Various ArtistsLost Paradise: Blissed Out Breakbeat Hardcore 1991-94Blank Mind
This compilation from London label Blank Mind explores the golden era of British rave music, taking in tracks by eight different producers (or teams of them). Mining loosely similar ground to Richard Sen’s Dream The Dream compilation from 2023, though with way more amens, none of curators Sam Purcell and Tammo Hesselink’s choices are obvious and all of them underline what a frighteningly creative time this was for dance music. DJ Mayhem’s ‘Inesse’, cited as the track that began Lost Paradise’s assembly, is rhythmically haywire for its time or any since, and a self-titled track by Escape splices Juan Atkins depth with junglist programming. Bliss, though obviously a concept in the ear of the beholder, perhaps reaches a zenith in the piano that frames Skanna’s ‘This Way’: my hands are in the air because I’m surrendering to it, duh!
Sea PowerDo You Like Rock Music?Rough Trade
Until the release of 2022’s Everything Was Forever, Sea Power’s third album was their career high-point, bridging the gap between their robust odes to the benefits of immigration in ‘Waving Flags’ say, or warnings of the appeal of fascism to young men via ‘No Lucifer’, with their ability to out post-rock the post-rockers on the likes of ‘The Great Skua’. As ever with Sea Power, this reissue was made essential with the quality of what came with it – excellent sleeve notes, photographic archival material of it being made, and so on.
DJ ZnobiaInventor Vol. 2Nyege Nyege Tapes
Following on from last year’s essential survey of Angolan kuduro and tarraxhina by DJ Znobia in the form of Inventor Vol. 1, Nyege Nyege Tapes delivers a second instalment in the series that offers a further insight into the foundations of a sound on which key present-day labels like Príncipe have been built. From the stripped-back, brisk party energy of ‘Wo Adji Wo’ to the more leisurely, hip-swaying arc of ‘Sombras’, Inventor Vol. 2 is a melting pot of sounds that can be heard still in plenty of the best forward-thinking club music of the present day being pushed by labels like TraTraTrax, Nyege Nyege Tapes offshoot Hakuna Kulala and the aforementioned Príncipe, among many others.
Norman McLarenRhythmetic: The Compositions Of Norman McLarenWe Are Busy Bodies
Norman McLaren didn’t always use other people’s music to score his films, as documented on Rythmetic: The Compositions Of Norman McLaren, the firstcollection of McLaren’s audio work. Spanning 1940 to 1970, the compilation pulls together eight of his film scores, four unreleased compositions, and, intriguingly, the entire audio for his 1961 film Opening Speech. Most of the tracks capture a process dubbed ‘hand-drawn sound’. Just as his movies often involved him drawing on film, McLaren’s sound works involved him drawing shapes and patterns.
Paraorchestra ft. Brett Anderson & Charles HazlewoodDeath SongbookWord Circuit
Mortality becomes mundane as you get older. The romance about the inevitability of death often becomes unsparing non-fiction. This confrontation with ideas of the end of life also comes earlier for some of us, because of our circumstances, our bodies and what happens to them. Yet somehow songs about the subject can often remain strangely uplifting, as a new album by the Paraorchestra, Death Songbook, pinpoints very beautifully. It helps that singer-songwriters well-versed at excavating the deeper, stranger sides of life (Brett Anderson, Nadine Shah and Gwenno) perform on this project, but the Paraorchestra is at the heart of it: a brilliantly expansive, experimental group of disabled and non-disabled musicians that stretch the boundaries of the conventional orchestra to include electronics and modified instruments.
Various ArtistsFlux Gourmet OSTBa Da Bing!
If Flux Gourmet really does mark a (we would hope very brief) pause in Peter Strickland’s directorial output, then it’s fitting that this soundtrack sounds the way that it does. It feels personal and exposing, an idiosyncratic record that draws a line between the young experimentalist having fun with his mates, a blender, some pedals and a bag of avocados in the 90s, and the creative mind who has since steered five unique feature films more recently. It’s a nexus point for his various collaborators (Cavern Of Anti-Matter show up briefly) and a chance for The Sonic Catering Band to finally step out of the shadows and take centre stage with a set menu of food music that’s as delicious and nourishing as it is adventurous and exciting. Let a thousand hands applaud tonight.
Robbie BashoSnow Beneath The Belly Of A White SwanTompkins Square
When I first got into Basho he was in the canon, but as a weirdo and outsider – rumours about the way he lived and what he was like seemed intensified by his freak death at the age of 46 – but what I take from this box set on Tompkins Square, is that Basho might just have had too many big real feelings for some of the scene he came from. Was he too theatrical? Too excitable? Too earnest? He studied and was swept up in esoterica and spirituality from various traditions, ready to try and nail the feeling of a raga, for example, if not the form. I love and envy that readiness to engage; the lack of self-consciousness that might be a cause for concern were he playing today. This box set has only increased my fondness for his playing, adding movement and colour to the portrait as it exists. It is a total wonder, and a nail in the coffin of my critical faculties when it comes to the music of Robbie Basho. My heart and not my head for Basho – my heart.
Imperial ValleyI-IVFolded Time
When is it not a busy year for Richard Skelton? In 2024, he’s released fantastic album The Old Thrawing Crux and single track ‘Bearer’ under his own name, continued to put out beautifully produced works of poetry by Autumn Richardson, and reissue work made under his Imperial Valley moniker. This project is inspired by the photography of Dorothea Lange, who was known for capturing the extremes faced by those caught up in the American Great Depression. Where Skelton’s work is often an evocation of deep time, climatic shift and the language of geology, the arid and at times unsettling drones of Imperial Valley paint the uneasy landscapes in which humans suffer and wilt. With the impact of global heating being felt more keenly every month and Donald Trump back in the White House, these reissues are timely, and often unsettling.
Shovel Dance CollectiveOffcuts And Oddities Vol. 2Self-Released
As much as I loved Shovel Dance Collective’s debut studio album, The Shovel Dance (and it was number one in my personal ballot for the albums of the year chart), I might have even more affection for the second instalment of Offcuts And Oddities, where the group archive various little sketches, improvisations, live snippets, sessions, outtakes and mistakes that are as much – perhaps even more – of the soundtrack to life as a touring musician than polished studio productions. Recording quality here varies wildly, some of the songs are repeated and others left unfinished, and yet it brims and simmers with energy and life.
CCLA Night In The Skull DiscothequeT4T LUV NRG
Spanning 96 minutes, this mix by CCL for Eris Drew and Octo Octa’s T4T LUV NRG label explores “proto-dubstep” sounds dating from across three decades and going as far back as music originally released in the 70s. With CCL having collected these ‘proto’ sounds for a number of years after noticing a red thread between them that ultimately gave us the era of DMZ and FWD>>-era dubstep in the 00s, the mix carries a deeply fascinating narrative as the DJ shifts seamlessly between the classic dub sounds of acts like Lee “Scratch” Perry, Jah Warrior and African Head Charge; 90s house and techno by Bandulu, Kevin Saunderson and Baby Ford; speed garage by Serious Danger; and much more besides.
Various ArtistsFunk.BR São PauloNTS
Brazilian funk, also wonderfully represented by the release this year of two albums by DJ Anderson do Paraíso for Nyege Nyege Tapes, is an absorbingly unruly sound designed above all to dominate favela parties across the country. This crucial survey of the funk scene in São Paulo covers 22 previously unreleased songs from key figures, both new and established, and explores various strains of the funk sound, such as mandelão, ritmado and bruxaria. Pressing play on DJ Patrick R’s collaboration with MC KVN and DJ Pikeno MPC, ‘Vai no Chão, which opens Funk.BR – São Paulo, it’s easy to immediately see why this music dominates parties in the megalopolis of the compilation’s titular city. It’s raucous and giddy, and proceedings only get more bonkers from there thanks to bass-boosted productions from the likes of Mu540 (the MC GW collaboration ‘A Culpa Eh da Cachaça’), DJ Arana (‘Montagem Phonk Brasileiro’) and DJ P7 (the MC PR collaboration ‘Automotivo Destruidor, P7 Vai Te Destruir’), among others.
LaibachOpus DeiMute
Laibach’s third album was their first for Mute and marked their international breakthrough. With stentorian, martial aesthetics that smuggle together synthesisers, brass, marching drums and Milan Fras’ rattling vocals, Opus Dei still sounds utterly original and revolutionary today, 40 years on. The cover of Opus’ ‘Life Is Life’ is surely one of the greatest reinterpretations ever committed to tape. Never ones to rest on their laurels, this year’s reissue was followed by a second release of their reinterpretation of Opus Dei’s songs that doesn’t entirely hit the mark, but that doesn’t really matter – as ever with Laibach, it’s their utterly individual vision and ambition that counts.
M.L. DeathmanAcid Horse 23Tesla Tapes
Acid Horse 23, recorded at the three-day word-of-mouth Acid Horse event organised by tQ co-founder John Doran and Strange Attractor’s Mark Pilkington in a pub near the Alton Barnes White Horse in rural Wiltshire, is trippy in the literal sense, eclectic in its incorporation of shamanic Balearic beats and swirling samples, and also loaded with spectral psychedelic house music that takes you through liminal spaces and those where incompatible worlds collide. Occasionally the ever-building drones have a disconcerting effect akin to the eerie work of The Haxan Cloak, while with a sample of the writer Anaïs Nin reading from her diary, the recurrent line “I remember my first birth in water, I sway and float”, sounds beguiling and haunting. So too does the sound of the Acid Horse crowd, cheering in the background at the same moment.
Mixmaster Morris, Jonah Sharp & Haruomi HosonoQuiet LogicWRWTFWW
As solo producers, Mixmaster Morris and Jonah Sharp, recording mostly under the alias Spacetime Continuum, built up a masterful reputation in the 90s as leading figures in the ambient and chillout music scenes, while Haruomi Hosono, by the time of the release of Quiet Logic, was pushing to make a name for himself that wasn’t reliant on the several years he’d spent in the decades prior as one-third of Yellow Magic Orchestra. Capturing the trio working together for the first time from Hosono’s Quiet Lodge studio, this record, reissued by WRWTFWW, finds all three of them at the top of their game, from the bright, shapeshifting melodies of the near-14-minute opening cut ‘Waraitake’ through to the more eerie and unsettling mood of ‘Wakarimasen’, which features vocals by Hosono in a mix of English and Japanese.
Richard TeitelbaumAsparagusBlack Truffle
Suzan Pitt’s 1979 film Asparagus is a surreal animated odyssey, like Georges Franju redrawn in the style of 60s underground comix. The soundtrack, by Richard Teitelbaum, is possibly even stranger: a shimmering, swelling Polymoog jam that drifts through twinkling tones like images from a dream. The composer himself apparently compared it to Ravel, but you’ll get closer if you imagine Suzanne Ciani and Terry Riley trying to reconstruct the haunting organ music from Carnival Of Souls. Somewhere amidst the cosmic soup you can also hear instrumental contributions from George Lewis, Steve Lacy, Steve Potts and Takehisa Kosugi, though not all of them are easy to discern. It’s a heady brew, but amongst the swirling suspensions and nightmarish fever dreams, there’s also this deep sense of yearning; a kind of cosmic oceanic feeling not a million miles away from early Tangerine Dream or Eberhard Schoener, and even, yes, a certain lush impressionism summoning up the horny spirit of Ravel.
Richter BandSmetanaInfinite Expanse
Initially reissued digitally and on cassette at the tail end of 2023 and followed up a year later with a vinyl release, this record from Czech collective Richter Band originally dates back to 1990. An engrossing and essential listen, Smetana is built mostly around the guitar-playing of bandleader Pavel Richter and the use of a custom-made “fidlerophone”, a percussive instrument made of jars and struck by plastic strainers, which produces a sound similar to that of Gamelan music. Opener ‘V Muzeu’ also weaves brass and woodwind into the soupy, warming mix of sounds, while ‘Líbivá’ builds around bewitching, arpeggiated guitar licks. Best of all, the material that makes up Smetana doesn’t feel like it has aged one bit since its release, finding natural bedfellows with both the swampy ambient music of current leading labels like 3XL and Motion Ward and the all-out experimentation and outlandishness of present-day releases from imprints such as Superpang and ECM.
John CaleShip Of Fools: The Island AlbumsCherry Red
Cale left Island after the remarkable year-long burst of creativity that birthed the albums Fear, Slow Dazzle and Helen Of Troy, or maybe the label left him. He didn’t exit Heartbreak Hotel, though. There was a long gap before his return with the post-punk Honi Soit and the exceptional Music For A New Society, which regardless of critical praise, Cale regards now as a miserable time. “People like watching suffering,” he concluded. Cale got out eventually and we should be glad of it, given he’s still making essential music in his 80s. Anyone can find themselves in Heartbreak Hotel, if they are not careful and even sometimes if they are. It’s a bad place to end up but, sadists as we are, what sweet, unhinged music can be heard coming out of its rooms and on the lonely streets that lead to it.
McCoy Tyner & Joe HendersonForces Of Nature: Live At SlugsBlue Note
In recent years too much of the jazz world has focused on vault discoveries from decades past rather than the innovations and developments in improvised music occurring right in front of our eyes. Nostalgia and marketable names frequently trump today’s best recordings, but sometimes a document is unearthed that not only contains a stellar performance, but which also fills in historical blanks. That’s certainly the case with Forces Of Nature, a jaw-dropping live recording from 1966 that drummer Jack DeJohnette kept in his personal archive for nearly six decades. The searing performance from the legendary New York venue Slugs’ – a hothouse for music in transition that closed in the aftermath of trumpeter Lee Morgan’s 1972 murder in the space – captures four of the greatest jazz artists, all in the midst of change, finding common cause as they straddled tradition and revolution.
NicoDesertshoreDomino
If you look at Nico’s artist page on streaming sites, are you going to see ‘Valley Of The Kings’ in the list of her top songs? ‘The Sphinx’? ‘Ari’s Song’? The answer is no (although it should be yes) – but, as the years pass, the vitality and unparalleled austere beauty of Nico’s solo records continues to attract listeners both new and old. Domino’s reissues of 1968’s The Marble Index and 1970’s Desertshore – her second and third LPs but the first records of her own material – are worthy reminders that the essence of Nico, while hard to pin down for someone so inscrutable, lies in her own compositions, her own melodies, singing her strange, beautiful songs in her own voice – literally and figuratively.
ObjektWHOLE 2024N/A
If you’re looking for Objekt in ever-brilliant, mind-bending club form, the recording he shared from a six-hour set at New York club Nowadays earlier this year is certainly one for you. This set recording, however, from German queer festival WHOLE over the summer finds him in a more laidback, yet still steadfastly confounding mode of DJing. Billed as an ambient and downtempo set, he stretches the parameters of what those terms might mean to some people across three hours as proceedings stretch from the lush and sublime (the opening sequence of gorgeous ambient cuts by producers such as Hajj, Atte Elias Kantonen and Zaumne; the merging of AT-XYA and James K’s empyreal collaboration ‘Dreamo’ with Jules Reidy’s acoustic guitar-playing just past the one-hour point) to the unnerving and ridiculous (the inclusion of EVA808’s maniacal ‘Y R U N KET’ early on; the K-hole-inducing GCOM & Qebrus’ ‘XO Transmission #1’ being followed by the layering of a spoken word comedy sketch by Gerard Hoffnung over Moritz von Oswald’s spooky choral number ‘Infinito’ at around the set’s halfway mark). Throw in a sprinkle of Savage Garden, Toto and The Chemical Brothers for good measure, and you have one of the year’s most bonkers, in the best way possible, mixes.
