19.
The Complete Matrix Tapes takes in 43 tracks in total, offering alternate live versions of the same song in some cases. The recordings featured on the 8xLP box set were captured across two nights at San Francisco’s North Beach club the Matrix.The Velvet UndergroundThe Complete Matrix Tapes
The shows (on November 26 and 27, 1969, which was Thanksgiving) formed part of an 18-date residency that the band took up in San Francisco across November and December of 1969, which saw them play shows at the Matrix and before that another venue called the Family Dog.
18.
VAElectro Acholi Kaboom from Northern UgandaNyege Nyege Tapes
17.
Arriving in mid-summer, this two-part addendum to SOPHIE’s excellent 2018 album, Oil Of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides, serves as a treasure trove of previously unreleased tracks from the producer that have become favourites over the course of her tour dates of the last couple of years. There’s also a generous helping of new takes on tracks from last year’s album, complete with SOPHIE’s distinctive, metallic sound design.SophieOil Of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides Non-Stop Remix AlbumMSMSMSM
16.
VASTUMM433
"John Cage’s ‘4’33’ has been present in my musical life for as long as I can remember as an important and inspiring composition. When the idea of every Mute artist doing their own interpretation of the piece came up during a conversation with Simon Fisher Turner, I immediately thought this was the perfect way to mark the label’s MUTE 4.0 (1978 > TOMORROW) series."
The Normal, aka Mute’s Daniel Miller
15.
The former Gesamtkunstwerk DJ and current NTS Manchester and CITS resident comes up with an incredible mix for Discwoman which ranges from Klein to Loraine James via Moor Mother, Afrodeutsche and DEBBY FRIDAY.HesskaDiscwoman 77Discwoman
14.
“There was no conversation saying, ‘Oh ‘Rocket U.S.A.’ should be the first track on the album.’ We just recorded our set live in the studio, exactly as we had been playing it for years, all in the order that you hear it on the album. It took us the amount of time it takes you to listen to the album for us to record it. About 35 minutes.”SuicideSuicideMute
13.
When it comes to folk horror soundtracks, Midsommar – like many modern folk horror films – doesn’t follow in any obvious way, the legacy of its forebears. Like 1973’s The Wicker Man, Krlic’s music makes use of diegetic folk singing but it’s nothing like the bucolic, folk jollies of Paul Giovanni’s imagination. And while it has the compositional finesse of scores like Luboš Fišer’s Valerie and her Week of Wonders and Mark Wilkinson’s Blood on Satan’s Claw, it sounds nothing like either.Bobby KrlicMidsommar (Original Score)
Lara C Cory
12.
Sun & Sea (Marina) represented Lithuania at this year’s Venice Biennale, winning the prestigious Golden Lion for Best National Participation. The exhibition consisted of a single and unbroken eight hour opera, viewed from platforms by a public who had queued up to 3 hours to get in, and performed by a cast of holidaymakers, reclining on a beach artificially created in a disused military warehouse. Singing at times alone, and at times in sweeping unison, each character’s concerns, foibles and neuroses become entwined with simple but gorgeous grace – a pushy mother, a workaholic father, a long distance couple anxious about when they’ll next be together. Viewed in person it is moving in the extreme, finding immeasurable depth in the most basic aspects of humanity, made all the more powerful by its transience. Such is the strength of the music, written and arranged by Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, Vaiva Grainytė and Lina Lapelytė, that Sun & Sea (Marina)’s brilliance is preserved, at least in part.Rugil Barzdiukait, Vaiva Grainyt and Lina LapelytSun & Sea (Marina)Skira
11.
“I wanted to approach this more like a compilation than a stand-alone ‘mix’. To me, compiling a DJ-Kicks is a significant statement of intent and representation, so with that in mind, I thought more about the selection than the mix.”Leon VynehallDJ-Kicks!K7
10.
Selections from 100 Models of Hegikan Roku is an essential record; it is a marvel that we can finally hear what happened that night in Stockholm, under conditions as ideal as they ever were for long-form sonic exploration. Remember, as Brouwer wrote, that “right through the walls of causality ‘miracles’ glide and flow continually, visible only to the free, the enlightened.” Hennix and her compatriots enlighten.The Deontic MiracleSelections from 100 Models of Hegikan RokuBlank Forms Editions
9.
Popol VuhThe Essential Album Collection Vol. 1
8.
Together, the twenty three tracks here promote a warmth that feels somewhere close to paradise. In fact, Kankyō Ongaku leaves you wondering what would happen to our society, to Britain in 2019, if we toned things down a bit and tuned into these frequencies in our public spaces? My god. That’s nirvana right there.VAKankyō Ongaku: Japanese Ambient, Environmental & New Age Music 1980-1990Light In The Attic
7.
It can’t be overstated just how key Hildur Guðnadóttir’s music was to the success of Sky and HBO’s acclaimed retelling of the Chernobyl disaster when it was broadcast in Spring. Incorporating recordings from an actual nuclear power plant, Geiger counter clicks, the occasional drip of an unseen fluid and the distant whirrs and thuds of machinery ground scenes in stark reality, while Guðnadóttir’s sparse and looming compositions capture both the chaos of the explosion itself, and the unshakeable existential terror of the aftermath. Listened to on its own terms, it is just as harrowing as the story it scores.Hildur GunadttirChernobyl (Music From The Original TV Series)Deutsche Grammophon
6.
To even summarise each moment of Drift is a challenge. What I can say is the elements of surprise and familiarity work together to form a deep, dark and wonderful hole, unmanageable by its very nature, and beautifully chaotic. The essential ingredients of Underworld are all there. Karl Hyde’s mesmerising and monotonous stream-of-consciousness vocals over Rick Smith’s glitchy techno and disorientating acid synths often come into the mixture, but often new elements reveal a new side to Underworld’s ever-growing pasture of material.UnderworldDRIFT Series 1Smith Hyde Productions
5.
I think the key to the Speedy Wunderground sound is to be heard in its agility and can be summed up by number four of producer Dan Carey’s ten commandments: “Recording of all records will be done in one day and finish before midnight. The recordings will be a snapshot of the day. Mixing will be done the day following the recording, also in one day only. This will prevent over-cooking and ‘faff’.” There is literally no faff whatsoever to Scottibrains’ liquid Kraut belter ‘Sustained Threat’; even the merest threat of faff has been eradicated by the track being mixed by Carey’s 13-year-old daughter, Orla. ‘BmBmBm’, a berserk volley of dynamics in future funk, that somehow doesn’t lose sight of the dancefloor despite ending up a corruscating ray of noise and grindcore ferrocity, a Speedy Wunderground anthem for the ages, if ever there was one.VASpeedy Wunderground: Year 4Speedy Wunderground
4.
“These days I cannot perceive things in quite the same light as previously. The finite nature of our physical bodies is made painfully apparent by David’s accident. I feel fragile, like a Japanese house or a piece of lace. I am touched in a very deep and sensitive place by the people around me… David, Richard, George and Steven – some of the men that mean much, they are parts of me I don’t want to lose. But I am reminded not too gently that other forces will make their power felt beyond my conscious efforts to endear and be endeared… to inspire & be inspired to probe and develop and ease the pain and to serve as material to others for similar exploration. To love and be loved is a simple thing, as simple as life and death. I am growing.”Patrick CowleyMechanical Fantasy BoxDark Entries
Patrick Cowley, an excerpt from the Mechanical Fantasy Box
3.
As well as producing one of 2019’s best EPs in the Tri Angle-released and departt from mono games, AYA (FKA LOFT) blends through modern distortions of club music at a dizzying pace on this mix for FACT, finding time along the way for delightfully silly edits by The South Yorkshire Mick Mucknall and HMT Hard Cru’s DJ Space Heater, as well as her own banging donk-esque take on Caterina Barbieri’s ‘Fantas’.AYAFACT Mix 738FACT
2.
It’s a release full of very groovy, but often intense music, getting high off its own sense of mission. There are some fabulous cuts to get lost in, such as the edit of Igor Wakhévitch’s piece, ‘Materia Prima’ (from his must-have Docteur Faust LP), a menacing space rock plod driven by bubbling synths that then turns tail and wades into Tago Mago territory. The great Philippe Besombes is here too, with a moody reflection from his 1975 LP Libra. ‘La Plage’ (The Beach) is the soundtrack to the most uninviting beach you can imagine and not at all like the rumbustious compositions he made with Jean-Louis Rizet. Rather it feels like a sonic prompt to those arty post-punks waiting just around the corner.VAStrain Crack & Break: Music From The Nurse With Wound ListFinders Keepers
1.
The CaretakerEverywhere At The End Of TimeHistory Always Favours The Winners
Stage 6 is heart-breaking, distressing, overwhelming. Once immersed you genuinely feel lost. It’s impossible to understand what is happening around you. It is confusing, overwhelming. You feel isolated. You might ask yourself why you would put yourself through such an experience but then isn’t that the power of all great art anyway – to experience and to feel unknown emotions, states, and perspectives? It’s not an easy journey but you feel different for undertaking it.
The Quietus Albums Of The Year 2019
- 1: The Caretaker – Everywhere At The End Of Time
- 2: V/A – Strain Crack and Break: Music from the Nurse with Wound List, Vol. 1
- 3: AYA – FACT Mix 738
- 4: Patrick Cowley – Mechanical Fantasy Box
- 5: V/A – Speedy Wunderground: Year 4
- 6: Underworld – DRIFT Series 1
- 7: Hildur Guðnadóttir – Chernobyl (Music From The Original TV Series)
- 8: V/A – Kankyō Ongaku: Japanese Ambient, Environmental & New Age Music 1980-1990
- 9: Popol Vuh – The Essential Album Collection Vol. 1
- 10: The Deontic Miracle – Selections from 100 Models of Hegikan Roku
- 11: Leon Vynehall – DJ-Kicks
- 12: Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, Vaiva Grainytė and Lina Lapelytė – Sun & Sea (Marina)
- 13: Bobby Krlic – Midsommar (Original Score)
- 14: Suicide – Suicide
- 15: Hesska – Discwoman 77
- 16: V/A – STUMM433
- 17: SOPHIE – Oil Of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides Non-Stop Remix Album
- 18: V/A – Electro Acholi Kaboom from Northern Uganda
- 19: The Velvet Underground – The Complete Matrix Tapes
- 20: Årabrot – Die Niebelungen
- 21: Anna Meredith – Eighth Grade (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
- 22: Call Super – Crack Mix 300
- 23: Craig Leon – Anthology of Interplanetary Folk Music Vol. 2: The Canon
- 24: British Murder Boys – Receiving The Law
- 25: Ernest Hood – Neighborhoods
- 26: Batu – Truancy Volume 240
- 27: UKAEA – Threads Mix, 21 October 2019
- 28: upsammy – Dekmantel Festival 2019
- 29: Martin Bartlett – Ankle On
- 30: Sunn O))) – BBC 6 Music Session for Mary Anne Hobbs
- 31: Shellac – The End Of Radio
- 32: DEBONAIR- RA.677
- 33: Mary Lou Williams – Mary Lou Williams
- 34: CCL – Unsound Podcast 56
- 35: Mort Garson – Mother Earth’s Plantasia
- 36: Mica Levi – Monos (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
- 37: Rupa – Disco Jazz
- 38: V/A – Nigeria 70: No Wahala: Highlife, Afro-Funk & Juju 1973-1987
- 39: Mark Jenkin – Bait (Original Score)
- 40: Arthur Russell – Iowa Dream
- 41: Barker – FACT Mix 720
- 42: Martin Bartlett – Anecdotal Electronics: Live Experiments & Other Recordings
- 43: Emile Mosseri – The Last Black Man In San Francisco (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
- 44: Peter Ivers – Becoming Peter Ivers
- 45: Michael Abels – US (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
- 46: Don Cherry – Brown Rice
- 47: Autechre – Warp Tapes 89-93
- 48: Alice Coltrane Sextet – Live at the Berkeley Community Theater 1972
- 49: Fabio & Grooverider – 30 Years Of Rage
- 50: Mark Korven – The Lighthouse OST
- 51: Louis Moholo Octet – Spirits Rejoice
- 52: The Fall – Hex Enduction Hour
- 53: Mark Hollis – Mark Hollis
- 54: Roland Kayn – Scanning (1982-1983)
- 55: Ben UFO – Rainbow Disco Club 2019
- 56: Maleem Mahmoud Ghania with Pharoah Sanders – The Trance of Seven Colors
- 57: Jane Weaver – Loops In The Secret Society
- 58: Ben Frost – Dark (Cycle 1)
- 59: V/A – WXAXRXP Sessions
- 60: Robert Ashley – Automatic Writing
- 61: VTSS – Discwoman 62
- 62: James Bernard – Dracula / The Curse Of Frankenstein
- 63: Nicholas Britell – If Beale Street Could Talk (Original Motion Picture Score)
- 64: V/A – Taxi Sampler 01: Rhythms & Vibes from the Spirit of Young Africa
- 65: Sybil – DIM167
- 66: Masayuki Takayanagi New Direction Unit – April is the Cruellest Month
- 67: Gene Clark – No Other
- 68: re:ni – Crack Mix 254
- 69: Yoshi Wada – Lament for the Rise and Fall of the Elephantine Crocodile
- 70: Dan Levy – I Lost My Body (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
- 71: V/A – Fracture Presents: Turbo
- 72: Throbbing Gristle – Part Two: The Endless Not
- 73: Jerry Goldsmith, Leonard Rosenman and Tom Scott – Planet Of The Apes (Original Film Series Soundtrack Collection)
- 74: Boards Of Canada – Societas X Tape
- 75: V/A – A Short Illness From Which He Never Recovered
- 76: Eris Drew – Raving Disco Breaks Vol. 1
- 77: Horace Tapscott With The Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra - Live At I.U.C.C.
- 78: James Righton – Benjamin (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
- 79: “Blue” Gene Tyranny – Out of the Blue
- 80: Tanita Tikaram – To Drink The Rainbow (An Anthology 1988 – 2019)
- 81: Sonic Youth – Battery Park, NYC: July 4, 2008
- 82: Scott Walker / Sia – Vox Lux OST
- 83: Various Artists – Mogadisco: Dancing Mogadishu (Somalia 1972 – 1991)
- 84: Fever Ray – Live At Troxy
- 85: David Axelrod – Seriously Deep
- 86: Mark Fisher & Justin Barton – On Vanishing Land
- 87: Dome – 1-4+5
- 88: Leif – Freerotation 2019
- 89: V/A – Third Noise Principle: Formative North American Electronica 1975-1984
- 90: John Coltrane – Blue World
- 91: Sun Ra Arkestra – Live In Kalisz 1986
- 92: V/A – Music From Jarvis Cocker’s Sunday Service
- 93: V/A – Music And/As Process
- 94: Laurel Halo – DJ-Kicks
- 95: James Holden – A Cambodian Spring OST
- 96: Miss Jay – HYPNOT 334: Need For Speed Mix
- 97: Cabaret Voltaire – Methodology ‘74 / ‘78: The Attic Tapes
- 98: Kristian Eldnes Andersen – Antichrist (Original Soundtrack)
- 99: Atomic Forest – Disco Roar
- 100: Beatrice Dillon – RA.706
