Our album of the year 2019 is Kali Malone’s 'The Sacrificial Code’ - a major work featuring almost two hours of concentrated, creeping organ pieces. 'The Sacrificial Code' provided us with precious mental refuge just as the world started to spin out of control around us. It's an album that somehow slowed everything down, allowing us to take notice of every slight movement, as if every minute shift in sound became magnified through stillness.
Sonic shapeshifter Jim O’Rourke yields 4 hours of engrossing, kaleidoscopic recordings from the Steamroom circa 2017-2018 in one of his most significant outings for years. Bringing everyone up to date with O’Rourke’s actions out in Japan, where he’s been stationed for a good few years, ‘to magnetize money and catch a roving eye’ operates under a title as curiously evocative as the music within.
Angel Bat Dawid is an enigma; her debut album 'The Oracle’ (released earlier this year on tape) is a total anomaly. Dawid recorded, overdubbed and mixed the album on her own after a brain tumor diagnosis disrupted her music studies, she plays every instrument you hear (except for some drums), appears on the cover and produced every flawless twist and turn you’ll find inside.
‘Morton Feldman Piano’ is a major 5CD collection of virtually all of Feldman’s music for piano, performed by Philip Thomas with a tactility befitting of this extraordinary, quiet, intimate music. It’s the most extensive survey of Feldman’s piano music since John Tilbury’s long unavailable 4-CD set was released 20 years ago, including several pieces which weren’t included there, and three works which have never been released on disc before at all.
The unmissable, head-twisting debut LP by Cairo's 1127 returns on a special one-off clear vinyl pressing for those who missed its shockwaves for the first time back in summer 2019, now including a bonus tape of previously unreleased, utterly crushing material from his 2016-2019 archive. Huge recommendation if you're into Autechre, Arca, Crowww, Rabit.
Having been auspiciously cued for a Valentine’s Day release, King Midas Sound's ‘Solitude’ is a meditation on loss, an elegy to extinguished romance and love in the endtimes.
This Instant classic solo debut of smoky vocal introspection and 808 heartbeats by Jonnine Standish (HTRK) really did stick in our head like nothing else in 2019. Featuring co-production from Nathan Corbin and guest input by Nigel Yang (HTRK), Conrad Standish (CS + Kreme), and Mona Ruijs, it's a properly stunning EP that comes with a massive recommendation if yr feeling Chromatics, Leslie Winer, HTRK...
Tapping a sublime vein of purely vocal improv inspired by local landscape, history and people, Norfolk’s Laura Cannell and Polly Wright quietly blow us away with their debut collaboration. Remarkably conceived, recorded and released in 2019 - the same year they first met - ‘Sing as the Crow Flies’ is a super-natural meeting of mutual souls seeking to limn a sort of deep topographical reading of their home turf in a series of haunting, near-wordless hymns.
Brilliantly loose-limbed, inspirational solo debut album from Kim Gordon after four decades fronting myriad projects, most notably Sonic Youth, but also with numerous collaborators including Tony Conrad, Ikue Mori, Julie Cafritz, Stephen Malkmus and most recently with Bill Nace as one half of Body/Head.
‘Lifetime’ is the debut album proper by visionary collagist/producer/vocalist Klein, following from 2016’s head-spinning introduction made with ‘Only’. Recorded by Klein over the past 18 months and issued on her own label, inj inc., the album renders her mosaic of ideas taken from Gospel composer James Cleveland to film pioneer Spencer Williams and 18th C. tonalities in dreamlike 3D, and elevates her form of abstract, contemporary spirituality to quietly jaw-slapping degrees.
Sähkö are keeping schtum about this ace enigma from “an experimental artist willing to stay anonymous on this project”, although they do mention a likeness to Nurse With Wound, Hafler Trio, Zoviet*France… Presented under the low key moniker, …, ‘No Title’ sounds like a night in an abandoned wooden cabin in the arctic circle with CM Von Hausswolff, and only a reel to reel and a broken radio for company.
Jessica Pratt’s exceedingly strange, seemingly sped up but ultimately completely immersive vocals are in haunting/beguiling effect on her 3rd album following an eponymous 2012 debut and ‘On Your Own Love Again’ [Drag City, 2015]. You’re either going to think the engineer is taking the piss or you’ll fall heavy under her spell - count us firnly under the latter....
An amazing slab from Glasgow’s fecund subterrain, ‘The Funnel’ is Wojciech Rusin’s debut razz of field recordings and choral composition riddled with rug-pulling edits and keeling turns of phrases - arguably a spiritual parallel to László Hortobágyi, Black Zone Myth Chant, Jani Christou, Él-G A big clue to the cryptic chicanery of ‘The Funnel’ is the fact that Wojciech Rusin builds his own instruments, which accounts for some degree of the odd tonalities at work.
The label behind Dominique Lawalree’s much-adored compilation pick out a real abstract beauty by cellist Leila Bordreuil for their 4th release, coming off like some dream meeting of Anne Guthrie and Kevin Drumm as overseen by Eliane Radigue.
Carla dal Forno’s keenly anticipated 2nd album pays dividends on the promise of her debut, returning a gorgeous, stately suite of chamber pop that certifies her among the most vital songwriters in her field. Tipped to fans of Nico, HTRK, CS + Kreme, Dome, Julee Cruise... Forming an exquisitely pruned bouquet of midnight wildflowers, ‘Look Up Sharp’ makes the shrugging pop of Carla’s debut LP ‘You Know What It’s Like’ [2016] feel almost naif by comparison.
Cult Detroit DJ/producer Howard Thomas aka H-Fusion supplies a crackshot debut album of psycho-jit-jazz and rugged raw house on The Death of Rave following his secret weapon 12”s and trax for Sound Signature, Transmat and Fit between 2005-2012.
It’s been 20 years since we heard Smog’s ’Spanish Moss’ for the first time and every Bill Callahan record since has f#cked us up. This is his first new one in years and is quite possibly his best. Supremely beautiful music... "As you listen to ‘Shepherd In A Sheepskin Vest’, a feeling of totality, of completeness, steals over you, like a thief in broad daylight. Of course it does - you’re listening to a new Bill Callahan record. The first one in almost six years.
One of the year’s more unexpected collaborations, legendary singer songwriter Mark Lanegan and Ecstatic maverick Alessio Natalizia, aka Not Waving, hook up for this timeless, modernist fusion of barrel-aged narratives and diverse, experimental backdrops that reminds us of everything from Scott Walker to Conny Plank & Moebius, from Christof Kurzmann to David Sylvian.
One of 2019’s standout albums is now available on vinyl for the first time; the solo debut by Mecca-based Msylma is a compelling coming-of-age tale sung in classical Arabic and set to stark, mystic electronic production by Zuli, 1127 and the artist himself for Rabit’s often pioneering Halcyon Veil label.
Shelter Press cap 2019 with a steeply hypnotic, four hour long immersion into the liminal boundaries of Ben Vida’s digital and analog synthesis - one of the most immersive and moving releases we’ve heard this year and an unmissable trip for followers of Eliane Radigue, Dennis Johnson, La Monte Young, Morton Feldman or anyone who fell deep into Jim O’Rourke’s recent, similarly epic 'To Magnetize Money And Catch A Roving Eye’ set.
The stunning next instalment in PAN’s Entopia series is an audio document of Anne Imhof’s acclaimed ‘Faust’ performance at the German Pavilion of the 2017 Venice Biennale - awarded the Golden Lion for Best National Participation.
Caterina Barbieri somehow recalls both Laurie Spiegel and Lorenzo Senni on her staggering debut album for Editions Mego, with ‘Ecstatic Computation’ yielding her most striking and accessible experiments in pointedly explorative synthesis Working at the point where deep, learned R&D meets sophisticated expression of soul, ‘Ecstatic Computation’ is one of those rare LP's that comes close to divining the ghost in the machine.
Greg Anderson & Stephen O’Malley’s Sunn 0))) mark 20 years of shaking our foundations with ‘Life Metal’, their 8th studio album and first all analog recording, engineered by none other than Steve Albini. Under a title that pricks trve metal seriousness (it’s an inside joke about Norwegian metal “sellouts”), ‘Life Metal’ is offered as the closest possible representation of the band’s staggering live prowess.
Nkisi rolls out a modern classic with ‘7 Directions’ for UIQ. A masterful debut album informed by African Cosmology and Congolese rhythms, it’s aesthetically comparable with music ranging from Autechre's ‘Incunabula’ to The Connection Machine’s ‘Painless’ and Lee Gamble's hyperprisms, but ultimately it’s peerless in the (hyper)modern field...
DJ Nigga Fox’s most substantial release to date sets a new benchmark for Lisbon’s revered underground ghetto dance scene, pulling traces of jazz, acid house and cinematic sound design into his deeply rugged and exceptional sound with effortless style...
Andy Stott’s first release since 2016 and first EP since 2011, ‘It Should Be Us’ is a double EP of slow and raw productions for the club, recorded this year and following on from a series of EP’s that started with ‘Passed Me By’ and ‘We Stay Together’ early this decade. Recorded fast and loose over the summer, these 9 tracks (8 on the vinyl) harness a pure and bare-boned energy, melodies subsumed by drum machines and synths; slow, rugged abandon.
One of the most inventive, well produced, original and hard-hitting records of the year. There are echoes of The Fall, Can and Sonic Youth but wrapped in something new. F#cking bravo. “In many ways the idea behind the album was to make an audio representation of the house.” And this enigmatic manor becomes Girl Band’s sonic playground: to place yourself within a space and to work with that space harmoniously.
Sarah Davachi’s ‘Pale Bloom’ sees the preternaturally gifted composer return to her first instrument, the piano, with ineffably graceful results that incorporate vocals to spine-chilling effect. Served in the wake of a series of albums where Sarah tested her improv mettle on everything from pipe and reed organs to analog synths - garnering a cult following in the process - her first album of 2019 confirms a versatile and bountifully prolific artist at work.
The GRM’s artistic director and Sunn O)))’s force of nature evoke vast shadowlands and illuminated cave systems in the premiere of their masterful duo recordings, rendering stunning, panoramic desert scenes filmed at dusk. It sounds like a more muted, introspective take on Neil Young’s 'Dead Man’ OST, via Bohren & Der Club of Gore after the jazz lights have gone out.
Formidable dark ambient se’er Deathprod returns like a rare comet with the keeling “anti-fascist ritual” of ‘Occulting Disk’ - his first solo album in over 15 years - offering a life-affirming warning to the power of negative energy. Proceeding 2004’s canonical classic ‘Morals And Dogma’, the Norwegian sound design auteur here gathers his uniquely dematerialised productions made in Oslo, Cologne, and L.A. between 2012-2019 under the auspices of an “anti-fascist ritual.
‘Dropped Out Sunshine’ is Madteo’s debut album of trigger-happy club graffiti for Demdike Stare’s DDS label, weighing in a keenly anticipated follow-up to 2012’s cult-classic ‘Noi No’ LP for Sähkö with a freestyle jack of mutant house, scorched rap, ragga-tekno-steppers, and poignant shoegaze ambient. For our money, it's a straight-up masterpiece of loose-limbed club gear, especially recommended if yr into Andy Stott, Joy O, Mica Levi, Moodymann...!!!
DJ Plead’s hugely in-demand battery ‘Pleats Plead’ is now available to download Bringing her best Mahraganat drums to the table in a signature style lying between OG oingy boingy dubstep, Electro Chaabi and brokebeat techno, Plead stuffs the EP with devilish dancefloor rhythms thru the darting, syncopated drums and flutes of ‘Baharat’, the gremlinoid chatter of ‘Salt and Pepper’, the deeper D&B-like touches of ’Shoulder Pop’, and her restless roller ‘Crush and Burn’. Drums for days!
A cult star of the UK underground, Yeah You’s Elvin Brandhi strikes solo in stunning fashion with ’Shelf Life’ for C.A.N.V.A.S., hot on the heels of their wide-scoped ‘Cipher’ compilation.
This is f×cking amazing - a second volume of desolate, ambient themes from David Lynch’s sound designer and mixer of choice Dean Hurley, one of those behind-the-scenes guys whose work most subtly colours the popular imagination. If you’re into anything from Deathprod to Badalamenti to Mica Levi’s 'Under the Skin’, the more ascetic end of work from Leyland Kirby / The Caretaker, or Aphex Twin’s ’Selected Ambient Works Vol II” - this will rule your world.
More of the drum, the whole drum, and nowt but the drum from Andrew Field-Pickering’s Dolo Percussion - packing four new hotshots alongside all cuts from his preceding trio of 12”s Holding 16 shots of rhythmic heat in total, ‘Dolo 4’ is the project’s definitive release following from a highly sought-after L.I.E.S. debut and further volumes divvied between his Future Times and The Trilogy Tapes, which are all coveted by righteous DJs and dancers.
From the crucible of Lisbon’s renowned club scene, DJ Firmeza fulminates four cuts of roiling Batida rhythm and free-spirited vocals in a kuduro (hard-ass) style for his return to the indomitable Príncipe. This one's murder!! Leading on from his 2015 solo debut 12” and numerous international DJ forays, Firmeza’s ‘Ardeu’ sees him inject devilish detail into his productions at no expense to his signature, stripped-down suss.
Eminent avant-garde/experimental explorer Oren Ambarchi opens a rewarding new avenue to embrace the warmth and mystic psychedelia of Brazilian music with assistance from celebrated percussionist and Downtown luminary Cyro Baptista. Arriving just after Ambarchi’s 50th birthday, and Black Truffle's 10th, ‘Simian Angel’ sees him yoke back from the forward tilt of his rhythm-driven outings over the past decade in order to focus on his electric guitar playing, with utterly sublime results.
Avant-garde composer and student of La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela and Jung Hee Choi, Ellen Arkbro renders sustained and harmonically opaque chords on her stunning second solo album for Subtext.
Frighteningly beautiful, piercingly emotive strings, keys and vocals from the Glaswegian bard and his barcelona foil, revolving some of Youngs’ most direct songwriting since 1998’s ‘Sapphie’ classic.
Bringing to a close a series which has frankly altered the way we listen to and perceive sound and music over the course of this decade, Jakob Ullmann seals his important Fremde Zeit series with ‘Solo V for Klavier’; a fascinatingly stark and spectral hour-long finale that sets the idea of ‘Foreign Time’ in its most minimalist and broadest setting.
Luke Younger yields his most engrossing work as Helm with the sorely romantic dynamics of ‘Chemical Flowers’, his follow-up to 2015’s ‘Olympic Mess’. Bolstered by J.G. Thirlwell’s rich string arrangements, it’s a hugely ambitious work that extends from whirling, panoramic vistas to insular, pulsing dynamics, somewhere between Earth, Oren Ambarchi, Keiji Haino and Actress.
The first in a series of exclusive editions of releases we've loved in 2019 comes from Indonesian nutters and notorious live act Gabber Modus Operandi. Their debut album for Shanghai’s maverick Sbvkvlt kru despatched eight hooligan alloys of heavy metal, militant Dutch kick drums and native styles of gamelan and Dangdut Koplo - local folk-pop - for a totally unique proposition no matter what angle you’re coming from.
‘Songs Without Throats’ is a large dose of zany brilliance from Paul DeMarinis - a Robert Ashley collaborator and member of The League of Automatic Composers - featuring work exclusively selected and compiled for Oren Ambarchi’s leading edge label, Black Truffle Paul DeMarinis is a graduate of the famous Mills College, where he studied composition with Robert Ashley and Terry Riley, leading to his formative role in the world’s first computer “band” - The League of Automatic Composers with
‘Meme Booth’ is a 100% must-check volley of algorithmic dance trax from Kindohm, returning as Conditional’s secret weapon with a tape follow-up to his 2016 vinyl LP - both big looks for fans of Rian Treanor, Gábor Lázár, Mark Fell, Beatrice Dillon, Rennick Bell! Bossing our reflexes right now, ‘Meme Booth’ is a keenly playful taste of the future from internet recluse and Minnesota, USA resident Mike Hodnick aka Kindohm.
Shanghai’s Svbkvlt spring a killer new batch of martial steppers and pointillist ‘tronics by 33emybw to chase her blink ’n miss vinyl pressing of the ‘Golem’ LP - backed with remixes by Lechuga Zafiro, Ikonika, and Hakuna Kulala’s Don Zilla Issued to coincide with its live premiere at Poland’s Unsound festival, ‘Arthropods’ manifests as the alien spirit twin of the soul-seeking creatures 33emybw brought to (semi)life in the ‘Golem’ album.
Morphine usher a crushing suite of organ music made with an abandoned Saxon pipe organ discovered in Transylvania, Romania - a strong look for fans of Kali Malone, Anna Von Hausswolff, Ellen Arkbro... ‘Quellgeister #3, Bussd’ is the 3rd instalment of Austrian composer Stefan Fraunberger’s ongoing research into the influence of nature on culture, and how it “touches on time, periphery, memory, and transience.
‘The Practice of Love’ is the 5th solo album peach by Jenny Hval, one of the strongest avant/pop artists to emerge this decade, and certainly one of the most striking to emerge from Norway. Conceived as an interdisciplinary piece for Oslo’s Ultima festival, ‘The Practice of Love’ investigates the link between life and art in a specific way that Hval terms “an umbilical magic”, or essentially the empathy of collective creation.
Exceptionally skewed, killer and asymmetric dancehall mutations from the same label that gave us that amazing Paradon’t EP a couple of years back, this one sounding like the missing link between Demdike Stare, Schaffel and Slikback 🔥 "'No idea how to categorise this! I would have called it experimental dancehall but irel.ier who made it says it’s not! Besides i don’t care how you call it - it bangs!
Class debut from Philly’s DJ Haram - fusing Arabic percussion and instrumentation with bass pressure for Hyperdub. Like a spartan echo of Mutamassik’s early ‘00s meeting of Egyptian breaks and rugged hip hop, DJ Haram finds a wickedly gritty friction and traction from a mixtures of sharp electronics and a dead canny sample palette that distinguishes her music from the crowd.
Nobody does timeless yet modern ennui quite like HTRK. On their 4th album proper the duo trustingly cup your heart in a cats cradle of crepuscular rhythms & valium blues, all riddled with Jonnine Standish's ear worming mantras and Nigel Yang’s heat haze guitar shimmers.
Award-winning Iranian percussionist Mohammad Reza Mortazavi describes the rhythm of eternity or ‘Ritme Jaavdanegi’ in eight transfixing ways on his first vinyl album, following 12”s with Padre Himalaya and Burnt Friedman’s Nonplace in recent years.
Sound poet and multidisciplinary artist Félicia Atkinson follows 2017’s cherished ‘Hand In Hand’ album with this spellbinding study on loneliness and intimacy, crafted while pregnant and on tour.
Nyege Nyege Tapes deliver an unmissable volley of hyper-fast, breathless Singeli from Tanzania, this time the vinyl debut of Duke showcasing the sound of Pamoja Records, following multiple zingers from the scene’s core Sisso Studios.
Celebrated cellist Oliver Coates beautifully expands upon his blink ’n miss 2018 release of ‘John Luther Adams’ Canticles of the Sky’ with a further three takes on pieces from the same John Luther Adams release, plus an alternate version.
After a 5 year pause for breath, Rainer Veil return with their debut full length for Modern Love; an immersive, kinematic tumble through electronic forms from hyper trance to tape dub experiments and loose polyrhythms - a summoning of ‘ardcore spirits in flux. Big RIYL: Photek, Caterina Barbieri, SND, Lee Gamble, Gábor Lázár... A hypnotic soundworld tempered by weighty bass and angular construction, ‘Vanity’ marks a breaking away from the binds of overthinking, an embrace of imperfection.
This album is incredible - a highly complex but beautifully fluid traversal of Iranian folk music and modular synthesis that reminds us of Dariush Dolat-Shahi’s unparalleled ‘Electronic Music, Tar and Sehtar’ with its fantastically creative sense of freedom and abstract expression, pulling us deep into uncanny valleys of hyper modernism bursting with ideas and a sense of disrupted harmony that’s hard to absorb in one sitting.
Logos lets rip with the dancefloor hellfire of ‘Fifth Monarchy’ on the next part of Berceuse Heroique’s ‘Ode To The Soundsystem’ trilogy, leading on from his ace ‘Imperial Flood’ LP Proudly showing off his UK bass cadet credentials, Logos pulls few punches over three shots of cutthroat grime, grey area pressure and one of the 2019’s sickest cuts in ‘Ghosting’, plus a powerful Ossia remix channelling proper yardcore vibes a la DJ Scud. Trust it’s enough to make a soundboy weep.
Debut release from award-winning violinist and member of The London Contemporary Orchestra Galya Bisengalieva, occasional Radiohead, Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, Frank Ocean and Actress collaborator. On this EP she performs her own work as well as pieces composed by Claire M. Singer (Touch) and Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch, another award-winning artist who records for FatCat’s post-classical label 130701.
EVOL cough up the intensely hypnotic results of sessions recorded on a Serge Modular Music System at the GRM in Paris, in early 2019. Weighing in at 28 trax wide and 292 minutes long, ‘GRM Trax’ is arguably the motherload of all EVOL releases.
Incendiary, 180BPM hyper-steppers rhythms riddled with razing drones and field recordings for Nyege Nyege Tapes, the debut electronic music productions by “Punk ethnomusicologist” Judgitzu, inspired by time spent in Tanzania and highly compatible with Singeli, hardcore techno, gabber... Roving punk ethnomusicologist Julien Hairon aka Judgitzu delivers fire on Uganda’s Nyege Nyege Tapes with two cuts of high tension, cheek-pulling club G-force.
Marja Ahti poetically manifests the super-natural and pataphysical via environmental field recordings, Buchla 200, ARP 2600, bowl gong and harmonium with ‘Vegetal Negatives’, her first proper release under this name following a run of tapes and LPs as Tsembla, and roles in Finnish psych ensembles Kiila and Kemialliset Ystävät.
Beautifully eerie 12-string guitar, synth and autotune studies played with a rare, tempered intensity and grace. It’s a highly unusual disruption of classic Takoma/fingerstyle with electronic drone and found sounds, at different points reminding us of everything from Hope Sandoval to late period Talk Talk, Jim O’Rourke, Tashi Wada Group and of course John Fahey, while ultimately sounding like none of them.
Among the most enigmatic, beguiling producers of recent years, Tribe Of Colin blesses Honest Jon’s with a brilliant LP suite of acidic steppers and hieroglyphic, rhythmelodic riddles comparable to everything from early Shackleton or Hype Williams to Theo Parrish and Alan Lomax recordings Hustling 9 original tracks of amorphous, rugged dub and astral synths, ‘Age of Aquarius’ arrives in the murky but iridescent wake of Colin’s tape for John T.
Swirling dream-sequence dance music from the mysterious Topdown Dialectic, building on the promise of their early ones for Aught and 2018’s Vol.1 with a seriously intoxicating new LP. Coolly finding a distinctive voice in the often sound-alike world of dub techno variants, Topdown Dialectic have earned a cult reputation over the past half decade for their software systems-based music’s beautifully elusive grasp of half-heard melody and unstuck rhythmic flux.‘Vol.2’ of their series for L.A.
A follow-up to their Ghostly album ‘Venus in Leo’, 'Over The Rainbow’ is HTRK's soundtrack to Jeffrey Peixoto's Scientology documentary of the same name, providing us with a rare all-instrumental showreel that's testament to a haunting soul that’s long lurked under the hood of their singular, hugely evocative sound.
Another heart-rending beauty from Sean McCann’s Recital, following superb LPs by Sarah Davachi and R.I.P. Hayman with Alex Twomey’s first album under his own name. Featuring stately, immersive compositions for brass, strings, solo piano, woodwind and electronics, it’s a startling, full-bodied approach that places 'The Entertainer’ well outside the current taste for more disposable ambient and environmental recordings, and for our money, one of the great albums of the year so far.
Hakuna Kulala return with ‘Kubali’, revolving around MC Yallah’s fiercely controlled delivery matched by rugged riddims from Debmaster. A prime showcase of east Africa’s incredibly fertile electronic dance music scene, ‘Kubali’ catches Uganda-born, Kenya-based MC Yallah step on and off 11 seriously ruffshod productions blessed with the best of both scuzzy industrial fetish styles and up-to-the-second global bass/trap movements.
The breathtaking odyssey of ’Epitaph’ is Jay Glass Dubs’ definitive opus, a singular redefinition of dub music wielding mutable mixtures of psychedelic dub, ambient-pop and abstract sound design.
Hyperdub continue to blaze a trail around global ‘floors with a deadly Gqom EP from South Africa’s DJ Lag and OKZharp Working with the more experienced studio hands of OKZharp, Gqom king DJ Lag’s signature style is buffed-up to optimal pressure while losing none of its raw, direct dancefloor traction.
One of Manchester and UK’s most original new artists, Loft aggregates 3 years of instability in a remarkable debut EP for Tri Angle Where Loft of yore was yoked to linearity, or the “mono” of her new record’s title, Loft’s current iteration feels as though she's bifurcating and spiralling around, into herself like a blooming double helix, or, in her own words forming a “sound ecology in which the arrow of time splits along the shaft.
Delia Beatriz aka Debit gets down to rugged fundamentals on ‘System’, the bruising follow-up to her flashier ‘Animus’ album. Asymmetric, astringent, aggy, ‘System’ finds Debit’s sound delacquered of gloss and delivered in gruff, textured tones in a wicked balance of gripping rhythmic sensuality and brutality, including a collaboration with footwork producer DJ Earl that stands up firmly next Jlin’s percussive ingenuity.
Raime strain at the harness in four cuttingly sharp mutations of Afrobeats, Footwork, and Jungle with scintillating results on the 2nd release on their RR imprint. RIYL Leonce, Kode 9, Lee Gamble!!
The label that gave us Space Afrika’s excellent 'Somewhere Decent To Live’ album last year returns with this quietly shocking solo debut by Berlin-based Russian, Alexandra Zakharenko aka Perila, who creates a sensual and highly unusual sonic tapestry where ASMR bleeds into sonic erotica in nuanced and intoxicating ambient dimensions. Highly recommended if yr into Félicia Atkinson, Huerco S, Leslie Winer... Born in St.
"The songs on the first album are the children. The songs on the second album are their parents. Ghosteen is a migrating spirit.’ - Nick Cave. "The album was recorded in 2018 and early 2019 at Woodshed in Malibu, Nightbird in Los Angeles, Retreat in Brighton and Candybomber in Berlin. It was mixed by Nick Cave, Warren Ellis, Lance Powell and Andrew Dominik at Conway in Los Angeles. Ghosteen is the seventeenth studio album from Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, following 2016’s Skeleton Tree.
Jonny Trunk draws an astute link between ASMR and ‘Mechanical Keyboard Sounds’ in this perfectly peculiar side of recordings by bespoke luxury mechanical keyboard maker, Taeha Types, featuring Recordings of 12 bespoke mechanical keyboards. Up there with the oddest and most brilliant Trunk sides, ‘Mechanical Keyboard Sounds’ takes a closer look and listen to the ubiquitous tool found on desktops everywhere, and may even make you develop a newfound appreciation for the humble keyboard.
xin tears out on Subtext with a vital detournement of neurofunk D&B, hardcore and dubstep dynamics in their utterly compelling debut album, including a superb link-up with Aya (fka Loft) Leaning deeper into hypermodern dance musick after 2018’s introductory EP ‘To Shock the Sky and Shake the Earth’ and a key live show in support of Holly Herndon’s ‘PROTO’ launch, xin first full length embraces the breath of their vision from mercurial sci-fi noise sculpture thru bodily-fluid dance swerve and
Piquant mutations of grime, R&B, footwork and all things sweet ’n road from Banshee, marking up his solo debut proper after a self-released 12” and guest spot on Zomby’s ‘Ultra’ album in 2016 Revolving some of the freshest gear from the UK in years, the ‘Thought Bubbles’ EP comes with a wickedly freehand approach to meter, space and pitch that’s bound to cause some confused 33 or 45 toggling.
Slikback’s long awaited vinyl debut compiles his pair of acclaimed Hakuna Kulala releases plus a trio of exclusive new bonus bangers - basically the most incendiary new club mutations from East and Central Africa highly compatible with Gqom, trap, speedcore, dancehall 🔥🔥🔥 Hailing from Nairobi, Kenya via Kampala, Uganda, Slikback has rapidly attracted a wave of attention to his undulating mutations of current club styles, as found on the ‘Lasakaneka’ and ‘Tomo’ EPs between 2018-2019.
Avant-percussionist and composer Sarah Hennies explores the brink of un/consciousness in a captivating work for piano and percussion for Oren Ambarchi’s trailblazing Black Truffle. Meditative but often invasively violent, the hour-long piece follows her striking ‘Embedded Environments’ LP for Blume in 2018 with a music that effectively gestures into space between The Necks and Julius Eastman.
Yeah that's what we’re talking about; supremely dank, occult dark ambient and submerged black metal atmospheres from Jim Mroz aka Lussuria, properly harrowing recordings pierced by occasional shafts of blinding light and choral arrangements that take us to exceptionally weird places. Huge recommendation If you’re into anything from Hildur Guðnadóttir’s isolationist soundscapes to Kevin Drumm or Thomas Köner's frostbitten classics.
Following last year’s acclaimed 'Sleep Like It's Winter’ album and a steady supply of releases via his own Steamroom, Jim O’Rourke returns with a rare vinyl outing; a reworking of source material provided by Alessio Natalizia a.k.a. Not Waving. Spread across two longform pieces, O'Rourke channels Popol Vuh on the spiralling, synth-heavy 15 minute A-side, while the flip sounds like highest grade rhythmic Autechre abstractions imaginable.
Strap yourself in for another dose of needlepoint madness by Carl Stone, pushing his sampler to giddy degrees in a brand new volley of strobing arrangements, plus two sharply contrasting tonal and vocal pieces using S.E. Asian field recordings, for Unseen Worlds. Really very good this...
Body-gratifying, technoid suss from one of our favourite rhythmaticians; New Orleans-via-Atlanta’s Leonce, giving his Morph Tracks label a golden start. 2 years since his deadly infectious ‘Insurgency’ 12” with Fade To Mind, Leonce mints his own label with a swingeing display of rhythmelodic hustle that leaves everyone else seeming stiff as f*ck. Speaking absolute percussive truth in each corner, he rolls out four incredibly supple and slinky dance grooves that say the most with the least.
My Disco finally unveil their debut album for Downwards, a brilliant rendering of concrète/industrial styles recorded in the same Berlin studio often frequented by Einstürzende Neubauten, Pan Sonic and Keiji Haino, somehow channelling the spirit of all three. It’s an intensely rich and wildly unexpected trip that takes in the ragged intensity of Suicide alongside gong recordings and a kind of isolationist ambient spirit that resides somewhere between Selected Ambient Works Vol II and Raime.
After blessing Night School with the divine ambient pop of ‘Hilja’ - one of 2018’s most memorable albums - Cucina Povera, aka Finnish-born, Glasgow-based sound artist Maria Rossi, turns us to mush again with ‘Zoom’, a startling new album of plaintive choral hooks, murmuring vocals, and super minimal synth strokes.
Moon Wiring Club scries dead strong, early Autechre-style hardcore breaks thru the prism of a Playstation on his perennial vinyl volley. Doubling down on the breakbeat chops of summer 2019’s ace ‘Ghastly Garden Centres’ CD, the inimitable artist/medium returns from his Pennine portal with a ritualistic suite of eldritch energies that sound like a rave in a haunted manor house.
‘Multivocal’ is Jessika Ekomane’s mesmerising debut album of uncanny psychoacoustic experiments in rhythm and spatial perception for the nonpareil Important label. A big RIYL Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe and Eleh .
With perhaps the most impactful, harrowing take on minimalist drone since they released Kevin Drumm’s 'Imperial Distortion' over a decade ago, Hospital Productions finally release the first proper new album from Skin Crime in years, a quietly harrowing, Japanese ghost story-inspired album of darkest ambient and industrial shadowplay inverting noise convention and exploring ideas of tense, slow-burn patience instead of aggressive intensity.
Insanely fresh, killer debut volley by 19 year old “veteran” of Lisbon’s virulent ghetto sound, recorded when he was just 14 and now remastered and released by the mighty Príncipe. It's a brilliantly weirdo, avant-garde fusion of portugese/angolan dance music styles championing an ideal of dance music as punkish & direct rather than overworked and generic.
The patron saint of maudlin romantics, Liz Harris (Grouper) adopts the Nivhek alias for this suite of freeform, glossolalic elegies, featuring a brief guest turn by Kiwi rock legend Michael Morley (The Dead C, Gate), and jointly dispensed between her Yellow Electric label and Superior Viaduct’s W.25th In two main movements comprising nine titled parts, Harris typically conjures a sense of stately calm underlined with menacing drones.
Alva Noto & Ryuichi Sakamoto share recordings of their show at Sydney Opera House in 2018, yielding 80 minutes of sublime, glassy electronics; minimal but full of that light-handed emotive brilliance Sakamoto seems to always supply so generously, and with such little effort. Gorgeous, moving music.
‘United’ is the incredible, ambiguous solo debut of medieval and electronic music hybrids by classically trained viola player Annie Garlid as UCC Harlo. To us it sounds like a baroque take on Arthur Russell's 'World Of Echo' treated with choral riffs.
Akira Rabelais’ years-in-the-making new album CXVI, featuring collaborations with Harold Budd, Ben Frost, Biosphere, Kassel Jaeger and Stephan Mathieu, among others. It unfurls a quietly breathtaking, dreamlike sequence of events where early music meets a prism of shoegaze, ASMR, classical and textural sound design - huge recommemdation if yr into Felicia Atkinson, the GRM, Morton Feldman, Stephan Mathieu, Deathprod, Harold Budd...
Preeminent avant-gardiste and Recital founder, Sean McCann gently melts our heads with ‘Puck’ his significant new solo side following from 2016’s ‘Music For Public Ensemble’. It strongly feels like inhabiting someone else’s dream. Totally spellbinding, life-affirming music from one of contemporary composition’s pivotal artists. “Puck is both public and private in nature. A smear of chamber works from Stockholm, Moscow, New York, and Kansas.
‘Mechanosphere’ is Cam Deas’ abstract yet poignant 2nd album exploring ideas of rhythmic dissonance and head-spinning proprioceptions for The Death of Rave. Following directly from his cultishly-acclaimed mini-LP ‘Time Exercises’, which was surprisingly deployed in Richie Hawtin’s recent ‘CLOSE COMBINED - LIVE’ mix and hailed as “Holy F#ck-What is This?!?
Ana Roxanne exerts a gently intimate and singular spin on new age ambient tropes on her beautiful new LP, sounding something like Julee Cruise via Maggi Payne. Surely among this year’s finest quiet listens... “Ana Roxanne is an intersex Southeast Asian musician based in Los Angeles. Born & raised in the Bay Area to immigrant parents, Ana's love for music and singing began through her mother's cd collection of 80's/90's R&B divas.
DeepChord’s Rod Modell lists and tilts at 140bpm+ in his banging solo debut LP for Tresor Landing 20 years since his 1st Rod Modell release, ‘The Autonomous Music Project’ for Lunar, the ‘Captagon’ album finds Modell breaking his usual 120bpm sound barrier to go headlong for a classic early Chain Reaction style, nodding to a mid-late ‘90s era when the likes of Monolake, Matrix and Erosion (T++) kept pace with the rest of techno, but also kept it deep and hypnotic as fuck.
