Genius dembow rhythm science from DJ Python on his 2nd album for Anthony Naples’ and Jenny Slattery’s Incienso. Total mind-melter this one, easily Python’s best material since his 'Dulce Compañia’ debut - we can tell you now we’re gonna be banging on about this record all fucking year.
‘Workaround’ is the singular debut album proper by Beatrice Dillon; an eminent rhythm fiend whose productions and DJ sets are prized for her patient, fluid grasp of space, texture and devilish, syncopated UK club styles.
One of the strongest debut albums we've heard in years, Nazar’s ‘Guerrilla’ is a record about the Angolan civil war that we reckon will come to be one of the defining albums of 2020 Relaying the tragedy and terror of his family’s experience of war, Nazar uses a highly distinctive sound design palette and manacled grasp of what he calls “rough kuduro” rhythms to bring listeners deep into his mindset.
Very strong slab of haunted ‘60s pop themes and keeling synth noise from Canada’s Pat Flegel aka Cindy Lee, formerly of Canadian indie-pop heroes Women, now sounding like a spell concocted by Panda Bear, Forest Swords, Johnny Jewel and Dean Hurley’s Trouble. Check the samples and trust your ears, it’s a bewt! “For Patrick Flegel, Cindy Lee is more than just a recording music project.
Properly engrossing and cataclysmic widescreen recordings of brass and percussion booming around a bridge in Köln on this wonder from NYC composer/sound designer Lea Bertucci for London’s emergent experimental music platform, SA Recordings. It sounds like a panoramic blade-runneresque fantasy, one of the most satisfying experimental records we've heard in a long time - huge recommendation.
One of 2020’s most distinctive new dance and electronic soul LPs, ‘Não Fales Nela Que A Mentes’ sees Kuduro auteur Nídia come into her own with a strikingly fresh, deep and original showcase of Afro-Portuguese dance music. TIPPED!!!!!!
Another record that arrived just on the cusp of strange times™ and sold out before anyone really had a chance to notice, Laila Sakini’s ‘Vivienne’ is an intimate collection of threadbare songs for piano, voice and effects that evoke a tremendous sense of melancholy - like a set of half-remembered earworms drifting into view decades later.
Lights out, game over. Duma win 2020. Breathtaking by any measure, Kenyan grindcore band Duma’s unparalleled debut of blast beats, sky-clawing synth noise and scarred larynx vocals is one of the mightiest things you’ll hear all year - a huge RIYL Nkisi, Woid, Senyawa...
An absolute treasure of an album, CS + Kreme’s debut is an early contender for 2020’s best - a quietly seductive, deeply romantic and stealthily addictive long player in the most classic, enduring sense. ’Snoopy’ has got under our skin with its opiated elegance and spellbinding hooks over the precious few months we’ve had the pleasure of spending in its company.
Dead uncanny new music from Lucy Liyou, a Philadelphia-based ambient/collage artist creating absorbing musical stories based on Korean folk-opera and “nuances in Quotidian experience” - think Nozomu Matsumoto meets Klein at Arca’s gaff and you’ve nearly got a grasp on this one.
As we approach the end of 2020, we thought we'd shine a light on a handful of releases we reckon should have had a bit more attention; albums that might have fallen between the cracks for some of you, but which have become missing links between different scenes and feelings for us over the duration of this cursed year. First up is FUJI||||||||||TA, whose iki album offered solace and space for contemplation with one of the most unusual, moving recordings we’ve heard in recent years.
Has Mica Levi ever made a bad record? This, again, shifts the template to a sort of scuzzed dreampop somewhere between MBV and that Chopped & Screwed hookup with the London Sinfonietta that really is one of our favourite records of all time. Has Mica Levi ever made a bad record? Nah.
Detroit visionary Terrence Dixon scans stellar new horizons on the awe-inspiring 3rd chapter of his most cherished, foundational and inspiring album series. Roughly once a decade since 2000 the pioneering Afrofuturist has offered a new landmark of deep, electronic music, and ‘From the Far Future, Pt. 3’ stakes one of 2020’s - and probably the next decade’s - leading examples of Detroit techno at its furthest, most experimental limits.
This is a brilliantly weird and hypnotic record, featuring pretty much nothing but the voice of conceptual artist Hanne Lippard reading a variety of texts typical of our digital age - things like autoresponders, FAQ’s, social media posts, bot-generated spam mail etc (or as she calls it ‘degenerate, or “b-language”) as a continuation of her ongoing investigation of the differences between the spoken and the written word.
Killer, beautifully scorched noise guitar and amp séances for the connoisseurs right here from improv catalyst Bill Nace (Body/Head) at his most crudely tactile and feverishly slow-burning. Highly recommended if you're into Wolf Eyes, Dilloway, Nate Young, Sonic Youth.
For a hallucinogenic experience through sound, 'Multi Natural’ was perhaps the most engrossing record we heard this year; a full length of art-house, time-dilating chamber music that’s both serene and un-real, following its own peculiar logic like some extended dream sequence excavated and recalled from the deepest recesses of the mind.
‘Holy Palm’ is the debut album by Flora Yin-Wong, an artist, writer, DJ and journalist, summoning the ghosts of her life in a masterful meditation on metaphysics, superstition and memory. It’s part collage, part audio diary, part reflection; a sort of private ritual purification that comes highly recommended if you’re into works by Mark Gergis, Philip Corner, Mark Leckey and Hildegard Westerkamp.
After a standout Recollections GRM side in 2015, Argentina’s Beatriz Ferreyra places over half a century of avant-garde knowledge and practice at the service of an utterly enchanting new collection for Room40, ranging from elegiac vocal works to apocalyptic concrète composition...
Gorgeous sophomore LP of gothic folk from Hilary Woods, aka erstwhile bassist with JJ72. Really strong Lynchian vibes on this one - aided by exceptionally dank and creaking production by Lasse Marhaug.
This lot have released 5 x 12”s anonymously over the last 3 years via Hardwax and there’s no info about them anywhere, pretty sneaky. They now land on Mana, a label so esoteric it has a flowchart on its website showing you how to get from Luc Ferrari to Nico Jaar in one short leap. There are 4 long tracks, one per side, each clocking in at 15 mins and each taking time to expand into being.
Gorgeous debut LP by Maria Spivak, a rawly expressive set of atmospheric, night-time synth-pop romancers channelling mystic vibes from Lena Platonos to HTRK and The Other People Place - very special stuff, indeed.
An enigma this one, the debut release - a decade in the making - from an artist about which we know very little. It’s a mysterious, confessional beauty - a diaristic mix of half-cut songs and textured, bittersweet electronic collage that we urge you to check if you’re into anything from Klein to Burial, Tricky to Mica Levi, Young Echo to RZA’s Ghost Dog OST.
Released as two separate vinyl LP’s, Mark Fell & Will Guthrie’s Infoldings / Diffractions is now also available as one combined digital edition, released via Koshiro Hino’s (Goat, YPY) newly minted NAKID label. Informed/inspired by Gamelan and South Indian Carnatic musics, this set comes with a big recommendation if you’re into Autechre, Michael Ranta, The Necks, Milford Graves.
Remarkable collaboration between inventor, synth pioneer and EMS co-founder Peter Zinovieff and preeminent cellist Lucy Railton, capturing a life-altering dialogue between two figures with a more than 50-year age gap between them, and with very little shared musical vocabulary.
Immersively sensual, diaristic entries by cult US ambient avatar Ulla (aka Ulla Straus), the first release on Experiences Ltd, a new label run by Special Guest DJ (uon, Caveman Paradise), and a big recommendation if yr feeling Huerco S, Nadia Khan, Dominique Lawalrée, Ryuichi Sakamoto.
Unreal début from French musician, artist, writer and dramaturge, Oï les Ox; basically one of the craftiest albums we’ve heard all of this damned 2020 - riddled with melodic ohrwurms - a massive RIYL Trevor Duncan’s La Jetée soundtrack to the most enigmatic oddities from Broadcast to Julia Holter, Teresa Winter to Nozomu Matsumoto and Rian Treanor’s disruptive rhythms.
Breathtaking new studio album from The Necks, saddling up for a glorious route taking in fast flowing polyrhythms and revelatory soundscapes - really one of their strongest in a flawless catalogue that now spans 30 years and with a closing track that once again taps into that Talk Talk thing they do so well...
Outta-nowhere DIY blinder from YOUTH; the sprawling debut album by Manchester-based painter, artist, DJ/producer Richard Harris aka Sockethead, recorded in a caravan on the Scottish West Coast and sweeping from fractal jungle to outsider folk and bruised, squashed soul music, think something like John Bender via Actress and into a Jandek/Robert Wyatt jam, highly recommended if u were feeling similarly singular Northwest tangents from FUMU, Turinn, G.H.
Ancient Indonesian tradition meets doom metal in profoundly Ur ways on Stephen O’Malley and Senyawa’s collaborative commission for choreographer Gisèle Vienne, highly recommended if you’re into Sunn O))), Keiji Haino, Nazoranai, Phurpa, KTL.
'Into the Traffic, Under the Moonlight’ is a new set of songs woven from the same fibre as Laila Sakini’s stunning ‘Vivienne’ album - one of the records we listened to - and loved - most this year, expanding its minimalist palette of piano, voice and effects to include some percusive samples, cello, bass clarinet, flute and hand claps.
A new solo album by Eiko Ishibashi, following on from the duo recording Ichida alongside bassist Darin Gray. Hyakki Yagyō (Night Parade of One Hundred Demons) was produced for the ‘Japan Supernatural’ exhibition at The Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney focusing on ghost stories and folklore from the Edo period onwards.
This one was pressed up in such a small run back at the start of the year that barely anybody caught sight of it, which is a shame cos it’s a deadly little thing. It starts off in the vicinity of Carl Craig’s Psyche/BFC classics and ends on a sorta woozy sea-shanty somewhere between Laurie Anderson's ‘O Superman’ and This Mortal Coil’s Song To The Siren. Basically, the best all-over-the-place vibes. ‘Lowlands’ thrills with a broad and fully formed mix of styles that’s impossible to pin down.
Knockout punch of computer music noise and hardcore techno razz from Ewa Justka, a catalytic figure on the live algorithmic coding circuit. Like the gleefully evil sister of EVOL, instrument builder and producer Ewa Justka has brilliantly and belligerently pushed the saltiest brand of sound and rhetoric for half a decade since releasing one of the earliest numbers on Calum Gunn’s Conditional in 216.
Exquisite bass clarinet nocturnes from Belgium, recorded in 2019 but feasibly coming from any point over the last 40 years - another boutique waffle off the Stroom griddle. Comparisons between bass clarinet-favouring Ben Bertrand and Colin Stetson are perhaps inevitable, but where the Canadian often goes macho, Brussels-based Bertrand is ineffably cooler, and better considered along with sax player Alex Zhang Hungtai’s knack for huffably intoxicating atmospheres.
Staggering avant-folk hymns by France’s Karen Jebane aka Golem Mecanique, eliding haunting vocals with billowing hurdy-gurdy-like tones from a rare French instrument. She takes all the time she needs to cast two spellbinding durational works full of visceral, slow-burning and dissonant energy. Hand-picked for release on Stephen O’Malley’s Ideologic Organ, you can trust this one’s as vital and heavy as your life, as he explains below.
Operatic ambient-pop meets contemporary classical in strikingly distinguished form - imagine Julianna Barwick duetting with Antony Hegarty at Holly Herndon’s lab and you’re not far off this singular bouquet. “Lyra Pramuk’s debut Fountain explores a post-human, non-binary understanding of life. Lyra Pramuk fuses classical training, pop sensibilities, performance practices and contemporary club culture in what may best be described as futurist folk music.
Ravishing, dream-like debut by Okkyung Lee’s chamber ensemble, placing a rarely paralleled instrumental guile and imagination at the service of Shelter Press’ beautiful series of carefully hand-picked editions.
Recorded at INA GRM and Steamroom, covering a period of thirty years, the gap between the two visits Jim O'Rourke made to the GRM, featuring Eiko Ishibashi on piano, Atsuko Hatano on violin and viola and Eivind Lonning on trumpet . "Shutting Down Here" is an exceptional recording, commencing GRM's brand new series of releases "Portraits GRM" and covering 30 years of activity from Jim O'Rourke.
Ostensibly Demdike Stare's first proper full-length collaboration, 'Sketches Of Everything' weaves dark moorland ambient blues into guitarist Jon Collin’s windswept Americana. It's a highly evocative swing between porchside strums, sludge doom and weathered dub noise somewhere between Bruce Langhorne’s soundtrack for ‘The Hired Hand’, Neil Young's 'Dead Man', Loren Mazzacane Connors at his most swoonsome and a screwed Prince Jazzbo - proper stoner vistas.
Crucial selection of raw, darkside early gqom from pioneering Durban trio Phelimuncasi, setting the gripping vocals of twins Makan Nana and Khera, and Malathon, to cranky technoid club engines by DJ Menzi, DJ Mp3, and DJ Scoturn, all showcased for first time outside South Africa on the ever vital Nyege Nyege Tapes. Unmissable for fans of dark, heavy dance music of all stripes!
Killlller avant-’95 jungle rolige, noise and ruffneck club rudeness from some unknown entity on the label that's sometimes home to Dean Blunt and Inga Copeland. We haven’t a chuffing clue who’s behind this lot, but it sounds to our ears like Mica Levi, Andy Stott and Lolina bunkered down for a night with some research chemicals and watched loads of mid ‘90s rave videos in the studio.
Stunning album from Ann Margaret Hogan aka Annie Hogan - prolific collaborator with the likes of everyone from Nick Cave to Simon Fisher Turner’s Deux Filles, Kraftwerk’s Wolfgang Flur, Lydia Lunch and countless others - here resurfacing on Karl O’Connor’s Downwards label, of all places, for a gorgeous swirl of reflective solo piano and field recordings that somehow reminds us of Virginia Astley’s life changing early 80’s masterpiece ‘From Gardens Where We Feel Secure’ - one of our favourite
Master field recordist, author and sound theorist David Toop presents a poignant, deeply trippy tableaux inspired by Chinese ghost stories and including recordings of his grandpa’s memories of 1901, a blind street group in Chiang Mai, and Ornette Coleman in conversation - wonderfully transitory, metaphysical stuff of rare substance. From David Toop: What are field recordings?
One of the most prolific and gifted composers for strings of his generation, Eyvind Kang returns to Ideologic Organ with sublime experimental classical fusions of Eastern and Western traditions. Leading on from last year’s ‘Chirality’, Kang cuts a more minimalist figure on ‘Ajaeng Ajaeng’ with a quietly spellbinding elision of the Sitar-like Indian Tanpura with Korean Ajaeng and their European cousin the Harpsichord.
Shinichi Atobe’s fifth album for DDS, his first in two years. Deep and sublime, the classic Chain Reaction <> Chicago House vibe, but this time with a swarming Drexciyan undercurrent, somewhere between DJ Sprinkles, Dopplereffekt and The Other People Place, and yet still 100% Shinichi. It’s odd working with an artist without ongoing dialogue; no context or an exchange of ideas. It’s all conjecture.
The new Sarah Davachi record is an 80 minute, 17 track double album meditation on impermanence and endings, framed by minimalistic organ études and careful harmonic layering. On two tracks the artist’s own vocals are also heard for the first time. This is the first release on the artist’s own label, Late Music.
Incredible album of ruffneck outernational soundsystem abstractions brought together by Uganda’s by-now infamously fecund Nyege Nyege crew; an impressionistic industrial/ambient soundtrack where chopped & screwed gristle meets ballistic singeli and mutant electro-acholi. If you’re into anything from King Midas Sound to classic Talking Heads, Nearly God and The WIld Bunch - this one’s a stone cold killer.
Brooklyn-based queer nightlife luminary Jasmine Infiniti self-released her debut album, BXTCH SLÄP, in March 2020. Dark Entries steps forward to present the album remastered and on double vinyl. "Over the thirteen disruptive club cuts of BXTCH SLÄP, Jasmine conjures occult rave incantations with sub-tectonic bass and seductive harmonies.
Valentina Magaletti (Raime, Tomaga, Vanishing Twin) & Marlene Ribeiro (Gnod, Negra Blanca) venture their oneiric style of “tropical concrete” in a gently head-swilling duo following Horn of Plenty’s excellent Moniek Darge reissue. Respectively, Magaletti and Ribeiro are responsible for roles on some of the past decade’s most definitive, chthonic recordings.
Absolutely fire showcase of St. Lucia’s Kuduro Soca or “Dennery Segment” sound, a local style notorious for slack lyrics and its hi-NRG pace, here served up spicy as fuck by one of the Caribbean island’s premiere DJs for Uganda’s Nyege Nyege Tapes. Packing pure heat from the town of Dennery in St.
We hardly need any convincing on the quality of Rian Treanor's productions as he's been completely unfuckwithable from day one, but "File Under UK Metaplasm" is still next damn level. Rian bashed out the initial demos on returning from a trip to Uganda in 2018 for Nyege Nyege Festival.
Magnum opus-weight album from organist and electro-acoustic composer Anna von Hausswolff, the entire record consists of just one instrument - the pipe organ, and represents absolute liberation of the imagination. It's a masterwork of gothic classical beauty - a must check for fans of Kali Malone, Kara-Lis Coverdale.
Nozomu Matsumoto follows up his stunning HD orchestral // text-to -speech début for The Death Of Rave with this haunting ambient soundtrack originally recorded for Maison Hermès, Tokyo, as a soundtrack for an installation by Nile Koetting. It’s undoubtedly one of the year’s most necessary and strangely apt ambient excursions; a beautiful, quietly heartbreaking trip highly recommended if you’re into 0PN, Sam Kidel, James Ferraro, TCF, Eno, Midori Takada and Japanese environmental recordings.
Inception-like, lower case sound collage and experimentation from claire rousay, drawing out spectral apparitions from a library in San Antonio and conjuring a super immersive sort of magick realism in her debut for Second Editions - RIYL Sarah Hennies, Alvin Lucier, Luc Ferrari claire rousay’s first vinyl release commits two beguiling works intended by the artist to question the “sensitivities of sound in relation to “the self” and “the other”, equally”, with results that investigate the
Rhodri Davies (Apartment House/Hen Ogledd) charms with this gorgeous suite of improvisations on a C.13th Horsehair harp specially built for this release - the maiden voyage on his Amgen Records Seemingly recorded in a stone cottage in medieval times, but actually captured in Newcastle upon Tyne, 2020; ’Telyn Rawn Amgen’ revolves around a flurry of 18 poetic improvisations on the transportable, lightweight sort of harp that was used to accompany Welsh and Irish bards back-in-the-day.
One of the most distinctive artists to arise from the last decade’s fixation with post-punk/new wave returns with a tight new spin on her mercurial synth-pop style Making her 2nd mark on Dark Entries after a respectable lack of singles - just 3 solid solo albums for them, NNF, and Night School - Mara Barenbaum’s Group Rhoda exerts an ever finer control over her machines with needlepoint drum programming and wiry synths complemented by ethereal vocals that lurk in the space between light and
Yeah this is the shit; the standout debut album of intricately woven, asymmetric and offbeat drill/pop from London’s Lol K, starring vocals by Coby Sey and LA Timpa. It’s a shockingly strong followup to their debut EP for Mica Levi and co’s Curl Recordings, developing a crafty set of queer, sensuous pop, configured in brilliant, surprising ways for Halcyon Veil. Highly recommended if yr into Vegyn, Mica Levi, Tirzah, Yves Tumor, Slowthai...
Produced and recorded by Arca, KiCk i defines a new era of multiplex harmony for the Venezuelan artist, singer, DJ, performer and experimental music composer, featuring appearances from Björk, Rosalía, Shygirl and SOPHIE, this is the first time Arca has invited collaborators into her world, previously having lent her sound to some of the decades most avant-pop artists.
Ana Roxanne follows up the short-and-sweet "~~~" with this devastatingly beautiful full-length for Kranky, joining the dots between the label's past and present with heartbreaking sounds that remind us of Labradford, Windy & Carl, Grouper and beyond. The album was written over the last five years, when the LA-based, Oakland-raised artist released that debut EP.
Príncipe’s dreamiest act supply a special batch of fizzing electronic exotica and ambient vignettes echoing the Black Atlantic waves of Drexciya, Iasos’ blessed new age harmonies, and the windswept wist of Zoviet France - a crafty change in styles following their ‘Apologia’ album, and stacks on their Ascender label...
Pure nether-pop magick from Glasgow-based Maria Rossi, chasing up her LP ‘Zoom’ with a return to studio-based sorcery after 2018’s ‘Hilja’ worked its way into a lot of AOTY lists.
Buttechno dishes up his best since the ‘City 2’ side with a superb set of Russian formula rave noise and cyber-alien ballads for his pals at Moscow’s Gost Zvuk Ragging it between chewed lip phet-tek and high velocity acid trance via a clutch of bitter and exquisite beat-less squat-chamber works, the diversity and queasy rave urge shared by all the tracks sets ‘Psy X’ up as one of Buttechno’s strongest this side of the hard-to-find ‘City 2’ or his ace soundtrack for Gosha Rubchinskiy.
Steeply absorbing solo debut of smoky free improvisation, reverberating between ECM-like jazz/classical and electro-acoustic dimensions for the ideal home of such enigmatic stuff; Oren Ambarchi’s Black Truffle. ‘Ashioto’ extends an immersive introduction to the solo work of Japanese drummer/percussionist/composer Tatsuhiro Yamamoto following a decade of collaborations with notables including Jim O’Rourke, Eiko Ishibashi, Phew, and Arve Henriksen.
Breathtakingly unique dust'n'bones drone-folk-noize workouts from Minnesota trio Maths Balance Volumes, who accurately paint a painful picture of 2020 while refusing to ignore the past, cramming harrowing folk and blues wails into ghostly shells of genre-agnostic experimentation. A late highlight of a trying year.
Killer debut of raw, deeply off-centre acid, house and techno swag from DJ Pembroke Chasing up appearances on Emperor’s first two memory stick releases, Pembroke lands on the label’s first 12” with three choice cuts taking in the Funkineven-like acid grind and astro pads of ‘Space Rider’ and the sprung acid pump of ‘Elements’ on the front, backed with the wickedly wonky techno drive of ‘F2’.
Stunning dream-pop/post-punk side from New Orleans’ MJ Guider, galvanising her shoegaze sound with industrial rhythms sounding out between Cocteau Twins, Tropic of Cancer and Seefeel in an amazing sophomore album for eternal dreamers at Kranky Arriving four years after her ‘Precious Systems’, which benefitted beautifully from studio mixing rendered by Turk Dietrich and Josh Eustis ov NIN/Second Woman esteem, ’Sour Cherry Bell’ channels a more pronounced sense of southern Gothic mystique and
Gloomy darkwave pop pearls from Belgian duo Victor De Roo and Frederik Willem Daem aka Prutser, debuting a haunted, theatric sound on the home of such stuff; Stroom Forming De Roo’s 2nd 7” after his low key addictive outing with Vanderschrick in 2018, ‘Netels’ sees the Stroom and Kontakt Group staffer team up with Daem for a typically minimalist pair of dark pop curios riddled with absorbing detail and melodic turns of phrase.
Félicia Atkinson returns with a stunning album of sensurreal storycraft dedicated to abstract expressionist painter Helen Frankenthaler and featuring spectral drones, gongs, bells, piano and marimbas accompanying Atkinson’s voice. RIYL Éliane Radigue, Jim O’Rourke, Luc Ferrari.
Matmos’ Drew Daniel wraps up a sensitive anti-fascist statement with ‘Shall We Go On Sinning So That Grace May Increase?’ in his 4th album proper as The Soft Pink Truth, starring guest vocals by Colin Self, Angel Deradoorian, and Jana Hunter. It's quite a trip... Daniel returns to dancefloor-wise fundamentals and more sensuous styles here that link back to the project’s emergence as the result of a bet by Matthew Herbert that Daniel couldn’t produce a decent house record.
Both pieces commissioned by INA GRM, Lucy Railton’s piece first performed on the Acousmonium at INA GRM's Multiphonies Concert Series, Maison de la Radio, Paris 2019, Eilbacher side recorded November 2018-March 2019 in Baltimore, Maryland. Two side-long pieces here from GRM's new "Portraits GRM" series, an offshoot of "Recollection GRM" geared towards more recent commissions for the pioneering French experimental outfit.
Beautifully serene and contemplative, ‘Landscape Architecture’ sees classical minimalists Christina Vantzou & John Also Bennett describe quizzical scenes on their follow-up to a sterling 2018 debut for Shelter Press, all recently mixed and self-released on the duo’s Editions Basilic imprint. RIYL Harry Partch, Félicia Atkinson, Jim O’Rourke, Luc Ferrari, Catherine Christer Hennix, Pan American.
On his first solo mission in 2 years, Parris pedals between stepping house and swanging ambient brokebeats in a lush new addition to his prized discography.
The sferic label add to a strong run of releases from Space Afrika, Perila, Echium and Roméo Poirier with a stunning new LP from Jake Muir; a fabrication of impressionistic cityscapes describing L.A. at dusk, and Berlin dawning, highly recommended if you’re into Pinkcourtesyphone, Gas, Philip Jeck, Jan Jelinek. ’The hum of your veiled voice’ was written by Muir in the wake of his transition from a life in Los Angeles to a new start in Berlin.
crys cole beckons us to listen closer with the skin touch intimacy, isolationism and drone poetry of her 2nd solo album, leading on from a string of uniquely quizzical collaborations with Oren Ambarchi, Francis Plagne, Leif Elggren. “Beside Myself is the second full-length release from Canadian sound artist crys cole.
Killer, freaked R&B, pop and tarraxho zingers from one half of Lisbon/Glasgow’s Yong Yong, Luar Domatrix, spinning perpendicular to Principe, Equiknoxx and Hakuna Kulala in wicked screwball style . TIP!!!!
Synth-pop soul queen Jessy Lanza once again teams up with Jeremy Greenspan (Junior Boys) for a delicious 3rd album of melodic ohrwurms and gilded grooves. After writing 2016's "Oh No", Jessy Lanza relocated to New York City, leaving her creative partner Jeremy Greenspan (of Junior Boys) in Hamilton Ontario. This latest album is the first she has worked on long distance, firing ideas and sketches back and forth and allowing the personal diary of new experiences to inform her writing.
Bill Nace and Graham Lambkin rustle up a lowkey liminal gem on Nace’s Open Mouth label traversing room and field recordings of zonked folk strums and waking life weirdness. Unbuckled from any fixed style, ‘The Dishwashers’ occurs with a deceptively casual approach that belies the fact this is only the second time they’ve recorded together, following a first meeting in Kentucky during 2018.
Totally unmissable debut full-length of free-floating ambient dream sequencing and avant garde percussion from pivotal NYC producer/sound artist Britton Powell for Brooklyn’s Catch Wave Ltd. - label behind 2016’s prized Dominique Lawalrée compilation as well as last year’s mind-melter from Leila Bordreuil.
Mesmerising debut album of blue and abstracted trip hop from Cairo's Dijit, making their first appearance for Andy Lyster’s YOUTH with a smoked-out, downbeat sound reminding us of Leila’s uber-classic debut album ‘Like Weather', Tricky’s Pre-Millennium Tension, with echoes of Tirzah, ZULI and Msylma. Perfectly low-lit and charged with a slow, nocturnal energy, ‘Hyperattention: Selected Digital Works Vol.
Finally, Regis lets his rhythmic noise opus out into the world, a bruising and hauntingly absorbing new album - his first since 2001 - recorded in Berlin with Einstürzende Neubauten’s engineer/producer Boris Wilsdorf and an absolute must if you want a dose of highest grade industrial rhythmic noise or into anything from British Murder Boys to Test Department, Jeff Mills and Cabaret Voltaire.
‘Codigo De Barras’ is the exceptionally tight first album from Lisbon-via-Manchester’s cult batida producer P. Adrix - now operating as A.k.Adrix - an LP bursting with shockingly sharp-cut but breezily animated dancers from the top shelf of kuduro, all fire this one!!! Making good on the promise of P. Adrix’s incendiary 2018 debut EP, the Angolan-Portuguese producer’s first album as A.K.
Vaporwave pioneer and new age scryer Spencer Clark (The Skaters) and poetic enigma Francesco Cavaliere merge minds as Etrusca 3D with a heady synth throwback summoning 600BC deities into the C.
Absorbing dub techno and ambient impressionism from Berlin-based coatroom operator and producer Florian T M Zeisig - a strong look for Huerco S./Pendant/Perila fiends and tipped if yr into the Chain Reaction >> Jan Jelinek >> Sferic >> Topdown Dialectic axis.
Glittering 1st new album in 6 years from pioneering alt-dance-pop sorceress Maria Minerva; a beautifully strong reminder of her timeless, breezy way with ohrwurm hooks and lissom ambient house hybrids for her pals at 100% Silk. Recorded in Hollywood, ‘Soft Power’ arrives nearly 10 years since Maria’s pivotal debut (‘Tallinn At Dawn’) with a blend of gauzy and seductively elegant songwriting that’s faithful to the pop urge that's behind all her work.
If you plot a line between Jon Hassell’s 'Dream Theory In Malaya' and Jan Jelinek’s 'Loop Finding Jazz Records', you’ll find this pearl lodged somewhere in between. Add in cover art that reminds us of the sun-bleached breeze of Antena’s eternally nostalgic 'Camino Del Sol' and you have three of our favourite albums referenced in one paragraph.
Chi-town beat mutant Beau Wanzer carves back to Delroy Edwards’ L.A. Club Resource with four killer, grotty bangers Chasing up a class 12” for Brew and split slab with Corporate Park, Wanzer slops out his machines between bits of slow, ferric sleaze in ’Stupid Drunk’ and the worn-down EBM nub of the EP’s title tune, and thru to a rusty techno slam-dancer ‘Vegetable Peeler’, while making time for soured, beat-less bedsit introspection on ‘Wilma’s Crate’. v into this.
Oozing with classic but contemporary soul, ‘Help’ is the definitive album opus by multi-disciplinary artist Duval Timothy, who’s pulled in co-producers Rodaidh McDonald (King Krule, The xx) and Marta Salogni (Björk) for an excellent full length bullet. Dished up on his Carrying Colour label and also starring a glittering roll call of Lil Silva, Vegyn, Mr. Mitch, Dave Okumo, and Twin Shadow, a.o.
A sort of slowly unfurling raga that plays tricks on your sense of depth and temporal perception, this stunning new album from long-string instrument master Ellen Fullman and cellist Theresa Wong has sent us into a light hypnotic trance with its slowly shifting tonal formations. Rarely is drone music so full of quietly cosmic eruptions - everything stays the same // nothing stays the same - pure aural alchemy.
Príncipe’s reign of fire continues with the shockingly heavy return of the Blacksea Não Maya trio after the label’s banner year of shellings from Nídia, DJ Nigga Fox, and DJ Firmeza. In step with the more polished production advances of their label mates, Lisbon’s DJ Kolt, DJ Noronha, and DJ Perigoso - aka Blacksea Não Maya - arrive 5 years on from their previous showing with a remarkably darker, muscular take on mutated Angolan dance music.
‘Sign’ is Autechre’s first new album-album proper since ‘Elseq’ and contains some of their most emosh compositions in eons, perhaps since ‘Tri Repetae’. Practically pocket-sized in comparison to their sprawling torrent of live material and radio recordings in recent years, ’Sign’ is a return to the sort of concision found circa ‘Exai’ and their earlier albums.
Originally released in July, DeForrest Brown Jr.'s explosive fusion of jagged rhythm experiments and revolutionary jazz, now comes bundled with an additional 30-minute track that fleshes out his sprawling narrative in a fourth dimension.
Properly captivating future folk reorientation from Athens-based Christos Chondropoulos, following a fascinating ace for The Tapeworm with mesmerising fusions of ancient and contemporary folk and dance spirits for the 4th world ambient ramblers at 12th Isle - a big RIYL Sublime Frequencies, Paul DeMarinis, Carl Stone, Jay Glass Dubs, Spencer Clark Taking his native Greece’s historic position as a cultural confluence stemming from its ancient empire strewn across Asia, Africa and Europe,
Following last year's brilliant "Trinity" mixtape and LEYA collab "Angel Lust", Alexandra Drewchin returns with her most assertive record to date, a fiery collection of modern dream-folk that blurs the lines between ambient, shoegaze and experimental pop.
Weaving an intricately detailed tapestry of meditative, spiritual jazz and dream electronics, Maxwell Sterling’s astonishing second album 'Laced With Rumour: Loud-Speaker Of Truth’ blooms in the cracks between Alice Coltrane, Talk Talk and Kara-Lis Coverdale, gently coaxing us into a trance-like reverie where the real and artificial morph into one pulsating organism.
Bill Callahan returns with another solo jammer, which opens with him exclaiming "hello, I'm Johnny Cash." It's good too; Smog devotees will find plenty here to enjoy and Callahan's deep, smoky tones have rarely sounded so absorbing. The songs are sad and graceful, slow and seductive, simple and enjoyable. Callahan's a witty, gifted songwriter and his take on deeply Americanized country and folk tropes is never dull.
Visionary Sunn 0))) guitarist Stephen O’Malley collapses black metal and spectralist music into the claw-handed amp worship of ‘Auflösung der Zeit’, a crushing, tantric 45 minute live recording made in Paris, 2018 and livicated to Iancu Dumitrescu.
Following last year’s incredible, all-vocal 'Sing As The Crow Flies' collaboration with Polly Wright, Laura Cannell returns with a new album improvised and recorded in single takes inside Wapping Hydraulic Power Station, London, over two days in February & March 2019.
Crucial, lilting folk-pop magic from quietly admired cult figure Joanne Robertson; collaborator with Dean Blunt, David Cunningham (Flying Lizards) and Paddy Shine now going solo for first time in four years. 'Painting Stupid Girls’ is the follow-up to Joanne’s ‘Walhalla’ album with Dean Blunt in 2017 (and her input on Blunt's ‘Free Jazz’, 2020), and finds her singing solo accompanied by nowt but acoustic guitar and natural-sounding reverbs.
