60.
Alongside their fellow Prague residents Genot Centre, the catalogue of (mostly) tape label Gin&Platonic is a reminder some of the most ambitious electronic music is to be found on cassette. Even by their standards though, Kleis, from St. Etienne-based Somaticae, AKA Amédée De Murcia, hits new heights. This is imagination-firing music, luring your mind into dreaming up parallel universes where the regular laws of physics hold no weight. Layers of synthetic timbre weave into hyper-speed rhythms. At some points it sounds like an Edgar Varese composition for a trance sample pack, or a computerised no wave band. At others it melds polyrhythms into utopian synths to create zero-gravity breakdancing music.SomaticaeKleisGin&Platonic
59.
Nottingham band Blind Eye delivered one of the best hardcore/punk demos of 2019, laid low with the rest of us for a couple years and then came back with one of the best hardcore/punk LPs of 2022. It’s got melody, noise, big-brain arrangements, timelessly simple passages, needle-pointed lyrics and a lineup consisting of people from Heresy, Bloody Head, Nadir and, in the case of singer Anmarie Spaziano, a Midlands grilled food franchise.Blind EyeDecomposedWrong Speed
58.
Sam Slater’s latest for Bedroom Community is a cyclical exercise in transfixing slowness. Made up of two seamless suites, ‘Darn!’ and ‘Kintsugi’, this deeply affecting, intoxicating LP transports traditional orchestral instrumentation – woodwinds, strings, percussion, and voice – into the realm of the uncanny. Aided by his collaborators – Hildur Guðnadóttir and JFDR among them – and with Emptyset’s James Ginzburg on the mix, Slater envelops his listeners in a luxurious sound world of slurred, syrupy sonics. They’ll want to return.Sam SlaterI Do Not Wish To Be Known As A VandalBedroom Community
57.
Following hot on the heels of last year’s Bianca, WEAK SIGNAL’s latest collection is unsettling in an extremely tuneful way. It is by no means a happy record. There are songs about poverty, mental and physical illness, loss, humiliation, annihilation and alienation. Luckily, the Jesus And Mary Chain-like melodies are fully gorgeous, with Mike Bones’ hollow baritone enriched by Sasha Vine’s lighter backing vocals. Whether in a faster or slower tempo, the songs chug along fuzzily, with a possible exception in the janglier palette-cleanser ‘Spooky Feeling’. Oh, wait. Halfway through that one, the pervasive fuzz-chug kicks in too. It’s a mesmerisingly morose journey, yet a scenic one too. Just don’t whack it on the turntable when you’re feeling at your most fragile.Weak SignalWAR&WARSelf-Released
56.
On Nymph, Shygirl’s debut album proper, the artist builds on the sensual energy of past singles like ‘Freak’ and ‘Nasty’. With the help of a cast of collaborators and co-producers that includes Danny L Harle, Arca, Caroline Polachek and Vegyn, the record nods dizzyingly towards trap, hyperpop, ’00s R&B, 2-step UK garage and rave breakbeats, as Shygirl’s voice flits at will between seductive spoken word and a sugary-sweet falsetto. Packed with addictive hooks, humour and wide-ranging production, it’s an impressive debut from one of the UK’s most exciting artists.ShygirlNymphBecause Music
55.
Soprano Eden Girma opens Sypon, singing in Latin of ‘the mirror of truth’, while Emmy Broughton sings a story of burning camps, blood waters rising and a man doing a litany of beastly things, one of which is lowing like an ox. Elsewhere, synthetically generated harpsichord and Wojciech Rusin’s own pipe chanters rub up against digital glitches and whirrs, which are broken up by field recordings of woodland birds and sploshing water. Rusin describes it as ‘speculative medieval music’, and its sonic imagination is that of science-fiction set in alternative pasts or regressive futures – this might be music for Strugatsky’s Hard To Be A God, or compositions performed by whatever mad composer remains in residence at the cathedral at Cambry in Riddley Walker. It comes from a place where glass, chrome and computers are sunk in the iron, mud and architecture of a century past that might rise again.Wojciech RusinSyphonAD 93
54.
There’s a feeling in Bucked Up Space of pushing close to the edge, of risking going out of sync or letting the music collapse or decay, a tension that becomes at times exhilarating, as if Nik Colk Void is somehow constructing the mountain she is slaloming down. What unites the variation throughout the record, aside from Void’s idiosyncrasies, is a feeling of world-building and an attendant sense of exploration, as if the creator is not entirely sure where it is all going. It gives the album the sensation of a live improvisation, however intentional it actually is, and it makes for a thrilling listen, full of surprises, ingenuity and left turns, as you’d expect of a member of Carter Tutti Void.Nik Colk VoidBucked Up SpaceEditions Mego
53.
Mitski has always been uneasy with fame, and the uncomfortable invasion it invites from others into the soft, vulnerable parts of her life. Laurel Hell finds her throwing herself all the way into that abyss, with darker, more piercing lyrics than ever before and sporadic ’80s throwbacks to engage with dance as a form of trauma release. Instead of blaming the world for her problems, she now points the knife back on herself. It makes for an album that is sadder, more dangerous and more thrilling than anyone thought she could ever sound.MitskiLaurel HellDead Oceans
52.
Pimpon, AKA Poland-born, Copenhagen-based drummer and composer Szymon Gąsiorek defies easy categorisation on debut Pozdrawiam. Opener ‘I’ve Made It To Another Station’ sees his autotuned vocals repeat the titular phrase over a bed of field recordings and electronics, the repetition coming across like a musique concrète-tinged reimagining of Sparks’ ‘My Baby’s Taking Me Home’. The collision of avant-garde and pop continues throughout. It’s a pop album, it’s a highly intricate sound art album, and it’s a virtuoso psychedelic percussion album all in one. Flicking audaciously between incessant earworms, massive beats and intricate scrapes and rustles, the antithetical components amplify rather than dilute each other’s impact.PimponPozdrawiamPointless Geometry
51.
Emerging as a key figure among the consistently brilliant West Mineral Ltd. and 3XL rosters of artists who explore various submerged and smudged electronics (see also: Huerco S., Ulla Straus, Perila, Special Guest DJ and Exael), Philadelphia producer Pontiac Streator’s latest album finds him in a distinctly blissful mood. Dealing in hypnotic, aqueous melodies, as well as disorderly drum patterns that might frequently have you wondering where exactly the ‘1’ is, Sone Glo finds a midpoint between the most soothing moments of the ’90s label Fax +49-69/450464’s back catalogue, and the headsy IDM of old imprints such as Isophlux and Suction. What that means to say is it’s quite simply gorgeous from start to finish, and one of the finest electronic music long-players you’ll hear all year.Pontiac StreatorSone GloWest Mineral Ltd.
50.
Kelly Lee Owens’ career as an artist has developed in tandem with, geopolitically speaking, a whole host of nightmare bullshit. And while she’s touched on these troubled times before, LP.8 is the first of her records to really mirror them in feel – the hope and beauty, the exhaustion and melancholy – as well as in content, and the result is stunning. This thing she’s made with collaborator Lasse Marhaug is unafraid and untethered and honest. It is by far her best record.Kelly Lee OwensLP.8Smalltown Supersound
49.
I feel I have known this album much longer than the few weeks I have spent with it. At one of the Unsound festival venues it was played in between the acts, and I had a moment of recognition, where I felt it was a record I had loved for years. I’ve said it before in this column and I’ll say it again – Antonina Nowacka has such a distinctive voice and way of singing that makes me feel she is singing from beyond a threshold. She opens a small portal to a world not quite the same as this one. Birch’s contributions only intensify this feeling, softening space and generating an aura in gossamer electronics and acoustics, shadowy echoes and vocal reflections. For fans of Joanna Brouk. Don’t sleep! (Well, do, but only once you’ve hit play).Sofie BirchLanguoriaMondoj
48.
Sonically murky in some respects, with guitar and bass coagulating noisepunkishly, Rigorous Institution’s addition of Hawkwind-into-black metal synth parts supplies an extra dimension and then some: without them, joints like ‘Ergot’ and ‘Earthrise’ might as well be different songs. They can still rustle up standout muscleman riffs, mind – the title track’s some plundering, blundering Motörgoth exemplariness and ‘Laughter’ swings its axe with the mechanical stiffness of Godflesh if they’d recorded for the Hardcore Unlawful Assembly compilation. Rigorous Institution may not even care whether you like Cainsmarsh or not, but have made something with horizons well beyond their immediate PDX-scene crust-lifer environs.Rigorous InstitutionCainsmarshBlack Water
47.
The union of producer Philippe Hallais, AKA Low Jack, and Franco-Ivorian rapper Lala &ce makes explicit the sonic affinity between French rap and left-field electronics. The soundtrack to a theatrical production of the same name – inspired by Mitchell Liesen’s 1934 film Death Takes A Holiday – and with a cast that also includes several other fresh faces from the Gallic rap scene (BabySolo33, Jäde, Rad Cartier and Le Diouck), as well as producers Myd, Sam Tiba and even Félicia Atikinson, it’s also a beautifully structured, flowing work that fuses shimmering cloud rap with sculpted dancehall rhythms.Lala ce, Low JackBaiser MortelPAN
45.
Genre labels like ‘post-punk’ or ‘synthpop’ fail to encapsulate the singular sound on Fear Fear from Todmorden’s Working Men’s Club. Whether they’re narrating nature’s terrifying power on ’19’, or the delirious fracturing of pandemic relations on ‘Fear Fear’, Working Men’s Club have created some of the most thrilling, weirdo-pop this year on their second album.Working Men’s ClubFear FearHeavenly
44.
CAPRISONGS is a testament to twigs’ voice, which has long broken out of that one mode of eerie breathiness. Here she’s almost spitting alongside Pa Salieu on ‘honda’, and bouncing around the dancehall chaos of the Shygirl-assisted ‘papi bones’ like she was born to be there. Plenty of twigs songs build to ecstatic melodies, as on ‘oh my love’, but only on CAPRISONGS can that climax arrive at something akin to The Ting Tings. That being said, it seems that even when cutting loose, she has a hard time not committing something of poignancy to tape, like on ‘meta angel’ where she sings softly, “I’ve got a love for desire / I’ve got a pain for desire.”FKA TwigsCAPRISONGSYoung
43.
Now at his seventh release with Constellation, longtime listeners of Eric Chenaux will find in Say Laura the distinctive sonic palette that the Montreal-born, France-based songwriter generated in his career, made of trumpeting guitars, fuzzy reverbs, and distorted picking; melding (semi-)improvised, jazz-adjacent guitar and a full songwriter croon; and once again enriched by the help of Ryan Driver, providing lyrics and the occasional Wurlitzer. There is an untethered quality to Chenaux’s music. Vocals and guitars play a game of tag in his tracks, only with the pursuer at times swerving abruptly away from the one who is chased, and taking the listener with them, down the same unexpected directions that the greatest works of improvised music have taken.Eric ChenauxSay LauraConstellation
42.
A sense of community has been a perennially important part of Gnod’s odd genetic make-up, and this has always extended beyond the band itself. It’s wound in the spaces they’ve inhabited, their fluctuating all-doors-open approach to the group’s lineup and a willingness to collaborate with artists from disciplines other than their own. Hexen Valley sees this sense of community playing out on a more parochial level: odd snippets of Hebden Bridge life, from fragments of pub conversation to ads thumbtacked onto shop noticeboards, seemingly giving credence to the old saw that it takes a village to raise a (mutant) child.GnodHexen ValleyRocket Recordings
41.
For the most part, Music For Films Edited By Moths appears to distance itself from the music Kramer is known for. With each grand chord change and gorgeous harmonic resolution, each stately cello rasp and pizzicato pluck, the landlubbing world of scratchy psychedelia and subdued slowcore seems left further and further behind. The dubby excursions of the last two songs, ‘Dreams We Never Dreamed’ and ‘Or Perhaps You Imagined It All’, are surely the most expansive and otherworldly things he’s ever been involved in. Each piece twists and rolls together, like a shoal of exotic fish making stately, wobbling progress through the fathoms-deep murk.KramerMusic For Films Edited By MothsJoyful Noise / Shimmy Disc
40.
Coldplay and Deftones are among the stadium-bestriding influences Porridge Radio’s Dana Margolin has cited for her band’s much-anticipated new album. But the record’s unique innovation is to take these familiar components – firecracker guitars, choruses that flutter gamely in the breeze – and to give them a body-horror twist, resulting in a project that feels simultaneously uplifting and unmooring. It’s like going to a rom-com at the cinema and realising half way in that the director has inserted ghostly images into every frame. A lark of an afternoon is all of a sudden filled with dread. This is not only a testament to Margolin’s gifts as songwriter and lyricist, but also to the uneasy cadences that she injects into her outwardly rhapsodic compositions.Porridge RadioWaterslide, Diving Board, Ladder To The SkySecretly Canadian
