Quietus Reissues Etc. Of The Year 2020 (In Association With Norman Records)

19.

LaksaCrack Mix 341Not On Label

Two very fine records for Hessle Audio and Timedance weren’t all Laksa had to offer in 2020. His contribution to Crack’s mix series is a high-intensity ride through dancehall, dizzying polyrhythms, reggaeton, UK techno, D&B, and a hell of a lot more. Loaded with numerous tempo shifts, there’s a surprise or, put simply, another huge banger at every turn.

Christian Eede

Various ArtistsPlanetMµ25Planet Mu

Mike Paradinas’ always forward facing Planet Mu label has just turned 25 and is celebrating with this compilation of 15 (relatively) hearty party bangers. RP Boo’s up for it ‘Finally Here’ develops from stuttering juke jam into a squelchy acid electro banger that cheekily interpolates Class Action’s ‘Weekend’, while Skee Mask brings lush synthetic chamber symphonics to his remix of Konx Om Pax’s ‘Rez’. By the time you’ve got through other dance floor manglers by East Man, Meemo Comma and Rian Treanor, you’ll be wanting to present them with a cake bearing 25 candles and wishing them all the best for the next quarter of a century.

John Doran

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17.

Charles CurtisPerformances & Recordings 1998 – 2018Saltern

A ‘best of’ (of sorts) collecting performances by the American cellist Charles Curtis on Tashi Wada’s Saltern Records. I wish there were more collections like this. It opens with one of Eliane Radigue’s Occam pieces (she only allows certain people to play her music) and includes a mix of early music by Tobias Hume, classical pieces by Messiaen and avant-garde compositions. Alison Knowles and Terry Jennings (who was an early TEM member). Many are minimal and grounded in the instrument’s body or material construction. The Alison Knowles piece consists of a beating of the body of the instrument that moves on to the strings. Curtis’s own pieces have the sort of instrumental drift of Gastr Del Sol – nonchalant guitars and brushes on snares. It is a salve.

Jennifer Lucy Allan

FLEE ProjectTarantismo: Odyssey Of An Italian RitualFlee

This gloriously odd record leads you to many discoveries. The opening tracks on the release are six recordings from the 1950s of an ancient folk music and dance ritual that was employed to cure Tarantismo; a psychological condition characterised by an extreme sometimes deadly impulse to dance, believed to be caused by the bite of a tarantula. The second half consists of modern interpretations. Tarantismo was found mainly in southern Italy – around the Greek colony of Taranta – during the mediaeval and the early modern periods. And, given the times, it seems the dance cure took the form of an exorcism. In more recent years this form of music based round creating long and fast rhythmic passages has developed and is used in therapy for patients with certain forms of depression and hysteria. The effects of the music on the endocrine system (your glands in other words) is now an object of serious research.

Richard Foster

Maxx MannMaxx MannDark Entries

High on the list of historical tragedies inflicted on African-Americans’ cultural history is the impact of the 1980s AIDS crisis. In the discos of New York, queer black men were able to find a place of sexual and social liberation just as they invented much of the electronic music many take for granted today. This fierce, proud scene was decimated by HIV/AIDS, a disease that continues to disproportionately impact African-Americans – according to research published in 2018, they accounted for 42% of new cases of HIV/AIDS. Maxx Mann’s debut album, reissued by the Dark Entries label, is one of the finest and most important archival releases of recent years, carrying in its smooth electro jams, not only a ribald sexuality, but also a poignancy – a multi-racial group, founder member Paul Hamman died of AIDS, while Frank Oldham Jr worked in AIDS advocacy charities

Luke Turner

Miles DavisDouble Image: Rare Miles From The Complete Bitches Brew SessionsLegacy

“Bitches Brew is my favourite Miles Davis album. It has been around for most of my life and I’ve been around people who have record collections and that’s the record that if there is any jazz at all, that’s it. If you like Black Sabbath then there’s a good chance that might be your one jazz record if you’ve got one. So it’s supposed to be cool. I first heard it when I was ten. I was like, ‘What’s this shit? I hate this. The songs go on for 20 minutes.’ If you can pick between Led Zeppelin and Miles Davis when you’re ten you’ll pick Led Zep, right? Then when I was like 20 I would go, ‘Ah no! I don’t get it. It just feels like it’s going to go on forever.’ Then about ten years ago I heard it and thought: ‘Ah . . .'”

Wayne Coyne of Flaming Lips

Alabaster DePlumeTo Cy & Lee: Instrumentals Vol. 1International Anthem

For the most part, To Cy & Lee consists of music lifted from across Alabaster DePlume’s last four studio albums, with two new compositions called ‘What’s Missing’ and ‘If You’re Sure You Want To’, recorded by DePlume and a one-off band consisting of Sarathy Korwar, Donna Thompson, James Howard, The Comet Is Coming’s Dan ‘Danalogue’ Leavers and Snapped Ankles’ Chestnutt. The music is gorgeous and soothing, intimate and direct. Between sweet and affecting melodies you can hear the sounds of fingers clicking on keys, buried voices counting time in the distance. Taking away the mercurial, frenetic vocals that appear on his other albums makes the music’s more directly emotional and calming qualities “easier to digest,” as he puts it, which is the point of the release. “People have said this to me: ‘I put your music on, and it was perfect, but then you started shouting something about a pig. Can’t it just be the nice bits?’ Sometimes I think, well, that’s fair enough! One of the things I wanted to do with this album is to make more people welcome.”

Patrick Clarke

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12.

Entourage Music Theatre EnsembleThe Neptune CollectionFolkways

Throughout The Neptune Collection‘s nine cuts, sweet folk melodies carried by taught woodwind, piano, guitars, and percussion licks appear not as main compositional themes, but almost as happy accidents of an experimental and free practice. As Clark’s collective entertained an inter- and multimedial combination of theatre, dance, poetry, and music, the record’s makeup was shaped into a similarly heterogenous form. Texturally and structurally rich like an ambient fresco. Painted with an elegant amalgam of Celtic dances, free jazz freakouts, klezmer’s joyful laments, and Balearic meditations. Haunted by an overwhelming sense of existing at the end of a summer that was never supposed to end. Anachronistic, yet perfectly preserved in amber tones.

Antonio Poscic

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11.

Lennie TristanoThe Duo SessionsDot Time Legends

I’m going to come clean and admit that before this album landed in my inbox this March, I had scarcely listened to a note of Lennie Tristano and knew little of his backstory. But for whatever reason I’ve found myself reaching for these sixteen cuts more than almost any others this past nine months. Perhaps it’s simply because it sounds so little like 2020 that it seems to immediately transport me to another time – and, let’s face it, who hasn’t wanted to be transported to another time this past nine months? But these late ’60s/’70s sessions with regular Tristano collaborators Lenny Popkin, Connie Crothers, and Roger Mancuso are also a quiet masterclass in unforced instrumental dialogue, each player weaving woozily around the other like a detective and a murderer in a tightly-plotted noir. Time was, if you needed music for your B-picture thriller you would either go with a small jazz group or an astringent Schoenbergian exercise in atonality. With Tristano, you get both.

Robert Barry

Sharhabil AhmedThe King Of Sudanese JazzHabibi Funk

The King Of Sudanese Jazz a record that fizzes and cracks with electricity and energy, dominated by the musician’s extraordinarily charismatic vocal presence. Rather than straight-up jazz as it is known in the UK, the music is a mix of rock ‘n’ roll, funk and samba, as well as established Sudanese music. Habibi Funk first included its opener ‘Argos Farfish’, a blasting joy of a song, on their 2017 compilation An Eclectic Selection Of Music From The Arab World. Around the same time, their sister label was working with a Sudanese MC called Zen-Zin, who happened to live next door to Ahmed’s son Mohamed, himself a musician. On their behalf, Mohamed asked his father what he thought of remastering and re-releasing some of his best tracks, and after years spent searching for recordings in high enough quality, they emerged with one of the compilations of the year, yet one that still only scratches the surface of a remarkably storied career.

Patrick Clarke

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9.

ObjektBBC Radio 1’s Essential MixNot On Label

Every new mix from Objekt is a treat. Whether he’s whizzing through an hour of ‘no-kick rollers’, as he did in 2018 on his entry to the Resident Advisor mix series, or using polyrhythms to seamlessly shift from techno to D&B, as on his 2017 Dekmantel podcast, you can always guarantee there will be a fair share of head-spinning blends and selections. That’s why, even as we were burrowed deep into lockdown and clubs were a distant memory when his Essential Mix for BBC Radio 1 was first aired earlier this year, this mix became a frequent listen. Opening with a selection of sub-100 BPM ‘techno dancehall’ cuts, the mix soon picks up the pace at the 15-minute mark and doesn’t look back for the remainder, moving through classic techno (Renegade Soundwave, Surgeon, Bandulu remixing Slowdive), mutant club music (BADSISTA, Rhyw, Nan Kolè & DJ Tess, Réelle), speedy acid and electro (Ceephax Acid Crew, Odd Lust, Radioactive Man), and jungle and D&B (dgoHn, The Criminal Minds, Donato Dozzy remixing Homemade Weapons). Perhaps the biggest treat of all though is the final 10 minutes of all-out breakcore and gabber – hearing Pete Tong pleasantly outro the show over a near-200 BPM speedcore track is something you don’t hear often. Now if only we could get a version without the Radio 1 idents.

Christian Eede

Ashtray NavigationsGreatest Imaginary HitsVHF

For Imaginary Hits, a massive 4xCD and 1xLP collection, Henry Rollins himself has lent a hand in determining just what constitutes an AshNav “hit,” assembling one disc of the collection; connoisseurs Peter Coward and Rob Hayler, along with fellow traveler Neil Campbell (of Vibracathedral Orchestra/Astral Social Club), picked their favourites for the other three. This selection method makes for intriguing juxtapositions: with such a massive body of work at hand, it only stands to reason that these four would come up with a version of Todd’s work which most reflects their own idées fixe, be it Coward’s taste for airplane hangar whoosh and clangour or Rollins’ ear for screaming guitar splooge.

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Dustin Krcatovich

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7.

Various ArtistsMaghreb K7 Club: Synth Raï, Chaoui & Staifi 1985 – 1997Sofa Records / Les Disques Bongo Joe

This is a terrific, compact compilation featuring artists with origins from across the Maghreb but based in Lyon. That degraded but punchy sound is one aspect of these recordings’ appeal, as well as the feeling of picking up a hidden gem from a market stall, but these rich pickings: the clip-clopping percussion and distorted vocals on Zaïdi El Batni’s ‘Malik y a Malik’, the sprightly drum machine funk of Nordine Staifi’s ‘Zine Ezzinet’ and Mokhtar Mezhoud’s dreamy, spacious ‘Rahoum Yegoulou Sabirine’ (the most recent tune here). Throughout there’s evidence of the musicians assimilating French pop trends, although sometimes belatedly – Salah El Annabi’s ‘Hata Fi Annaba’ is from 1993 but cops the tune from ‘Oxygène IV’ by fellow Lyonnais Jean-Michel Jarre.

David McKenna

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6.

These New PuritansHidden [MMXX]Domino

To mark the dawning of a new decade, These New Puritans resurfaced with a masterpiece. Hidden is a questing, post-everything collage piece that largely eschews guitars in favour of pummelling beats, brooding electronics and the ominous chanting of a children’s choir. At every turn, Hidden wrong-foots the listener. Continuity comes solely from its unwavering magnificence.

Niall O’Keefe

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5.

Various ArtistsSharpen, MovingTimedance

Timedance, the Bristol-based label founded and run by Batu, turned five in 2020, and while circumstances may have hampered some of its big anniversary plans (only a handful of celebratory parties were able to take place earlier in the year and the inaugural edition of Batu’s En Masse festival was postponed), it’s safe to say that it certainly didn’t sting the musical output. Characteristically intricate sound design and simultaneously head-spinning and functional rhythms were the order of the day on EPs from label regulars Laksa, Lurka and Metrist. Capping the year though, Sharpen, Moving introduced some new faces to the label. A relative veteran of electronic music, Peter Van Hoesen explores speedy, broken techno on ‘L9T’, Mang & GRAŃ (affiliates of Shanghai’s Genome666mbp collective) take a more pummeling, deconstructed direction on ‘Live4evr’, and Happa opts for hulking dubstep-adjacent drums on ’15Three’. Established Timedance figures such as Bruce, Ploy and, of course, Batu (whose ‘SYX’ is a compilation highlight) also feature in a release that sees Timedance continue to break out from the localised ‘Bristol techno’ of its origins.

Christian Eede

Oneness of JujuAfrican Rhythms 1970 – 1982Strut

Known by many different names across their decades-long career with a constantly shifting line-up, but always under the captainship of Plunky J. Branch, Oneness Of Juju boast one of the most imperious discographies in modern jazz. This enormous triple LP, a reissue of a record first put out in 2002 to capitalise on a resurge in popularity spurred by the likes of J Dilla, accounts for just part of it, but is nevertheless an essential document. It doesn’t just compile the best of Branch’s music, but frames it in the wider musical and activist movements he was a key part of; the FBI kept a file on him for years, and he was a mentee of famed South African exile musician Ndikho Xaba. Running from the powerful semi-improvisations, funk and afrobeat tracks they put out for the legendary D.C. jazz label Black Fire in the early 1970s, all the way through to their 80s minor club hit ‘Every Way But Loose’, this is a comprehensive and vital collection.

Patrick Clarke

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3.

Richard DawsonRepublic Of GeordielandSelf-Released

Despite the obstacles, Richard Dawson has had a prolific 2020. With Sally Pilkington, Rhodri Davies and Dawn Bothwell he put out the fantastic new Hen Ogledd album Free Humans, and his Bulbils project with Pilkington released fifty quite lovely lo-fi mini-albums. Then, there’s Republic Of Geordieland. Dawson says he always used to imagine the title going with “some grand overblown quadruple-vinyl prog-folk opera or suchlike,” but instead it heads up a smattering of disparate demos and standalone recordings from across his career, released in an effort to counter lockdown anxiety. Some of the tracks will be familiar to fans, the powerful a capella tracks ‘Felon’ and ‘Almsgiver’ he recorded for the film This Liberty about Hexham Old Gaol, for example, which have been fixtures of live sets over the last few years. Others are a little rarer, like the staggering brass-led instrumental ‘A Very Fine Horse’, or the slender acoustic guitar track ‘Heart Beats Slowly’, composed for plays by Kate Craddock and Steve Gilroy respectively. Then there are the weirder, but equally wonderful lo-fi tracks Dawson’s recorded during lockdown, the lopsided and labyrinthine 15-minute guitar-and-drum-machine headspinner ‘The Minotaur Of Cornwall’, for example, or the tribute to the anti-racist motto of his native Newcastle, ‘We Are Black And White’. “Frankly, it’s a dog’s dinner. But a dog’s dinner may still offer some nourishment!” Dawson says. We think he’s underselling it somewhat. This collection is a disparate delight.

Patrick Clarke

Patrick CowleySome FunkettesDark Entries

All credit to the Dark Entries label for continuing to maintain the quality of their ongoing exploration of the Patrick Cowley archive. We’ve had the porn soundtracks, the beautifully written and rather hot journals, and now this superb collection of covers that give significant insight into what shaped Cowley’s musical world. Versions of tracks by The Temptations and Herbie Hancock have a loose, carefree feeling that seems to allow the producer himself into the music – you can imagine him putting this together, bobbing in the studio, on some bright west coast afternoon. An early version of his take on Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’ is here, of course, and listening to it is something of a goosebumps experience – like lifting the lid on a portal to musical history being made, yes, but also the soundtrack to queer liberation.

Luke Turner

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1.

AYAtoo oh won neinSelf-Released

Ever wanted to hear Caterina Barbieri’s gorgeous synth tracks overlayed with a big fat gabber beat? Ever wondered what Oneohtrix Point Never and LTJ Bukem might sound like on one tune? Ever wanted to hear Shawn Mendes over Flux Pavilion’s tearout dubstep wobbles? Well, AYA’s got you covered with this mind-boggling collection of cheeky bootlegs and edits. Luck may not have looked down on us in 2020, but we are blessed at least to have AYA continually reminding us of how chaotically fun dance music can and should be.

Christian Eede