The Best Of 2022. A great year for music. A terrible year for musicians.
Part 1 - The Platters That Mattered
All of these records blew my mind in 2022, and some of them grew deeper in my affections by simply being there at the right time, and charting the same queasy senses of derangement and loss I was feeling.
In Part 2 I’ll reveal my album of the year and go deeper on 2022 and what it’s meant for music makers, how apparent it was that if you’re not rich and middle class a ‘career’ in music is simply being carved out as NOT FOR YOU.
Many if not most of the artists here struggle not only to bring this stuff out but also to tour, to play, to survive in a world in which creative work has become entirely colonised by those supported by rich parents or benefactors, those willing to play the indentured slavery game, those who have ‘teams’ to do all the exhausting work artists are expected to do now in terms of promo. We should be wary of yearning for golden ages, always. But we shouldn’t allow a forward facing stance to engender a mindless optimism - things are FUCKED for music makers right now. Another astonishing year for music. Another gruesome year for the people who make music.
Give a little love to these people. As ever purely in alphabetical order with excerpts from my reviews (from Wire mag, here and Quietus) in quotes.
50Ft Wave Black Pearl (Fire)
“. . . .love it when Kristin gets fucking HEAVY and this might be t’wave’s groggiest, most compelling suite of songs yet. A definitive grower which ends up bullying your time the further drawn into its fuzzy fucked up spaces you venture. . . “
7xvethegenius Self 7xve 2 (Broadband Sound)
“. . . way more self-consciously ‘arty’ than the Griselda crew and this wonderful set combines rugged beats with gorgeously pellucid drill/electronica constructions. The bass hits hard throughout, the guests are carefully chosen and crucially 7exvthegenius is really finding her own unique voice - intellectual, sharp, soothing, almost Simz-like in its reflection, langour and range, a child of the digital age with her head in the daisy age. Superb.”
Ondrej Adamek, Isabelle Faust, Magdalena Kozena, Simon Rattle Follow Me & Where Are You? (BR-Klassik)
“ . . . a three-movement violin concerto that stretches notes to their limit in a slow-motion melodic conversation between orchestra and soloist that feels increasingly ritualistic and unnerving - the parable of a leader swarmed by his disciples enacted in sonic form. This is the premier performance with Isabelle Faust and it’s unsettling, compelling, temporally placeless music that draws you deeply in. ‘Where Are You' sees Czech mezzo-soprano turn in an astonishing performance on a series of breath/voice pieces with Simon Rattle conducting the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (augmented with Adamek’s own invented sonic-objects/instruments) across some chilling vistas and jagged shapes in sound. Utterly unfamiliar with Adamek’s music before, utterly transfixed now.”
Eve Adams Metal Bird (Basin Rock)
“ . . . .a big part of why ‘Metal Bird’ works is the strange space it carves out for itself, its sense of increasing oddity and wonder as the album progresses. It's as if Eve starts out the album as a singer songwriter but eventually transforms into a dub sorceress, and it’s that shift from the clear and direct to the gaseous and suggestive over the course of this ravishing record that both evanesces and accentuates Adams’ intriguing presence. Illuminated by the past, but unable to escape the growing shadows of the present, ‘Metal Bird’ is a perfectly poised record that contains a lot but also crucially contains space for you. Go fly.”
Africa Negra Antologia Vol 1 (Bongo Joe)
“ . . . Like most bands from the Sao Tomé and Principe archipelago they had to record at Radio Nacional STP, the only studio on the island at the time, whose cramped premises forced the big bands to do sessions outside in the courtyard, at night, facing the ocean and in front of their fans.Catchy as fuck this - and lovely to hear the local Forro language provided by lead singer João Seria and the stunning b-vox from the band. Puxa and Rhumba are the rhythms but frankly if you can’t dance to this physically/mentally/spiritually you’re a bot and I claim my five pounds. Verify you are human by playing this loud immediately.”
Anadol Felicita (Pingipung)
“ . . . performing fascinating games with the ideas of native tradition and authenticity - without a doubt the album is lit up with Turkish psyche and traditional music but where she takes it is somewhere else, somewhere both placeless and yet absolutely suggestive of Atil’s own expanding environment. Anadol is a very postmodern Turkish artist - you can hear both the influence of Turkish pop and Arabesk music from Turkey but also folk, chanson, Greek music, American rock and jazz. This might sound like a grisly confection but in Atil’s hands ‘Felicita’ emerges as deliciously fluid, gliding across genres to create something truly kaleidoscopic and engrossing - her use of a roster of Istanbul jazz musicians to flesh out her vision means that the music here is immaculately realised but has the grit and grain of great hip hop . . . what Anadol explores lyrically throughout is just how nuanced, precarious and ambiguous happiness can be, a happiness the music here plants firmly in the heart and head of anyone lucky enough to bear witness. A beautiful record from a name to watch. Can’t wait for more.”
Suzi Analogue Infinite Zones (Disciples)
“. . . .What I particularly dig here is that this is pure unbridled energy WITHOUT any sense of false positivity or egoism - the melodies on the mighty ‘Shine NN Any Weather’ are almost exclusively dark, dubby, dank and miasmic and it’s that thrilling sense of hard-boiledness to Analogue’s music that really captivates . . . you’re hitting repeat and reload immediately because this collection is future and past crushed into a brand new high. Recommended.”
Avalanche Kaito Avalanche Kaito (Glitterbeat)
“What happens when a Burkinabe urban griot (Kaito Winse) meets a Brussels-based post-punk noise duo (Benjamin Chaval - drums, electronics and Arnaud Paquotte on bass)? This, and it’s fab - think This Heat, Faust, Material, Sloy and Tinariwen at their hottest. It’s THIS kinda music - music by travellers between worlds finding likeminds - that’s the most interesting music at the moment and this self-titled full-length captures a perfect balance between live improv heat and rock-solid studio-borne derangement. Peel yr cap back.”
Badge Époque Ensemble Clouds Of Joy (Telephone Explosion)
“Listening to this third set from Toronto-based experimental ensemble Badge Epoque I’m immediately caught and trapped between two powerful impulses. Firstly to just irresistibly DROWN in the cleanliness, the clarity, the multi-tracked 70s warmth and lushness in these six vintage-soundtrack/electric-jazz tracks. Secondly - to wonder, out loud, who the hell I have become who can accept such thoroughly dated, deliberately vintage sounds in my life. As ever with music that tightropes you between delight and disgust like this your deepest questions are about motivation, about whether BEE sound like this as a refutation of the present, or whether - as I suspect - this is just what naturally emanated from them at this period of their lives. As with the sonically adjacent Soyuz’ new opus ‘Force Of The Wind’ I can’t help admiring the chops but also faintly giggling/goggling at the sealed-in cultishness of the music. In white robes, definitely embearded and with a glassy eyed smile, ‘Clouds Of Joy’ is distinctly hippyish but strangely compelling for it. At first ‘Clouds Of Joy’ was a supremely guilty pleasure. The longer I spend with it the more that guilt melts away with the sheer liquid bliss of these grooves. Keep it like a secret.”
Beach House Once Twice Melody EP (Sub Pop)
“You keep sitting down and listening from the beginning as ‘Once Twice Melody’ grows over its chapters. And that way, each song grows with you, and grows on you and oh my days if ‘Only You Know’ doesn’t dig its elbows right in yr solar plexus you’re past help. I’m digging the sprawl so much, and the company and the view and the sense of not being here and being somewhere else, some other time, when there might even have been hope on the horizon, where the sun wasn’t imagined and things could have turned out different. Only Beach House can do their true vanishment from here through the popular song and I can’t get enough of this new aperture they’re opening up to their dreamworld.”
Simon-Pierre Bestion & La Tempête Hypnos (Alpha Classics/Outhere Music France)
“Bestion’s aim here is to create a Requiem service, using music from the middle ages through the Renaissance and up to the 20th century. I hear that but I also hear true ritual time-travel, and real travel - if his attempt is to point this sacred & secular music from its usual dark and dingy medieval recesses to a space more sun-kissed I feel it on my skin, it’s warming. This isn’t icy chilly cobwebbed cloisters, it’s Byzantine, it’s rennaissance polyphony that’s looking south and east and in this damn cold it’s performing miracles.”
Joep Beving Hermetism (Deutsche Gramaphon)
“Fragile, intimate solo piano explorations by Beving very much in hock to Chopin and Debussy but lit not only with the sound of his Schimmel piano but also the incommunicable yearning of lockdown this music was created in. There is something palpably odd in terms of the motivation here - one is immediately questioning of anyone making music so melodically conventional, or at least conventional to the habits and styles of pre-modernist, turn-of-the-20th-century solo piano composition. But the GRAIN of this, the mournfulness, and the bravery of its sense of space, wins through.”
Big Thief Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You (4.A.D)
“Adrianne Lenker’s songwriting and vocals have never been more inclusive yet forebodingly sui generis, sealing that simultaneous conviviality and strangeness that makes Big Thief’s music so addictive, and the band have got tighter and warmer from the years of touring that preceded the album’s creation. I always hear the word ‘Americana’ mooted around Big Thief but that simply doesn’t do it - the country-ish textures and pace of something like the stunning ‘Sparrow’ have little to do with reimaginings of a lost weird America but seem to genuinely tap into a fresh radiant wonder at the receding horizon of the American landscape that is entirely new in this millenium. For fans a deluge that will swallow the year, for neophytes a hell of a way into one of the very best bands on earth right now.”
Yao Bobby & Simon Grab WUM (LAVALAVA)
“WUM sounds so unleashed, so simultaneously smart and feral, the 20 tracks here come at you with an energy that’s unique, a noisy, sulphurous crush of distorted beats, bass and loops and wild, wicked raps that utterly electrifies you. Yao’s lyrics are multilingual, cutting between his mother-tongue Ewe, French and English and they deal extensively with post-colonial rage and resistance. Grab’s productions are a glitchy riotous bombed-out soundscape of afrobeat and Death-Grips-style noise. . . . the music becomes a properly brain-jangling hebephrenic transmission from a psyche at breaking point. Undercutting this organised confusion though is the sheer bloody-minded grain of resistance and clarity in Bobby’s voice. Play loud, play often. Music that not only stands up to our modern madness but actually provides a gloriously righteous salve to these times. Highly recommended.”
Cate Le Bon Pompeii (Mexican Summer)
“. . . each song here has its own little light and shadow, little walkways to stroll through. I only ever use art-rock as a compliment and this is art-rock. The sax, the dry-as-fuck drums - it’s a very Tusk-like record sonically at times but Le Bon’s voice and words are uniquely on their own spirals, and the way we find ourselves shifting our position in these songs from spectator to confidante to Le Bon herself keeps you on icey tenterhooks throughout. Unsettlingly beautiful.”
Breakage At The Controls Volume 2 (Index)
“D’n’b where the D is HARD and the b is LOW (amazing how much dnb seems to forget to do either of those things these days) and I love the way Breakage always resists the typical structures the dancefloor demands - the drops here aren’t where you expect, the beats scythe in on themselves honing a pure ‘Cold Sweat’ style broken funkiness and the iruptions of dubbed-out vocals that propel each track on just add to the excitement. Lose friends and influence people to hate you with this wonderful music.”
Action Bronson Cocodrillo Turbo (Loma Vista Recordings)
“. . . . a reminder of what a fkn great rapper he is (to the point where the cameos from Meyhem Lauren, Roc Marc and Conway feel superfluous), and the beats served up here by a rotating cast of like-minded loons (Alchemist, Roc Marci, Deringer and AB himself) suits the fetid, amazonian vibe. At times the sounds go into properly odd spaces - try ‘Turkish’ for a flavour of the mentalism on offer here. Recommended.”
Laura Cannell Antiphony Of The Trees (Brawl)
“I really like the enforced discipline and limitations Cannell has given herself on her 7th solo album, and how much she gets from those limitations - here she focusses solely on the recorder (bass, tenor, alto and double recorder), and takes inspiration from the birdsong she hears in the Fen valley where she lives. She takes parts and distorts, layers, fundamentally DUBS them into these beautiful simulacra of birdsong, of the back and forth we’re all starting to hear more of on our woodland walks. For Cannell, this was inspired in part by the sudden quietening of the roads and the skies during lockdown - “The birds were singing so loudly that I had to sing back”. The way she gets the various recorders’ polyphonic tones oscilatting, fracturing, and yet is also able to marshall them into such a strong, supple resonant sound is nothing short of miraculous.”
Chaos Perversion Petrified Against The Emanation (Sentient Ruin)
“With titles like ‘Absorption Ascencion Under The Vampiric Connection’ and ‘From The Ominous Funerary Miasma - Incantation By Semitrance and Praxis of the Grotesque’ you know this isn’t gonna miss and as Chilean black/death metal concoctions go this is a glowering chalice from the charnel-house . . . when they say that this ‘hell-forged arsenal of complete mass destruction’ creates a ‘reek from its wretched spires like a baneful presence signaling omens and premonitions of unseen black/death ritualism and disarray’ you bet yr cute little caboose they MEAN it.”
Charli XCX Crash (Asylum)
“‘Used To Know Me’ is kind of out of order isn’t it? A cheater’s anthem but because you’re PART of this affair you assent to its lyrical need, and you can’t resist how fucking totally catchy it is. Disgraceful behaviour (yes, humming it as I type) but here because I dig ‘Baby’ on the EP SO much, straight-up Timber/timba/lake/land pop that gets all robotic and scary and doomed but winds up on a hook worthy of Noga Erez.”
Che Noir Food For Thought (DMG)
“ . . . love the sense of self-exploration but also the grain of dissident resistance throughout this. There’s no pride in poverty here but also no escape into dreams of wealth, and Che is able to spit Simz-style self-interrogation and street narrative with total authority. Now Griselda is firmly dwindling in terms of quality, Che offers real hope that Buffalo might finally give us a true lasting star. Superb.”
Coast Contra Apt.505 (Area51)
“If you get a chance check out some of this Philly crews’ freestyle videos on Youtube they’re awesome and this debut album is an absolute doozie - something of the back’n’forth grace and guile of a Roots or Pharcyde, two sons of Ras Kass involved but not remotely dated (and where it IS, no beligerent deliberate regressiveness), a nice mix of hooky r’n’b inflected beats with rawer harder-hitting trap-laced dynamics as well. Smokers’ choice.”
Come Peel Sessions (Fire)
“. . . the versions here (mainly from the magnificent masterpieces ‘11:11’ and the recently reissued ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’) are just stunning, rawer than the album takes and pitched with that live ferocity that Come themselves never quite captured on tape. Also some fantastic tracks like the raucous Stonesy punka splurge of ‘City Of Fun’, the tangled trauma of ‘Sharon Vs Karen’ and a live ‘Clockface’ from Boston in 91 that you won’t hear ANYWHERE else in Come’s discography so far. It’s one of the greatest discographies in all rock, complete it with this. And if you’ve never heard Come before oh my god, I envy you your onward journey.”
Commodo Living Bones (Black Acre)
“Oh fuck. He’s back. Commodo properly fucking scares me. His music is so fetid, so purulent with loathing and yet it can only come from love, from fascination with sound, and a deep infatuation with deepest bass, the kind that taps your skeleton and judders your innards. ‘Living Bones’ is one of his filthiest, dankest, most compelling pieces yet and is the preview to a 3-track EP called ‘Deft 1s’ out in late Feb. Sheffield dubtronics par excellence.”
Donna Celia Coquista O Bar (Musica Macondo/Bandcamp)
“ . . . an eight-track comp on Brasil Novo of contemporary Afro-Brazilian tracks and it’s gloriously all-over-the-shop - samba, candomble, batuques, jazz, folk all feature but crucially all pitched at the dancefloor, showcasing both celebrated and unfamiliar artists from the cities of Recife, Rio De Janeiro and Sao Paulo. Brazil’s record industry has often been white-facing, ignoring or disdaining this music, which has survived through a strong oral tradition and rituals like carnival - one can only surmise how much the pandemic and Bolsonaro have also accentuated this cultural marginalisation. A positivity you can’t refute. Let it in your bones.”
Marcus Creed x Danish National Vocal Ensemble, Daniel Aberg, Malene Nordtrop Lux Aeterna: Choral Works by Gyorgy Ligeti and Zoltan Kodaly (Verso)
“. . . beyond ethnomusicology. . . pushing the boundaries of expectations with lovely dissonant clusters of notes and onomatopaeic sounds. Of course by the time you’re through to the unforgettable Lux Aeterna (and the remarkable Drei Phantasien - based on texts by Friedrich Holderlin) you’re in Ligeti’s later stage, most revelatory work. The real intrigue and pull of this wonderful recording for me though is the Kodaly works which I was alot less familiar with - they chart his development from the world of late romanticism to the mini-cantata Matrai kepek (Matra pictures), and the overwhelming Esti Dal (Evening Song). The Danish National Vocal Ensemble and conductor Marcus Creed are incredible here, and producer Michael Emery and technician Mikkel Nymand put you right in the room. Stunning.”
Lisa Davidsen & Leif Ove Andsnes Edvard Grieg (Universal)
“. . . this album is hinged around Haugtussa, Grieg’s only song cycle, which I’ve never heard before and which blew me away with the sheer translucent beauty of these songs and structures and shapes. It’s clear that Andsnes and Davidsen want to come to this material - familiar to Norwegian audiences - afresh and anew, and they’ve found their OWN way of playing and singing these amazing songs that - once I’d compared them to previous recordings - is genuinely innovative and fresh. Gorgeous, expressive, light but heavy heavy but light listening. Highly recommended.”
E Any Information (Silver Rocket)
“You are reminded of the more experimental side of post-hardcore rock (Albini post Big Black + Six Finger Satellite, even Cop Shoot Cop are recalled to me) and the songs here combine fascinating tangents that seem to dive deeper and more revealingly into the tangled trauma of fucked-up relationships than even Zedek’s own solo work. I’d call each member’s other work unromantic romance. In E, it’s just plain unromantic. Harsh, unsparing but very addictive little EP this.”
Eyal el Wahab Khat (Bandcamp)
“Yes, named after the drug so widely chewed across the middle east and this Tel Aviv-based band’s music is similarly moreish and addictive . . . using an unpicturable orchestra of percussion, horns, strings, electricity and el Wahab's own DIY instruments. Formalistically this is pop - simple chords and melodies, but that instrumentation takes you somewhere else simultaneously retro and futurist and crucially Eyal’s roots-and-future clash beautifully throughout. An alba worth opening.”
Elucid I Told Bessie (Backwoodz Studioz)
“There was nothing else in hip hop in 2022 that got remotely close to the elegiac, brain-jangling wonder of this homage to Elucid’s nanna - the guests should tip you the wink as to how weird and wonderful this album is”
Elujay Circmvnt (OneTime!)
“. . . fresh, weird r’n’b (or is that d’n’b or is that doo-wop or is that 80s soul or is that lovers rock?) from Oakland. created entirely NOT in person by 25 year old sometime-model most-time musician Elujay in collaboration via Zoom and file-transfer during the pandemic. It already sounds like when we listen to this in the normal future we’re fantasising, it will sound like pandemic music - it won’t, because the songs and derailments of those songs are engrossing enough to stand without that context, but I don’t think it’s just my imagination that there’s a faint sense of panic, woozy disconnection and incipient hysteria about this collection that puts it a cut-above.”
Sharon Van Etten We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong (Jagjaguwar)
“‘. . . properly epic, a widescreen wonder of panoramic yearning and architectural longing. My faves tracks here are BIG, eighties-infused synth-wise (but also bang up to date in terms of the low-end and beats), and they’re epic because they find their hooks quickly and rinse them completely - there’s no slow-build to hooky choruses here, Van Etten gives you the melodic thing that is going to absorb you quickly, then spends the duration of the songs amplifying the size to . . . yeah EPIC is the word, but epic constructed from a deeply human, intimate basis. When things drop down - as in the gorgeous ‘Darkish’ - Etten’s voice has never sounded so close, so able to soar, so engulfing and wrapped around you.”
Ferkat Al Ard Oghneya (Habibi Funk)
“. . . a remarkable album from 1978, from Issam Hajali’s group Ferkat Al Ard, a trio from Lebanon playing music from somewhere just behind the temple and under the ribs - a great almost-lost gem of Arab pop that marks the interstices of traditional Arab music, tropicalia, baroque pop, psyche folk, jazz and the stunning lush arrangements of Ziad Rahbani. It’s the Brazilian connection that really lights this up (Lebanon and Brazil have had a strong connection for nearly a century due to the continuous flow of immigrants from one country to the other, Brazil has the largest Lebanese diaspora in the world, the “Brasilibanês) and the fluidity of the meld of Arab pop and bossa/tropicalia is a delight.”
Ekin Fil Feelings (A Sunken Mall)
“ . . . Ekin Fil is Istanbul-based Turkish musician Ekin Üzeltüzenci who first grabbed my attention with ‘Language’ on tape in 2011 for the Root Strata label. The bruised hazy soundworlds she creates in which melodies seem half-remembered, half-forgotten absolutely pierced somewhere deep for me and ‘Feelings’ - written & produced by Fil in the depths of 2020-lockdown has taken over a year to reach us but was worth the wait. Swoonsome drones, gorgeous Satie-esque piano lines, glimpses of both despair and hope, an overhanging feeling of darkness to the strung out and ethereal textures and sounds crucially shot through with tiny iridescent moments of glimpsed hope and sudden thrilling moments where things get fully psyche/dream-pop. A beautiful, still and yet deeply moving album.”
FKA twigs CAPRISONGS (Young)
“So enjoyable I’ll even acquiesce to the kind of lower/upper-case shenanigans I normally spurn like a rabid dog. I’ll even acquiesce to the idea of this as a mixtape (replete with pressplay noises at the start of every track) - it lessens the weight of febrile industry/critical over-think that previous FKA releases have carried. Where previously the chat about twigs that always seemed so choked with ‘career-appraisal’ rather than musical insight, here we’re invited into her company just for a laugh, for fun, for a day, for 48 minutes, and it’s a blast. By becoming so light on her feet, FKA’s making her best, least pressured music yet.”
Moktar Gania & Gnawa Soul Gnawa Soul (Planet Essaouira)
“The Gnawa culture stems from descendants of slaves bought to Maghreb during the Arab trade in sub-Saharan Africa between the 8th and 19th centuries, with cults linked to Sahelian animist rituals. Ritualistic sound is what you hear on this head-wrecking LP - Moktar Gania is heir to a long line of Gnawa musicians and an amazing guembri player (the traditional Gnawa guitar) - this LP comes from his meeting with composer and guitarist Anoir Ben Brahim and percussionist and arranger Yacine Ben Ali. The Gnawa groove is hit up with the oriental melodies of the Maghreb and saxophonist Géraldine Laurent, guitarist Jean-Marie Ecay, and Israeli singer of Moroccan origin Neta El Kayam seal the whole thing together with sensational playing. Fiery, hypnotic music that puts a 50-degree heat in any room or car or head it hits. Handle carefully, play LOUD.”
GLOR1A Metal (Bandcamp)
“. . . intensely dystopian r’n’b that is shot through with a deeply post-punk sense of rhythmic intrigue and darkness . . . for this new album she’s created a whole new alter ego, ‘Lost in technology, Black femme-bot GLO1RIA 2.0, some say she is malfunctioning’. That sense of ‘unprogrammed reflections’ and ‘unmanned performance’ is something infecting and effecting a lot of black female r’n’b from the UK atm (I think of the stunning ghostly work of Jaydonclover) but GLOR1A makes that oddity and freedom explicit throughout this stunning record. A major new talent and a name I suggest you watch like a hawk - a remix project is soon-coming and if ‘Metal’ is anything to go by may well be one of 2022’s first pinnacles. A belligerent, bruising, brilliant masterpiece.”
Gnawa Music Of Marrakesh Night Spirit Masters (Zehra)
“. . . . gloriously low-end-heavy stuff, basslines locked in from the off and going nowhere VAST, little metal clappers and drums and voices swimming in and out of the mix to ramp up both the hypnosis and the strange sense of ancient funk. What’s great about Laswells mix is that he’s confident in this music enough to let tracks that are purely percussive, or purely melodic, sit amidst those tracks that blend the two and consequently the cumulative effect of the album is a little beyond even his control, a properly unhinging build of ceremony and magic that’s irresistible. A fantastic launchpad into a far-too-unheralded music culture you might not be familiar with. Dive in.”
Ground & Seyu Dance Sunny (Chill Mountain)
“Solex, early Simz mixtapes, late Blonde Redhead . . . . there’s something simultaneously red hot and icily cold about this record and I’m kind of addicted to walking its frostbit sunstruck tightrope as the weather continues to provide apocalyptic mildness outside. Osaka-based producer Ground first came to my attention with 2018’s astonishing ‘Sunizm’ and he’s plouged a hugely absorbing furrow since mixing experimental electronica and trippy folklorism - on ‘Dance Sunny’ he’s produced a suite of weird wonder with Seyu who is a vocalist, lyricist and producer from Dayton, Ohio. Her percussive, brilliantly biting, deadpan (and often gratifyingly IRATE) vocals sit so perfectly amidst the beats and riddims here it’s as if they’ve been working together for years. Taking and talking no shit.”
Sofia Gubaidulina/Sinfonia Varsovia Works for Cello & Accordion (Sarton Records)
“Which might strike you as an odd combination but that’s precisely what makes this miraculous music so unsettlingly addictive. Gubajdulina is such a wonderful composer and you sense she KNEW just how to accentuate the folk-horror oddity of what she’s written here. The accordion here is a billion miles distant from the chirpy-squeezebox playing you might expect - it creates a legion of drones, all morbid, all dark, sonically very close to the use of harmonium in Indian music. The cellos hang in deliciously dissonant clusters amidst those drones and the solo cello peals off into wracked, devestating melodic lines that are fearlessly modernist and massively moving. Something of the spooked, heartstopping vibe of Messaien’s ‘Quartet Por Le Fin Du Temps’ here. Highly recommended.”
Aldous Harding Warm Chris (4.A.D)
“As poppy as I’ve ever heard the miraculous Harding. So pure, so clear, so damn fucking catchy it has to have been painstaking but it never SOUNDS difficult, it sounds like an effortless suite of pop wonder that almost comes together as you hear it happening. Utterly dazzling and some of the most addictive pop of the year.”
Sara Hebe x Ana Tijoux Almacen De Datos (Sara Hebe)
“Omg, what a meeting of minds, and what a fucking tune- two AMAZING Latin artists casually spitting out a total party-starter - love the ‘Drop It Like It’s Hot’ minimalism of this, very little bar a snappy beat, a velcro-adherent loop-lick, crucially that sparseness foregrounds the two amazing voices. Sara Hebe is an Argentinian genius who has been making fab records since 2008’s “La hija del loco” (“The Mad- man’s Daughter” - also check 2012’s ‘Puentera’, 2015’s ‘Colectivo Vacio’ and 2019’s ‘Politicalpari’) and here with the similarly awesome Ana Tijoux (check her astounding ‘1977’ album) this is just a straight up monster tune and amazing vid.”
Laura van der Heijden & Jâms Coleman Pohádka Tales from Prague to Budapest (Chandos)
“Focusing on the folk roots of Czech and Hungarian composers of the last century this collaboration between cellist van der Heijden and pianist Coleman is a wonderful recital, including some works entirely new to the Cello and adapted by van der Heidjen (Janáček’s Violin Sonata and two songs by Kodály). She plays a 17th century Rugeri cello and it aches with everything that makes that instrument so special, a long-fostered and deeply empathetic awareness of each other makes their playing sparkle and stretch out in all the right places, served brilliantly by a production that puts you right in the room with them.”
Helms Alee Keep This Be The Way(Sargent House)
“ a great heavy harmonious three-piece from Seattle but where their previous records have been snapshots of deeply rehearsed material, their new album ‘Keep This Be The Way’ was entirely confected in lockdown. The band made themselves a bubble, and a studio, and off the leash of time they played with the textures and layers of their sound, and with the compositional process. The results are fucking fantastic. “
Boldy James x Real Bad Man Killing Nothing (Real Bad Man Records)
“ Hypnotic yet occasionally jarring soundscapes that Boldy’s narratives both sail over but also punctuate, with a sense of encroaching darkness and utterly irredeemable dankness that never existentially tips over into doom, always pushes each couplet and each new sonic antechamber into gloriously resistant life. A gritty, grainy riot for the mind.”
J.I.D The Forever Story (Dreamville)
“an amazing record, deep, funny, shocking, hook-laden, bass heavy and as waywardly engrossing as prime Outkast, as gritty and graceful and glorious as hip hop gets in 2022, and one of the most engrossingly sealed-in holistic albums I’ve heard all year. You get bound up in it. . . .a rarity, a hip hop album in 2022 without a fucking attitude of arrogance or injured vengeance or monomania, a full, giving, generous and open artistic expression rather than a closed off defensive business statement.”
Johann-Johannsson/American Contemporary Music Ensemble/ Theatre Of Voices Drone Mass (Deutsche Grammophon)
“. . . at first you might almost feel this is some uncovered dark masterwork from the middle ages but as the electronic components get increasingly blended in, as the drones start taking on a hazey, heady, entirely suggestive rather than religious aspect you relish the placelessness of the language . . . your mind is simultaneously tied to the choir’s sense of churchly light and space, but also untethered by earthly reference, free to gaze up to the open skies and over the ruins. Like Lygeti tuning into Labradford. Really special this.”
Jim Jones x DJ Drama Gangsta Grillz: We Set The Trends (VL)
“. . . does what a proper mixtape should do. Production thrills for at least 75% of it, skip button used two times or less. One track that’s so arrestingly odd you can’t at first tell if it’s genius or horrible, or at second, or third. (‘Stickup’). Rhymers and guests loose, but because of that looseness occassionally amazing and doing things they might not do on a more ‘official’ release. The right ‘features’ for the right production i.e some sense of forethought rather than just fucking about and hoping for the best. Addictive when it’s predictable. Startling when it isn’t. All good.”
J.Rocc A Wonderful Letter (Stones Throw)
“. . . .a delight that flits from heavy sample-laden hardcore to dancefloor-directed disco derangement and takes in a welter of wibblery in between. Streetlevel and high as a news-copter.”
King Iso Get Well Soon (Strange Music Inc.)
“In the cultural transaction (rather than imperialism) that is now the relationship between US & UK hip hop I’m hearing more influence of UK Drill on US rap than the other way round but I can’t tell if that’s a habit stemming from my listening habits or my forgetting just what an influence trap and Chicago drill exerted in the UK. Either way, Iso is an interesting rapper, who populates an interesting facing-30, slightly doomy, occassionally poignantly heartfelt persona throughout this freewheeling, bass-heavy collection that has a great walloping Southern-rap humour and heaviness (and a speed-of-thought to rival the fastest Dancehall to it as well). At it’s best, like on the horror-grime of ‘6 AM’ this stuff knocks the breath out of you and wobbles all the air in the room out of existence.”
Laddio Bolocko ‘97-’99 (Castle Face)
“ a reissue of the entire recorded work of this miraculous, unique band . . . frenzied, coruscating, shocking, heavy, funky, mad, razor-sharp - if I can draw comparisons perhaps God(flesh), Six Finger Satellite, This Heat but fuck, I’m not really getting close, only indicating that no this isn’t happy music but it is utterly thrilling . . . FEEL in abundance so this isn’t in any way a ‘challenging’ listen, it’s just a gloriously galvanised racket that’s kind of mindblowing and that goes in multi-directional beams out your speakers past your dropped jaw and straight into your cortex - once you hear em you won’t forget.”
Suzie LeBlanc De La Cour De Louis XIV a Shippagan (ATMA Classique)
“. . . Acadian soprano Suzie LeBlanc pairs French airs de cour with traditional Acadian songs but it’s the arrangments of this material that really sings here - Ellen Torrie provides sublime understated guitar, Marie Nadeau-Tremblay’s baroque violin is a peal of wonder, Vincent Lauzer makes his recorder plangent and compelling and Sylvain Bergeron plays Baroque guitar and archlute with a modern confidence and an ancient delicacy. Serious songs, comic songs, traditional songs but crucially all arranged in collaboration so this feels less like repertoire and more like a band-recording. Just an exquisite sound.”
Kendrick Lamar Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers (Aftermath/ Interscope/ Top Dawg)
“A sense always in the white critical narrative around Kendrick, that he is somehow floating ‘free’ of rap now - the amnesiacal forgetting of hip hop’s birthpang & eternal promise of freedom, lyrically and musically. For this listener, the Band’s idea of a great American music, a sweeping tapestry of American sound is precisely what Kendrick has created here in this album of contrasts and paradox and confusion - hyperkinetic rhymes and music that sum up ponderous moments, bubblegum hooks mashed into pivoting psycho-babble, poetry full of concrete anger and burning hunger couched in music that dubs that desire out into abtraction. The sheer fucking HOLD he takes on you from the moment the needle drops is properly unearthly, and I really don’t feel that anyone is talking about race, class, violence and the ongoing diffraction of the American nightmare with anywhere near as much magical articulacy and suggestive ambivalence as Kendrick.”
The Maghreban Connection (Zoot Records)
“. . . ‘Connection’ is a telling title - not only has he managed to forge connections with artists who completely help his vision come across here, he connects soundworlds in a brilliantly imaginative and entirely natural way, while connecting with his own grief and sadness with a depth his previous work has only hinted at. He’s become connected with himself and the results are ravishing - the way he confects things together is entirely personal and in the interests of suggestiveness and directness rather than merely the stacking up of referents - yes you’ll hear techno, jazz and middle Eastern influences combine but that doesn’t quite prepare you for just how deeply fluid, intimate and yes - connected - this music feels. Plug yourselves in and go live. A wonderful record to wander in.”
Branko Mataja Over Fields & Mountains (Numero Group)
“. . . what a uniquely weird sound - delayed electric guitar played with this strange mix of Durrutti-column-like pointillism, Les-Paul style garage tape experiment, and Django-esque subtlety and verve. Born in 1923 in the coastal town of Bekar, Branko and his family moved to North Hollywood in 1964. After working as a barber, he began teaching himself to repair guitars and other instruments. He built the guitars he used to record his two albums — Traditional And Folk Songs Of Yugoslavia and Folk Songs of Serbja - which uniquely took traditional music away from flutes/lutes/bagpipes and rendered it through wood and wire and pickups and a lovely bit of radiant reverbed fuzz around the edges. It plays like a great lost bit of radiophonic/Joe Meek weirdness, enjoy.”
Trevor Mathison From Signal To Decay: Volume 2 (Purge)
“Mathison has forged the kind of evanescent sonic identity that deliberately and dissidently slips under mainstream cultural radars, but whose imprimatur, when first heard, resonates so incredibly deeply you can’t believe more of us, especially us BAME folk, aren’t armed with it, don’t carry it like a weapon against our own marginalisation. Fascinated by dub, tape music, music concrete, industrial music and the myriad connections therein, Mathison takes samples, found-sounds and archival material and blends it into these stunning reconfigurations of black sonic space. For anyone who knows Mathison’s work this is a long-overdue collection to savour. For those only stumbling across his music now, be prepared to find the work of an unheralded pioneer who has provided one of the surest, most fascinating explorations of a uniquely British, uniquely polyglot history of sonic intrigue and resistance. Absolutely essential.”
Meshuggah Immutable (Nuclear Blast)
“The moment about two minutes in to this record when the first totally astonishing riff kicks in has imperilled me immensely - driving, I punch the steering wheel so hard my palms tingle, want the moment to never end cos it’s so fucking epic. The Swedish death/tech/doom-metallers ninth LP, their first in which co-founder Fredrik Thordendal writes nothing (although does contribute typically mind-melting guitar solos), each song played and treated like a unique entity, given Meshuggah-ness by sheer dint of being played by the band rather than fitting neatly into any self-designated categories. The precision and control and grand-guignol gothery is all still in place but there’s also surprise (check the startlingly clean and gorgeous nine-minute odyssey of ‘They Move Below’) and an energy the band haven’t shown in years. Glorious.”
Messa Close (Svart Records)
“. . . Messa are an Italian doom/black-metal five-piece fronted with the amazing Grace Slick-like vocals of Sara - their 2016 LP ‘Belfry’ was astonishingly evocative and up there with other femme-fronted doom like the amazing Windhand - but shot through with its own latinate Goblin-like weirdness and uniquely spooked vibe. Black/doom/sludge/DRAMATIC metal but somehow . . . none of those things, Messa music. I think it might be cos everyone in the band is special, and has a special understanding of each other: Sara’s vocals, Marco’s bass, Alberto’s guitar, Rocco’s drums, they cleave around each other so intuitively it’s jarring for anyone outside that circle, startling how every shift feels natural to them but remains so ravishing for us. Like nothing else in heavy music at the moment. Love ‘em.”
Mitski Love Me More (Dead Oceans)
Only 12 notes anyone can play but ‘Love Me More’ is one of those songs where you realise 12-factorial is nowhere NEAR being fully explored yet - Mitski has written one of THEE addictive pop songs of the year thus far and it’s arrangment is wonderfully placeless both temporally and geographically, as touched by Tin-Pan smarts as Nordic glacial glide and instantly sealed to your heart. Alongside the Aldous, pop single of the week.
Mdou Moctar Afrique Victime: Deluxe Edition (Matador Records)
“What an absolutely stunning record this is - here getting a well-deserved deluxe edition with bonus live and demo tracks. Mdou Moctar is a Tuareg musican who plays overdriven, lurid, incendiary versions of traditional Tuareg music, thick with seething funk and pschedelic atmosphere and the live tracks included here make this essential even for those who caught the original drop of this last year. The demos are enthralling too, pared down to acoustic and percussion and like hearing Marc Bolan do T.Rex hits Tyrannasouraus Rex-style. Essential.”
Noori & His Dorpa Band Beja Power! (Ostinato)
“. . . an attempt on his part to keep alive the oft-oppressed Beja (pronounced bee-jah) culture of East Sudan. 30 years ago Noori welded together a vintage tambour from the 70s with a guitar neck and the result is his electrified tambo-guitar, a unique hybrid which is just part of his band’s meld of music, the playing hypnotic, but also licked with flames and heat and simmering threat. Electrified Afro jazz-rock and WHAT a band playing it. Magnificent.”
Objectiv & Lupo Decisions EP (ThirtyOne Recordings)
“31, as you should know, is one of those d’n’b imprints you can absolutely trust with your life and this gloriously dank EP sees you more than right. . . Doc Scott only allows the very best on 31 and the standard is kept high throughout this little slab of malevolent wonder.”
OKI Tonkori In The Moonlight (Mais Um Discos)
“Hokkaido-born experimental folk musician OKI plays the Tonkori, a five-stringed instrument thought to have originated in the mid-19th Century on the island of Sakhalin and to have arrived in the main Ainu community of Hokkaido after Sakhalin was annexed by Russia after WWII. On this 11-track compilation of mostly traditional Ainu songs, OKI combines Tonkori melodies, dub and folk - as well as aspects of Irish folk, reggae, throat-singing, African drumming, and Central-Asian ritualistic music to enchanting and engrossing effect. The special mix of roots and rootlessness, of space for new expressions but also an openness to spectral ancient voices, is what gives so much of the music here its vitality and suggestiveness. Dive in.”
Orchestre Massako Limited Dance Edition Nr.14 (Analog Africa)
“recorded in makeshift open-air recording studios but what you hear here is music recorded after the Gabon Armed Forces decided to form their own band in 71 - funds were made available to bring recording equipment over from France, Mack-Joss was recruited to become the band leader and Orchestre Massako was born. That itinerant recording scenario (the records were pressed in France and then shipped back to Africa) is part of the pleasure here because the band sound so fluid, so intimate with each other it takes the breath away - above and beyond all though is the singing from Amara Toure, a vocalist from Guinée Conakry who had joined Orchestre Massako as a singer in 1980 and it’s his vox that really pushes this to the stratosphere. Hypnotic miraculous music.”
Bobby Oroza Get On The Other Side (Big Crown)
“R’n’b is contemporary black pop. Oroza ain’t daft enough to think he’s making that. He’s making a grittily real dream of wholeness that comes from a broken white boy from Helsinki. That committment to his dream is all important and it utterly staggers me how his concision and control makes this record so emotionally devestating but ultimately redemptive : back in the day ‘Otherside’ would have - if not repelled me - simply not fitted in with my doctrinaire ideas about the past and its’ usability to forge a future. In this permanently present past, and permanently dated present, I find ‘Get On The Otherside’ utterly irresistible.”
Otoboke Beaver Super Champon (Damnably)
“Just as awesome as ‘Itekoma Hits’ but pushed into an even more laceratingly eye-popping technicolour - OB still play like absolute motherfuckers, you will not hear a tighter, more pulverising rock n roll band on the planet right now. They’ve toured, they’re tighter, it’s fucking awesome and the songs have got more dazzling to fit - more sections, more complexity, more togetherness and more strength when you really didn’t think that was possible.Play loud, play often, play AT non-believers. Their world would be a better world.”
Shelley Parker Wisteria (Hypercolour)
“urban music in an entirely non-genre sense - it’s dense, layered and cinematically immediately evocative of both the huge structures of urban life but also the tiny street-level detail. Time passes on ‘Wisteria’ but you don’t notice or feel it pass, rather you get this steadily unsettling sense that though you’ve been plunged down trajectories and up to vantage points you’re still ultimately inhabiting Parker’s consciousness, the way SHE sees and hears things, so by the time you’re rapt in the industrial dankness and dark graininess of ‘Deepfield Way’ all you’re thinking about is rewinding back to the beginning, staying in this world both familiar and freakishly alive with electro- psychedelic suggestion. Superb.”
Phase Shore To Shore (Metalheadz)
“I put up with the moments here that are a little too liquid and lissom and fusion-like because Phase knows how to harden things down to concise simplicities as well, hard hitting beats, beautifully refracted bass, little details that get addictively unhinging. Calibre and Intalex exerting an influence here, especially on the frictive incisive likes of ‘Stress Out’ and ‘Something’s Missing’. I nitpick on the cleanliness but there are passages that I love throughout, and it’s fantastic driving music late at night, dramatises every neon-glistened moment.”
Tegh & Adel Poursamadi Ima ایما (Injazero)
“an immensely evocative, richly cinematic series of soundscapes that walks the tightrope between Iranian traditional music and science-fictional composition that incorporates drone, noise and experimental electronics. ‘Ima’ really does suggest a new fusion of ancient and futuristic, really does capture a unique working method that has unique results. A dizzyingly good, immensely suggestive record. Investigate immediately.”
Primitive Man Insurmountable (Closed Casket Activities)
“They always sound unhealthily FUCKED in head, spirit and soul- this latest EP sounds like it was tapped and scraped from the abyssal depths, ultra-slo-mo carnage that avoids all Sabbathisms and puts the atonal and jarring (the guitars often sound more like something Keith Levene or JKBroadrick would dream up) into the dynamics of 16rpm doom. Utterly bleak, hostile, pitiless music to use as a collosal fuck you to the world, the universe and the horrific joke that is existence. An addictive complete DESPAIR of sound.”
Quelle Chris Deathfame (Mello Music Group)
“His weirdest yet . . . In the past it’s been easy if mind-boggling to detail the accumulations of sound Chris has confected but here EVERYTHING is wrong in the best most unsettling way, wonky as fuck, jazz pushed into industrial heaviness, rap slowed to a Butthole-Surfers crawl, rhymes doubling back on themselves, voices schizophrenically shifting tone mid song, mid syllable, refusing their own significance. Nowhere near to fathoming this masterpiece out but damn sure it’s a masterpiece. Experience it.”
Revelators Sound System Revelators (37d03d)
“RSS are MC Taylor from Hiss Golden Messenger and his mate Cameron Ralston and they recorded this self-titled debut album (about to drop) through 2020/21 at Taylor’s home in Durham North Carolina and Richmond Virginia’s Spacebomb studio (where Ralston is the session bassist). So far, so dangerously close to ‘jam band’ but fuck me it’s a great LP . . . . rump-shaking beats, jazzy horns and piano coalescing into a real hypnotic drone and moments of properly free-flowing derailment that add to a burgeoning monolithic sense of heaviness. This IS fusion, but that kinda lovely fusion that feels like a bit TOO much and also not enough, fusion that hasn’t been spoiled by its virtuosity. Diggit.”
Rosalia Motomami (Columbia)
“the astonishing twists and turns this record takes, into lo-fi Latino pop, into achingly fragile authenticity and rock hard artifice, never fail to take you with them, always latch themselves addictively into your synapses through sheer hookiness and confidence. She’s honest about her theivery, and the reggaeton & dembow touches are done as fearlessly as the gospel, avant-funk, hip hop, trap and tropicalia and straight-to-camera balladry - fully aware of the twists in cultural imperialism that both liberate and limit her, always with THAT FUCKING AMAZING VOICE pulsating like the most electrifying sound you’ve heard in pop since Little fkn Richard. Let it play all summer.”
Sophia Djebel Rose Métempsycose (Red Wig/Oracle)
“Recorded in the high plateaus of Auvergne, the arrangements here are beautifully austere and sparse - though Rose’s guitars and harmonium always seem to fray and radiate with a mountain light, peripherally iridescent with tiny crepuscular life. Her voice is a delicious dark thing of wonder - absolutely a hard-boiled Nico-like peal of across-the-table doomspeak but just as able to look up and levitate and commune with the air above, the empty heaven and the infinite space. A magical, mysterious soundtrack to your own reconnection with the earth.”
Claire Rousay x More Eaze Never Stop Texting Me (Orange Milk)
“If this had been played to me as a child and I’d have been told this was FUTURE POP I would’ve believed.”
Suso Sáiz x Menhir Just Before Silence (Phantom Limb)
“a stunning suite of fuzzy, ambient wonder from Spanish minimalist composer Saiz that recalls Windy & Carl, Labradford, Stars Of The Lid and also the astonishingly prolific and equally wondrous Rafael Anton Irisarri (you don’t know him? GET TO KNOW TOOT SWEET). A dream you don’t want to end, that leaves your skin puckered and prone.”
Sasami Squeeze (Domino)
“I’m fucking addicted to it: LA-based ex-Cherry Glazerr Sasami Ashworth’s second album is fundamentally about struggle - the hooks are always about trying to understand, trying to communicate, but for anyone who ever got addicted to Throwing Muses, That Dog this music makes immediate pop sense. The DRYness of the recording is key, there’s an intimacy to everything that makes even the heaviest moments (‘Skin A Rat’) feel like you’re hearing them in a dead-room, and the shifts in tone from the punchy (‘Sorry Entertainer’) to the plangent (‘The Greatest’, ‘Tried To Understand’ and the gorgeous chorale-like ‘Feminine Water Turmoil’) remain utterly convincing thanks to Ashworth’s miraculous voice, one of thee great voices you’ll hear in 2022. Tremendous.”
Nate Scheible Fairfax (Warm Winters)
“I haven’t heard a more moving work of ‘found-sound’ manipulation in my life . . . a stunningly emotional, eventually redemptive suite of wonder that will cleave itself around your own memories, your own ongoing heartbreaks and loneliness, like a warm embrace, like the tightest hug. This isn’t grand drama or kitchen-sink homily. This love is the size of these people. Let it envelop you.”
Sigh Shiki (Peaceville)
“both cohesive and chaotic, continuing Sighs blending of tradition Japanese instrumentation (Shakuhachi & Sinobue flutes make frequent, and totally hatstand appearances) with their anti-template of prog-black-symphonic-doom madness. This kind of strange alternation between feral ugliness and technically gorgeous genre-less soundtrack-worlds makes the whole album a properly unsettling experience, addictively so. a truly astonishing mix of blazing drone, Himalayan wonder and spectral ambience that somehow recalls Popol Vuh, Eno AND Celtic Frost. I don’t know how Sigh do what they do. I’m just ever so glad they do.”
Širom The Liquified Throne Of Simplicity (tak:til)
“Slovenia’s crossroads-status between central Europe the Balkans and the Adriatic, and its topography of mountains and forests and ‘karst’ landscapes are all key here, in pieces full of both energy and contemplation. They call this album ‘intuitive transcendence’ and dammit they’re right . . . they’ve fully slipped the restraints of a vinyl record to craft these long, hypnotic journeys in sound, like an unplugged Krautrock or Popol Vuh, mashing geography and sound inspired by pandemic wanderings around their local environment, and realised through an intriguing set of instrumentation. In its cumulative force and length it actually reminds me of Pharoah Sanders ‘Black Unity’ but in avoiding anything like a groove you might be used to, it pushes your imagination as a listener beyond referents and towards something a little brand new.”
Soul Glo Diaspora Problems (Epitaph)
“Black post-hardcore punk from Philly. The lyrics are these amazingly intransigent blocks of lucid prose, shredded into shape by Pierce Jordan’s soul-shattering scream. The music is less about traditional structure and all about senses of trajectory, of brinks plunged over, vortices submitted to, whirlwinds scattering the walls. Which might make it seem that all here is chaos - it isn’t, when it galvanises around a chord or a surge or a lyrical focus, it becomes astonishingly sharp and urgent and I pray for a world in which something like the mighty ‘Thumbsucker’ could become an alt-metal hit. Of course it makes me think of Death and Bad Brains and Death Grips, but Soul Glo are onto something uniquely theirs here. Crank it loud.”
Spacemoth No Past No Future (Wax Nine)
“part of what makes this album so joyful for me is that I’m very familiar with how those of us with roots from elsewhere have to struggle to be heard, have additional hurdles of both family-expectation but also the prejudices of the white curators of independent pop culture to get over. In Qudus’ case I think it’s driven not only her learning and experience, but it’s also made her intent on creating music of incredibly high standards that absolutely reflects both her background but also music’s magical ability to allow us to transcend and play with the imaginative flowerings that grow from such tangled roots. This aint just a gorgeous album, it resonates deep for those of us who need it to. Highly recommended.”
Martin Suckling The Tuning (Delphian)
“What a stunning collection of songs Martin Suckling has crafted here, based on truly unsettling poems of witchery-doo and magic from Michael Donaghy and sung by mezzo-soprano Marta Fontanals-Simmons with devestating poetic control and chilling authority. Christopher Glynn’s piano beautifully brings to life Sucklings score, full of shade and shadow and trajectory and precipices and natural life. There’s also a string quartet, and some starting music for cello and violin but it’s the songs you’ll keep coming back for. A record that stops you in your tracks, stops time in its ticking, might even stop Spring happening but you won’t care, this is utterly enthralling.”
Tanya Tagaq Tongues (Six Shooter Records)
“A voice so thick with rage and enmity and wracked humanity it was almost too uncomfortable to bear. And of course, like a horror you close your ears to you’re so scared I had to return, to test myself. And slowly, but surely, and completely, ‘Tongues’ - produced by Saul Williams - took me over. And started sounding less like a pipe bomb thrown in my direction and more like the authentic voice of someone joining me, joining you, in the struggle against death, in a raging celebration of dissident life. There’s an intimacy here that’s deeply uncomfortable, Tagaq centering and foregrounding her vocals so much you wonder if you’re hearing her or she’s possessing you, whether you’re hearing her voice, or voices within your head. Searing, unforgettable music.”
Tan Cologne Earth Visions Of Water Spaces (Labrador)
“It’s like diving down from the cobalt sky into the valley, seeing water at work shaping the earth, diving deep into the ancient life it uncovers. When it’s quiet it’s quieter than they’ve ever been, when it paints its canvasses it’s in deep blue depths and shimmering surface light. There’s no macho surge in this music, just the fluid keeping of a spell intact.I swear I’m not tripping. Truly Tan Cologne are a spellbinding, magical duo. Let them walk you under their skies and pull you under.”
Tenebrae, Christian Forshaw, Nigel Short When Sleep Comes (Signum Classics)
“Pieces from Antoine Brumel (1450–1512), Thomas Tallis (1505–1585), Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548-1611) intermingle with Forshaw’s own pellucid works and this is as the title indicates, late night music, perfect for insomniacs or those seeking to explore insomnia as a lifestyle choice. Something about the sound here gives me hope, and dreams of salvation.”
Various Artists Elsewhere VXIII (Rocket)
“You’re left by Elsewhere VXIII not jetlagged, not smug about owning this eclectic collection - rather plunged into a true feeling of nomadic rootlessness and confusion. This is the feeling this amazing collection gives you and that’s why it should be recommended not as reassuring, but as revolutionary to all the categories and hierarchies you may have been taught about sound in the west. A launchpad certainly but an external and internal journey that works as one of the most devastating suites of sound you’ll hear in 2022. Get yourself overthrown by it as soon as you can.”
Various Artists Saturno 2000 La Rebajada de Los Sonideros 1962-1983 (Analog Africa)
“ . . . exploring the Rebajada style of Cumbia music. “Rebajada" literally means reduced or slowed and is the favoured way to play Colombian Music records by the Sonideros (sound system' selectors) in Mexican cities like Puebla, Mexico City, and especially in the northern city of Monterrey. In this style lyrics become easier to understand, dancing goes on for longer. Listen and you’ll understand - hypnotic, grainy, langorous dance music that’s sexy as fuck.
Dennis Wize Consciousness Program (Stroll)
“a psychedelic, dense mix of synth, guitar, manipulated tapes and vocals unlike anything bar perhaps Chrome’s ‘Alien Soundtracks’. It’s an utterly unique sound Wize creates. One of the most vital, startling reissues of the year. Do not miss this masterpiece.”
Billy Woods Aethiopes (Backwoodz Studioz)
“what’s remarkable about Woods’ work is that he manages to simultaneously avoid both mainstream and underground orthodoxies in hip hop. Lyrically and musically this bears little resemblance to ANYTHING else in hip hop at the moment, but crucially it’s focussed on a musical and lyrical TOTAL FREEDOM that is still concise, sharp, addictive to listen to, a million miles away from self-consciously ‘challenging’. It’s nothing short of a reminder that hip hop, now so drowned in tropes and expectations, can be the most thrillingly unfettered music on the planet. Not a single track on here gives you anything you might expect beyond Woods’ utterly engrossing street/bedroom/agit narratives and poetic suggestiveness - the music at every turn offers surprise, dread, delight and wonder. Essential, absolutely essential.”
yeule Glitch Princess (Bayonet Records)
“there’s a hypnotic, stately, deeply avant-pop way to tracks like ‘Flowers Are Dead’ that reminds me of the (already seemingly forgot) lockdown masterpiece Camilla Fuchs ‘Kids Talk Sun’, and the way Cmiel takes you on her journey, both within and without herself is utterly engrossing throughout. A record so oddly moving it makes me wanna turn goth. Those with goth hearts should be listening to POP like this these days.”
The Young Gods Play Terry Riley In C (Two Gentlemen)
“in absolutely zeroing in on the two key components of ‘In C’ – that of repetition and variation – they’ve actually managed to give the piece new life . . . you find yourself increasingly not thinking about ‘In C’ as a piece to be played, more as a launchpad of possibility within constraint which the Gods have explored with their entire musical, physical and spiritual being. Some trick to reinvigorate something so familiar, some trick to suggest to anyone hearing that all that’s needed for wonder to happen is to set something in motion and see where it takes you. That has always been the wonder of ‘In C’. The Young Gods have made the piece sing again. Fresh, fearless, utterly engrossing throughout, one of the greatest bands ever playing, listening to each other, moving on. Great to have them back.”