60.
Maggi PayneArctic Minds
59.
Helena HauffKern Vol. 5
58.
Triptykon With The Metropole OrkestRequiem (Live At Roadburn 2019)
57.
Ben Salisbury, The Insects Geoff BarrowDevs OST
56.
Yellow SwansGoing Places
55.
Various ArtistsBlack Riot: Early Jungle, Rave & Hardcore
54.
Bessie Jones The Georgia Sea Island SingersGet In Union
53.
Horace Tapscott With The PanAfrikan Peoples ArkestraAncestral Echoes: The Covina Sessions 1976
52.
Powella Æ’older
51.
Previously unknown sides to Robbie Basho unfurl from this box set, of music that has been lost for decades and was unearthed in the home of a Meher Baba devotee by filmmaker Liam Barker (whose film Voice Of The Eagle is essential and a fantastic piece of research). For Basho fans, these recordings are the holy grail, previously unheard material that is long lost and finally coming to light. It contains ferocious playing in tracks like ‘Harakiri, Kali Style’ and daft ditties in ‘Hippie Song’, and on ‘Sea Of Light (Baba’s Ship Song)’, Basho’s naïve vocalisations and his idiosyncratic piano playing sound like sunbeams on mountain streams.BongripperSatan Worshipping Doom (2020 Remaster)Great Barrier
More: Buy from Norman Records
49.
Look, you don’t need me to tell you how great Paranoid, the second of Black Sabbath’s genre defining albums of 1970, is. So why do you need to shell out again? Well, there’s a delightful 12″x12″ book, the 1974 Quadradisc Mix in stereo on vinyl for the first time, and a nice poster… which is all great, obviously, but the real gear is the triple live LP featuring two live gigs from the late ’70s, one from Montreux, one from Brussels. And it’s through these live documents you can hear Sabbath in a state of flux; Ozzy Osbourne still singing the original ‘Walpurgis’ lyrics to ‘War Pigs’, plus an alternate version of ‘Iron Man’. Elsewhere you get to hear some liquid interplay between Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler plus Bill Ward’s fantastic jazz influenced ‘architectural’ doom laden drum fills – Sabbath’s ‘psychic’ playing abilities already firmly in place due to club residencies in Hamburg, Carlisle and Switzerland. And that’s the real history right there.Black SabbathParanoid Super Deluxe Box SetBMG
48.
Over the course of a handful of records since its launch in 2016, Valentino Mora’s IDO Records has pushed a brand of hypnotic, explorative techno that rewards deep listening. It’s a sound that is somewhat of a heavy shift from his past moniker of French Fries, and has produced some of his best output. The label’s fifth record, this compilation, which is billed as the first of a full-length ambient series, finds him appearing alongside a number of compatriots in that aforementioned style of techno, pulling together 10 stunning weightless pieces from figures such as Donato Dozzy, Neel and Refracted. This is ambient music with purpose.Various ArtistsTranscendental Movements Vol. 1IDO
47.
Deerhoof have navigated the various catastrophes of 2020 in curious, backwards fashion. Before the pandemic had even begun they finished work on Future Teenage Cave Artists, for which they worked remotely around a concept of post-crisis humans trying to make sense of a global disaster. Then, in July, just as that kind of music was becoming the norm at the height of the pandemic, they put out a glorious collaborative live record with legendary jazz musician Wadada Leo Smith, To Be Surrounded By Beautiful, Curious, Breathing, Laughing Flesh Is Enough, recorded last year. Its title alone, taken from Walt Whitman’s I Sing The Body Electric is enough to make you long for that feeling. Then there’s the music itself. The first half is Deerhoof on fearsome form as they rattle through their usual tempestuously euphoric live set. Then, Smith joins the fray, adding rich, pummelling trumpet that rises to match the band’s inherent chaos, duelling wildly with the band’s thundering drums and feral guitars. It’s as exciting as live albums get.Deerhoof Wadada Leo SmithTo Be Surrounded By Beautiful, Curious, Breathing, Laughing Flesh Is EnoughMoserobie
46.
After whetting our appetites with the first official re-issue of Mort Garson’s beautiful Plantasia last year, Sacred Bones Records really delivered the motherlode in 2020 with no less than four exquisite editions of the Canadian synth pioneer’s music. Frankly, any one of them could have been put here and we’ve chosen Patch Cord Productions as something of a stand-in for the whole Garson re-issue project. Garson was a session musician and jobbing arranger who worked with Doris Day and Mel Tormé, but in 1967 he met Bob Moog and the synthesiser proved the perfect outlet for some of Garson’s more outré tastes and interests, from astrology to black masses to porn soundtracks. Like Raymond Scott’s Manhattan Research Inc. comp, this is a collection of offcuts and oddities, all gurgling triangle waves and wild white noise swooshes. A slithery, sensual pleasure from start to finish.Mort GarsonMusic From Patch Cord ProductionsSacred Bones
45.
On Mouse On Mars member Jan St. Werner’s latest record, the ghost of the late Mark E. Smith escapes Hades and materialises in St. Werner’s studio as that hobgoblin on the cover of the ‘City Hobgoblins’ single. Though the album finds St. Werner re-editing a set of songs that were originally recorded in 2014 at the Cornerhouse, Manchester, in the guise of a multi-channel installation (as well as unreleased new material partly written around that same time), it’s nigh impossible to not hear the album as a voodoo ritual calling to Smith beyond the grave, demanding he make his physical presence, his voice, and his words known once more.Jan St. WernerMolocular MeditationEditions Mego
44.
Donato Dozzy has been playing drum & bass for some years now, but his affinity for the genre seems to have reached new heights in recent years, as evidenced by recorded DJ sets from Italy’s Terraforma festival and as part of Resident Advisor’s 2018 Alternate Cuts event series, as well as by a remix he did for Homemade Weapons on the Samurai Music label last year. In 2020, he returned to Samurai for a full D&B EP and crowned it with this mix for the label’s podcast series. Across just shy of 45 minutes, the Italian maestro weaves through several hypnotic 85/170 BPM cuts, each blend pulling you deeper and deeper into the kind of wormhole that he’s known to so deftly concoct playing the deep techno his name has come to be synonymous with over the last decade and more.Donato DozzySamurai Music Podcast 46Not On Label
43.
The fruitful pairing of Australian minimalist pugilists My Disco and Karl O’Connor’s Downwards Records continues with this remix record of their austere 2019 record Environment. The MD palette – heavy bass drops, noise, Liam Andrews’ deadbeat vocals – lends itself well to these excellent retoolings by the likes of Giant Swan, Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement and Oliver Ho. Joyously dour.My DiscoEnvironment RemixesNice Music
42.
When I saw Arnold Dreyblatt at Belgium’s Meakusma Festival last year, I described the gig as resembling “ZZ Top covering the Theatre of Eternal Music,” a pulsing, hard-rockin’ minimalist hoedown composed of double bass harmonics and country-rock drums. But this – a set of 1990s recordings repackaged by the always-excellent Black Truffle – is something else. The six cuts featured here, see Dreyblatt in composer-producer mode, sitting back and conducting the band rather than digging in with his piano-wire-strung bass. At times it sounds like a hoedown directed by Philip Glass; other moments could be Arthur Russell let loose after dark in a museum of mechanical automata. Throughout it remains propulsive, compulsive listening. Cosmic leaning and richly conceptual, but still somehow kinda fun.Arnold DreyblattStar TrapBlack Truffle
41.
Dubiny began as a local band in the north eastern Polish village of the same name, led by a local folk musician from the area’s Belarusian minority called Piotr Skiepko, who had begun to experiment with self-made instruments. He blended the disco, rock, proto-electronica and psychedelia that was rising in Poland at the time, with the traditional, mainly accordion-led music of Belarus, to create a remarkable new sound that fast became a hit at weddings and public festivities across the region. At a time where Belarusians suffered stigmatisation in the region, by performing to both his own people and Poles, Skiepko broke political boundaries, as well as musical ones. His bold, yet playful spirit is represented lovingly on this unique compilation.DubinyVianie Ruta 1982​-​1988Modernizations 1000HZ
40.
New York DJ Hank Jackson’s entry to the always brilliant Truancy mix series (courtesy of the Truants blog) is a trip through all kinds of exciting current club sounds. Opening on a dubbed-out roller from the Bokeh Versions label, he progresses into driving percussion workouts (Superficie, NA DJ X Crazy Design), all-out bassbin rattlers (Cocktail Party Effect) and menacing electro (Microthol, Dynarec), amongst numerous other diversions. The mix’s highlight has to be the moment that the 2-step UKG rhythms of Allstars’ grin-inducing classic ‘Walk On By’ effortlessly float in from the preceding track at around the 29-minute mark.
