41.
Everyone’s favourite cosmic occult Marxist wife and husband duo, Hawthonn, were busy this year; not just with their excellent new Earth Mirror album but also this collection of unreleased and otherwise hard to find tracks. ‘Pan Laws’ features a reverberant turn from Herb Diamante who has plenty of advice to those wishing to witchify their lives: “Cast spells in the woods… reclaim the land… play music to luminaries… imbibe wine and mushrooms!” Elsewhere ‘Vespertilionidae’ features ultrasonic bat sonar, there are songs recorded in the resonant recesses of stone churches, and the range travels from the more typically and splendidly Hawthonnian ‘The Curse (PYAX JWA)’ to the aqueous cave fusion of ‘Bright Waters’.HawthonnVulva CaelestisLarkfall
40.
Rakta and DEAFKIDS are the two outliers of the Brazilian heavy psych scene right now, two caterwauling tornadoes of sound that, on Live At Sesc Pompéia combine into something even more thrilling than the sum of their parts. It’d be understandable, perhaps even expected, for this joint performance recorded in 2019 to be simply an explosion of noise, but what’s most telling about the record is its razor-sharp refinement, their commitment to full-throttle groove and rhythm. Guitars can gnash and wail at the end of their leash, but they’re never allowed to fly off the handle. The album swings on a perfect axis between restraint and release, thrilling tension building to sledgehammer hits of pure power.Rakta DEAFKIDSLive At Sesc PompéiaRapid Eye
39.
Now into its third year, Anz’s annual Spring/Summer Dubs collections never disappoint, seeing the UK DJ and producer offer up a variety of tempos and sub-genres within the club music sphere. 2021’s entry to the series takes in 18 still unreleased productions from the artist, and sees her move through airy breakbeat and ‘80s freestyle-referencing electro, percussive cuts and warped garage, and even a touch of tasteful donk and ghettotech. Hopefully 2022 will see the individual release of some of these tracks.AnzSpring/Summer Dubs 2021Self-Released
38.
A musical time capsule, it’s this distillation of the year gone by which makes Unsound Intermission such a special document, and not just another ramshackle compilation. By collating broadcasts from some of our greatest compositional minds in such a cohesive way, it’s music which seems destined to acquire potency as it ages, as these pieces become vignettes from a time we hope will one day feel quite distant.UnsoundIntermissionUnsound
37.
This record is turned from a good one to an epochal one with the avant-guitar playing of Brandon Ross. The bastard riffs and freewheeling fingerpicking of the New Jersey guitarist are liminal and hypnagogic. On the Wertman-written ‘Egypt Rock’, he begins with a monolithic riff, before proceeding to a freewheeling fingerpicking frenzy that glides with great agility around Reid’s tubthumping bombast, whilst a cameo from violinist Terry Jenoure fills the soundscape with a haunting hymenoptera buzz. Ross’ playing is totally free of structural rigidity, but I think the most notable aspect of it is its intimacy. A lot of the tones are muted, a lot it quiet, but each pluck is a pontilist dab of the paintbrush on a painting you can’t help but marvel at.New LifeVisions of the Third EyeEarly Future
36.
Sexual HarassmentI Need A Freak
35.
There is nothing of 1997, or any year, in its sound – the music so big and so bold that the Gregorian Calendar pales in insignificance. Those who heard the record on its release, too, commented on its timelessness. “The work of a man who, having assimilated an army of influences […] has managed to create an entirely new noise out of the wreckage,” said NME’s Paul Moody in his review. Even the cover, in its homage to the simple and unchanging design of prescription medicine, hasn’t dated the way the art for its predecessor Pure Phase has, for example. Upon its reissue, the third in Fat Possum Records’ ongoing series of 180g double vinyl remasters, it still seems to operate in a dimension apart from such petty concerns as legacy and nostalgia. It’s a sublime remaster, the record’s dynamic peaks and troughs more dramatic than ever. The mass of instrumentation, from the subtlest whirling synth line to the most seismic tsunami of sound, are finely balanced like the interlacing orbits of a solar system. With this little sonic touch-up, the music still sounds entirely fresh.SpiritualizedLadies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In SpaceFat Possum
34.
This latest Duppy Gun drop has been firing me up, big time. I’m properly stuck on these cuts from the vaults – 19 tracks that never made their way onto official releases. Cameron Stallones and M. Geddes Gengras are easily identifiable on the buttons in places, particularly on tracks like standout opener ‘Snapbacks’ by MC I Jahbar with Big Flyte and Velkro. (Killer MCs with Sun Araw-ish bloops and wibbles is basically my dream musical project). Elsewhere Lupo goes for a more heads-down shuffle; G Sudden gets a gnarly stripped back riddim to tear up, and Sniper ducks and weaves around a weird and friable groove.Various ArtistsDuppy Vaulted (2011 – 2021)Duppy Gun
33.
A split folk release by Cambridge guitarist C. Joynes and political nine-piece Shovel Dance Collective makes for an interesting contrast. The former’s playing is deft and delicate, effective via the gentlest of touches, while Shovel Dance play in overwhelming waves. The voices of Mataio Austin Dean – an intense rumbling drone on ‘My Husband’s Got No Courage In Him’ – and Nick Granata’s gorgeously emotive sweep on ‘The Foggy Dew’, are both utterly stunning albeit in completely different ways, while the playing of the rest of the collective swings from one sublime emotional extreme to another.Shovel Dance Collective C JoynesBetwixt & Between 7Betwixt & Between Tapes
32.
Space Afrika’s entry to Resident Advisor’s mix series shares some headspace with 2020’s standout hybtwibt? mixtape from the Manchester duo, mostly in its collage-like quality. Over the course of 75 minutes, they roll through various mostly beatless pieces of music, from Claire Rousay’s peculiar ASMR-esque pieces to a more than decade-old Burial radio rip. It also takes in various new works and reworks of their own, and provides a great companion to their breathtaking album from this year, Honest Labour.Space AfrikaRA.772N/A
31.
The archives of East African studios Radiodiffusion-Télévision de Djibouti (RTD) were opened to Ostinato Records in 2019, revealing something of a treasure trove. Their first record off the back of this opportunity is this anthology of Somali large ensemble dance music. You could say that the overarching vibe is one of low slung but dancefloor-orientated funk reggae but that would ignore the incredible richness of a sound that effortlessly includes nods to Ethio-jazz and Turkish disco, not to mention Bollywood, Yemeni and Egyptian pop.4MarsSuper Somali Sounds From The Gulf Of TadjouraOstinato
30.
Each piece on Canto+ exhibits a painstaking attention to detail: every bounce and pluck and hum feels expertly placed, and it’s evident that Ferreyra is as comfortable creating buoyancy as she is liminality. ‘Étude aux sons flegmatiques’ features sparse ringing that floats in a distant background as haunted sounds murmur underneath, while ‘Canto del Loco’ opens the album with bouncy shooting stars that ripple across layers of robotic chimes. The music easily transforms from bright timbres to forlorn rumination, even with just a few notes.Beatriz FerreyraCANTO+Room40
29.
The hugely influential Joseph Spence was a master of the guitar, that much is more than clear on this compilation of Bahamian songs recorded in 1965. He’s deft and spirited, dazzling when he wants to be but never loses track of an overriding sense of playfulness and joy. His singing, though, is equally remarkable, a gruff and grumbling voice that’s as transfixing in its soulful moments as it is when he’s muttering along to licks of guitar. 37 years after his death, Spence’s music still sounds completely singular.Joseph SpenceEncore: Unheard Recordings Of Bahamian Guitar And SingingSmithsonian Folkways
28.
Listening now to the reissue of The Esthetik Of Destruction, re-released by Tenement Records with some striking collage cover art by Gavin O’Brien, the music sounds like it could have been made yesterday or tomorrow. Maybe it’s because many of the heavy synth bands of that time have since faded away and Kling Klang appear more of a monolith now. Maybe it’s because they seem even more cleansing in an age of production gimmickry. I get the feeling it’s because of an abiding sense of unfinished business, a sense that the journey they were on was abruptly and unfairly curtailed. You could say that, flirting with chaos and misadventure, the tension and release that comes with almost falling apart, there was always a risk that the band would snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Yet Kling Klang were also subject to an excess of misfortune. There’s a thin line between comedy and tragedy, and it doesn’t take much to tip laugh out loud stories of exploding equipment, enraged sound engineers, and a mysterious manager called The Doctor into grim tales of drug dependency, debts and death.Kling KlangThe Esthetik Of DestructionTenement
27.
Listening to Arthur Russell, specifically World Of Echo, put all my worries to rest. It was like, ‘OK, no, I can actually, I can do whatever the hell I want to do because this other person has done it and it’s proved that you don’t need to choose between pop and experimental music. You don’t need to choose between instrumental and singing. You really can do it all.’ Arthur Russell also put my mind at ease because he showed me I could use effects without effects being there to hide your flaws or your inability to do something properly.Arthur RussellWorld Of EchoRough Trade
26.
Tchiss Lopes left Cape Verde in 1980 and wound up in Rome, finally securing a job as a wiper on a cargo ship. It wouldn’t take long for the former professional footballer to recognise that a sailor’s life was not, in fact, for him. But the experience did give him a global view of contemporary pop music – as well as a new found appreciation of Cape Verde’s own dance sounds. In 1984, hooking up with fellow Cape Verdean musicians, Zé António on guitar, Bebethe on bass and Alírio on drums, he recorded Já Bô Corre D’Mim a thrilling if at times melancholy fusion of reggae, disco, Brazilian funk, funaná, and kizomba. Before Milan’s Arabusta Records re-issued the cut in November, copies used to sell on Discogs for around £200. But a record this infectious is worth every penny.TchissLopesJá Bô Corre D’MimArabusta
25.
It’s fair to say that in a time when we were starved for the thrill of live music, most of the virtual replacements proved a poor substitute, with most home-recorded live streams and so on like the worst soggy tofu standing in for a glorious hand-chopped steak tartare. Let The Night Return, a new performance film meets live album and fancy book by Karl ‘Regis’ O’Connor, marks an exception to this rule. The Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus in Peloponnese has been hosting varied entertainments in its gracefully curving stonework since the fourth century BC. Still known for its incredible acoustic qualities, it can hold 14,000 people, though an audience of none was present for the recording of O’Connor’s film, beautifully shot by Vasileios Trigkas in June 2019. The Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus was part of a complex devoted to Asclepius, Greek god of medicine, and it was believed that attending performances there could have a beneficial effect on the health of those present – that this socially-distanced, zero audience gig in a medically resonant historic site was filmed long before the COVID-19 crisis is a curious twist of fate.RegisLet The Night ReturnDNS-Essex
24.
They may be spheres apart but it’s curious to weigh up dire, uncle-who-microdoses-now “jam bands” such as Phish with the legitimacy of those whose jamming means long shifts and likely thought transference in the feverish pursuit of ecstasy. As Easy To Build, Hard To Destroy shows, the latter quest has hinged on two core tenets for Gnod over the years: doing it and doing it a lot. “Most weekends from Friday to Sunday we were in the rehearsal room together,” the band recently recalled. “[We were] experimenting with equipment, setting up mad pedal chains, plugging things into other things and just plain old jamming.” As peaks here, like the hysterical, sax-mangled ‘Deadbeatdisco!!! Part 1 & 2’, fully attest, with the right heads and intent at hand, plain old jamming can go an exceptionally long way.GnodEasy To Build, Hard To DestroyRocket
23.
The 12 acts collected here are very much the product of affordable synths and compact recording techniques. A light is shone on a scene which drifted between Berlin School type ambience, clanky industrial and loop-based proto-techno music, largely distributed via a DIY cassette network (the Spaniards seem to have stuck with tapes quite a bit into the ‘90s, when the original cassette culture had otherwise vanished) and mainly contained within the country’s borders. Esplendor Geométrico, inspired by the likes of Throbbing Gristle, were more internationalist in their reach than most of their peers (their first tape, in 1982, was released on a German label). While they still exist today, this comp’s ‘Sheikh’ dates from 1988 and is equally tribalistic and hauntological, to the extent one can ever pin down such terms. They’re the only name here to also feature on La Ola Interior’s sort-of prequel La Contra Ola, released in 2018 and compiling Spanish synthpop, post-punk and new wave from 1980-86; EG’s relatively accessible side is represented in both cases.Various ArtistsLa Ola Interior (Spanish Ambient & Acid Exoticism 1983 – 1990)Bongo Joe
22.
Listening to a full near-nine-hour set might take some commitment, but in the case of this recording of Objekt’s recent all-night set at New York club Nowadays, it’s certainly a rewarding experience. Starting on a raft of sparse, introductory cuts (for example, Autechre’s remix of Seefeel’s ‘Spangle’), the recording offers a chance to listen in as one of the world’s most technically gifted DJs, and best selectors, guides a dancefloors through various peaks and troughs. Running through peak-time and on towards a volley of killer D&B and jungle bangers, the closing hour is when the recording really hits its sweet spots as the DJ runs through various chuggers and more reflective pieces for the hardened dancers that remained. His own story of how the night went is very much worth a read while you give the mix a listen.
