom
- 50: Blóm – Flower Violence
- 51: Jennifer Walshe – A Late Anthology Of Early Music Vol. 1: Ancient To Renaissance
- 52: Sarah Davachi – Cantus, Descant
- 53: J Hus – Big Conspiracy
- 54: Black Curse – Endless Wound
- 55: More Eaze & Claire Rousay – if i don’t let myself be happy now then when?
- 56: Nate Wooley – Seven Storey Mountain VI
- 57: Delphine Dora – L’Inattingible
- 58: Sun Araw – Rock Sutra
- 59: Róisín Murphy – Róisín Machine
- 60: Yves Tumor – Heaven To A Tortured Mind
- 61: Sufjan Stevens – The Ascension
- 62: clipping. – Visions Of Bodies Being Burned
- 63: Closed Circuits – Returner
- 64: Lorenzo Senni – Scacco Matto
- 65: Antonina Nowacka – Lamunan
- 66: Deerhoof – Future Teenage Cave Artists
- 67: Nídia – Não Fales Nela Que A Mentes
- 68: Mariam Rezaei – SKEEN
- 69: Jerskin Fendrix – Winterreise
- 70: Emma Ruth Rundle & Thou – May Our Chambers Be Full
- 71: Charli XCX – how i’m feeling now
- 72: Harry Pussy – Superstar
- 73: Dead Meat – The End Of Their World Is Coming
- 74: Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs – Viscerals
- 75: Arca – KiCK i
- 76: Memnon Sa – World Serpent
- 77: Susan Alcorn – Pedernal
- 78: Datblygu – Cwm Gwagle
- 79: Geld – Beyond The Floor
- 80: Laylow – Trinity
- 81: The Homesick – The Big Exercise
- 82: Shit And Shine – Malibu Liquor Store
- 83: Liv.e – Couldn’t Wait To Tell You…
- 84: Lucrecia Dalt – No Era Sólida
- 85: Pyrrhon – Abscess Time
- 86: Dale Cornish – Thug Ambient
- 87: Jam City – Pillowland
- 88: Nines – Crabs In A Bucket
- 89: Regis – Hidden In This Is The Light That You Miss
- 90: East Man – Prole Art Threat
- 91: Haq123 – Evil Spirits Who Prowl About The World Seeking The Ruin Of Souls
- 92: Satan – Toutes Ces Horreurs
- 93: Aksak Maboul – Figures
- 94: Wire – Mind Hive
- 95: Magik Markers – 2020
- 96: Potter Payper – Training Day 3
- 97: Sun Ra Arkestra – Swirling
- 98: Luminous Bodies – Nah Nah Nah Yeh Yeh Yeh
- 99: Nyx Nótt – Aux Pieds De La Nuit
- 100: Pharaoh Overlord – 6
