Deluxe Issue Twenty-Four

RECORDS OF THE YEAR

/2021

MUST HAVE VINYL FOR 2021

SHAME DRUNK TANK PINK

JAPANESE BREAKFAST JUBILEE

KHRUANGBIN MORDECHAI REMIXES

AARON FRAZER INTRODUCING...

DEADOCEANS.COM

FENNE LILY BREECH

DURAND JONES & THE INDICATIONS PRIVATE SPACE

KEVIN MORBY A NIGHT AT THE LITTLE LOS ANGELES

DEVENDRA BANHART REFUGE

SECRETLYCANADIAN.COM

SERPENTWITHFEET DEACON

FAYE WEBSTER I KNOW I’M FUNNY HAHA

LE REN LEFTOVERS

CURRENT JOYS VOYAGER

JAGJAGUWAR.COM

BIG RED MACHINE HOW LONG DO YOU THINK IT’S GONNA LAST

DINOSAUR JR. SWEEP IT INTO SPACE

MOLLY LEWIS THE FORGOTTEN EDGE

ANGEL OLSEN AISLES

NOW A V AILABL AT PICC ADILLY E OR ON SECRE LIN SADDESTFACTORYRECORDS.COM

CLAUD SUPER MONSTER

C H A R L I E H I C KE Y C O U N T T H E ST AI RS

S LOP P Y J AN E M ADI S ON

E TLYSTO RE.COM AT

Welcome to Deluxe Issue 24.

We decided this year to ditch the numbers, a top albums poll with no clear codification other than sequential.

We did this not so as to be idly inscrutable, but rather that we just felt like so many of these brilliant albums resonate for different reasons, and talking about them in this way feels more celebratory, somehow. We do have ONE Record of the Year (we’re not total heathens), but otherwise, this is a meander through the months that formed 2021, with notes about our musical highlights.

For your consideration, eleven months of new music (well, mostly so) that gave us the chills or made us feel equally moved. This is what we’ve been enjoying playing, and we hope you do too.

Written and compiled by: The Record Shop.

www.deluxenewspaper.com Written and compiled by The Drift Record Shop Design by Jenny Frances Photographed by Mike Rudd Sub edited by Lu Overy Printed by Newspaper Club Distributed by Forte Music Distribution © 2021 Deluxe Newspaper

Whilst every care has been taken in the preparation of this newspaper, the publishers cannot be held responsible for the accuracy of information or any consequence arising from it.

MELVINS FIVE LEGGED DOG Ipecac

DANIEL AVERY TOGETHER IN STATIC Phantasy Sound

DIVIDE & DISSOLVE GAS LIT Invada Records

HOUEIDA HEDFI FLEUVES DE L’ÂME Phantasy Sound

MATT BERRY GATHER UP Acid Jazz

THE DROPKICK MURPHYS TURN UP THAT DIAL [PIAS] Cooperative

MR BUNGLE THE NIGHT THEY CAME HOME Ipecac

STEPHEN FRETWELL BUSY GUY Speedy Wunderground

PUMA BLUE IN PRAISE OF FLOWERS Blue Flowers Music

JOHN HIATT WITH THE JERRY DOUGLAS BAND LEFTOVER FEELINGS New West Records

THE MURLOCS BITTERSWEET DEMONS ATO

MAXÏMO PARK NATURE ALWAYS WINS Prolifica Inc.

www.integralmusic.com

MINSKY ROCK

THE ORIELLES

DOUGIE STU

Megamix

La Vita Olistica

Familiar Future

SAINT ETIENNE

AUDIOBOOKS

FIONN REGAN

I’ve Been Trying To Tell You

Astro Tough

100 Acres Of Sycamore

CAIXA CUBO

PIP BLOM

THE PARROTS

Angela

Welcome Break

Dos

RAF RUNDELL

VARIOUS ARTISTS

BAXTER DURY

O.M. Days

Remixes Vol.1 & 2

Mr Maserati

JANUARY

RECORD OF THE MONTH

01/2021

GOAT GIRL On All Fours

Rough Trade Records

Our first Record of the Month for 2021 was On All Fours, the hypnotic and experimental second album from South London fourpiece, Goat Girl. The band again worked with Dan Carey (of Speedy Wunderground and numerous other thrilling tones) on production, and this marvellous album has such a great flow, electronic augmentations that add a haze and fug around the off-kilter postpunk. The band’s eponymous 2018 debut was more in a straight up DIY post-punk space, and without losing any of their bite, On All Fours is a grand expansion in scope. Sonically it is so full, intricate like a ghostly web of claps, analogue drum machines, crunching riffs and all sorts of bubbling noises. It is skilfully constructed and crafted, never sounding cluttered in its maximal flow. Vocally it is mesmerising, a sort of whispered ennui that moves from vivid to surreal. On All Fours tackles issues forthrightly, from the personal (mental health) to the shared (climate change, sexism, misogyny) without ever preaching or losing focus, there is such honesty in the voices. The album’s sound is a huge step forward in complexity, but still incredibly charming, creatively distinct and brilliantly intelligent.

ANNA B SAVAGE A Common Turn City Slang

NAILAH HUNTER Spells

Leaving Records

Nailah Hunter’s Spells is absolutely stunning. The debut release by the Los Angeles-based multi-instrumentalist and composer is pure magic, six songs concerned with spells and ‘unique sonic place(s) forged by imagination and incantation’. She really has woven something quite incredible, tranquil soundscapes on harp and synths that feel like futuristic fairy tales. Originally released late in 2020 as an EP, the physical reissue includes additional, exclusive cuts to bring this up to the 25 minute mark, and not one second is wasted. A beguiling treasure.

The raw and totally bewitching debut LP from Anna B Savage. The setup is fairly simple across its ten tracks, plucked guitar strings and clattering reverbs framing one of the most genuinely stunning and spellbinding vocal deliveries we’ve heard in a very long time. Although the Jeff Buckley comparisons don’t really paint the whole picture, there is something otherworldly with Anna B Savage that rings the same sort of baroque-pop bell. A Common Turn was produced with William Doyle (of whom we’ll be talking more, later in this issue), and although there are some quite overwhelming drones and flourishes (especially in the album’s closing moments), it really is a masterclass in keeping the songs stripped back. Her vocal is so central and clear, it’s like she is whispering (and howling) directly in your ear, songs of disarming honesty and stark intimacy. It is beautifully crafted, but the real masterstroke is that it feels totally spontaneous throughout, like she’s singing the words for the first time. Dark, brutal, raw and very special indeed.

POM POKO Cheater

Bella Union

VIAGRA BOYS Welfare Jazz

Second studio album by Norwegian post-punk band Pom Poko, and one that is even more ambitious and explosive than their 2019 debut Birthday. Cheater is nothing short of a trip, hurtling around at a frenetic pace, effortlessly scampering through post-punk, noise and art-rock with loads of pop sensibility. It is positively breathless across its 33 minutes, a tour de force through hyper-saturated distortion pedals and unhinged mathematics at the drum kit. Singer Ragnhild Fangel’s falsetto rips through the mix at whim, sounding very much unlike anyone else at all.

One hell of a band, this.

Year 0001

Welfare Jazz is the debauched and smashing return of Swedish post-punks Viagra Boys. Against the jazz-infused spitting and thrashing around, the prominent styling has always left glimpses of who is really underneath. Welfare Jazz is about digging into that, it goes further than before, looking at toxic masculinity, our burning societies, and primarily at the Boys themselves. The deranged cover of John Prine’s In Spite Of Ourselves (featuring guest slurs from Amy Taylor of Amyl And The Sniffers) encapsulates the mood perfectly: viral, satirical and hedonistic.

A honking joyride of an album. As we were compiling this issue, we were sad to learn that founding member of the band, Benjamin Valle, had passed away.

SHAME

Drunk Tank Pink Dead Oceans

The London quintet returned with their big, brash second LP, and it was a stirring way to start the year. Drunk Tank Pink (which takes its name from the colour that psychologists discovered automatically weakens anyone who stares at it for more than a short period of time) expands their 2018 debut Songs of Praise in every way.

Smart and brimming with ideas, but knowing enough not to preach directly. Sonically aggressive, jacked up and utterly committed, but surprisingly fun for it. Absolutely stacked with bold off-kilter directions and anthemic fury.

MARAL

LICE

Push

Wasteland: What Ails Our People Is Clear

Leaving Records

Settled Law Records

Push is the debut, full-length album on Leaving Records from Los Angeles-based Iranian-American producer Maral. Collages of Iranian classical and folk samples that drive through experimental electronic production with noise, punk / post-punk and dub. Includes guest appearances from dub legend Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and Penny Rimbaud of Crass. Intense and addictive, absolutely lush tape hiss with mashed echos and sounds that are as hard to decode as they are physically affecting. Pure sonic alchemy and one of the year’s most trippy rides.

Doubtless one of the year’s most ambitious, engrossing debuts. A concept album structured as an experimental short story, taking cues from authors Brian Catling, William Burroughs and Kurt Vonnegut Jr, not to mention the central character of a hand-built noise instrument (Intonarumori). The conceptual depth and complexity could feel almost confrontational in its scale, if it wasn’t so utterly, full body grasping in its post-punk reverberations.

BEAUTIFY JUNKYARDS Cosmorama Ghost Box

The fourth album from the Lisbon-based band and their second on Ghost Box. Luscious and expansive psychedelic dream-pop, deeply rooted in Brazilian and Portuguese musical heritage. Like a hallucinogenic fusion of Os Mutantes and Broadcast, it is hypnotic like the echo of dreams. There are harps and harpsichords, spacey Moogs, sweeping strings and mellotrons, bossa nova beats and Can-style rhythms - it is a gorgeous sounding album in rich analogue. Not without its moments of darker introspection, it’s a really multi-textured listen.

FEBRUARY

RECORD OF THE MONTH

02/2021

BLACK COUNTRY, NEW ROAD For The First Time Ninja Tune

Who would have thought back in 2019, when the unsigned seven-piece Black Country, New Road squashed themselves into the schoolmaster’s living room at Dartington’s High Cross House for an ad hoc Sea Change Festival gig, that less than a year later their debut LP would receive such plaudits and ultimately a Mercury Prize nomination? Well us, we could just tell from their eyes that something special was going on with this lot.

Following the explosive and instantly sold out singles on Speedy Wunderground and Blank Editions, the band’s full debut was one of 2021’s most anticipated. It was a miracle that they made it through the hype machine at all, let alone with such a genuinely engaging and searching record. A sevenpiece most likened to free jazz and perhaps Slint are not going to win everyone over, but it’s like staring into the fire, it gets hold of something inside of you. Shamanic monologues, post-rock poundings, jazz squeals and something akin to a frenzied klezmer. Inquisitive experimental music with plenty of soul, and testament to its young authors’ musicianship and shared sonic understanding. It is a genuinely thrilling debut and, although far from easy going, an essential listen for one and all.

FEMI KUTI AND MADE KUTI Legacy +

MOGWAI

As The Love Continues

Partisan Records

Rock Action

A genre-spanning double album of driving Afrobeat from father and son Femi and Made Kuti. This is powerful, important and addictive music. Hot, spiralling brass with ever propulsive beats. Hypnotic and spiritual tones, as much a language of its own as it is a genre. This double set is some of the most politically engaging music in years, and very much in the lineage and mould of the iconic patriarch. Afrobeat pioneer and Nigerian activist Fela Kuti’s legend is in the mix, Femi’s lifelong struggle is the narrative and Made’s adventurous sonics hint at the future. Euphoric and inspiring.

There are epic returns, then there are Mogwai-sized epic returns! Glasgow’s finest sons released As The Love Continues, their tenth studio album (not including soundtracks, live and comps), and it rather brilliantly has a bit of everything that they do. It has the pensive and doomy builds of their soundtrack work and the unruly energy and clattering walls of noise that they debuted nearly 25 years ago, with even more gravitas in the crushing and swooping sonic waves. Nominated for the Mercury Prize and the winner of the Scottish Album of the Year award, As The Love Continues is an hour combining glorious maximalism with subtle experimentalism, especially in the smaller gestures. A real grower, with much to discover in both the whispers and the wails.

THE WEATHER STATION Ignorance

Fat Possum Records

We’ve long been firm fans of Tamara Lindeman’s The Weather Station, so trust us when we say that Ignorance is her grandest and most accomplished set to date. This record sounds incredible. Without losing her folk roots, she has embraced synths, loads of strings and disco-pop beats to craft an album that is both affecting and quietly euphoric. The instrumentation and arrangements are deft - rich and driving and never in the way of her voice, which is in delicious form as either a hushed, assured whisper, or as a swooping falsetto. You will hear flashes of songs that take you somewhere you might have been before, and that is a big part of Ignorance‘s allure. It is all about feeling.

WARRINGTON-RUNCORN NEW TOWN DEVELOPMENT PLAN Interim Report, March 1997 Castles in Space

An homage to the brutalist beauty of Cheshire’s designated new towns of Warrington and Runcorn from synthesist Gordon Chapman Fox, his first of two released albums this year. This album is inspired by the enormous chasm between the 1960s architects’ utopian visions, and the complex and often sobering reality. Comparing the two feels like science fiction, and the long sweeping electronic pieces are deeply cinematic, like classic BBC soundtracks or the dystopian masterpieces of John Carpenter. Intricate and evolving, the evolution of each track is beautifully paced.

CASSANDRA JENKINS

WHITNEY K

Ba Da Bing!

Maple Death Records

Second studio album from New York songwriter Cassandra Jenkins. Her willingness to experiment was already showing on her 2017 debut, but this new LP is both searching and fearless. Thematically (and sort of literally) in the middle of the album is Hard Drive, an extraordinary song - slow-building arrangements with Jenkins narrating the four verses in her deep, calm voice, and a quavering vocal on its bittersweet chorus. The production is very special; with lots of space in the record, it has a certain jazz quality. Throughout, her voice is surrounded with saxophone and yearning fretless bass; it’s all so calm in its haze, an impressive tranquility.

Whitney K is the wandering stalwart Konner Whitney, a Whitehorse, Yukon (way out in Northern Canada) resident.

Two Years is a wonderfully ramshackle LP, with deep dives into psychobilly and country across the album’s opening tracks alone. The musicians are accomplished, they’re just all playing it real loose. There are shades of early Cass McCombs or Lou Reed without ever risking mimicking the inimitable. Often darkly funny, it is lyrically unguarded with dry flights of fancy. Great vibes and some moments of pure intoxicating euphoria.

KIWI JR

DJANGO DJANGO

Sub Pop

Because Music

Oh my word how we do love a good jangling guitar!

Toronto four-piece Kiwi Jr released their second LP (first for Sub Pop) with the disarmingly upbeat Cooler Returns.

Echos of Antipodean vibes, a glorious smoosh of The Go-Betweens and - further afield - The Modern Lovers (especially vocally). It has a sunny disposition, and in the best possible way the band are enjoying this as much as their audience. The songs are smart with carefree riffs and drive, absolutely stacked with neat instrumentation; lyrically it’s wry, full of sardonic observations.

Across their discography to date, London-based Django Django have illustrated a keen ear for bouncing between genres. Their excellent fourth album Glowing In The Dark is a positive masterclass in blurring genres - a smash and grab through synth pop, no-wave, post-punk, krautrock and proto-disco (Right The Wrongs might be the best song that Devo never wrote) without ever clearly changing gear. It’s a proper album and a trip in that way. Remarkably cohesive throughout, and above all else, brilliant fun. One listen and you’ll be humming it for weeks.

An Overview on Phenomenal Nature

Cooler Returns

Two Years

Glowing In The Dark

SARAH NEUFELD DETRITUS

AVAWAVES CHRYSALIS

LOMOND CAMPBELL LŪP

STUBBORN HEART MADE OF STATIC

KAKTUS EINARSSON KICK THE LADDER

POPPY ACKROYD PAUSE

ULTRASOUND EVERYTHING PICTURE

POLLY PAULUSMA INVISIBLE MUSIC

MANU DELAGO ENVIRON ME

“BRILLIANT… A DEBUT ALBUM THAT JUSTIFIES THE HYPE” - THE SUNDAY TIMES -

THE OBSERVER

RECORD COLLECTOR

THE GUARDIAN

MOJO

8.6

BEST NEW MUSIC

PITCHFORK

NME

THE TELEGRAPH

UNCUT

THE I

MARCH

RECORD OF THE MONTH

03/2021

JANE WEAVER Flock

Fire Records

Over the last decade, Jane Weaver has continued developing her songwriting and sonic palettes, with each new release bringing in new timbres and styles. Flock, her 11th studio album, is a kaleidoscope of influences, a futuristic pop extravaganza forged in sounds that could have been released in any of the last six decades. As much as it is another fine evolution of the psychedelic pop she has honed since 2014’s The Silver Globe, it is also a total revelation. The best sort of musical magpie, she pulls in glam rock, ambient meditations and an exhilarating analogue-rich take on library music. In lesser hands, such a rich assortment of beeps and shimmers could have sounded cluttered, but it is unified by her voice. A grounding sort of High Queen of dancefloor-friendly pop music, whilst gesturing back to her equally impressive lo-fi folk roots. Lyrically it’s clear this is a real person telling you real things, when you tune in it’s all quite humble against the woozing magnitude of the production. As stylish as anything this year, and an utter joy from start to finish.

FLOATING POINTS, PHAROAH SANDERS & THE LSO

MADLIB

Promises

Sound Ancestors [Arranged By Kieran Hebden]

Luaka Bop

Madlib Invazion

Promises is a collaborative album from Sam Shepherd’s Floating Points, spiritual jazz guiding light Pharoah Sanders and The London Symphony Orchestra. Released on David Byrne’s innovative Luaka Bop label, it really is an extraordinary album. The opening sounds - a seven note motif that echoes again and again through the album - are like the stirring from a dream, an evocative and cinematic gesture from the Blade Runner universe. The album is a single 45-odd minute piece in nine movements, where its components slowly morph around each other to hallucinatory effect, looping back each time to that same simple motif. The humming synth tones from Floating Points and spine-tingling strings from the LSO make for a celestial union in washes and swells. In the middle of the tapestry is Sanders - in his first recordings for more than ten years - a warm and fluid lead, truly making his saxophone sound like a vocal. This really is a stunning album, a work to be in awe of. It has amazing energy everything, down to the air in the room, is simply electric.

Although officially billed as ‘music by Madlib’ and ‘edited, arranged and mastered by Kieran Hebden’ (Four Tet), this is a sonic partnership and a spiritual collaboration of the highest order. Sound Ancestors plays out like a set of passionate and deeply connected conversations between pen friends, record obsessives and song collectors trading deep cuts. Much like Madlib’s 2003 Shades of Blue album (where he was given free rein to raid and chop up the iconic Blue Note Records vaults), Sound Ancestors is all celebratory, it’s about turning the listener on, it’s about sharing fragments and it’s about being part of a connected spirituality. It’s a privilege to feel you’re part of the conversation and genuinely in their company.

“I was sent hundreds of pieces of music over a couple of years’ stretch and during that time I put together this album with all the parts that fitted with my vision.”

- Kieran Hebden

WILLIAM DOYLE

HANNAH PEEL

Tough Love

My Own Pleasure

Through his work as East India Youth (earning a Mercury prize nomination) and his subsequent delicious experiments in ambient and experimental music, William Doyle has always proved to be a producer of great invention.

His second full album under his own name is perhaps his boldest statement to date, all of the rich facets of his sound wound tightly into an album of glorious idiosyncratic charm. Much like The Floating Feather by the Dutch painter Melchior d’Hondecoeter that graces its cover, it is a perfectly constructed piece, no wasted gestures and not one wasted second. It is rich, it is saturated and it is brilliantly ambitious.

Emmy-nominated composer and producer, BBC Radio 3 host and Sea Change alumnus, Hannah Peel is one of the most forward-thinking musicians of our time. Her work is full of limitless imagination and an ever propulsive sense of exploration. It is also indebted to decades of electronic experimentalism and synthesis. She is steeped in the energy of pioneers like Delia Derbyshire and Daphne Oram whilst cutting her own distinct silhouette. Fir Wave is subtly triumphant, a beautifully constructed electronic record full of human fingerprints and sonic journeys.

Great Spans of Muddy Time

Fir Wave

SERPENTWITHFEET DEACON

Secretly Canadian

A shimmering bridge between avant-urban and chamber soul, DEACON is a most welcome return - the second full studio LP- from Serpentwithfeet. It’s not just that the production is immaculate - which it most certainly is - it’s the way that Josiah Wise (Mr. Withfeet) positively weaves magic across every second, a densely saturated R&B. Drawing influence from music, art, culture and religion, it’s a vivid and luxurious record where every second feels both deeply considered and richly impulsive. An album entirely about LOVE, and some of 2021’s most deeply luscious moments.

ALTIN GÜN Yol

Glitterbeat

For their third full-length release, the Amsterdam based Altin Gün enlisted Jacco Gardner to mix their most diverse set yet. Formed mostly during the isolation of lockdown, it brings in more synths and drum machines than on their first two collections, whilst retaining the heavy smoke of their 1970s Anatolian funk canon. A more disco-inspired sound, still bustling with glossy offkilter pop tones and rich analogue hues. Without firmly committing to a decade or a genre, they have reimagined the Turkish traditional with real panache.

GAZELLE TWIN & NYX Deep England

DIALECT

Under~Between

NYX Collective Records

RVNG Intl.

Deep England is the debut full-length collaboration between Elizabeth Bernholz’s Gazelle Twin and NYX, the six-piece drone choir and otherworldly electric chorus.

Deep England is a series of dramatic reconstructions of Gazelle Twin’s extraordinary 2018 Pastoral album. The Adidas-emblazoned imp of Pastoral has morphed to a different and altogether more ghostly type of malevolence, an oracle gazing at the fractured Great Britain of 2021.

The gaggle of recorders on Fire Leap is simply terrifying, characteristic of an album that offers hair-raising chills in ways that are both deeply uncomfortable and exhilarating.

Starting with bubbling water noises and guided meditation, Liverpool-based artist Andrew PM Hunt’s fourth studio LP as Dialect was always going to live in the memory. The 11 tracks began their life as chamber pieces commissioned by Immix Ensemble, and act as a beautiful place to dive from. Under~Between is a beautiful and expertly paced collage. The coming together of organic and synthetic sounds is hugely imaginative and would provide a beautiful backdrop for daydreaming if they weren’t so inventive and totally captivating. Pretty magical stuff.

APRIL

RECORD OF THE MONTH

04/2021

DRY CLEANING New Long Leg 4AD

New Long Leg is the first album from south London quartet Dry Cleaning and for our money, it is the year’s most fully formed, vital and idiosyncratic debut. Recorded in Wales with iconic producer John Parish, it is musically pin sharp, with the band’s three musicians - Lewis Maynard, Nick Buxton and Tom Dowse - trading the role of leading light as they constantly evolve through post-punk modes, fizzing and jangling with dark and adventurous tones. They are focused and in unison, controlling the pace with tremendous cohesion. Musically they are excellent, but where the band have truly found their own space is in their relationship with singer Florence Shaw. She sounds very little like anyone else at all. More a narrator than a singer, she is a singular presence. Lyrically she is surreal, non-sequiturs that are jarring and often hysterical as she delivers droll monologues about the seemingly mundane. Entirely sardonic, but without the edge of someone trying to grind an axe, this is about a broader, shared sense of social awareness.

It’s a debut that will be long remembered and one that will spawn many an admirer, too. So much dark energy, so much dark humour and every element so perfectly balanced. It’s a record that will live long with you; you’ll certainly find yourself talking about ‘a Tokyo bouncy ball, an Oslo bouncy ball, a Rio de Janeiro bouncy ball’… quite why is anyone’s guess.

GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR

G_d’s Pee AT STATE’S END! Constellation

THE REDS, PINKS & PURPLES Uncommon Weather Tough Love

The excellent third LP from The Reds, Pinks & Purples, centred on the bedroom pop vibes of prolific San Francisco-based songwriter Glenn Donaldson. Although easily categorised as lo-fi or twee, there is a lot more going on here in the breezy strums and plucks, and he never leans too heavily on any genre styling, offering some lush little surprises. Largely self-recorded and self-performed, the album is stuffed full with timeless pop gems, nostalgic little nuggets that sound like crackling memories you’ve long forgotten. If you have even a passing interest in jangle and heartbreak, Glenn is your man.

Canadian instrumental ensemble Godspeed You! Black Emperor returned this year with two seismic, 20-minute, side-length trajectories of noise-drenched, widescreen post-rock. The band’s seventh studio album arrives 25 years into their career, landing at a time when so much of the world is still cast deep in the shadows of uncertainty.

GY!BE provide THE most suitable imaginable soundtrack, an extraordinary set that is frenzied and angry, trying to process so much collective grief and confusion. The guitars are louder and more unhinged than on 2017’s Luciferian Towers, building with a controlled chug while threatening to combust entirely at any moment. The ensemble’s ability to create a palpable sense of danger is peerless. The flipside to the anger and bile that drives them is the full-bodied euphoria of the slow builds and ultimate arrival at huge crescendos, which on this tense album are strangely optimistic. Huge atmospherics, drones, dissolving field recordings, noise-drenched orchestrations and quite beautiful lifts and dips. As ever, it’s a musical experience that for the most part defies description. Very special stuff indeed.

NASHVILLE AMBIENT ENSEMBLE Cerulean

Centripetal Force

The Nashville Ambient Ensemble is based, as you may have guessed, in Nashville, Tennessee. Organised and led by electronic composer Michael Hix, the ensemble’s lineup is made up of some of the city’s most creative and innovative artists. Indebted to ambient pioneers like William Basinski, the pacing is centred on graceful meditations that slowly form before disappearing entirely like smoke halos. The Ensemble is also steeped in the rich, sympathetic Nashville sound, with Cerulean sounding both vintage and strangely modern. Music that explores the rich landscapes it paints… just gorgeous.

MICROCORPS XMIT Alter

MICROCORPS is the new project by artist and musician Alex Tucker (of Grumbling Fur and Imbogodom).

Most easily identified as an often discomforting minimal techno, XMIT is absolutely gripping, its tension unrelenting throughout, skittering drum machines that hold a digital heartbeat as the unfathomable sounds jerk from speaker to speaker.

The album features collaborations with Gazelle Twin, Nik Void, Simon Fisher Turner and Astrud Steehouder, bringing pulsating rhythms, brittle noise and ghostly vocals. It feels like a digital interpretation of human emotions (the album’s title refers to data transmission), glitching to haunting effect.

SILVER SYNTHETIC Silver Synthetic

FIELD MUSIC Flat White Moon

Third Man Records

Memphis Industries

The debut self-titled album from New Orleans’ psychrockers Silver Synthetic. Such lush timbres going on; nice bit of jangling (and quite Byrds-esque) guitar, sundrenched psych with plenty of pounding to the rhythm section. The influences are keenly observed without making too much of a direct impression on the sound.

Super warm throughout, and still plenty of opportunity for some off-kilter moments. You can practically feel the glow from the valve amps.

A glorious return - the eighth album since their debut 16 years ago - from the Brewis Brothers of Field Music.

Whereas the breakneck turns of pace and smarter-thansmart musical riddling of their back catalogue has arguably robbed the band of the massive success that their immaculate writing deserves, this latest set has amped up their love of soft rock and lavish production (especially 1980s pop) for their most crowd-pleasing set to date.

Still full of musical alchemy and positively brimming with confidence, Flat White Moon is a joy from start to finish.

YASMIN WILLIAMS

LEON VYNEHALL

Urban Driftwood

Rare, Forever

Spinster

Ninja Tune

Urban Driftwood is the second album from 24 year old, virtuoso solo guitarist Yasmin Williams. We’d rarely make a point of anyone’s age, but the incredible dexterity and precision of her playing seem like skills that should take many more years to master than she has lived. It is often hard not to gasp in awe at how she can possibly make such beautifully complex patterns. Pensive and bittersweet, her songs are incredibly emotive. A deeply human songwriter as well as an impressive technical player.

Rare, Forever is the excellent new LP from Leon Vynehall.

It’s such a fascinating one - sonically it sounds cavernous in its hugeness, but the textures are minute and precise.

The sound design is just extraordinary, each contributing tone feels entirely full of its own character. It’s amazing how often you think you are hearing something out of the smoky jazz club shadows, only for it to disappear again. It really is beautifully constructed, and builds up to a formidable set of club rhythms.

JOY ORBISON - still slipping vol. 1 ARCA - Kick ii BADBADNOTGOOD - Talk Memory RADIOHEAD - Kid A Mnesia SMERZ - Believer KING KRULE - You Heat Me Up, You Cool Me Down

MAY

RECORD OF THE MONTH

05/2021

SQUID

Bright Green Field Warp

After a run of quite extraordinary singles, Squid’s debut studio LP was doubtless one of the year’s most anticipated releases, and remains an album we play a great deal. It is produced by Dan Carey, who has worked with the band for a good while now, releasing a couple of instant hit singles and the amazing Town Centre EP on his own Speedy Wunderground label. The Brighton-based five-piece are absolute masters of groove, their songs ooze with a locked-in confidence that can squeal, honk and mutate through cacophony but always centring on something so instinctively rhythmic, familiar in that way to Fear of Music / Remain in Light era Talking Heads. They pick you up, they lock you in and they can make you dance any which way they choose; the songs are rarely about the destination, more focused on the journey. Lyrically there are abstractions, but the more overtly political deadpans and screams resonate with the oppression of the last year.

Not only is it an album of supreme vibe, it’s full of brilliant moments. Deft little one-liners, glorious little twangs and rises. Bright Green Field is gripping and totally addictive to its last moments, especially the epic album closer Pamphlets, that might well be the band’s finest moment yet in an immaculate young career. Believe the hype, this is a fierce and deeply weird collection that went above and beyond all our expectations.

BLACK MIDI Cavalcade

Rough Trade Records

ICEAGE

Seek Shelter Mexican Summer

Seek Shelter is the belting fifth album from Danish punks Iceage. You’ll all know well that we love these guys, makers of stylish and totally urgent music. This really is an awesome addition to their catalogue, retaining all the snarl of their earlier work, whilst shifting the sonic palette to deliver more meticulous highs across the maximal and rousing new set. Sonic Boom (Pete Kember of Spacemen 3), enrolled to produce the record, helps drive the band into propulsive, expansive and quite ecstatic new directions. The appearance of the Lisboa Gospel Collective is totally hair-raising stuff, the sort of broken-down gospel that Kember’s former bandmate Jason Pierce has used to exhilarating effect.

The second full-length studio release from the experimental British rock band, the leading lights of keeping it chaotic. Whereas the band’s much celebrated debut Schlagenheim was all about wild and unhinged energy, Cavalcade is much more considered. It retains all the white-knuckled energy whilst developing a more deliberate, compositional approach. The rhythms syncopate, the timing undergoes wholesale changes, tracks are formed from segments and mini-suites. Opening track John L is frenetic, an elaborate and anarchic five minutes of ever increasing tense noise and chaos, before moving aside for the bossa nova balladry of Marlene Dietrich. One of the most masterful parts of Cavalcade is that every second of it sounds like black midi, whilst simultaneously, if you drop the needle arbitrarily across either side of the record, you could hear noise rock, folk, crooning, free jazz or stirring orchestrations. The seemingly short time between the two albums has been spent invaluably, a wildly inventive young band encouraged to go as far down the avant garde rabbit hole as they like.

The shadow of Scott Walker is in the room throughout, a compliment we’d only reserve for such a special album from such a thrilling band.

SONS OF RAPHAEL

Full-Throated Messianic Homage Because Music

Seven years in the making, Full–Throated Messianic Homage is the debut LP from Sons Of Raphael (brothers Loral and Ronnel Raphael) and it is absolutely extraordinary. It sounds all at once timeless, familiar and strikingly new, which is a discombobulating experience.

The songs are smart and dense and the production is really something else; pop maximalism that we haven’t heard in... well... we just plain haven’t heard actually! Opening track Revolution is nothing short of a masterpiece of a pop song. Experimental, sophisticated and deliciously transportive music.

LAMBCHOP Showtunes

FEARS Oíche

City Slang

TULLE

Kurt Wagner is one of our most favourite voices, a rich baritone and teller of dark, funny and tall tales. The jump off point for Lambchop’s 14th studio album was - as so often they are - a fleeting and experimental thought from Wagner, on this occasion taking simple guitar songs and converting them into midi piano tracks. The ability to tinker and edit made them strangely perfect, classic songbook songs through the idiosyncratic Lambchop lens. It is much less country-tinged than anything they have produced before, darker too. The experimentalism is admirable, a ghostly quality to it with absolute knock-out moments

Oíche is the debut album from Dublin-born, Londonbased singer-songwriter Constance Keane as Fears.

The title - the Irish word for ‘night’ - is felicitous; delicate and hushed electronic music, with Keane’s whispered vocals like dark lullabies. This is night-time listening, with bleeps and boops weaving in and out of the shadows.

The album was crafted over the last five years and is both deeply personal and boldly honest. An imaginative and meticulously produced set with timbres in pop, electronics and something altogether more ethereal.

SONS OF KEMET Black To The Future

GRUFF RHYS

Seeking New Gods

Impulse! Records

Rough Trade Records

Black To The Future is the furious return of Sons of Kemet, their follow up to 2018’s Mercury Prize-nominated breakout release Your Queen Is A Reptile. It is an urgent collection with a palpable sense of cultural and political tension across each of the album’s dynamic songs. The production is amazing, so full and sonically dense, and everything has enough space to exist on its own and collide to hypnotic effect. Stacked full of guest collaborators - including rapper Kojey Radical, poet Joshua Idehen, grime MC D Double E and Lianne La Havas - it’s a really thrilling evolution of what they already did so well, a hugely impressive album.

The seventh solo record from Super Furry Animal, Gruff Rhys. He is a voice that we have listened to endlessly for decades now and on Seeking New Gods he is in pure, grooving form. Fundamentally a feelgood album, it is not without its thought-provoking or maudlin moments, but the song-writing is joyous and the production - with Mario C - Is pure Technicolor; sweeping psych-pop nuggets all inspired by Mount Paektu (an East Asian active volcano).

No matter how odd the concept, or how seemingly strange the inspiration, Gruff Rhys is such a human songwriter that his albums always ooze with charm. Whisper it, but these might be some of his best moments yet!

MDOU MOCTAR Afrique Victime Matador

The prodigious Tuareg guitarist and songwriter Mdou Moctar returned this year with Afrique Victime, a spiralling collection recorded during tour breaks that paints a vivid picture of the group’s easy chemistry and explosive energy. Rock and roll psychedelics, some grizzly riffs, dusty Saharan jams and all sorts of blurring between them all. Really good vibes, and if you have a passing interest in Ali Farka Touré, Tinariwen or Jimi Hendrix even, you’re going to trip on this, it’s a bloody joy!

DJ BLACK LOW Uwami

Awesome Tapes from Africa

Uwami is the debut album from DJ Black Low, a 20 year old beatmaker from Gauteng province in South Africa.

Rooted in Amapiano - a township-developed style that fuses deep house, jazz and lounge music, rich in synths, airy pads and wide percussive basslines - it is relentlessly upbeat, frenetic electronic music, with brilliant juxtaposing of rhythms and tones for some tense moments. The Awesome Tapes from Africa label has spent the last 15 years digging through long lost gems, it’s equally thrilling to hear these distinctly new unearthed treasures. One hell of an album to pack boxes to.

BUZZY LEE

MASAYOSHI FUJITA

Future Classic

Erased Tapes

Buzzy Lee is the recording nom de plume of Los Angeles-based musician Sasha Spielberg (yeah, he’s her Dad). This full debut - Spoiled Love - is produced

by Nicolás Jaar, her long time musical partner, and his touch is deft, with dense and rich dream-pop that wraps and weaves around her vocals like a sonic fog.

She has such an enticing voice, the ease of her delivery is delectable, never trying to overplay the dramatics or contort it. It is intimate like she is singing confessionals through half-dreams. A seriously impressive debut set.

Masayoshi Fujita returns on Erased Tapes with Bird Ambience and it is absolutely stunning. Although the composer has made his name as a master of gently layered vibraphone compositions, the complexity of this new set is absolutely masterful in both its delivery and the diversity of its tones. Without losing his signature vibes, he has subtly moved the key instrument to the marimba and augmented it with drums, percussion, synths and a tape recorder. It flows like nature and is just glorious. One of the year’s most luxurious headspaces.

Spoiled Love

Bird Ambience

COLLEEN

RYLEY WALKER

Thrill Jockey

Husky Pants

Entirely self-recorded, produced and mixed, The Tunnel and the Clearing is the absolutely bewildering seventh full-length release for Cécile Schott under the name Colleen. Broadly, it is a set of expansive and trancelike tracks that ebb and flow through dubbed-out spaces.

The celestial soundscapes are created with a limited set of analogue electronic instruments which add to such a wholeness, it’s an album more than a set of tracks. Her signature half-whispered vocals are enchanting and sit amongst the blurred edges of the instruments, it’s just a beautiful mix.

Ryley Walker’s fifth studio album - discounting collaborations with Kikagaku Moyo, Bill MacKay, Charles Rumback, David Grubbs, and a full album of Dave Matthews Band covers - pays testament to an artist who is a great deal harder to pin down than he might appear. There are flashes of the pastoral and wistful singer from 2015’s Primrose Green and the jacked up prog-rock of 2018’s Deafman Glance, but Course In Fable has its own distinct character.

Produced by Tortoise’s John McEntire, it pulls in Walker’s oft-declared love of prog for a set of complex, jazzy and tricksy compositions. He’s basically doing exactly what he wants, and that’s quite a joy to behold.

The Tunnel and the Clearing

SARAH NEUFELD Detritus

One Little Independent

Stunning third solo LP from Sarah Neufeld, composer, violinist and member of both Arcade Fire and Montreal’s Bell Orchestre. Deeply cinematic, it is a journey of euphoric and complex looped violin, confronting the duality of anguish and beauty. Sonically it is beautifully composed, such detailing in the shadows around the bright and dramatic violin. It really is a beautiful set, stirring in its desolation and cavernous emotives.

For all the palpable fragility and darkness, there is always a little glimmer of light in it all, inspiring stuff.

Course In Fable

JUNE

MARINA ALLEN Candlepower Fire Records

Candlepower is the debut release from LA-based songwriter Marina Allen, and it’s very special indeed.

A seven song set, it is short and sweet, shimmering for each and every one of its captivating seconds.

Although it has a deliciously retro sound (1970s, California, Carole King, analogue, Karen Carpenter, Laurel Canyon), its rich sonic tapestry never feels derivative. She has a refreshingly authentic voice; confident, rich, searching and just so delightful to listen to. Candlepower’s 20 minutes feels about three times as long as it is, brilliantly different songs with thrilling moments and heartfelt tones throughout.

FRANCIS LUNG Miracle

Memphis Industries

The second full-length solo release from Manchesterbased multi-instrumentalist, producer and ex-Wu Lyf bassist, Francis Lung. The themes are dark, digging deep to look at loneliness, substance abuse and mental health, but the delivery is just immaculately friendly. Very much in the Brian Wilson mode, this is maximal pop music, sunshine and euphoria with shadows creeping in at the corners. It’s a highly accomplished, skillfully crafted record; it’s really not often that an album can flirt with Elliott Smith as an influence and pull off the same kind of energy.

RECORD OF THE MONTH

06/2021

WHITE FLOWERS Day By Day Tough Love

JAPANESE BREAKFAST Jubilee

Dead Oceans

Jubilee is the joyous third album from Michelle Zauner as Japanese Breakfast. Right from its first horn-heralds, it is a triumphant set, finely chiselled pop songs that - across the album’s ten tracks - rarely pass the three and a half minute mark, and certainly never outstay their welcome. Each track feels like a radio-ready single, a beautifully crafted pop record of different nuances: rich chamber pop, 1980s-indebted pop, shoegaze pop, and slick, glossy, futuristic pop. An artist developing with each impressive outing, everything here is more saturated, fuller, richer and deeper.

Day By Day is the swirling and hugely addictive introduction to White Flowers. The Preston-based duo of Joey Cobb and Katie Drew taps into the rich vein of dream pop dramatics and shoegaze sonics to hugely evocative effect.

Produced with Jez Williams from Doves (who brings little shimmers of euphoria to the intense and weighty walls of reverb), there are clear lines of influence - the macabre of Cocteau Twins, the fuzzed out bliss of Mazzy Star, the tightly-wound spaces of Beach House - but this debut’s biggest victory is taking stylistic cues and avoiding being crushed beneath them. There is something going on here that is entirely unique, and you get the impression that every aspect has been carefully considered, developed and perfected. You could spend the duration of the album just listening to the incredible guitar sounds or the dreamy cry of the vocals. The pacing is meticulous, a hazy interpretation of the human heart. The rhythmic nature also offers up hugely rewarding moments when they break into clattering euphoria. You can achieve the guitar tones, you can create the synth resonance, but you can’t fake the spells. This really is magical stuff.

CORY HANSON Pale Horse Rider Drag City

Pale Horse Rider is the second solo record from the dynamic and prolific Wand front man, Cory Hanson.

His previous releases have moved with fluidity between garage rock and an altogether artier and more dense kind of chamber pop, but this latest solo set is a massive creative step into winding desert sounds, with some of the year’s most avant garde, sumptuous and cosmic Americana. The brushed drums and whining pedal steel are country music fixtures, but used here to discombobulating effect as textures that move in and out of the mix, against fuzzing guitars and below Hanson’s emotionally rich vocals. A powerful set that will stay with you long after the last string swells.

DANIEL AVERY Together In Static Phantasy Sound

A beautiful and stirring new electronic set that plays out as a love letter to how much we’ve all grieved the sharing of group experience. High on immersive ambience, the control and pacing really is special stuff, and when the techno beats drop it is positively cataclysmic. The album consists of music created specifically for a Covidsafe live show at London’s Hackney Church, and is a remarkably coherent vision of the highly emotive aspect of club music.

MAPLE GLIDER

ROSE CITY BAND

Partisan Records

Thrill Jockey

Hugely impressive debut album from Maple Glider, the Naarm/Melbourne-based singer-songwriter Tori Zietsch.

Structured from metaphors and symbols, it is a sparse and simple set of songs about loss that positively ache through the speakers. Her voice is totally bewitching, a gothic take on folk music with wistful and ghostly delivery.

Rarely more than a plucked guitar, the arrangements are glorious in their simplicity. A wonderful new voice.

Ripley Johnson (of Wooden Shjips and Moon Duo) returns under his Rose City Band moniker for some real chill country vibes. The narrative here is taking time out.

Against the backdrop of 2020 for a touring musician (and an extensively touring one at that), it was the first time in years that he was able to take stock of time, nature, stillness and most importantly, home. Although in its own way it is about isolation, this inspiring country set is expansive and spiritually uplifting, a restorative and pastoral ramble.

To Enjoy is the Only Thing

Earth Trip

L’RAIN

LONELADY

Mexican Summer

Warp

Brooklyn-born-and-based experimentalist and multiinstrumentalist Taja Cheek returns as L’Rain, and with a quite extraordinary set of songs. Co-produced with Andrew Lappin, it is a phenomenal collage, a massively complex set of arrangements with 20 musicians contributing to its tracks. Experimental pop fuses vocal loops, neo-soul, sweeping strings, percussion and other sonics to shapeshifting effect. Whereas it might have sounded muddled or cold, there is a lush sense of bubbling curiosity throughout. One of the year’s most heady trips.

Manchester singer-songwriter and national treasure Lonelady released her third album, a complex dancefloorready set born from a Somerset House Studios residency.

The austere northern cityscapes still shadow her work, although this is the first time she has recorded away from her native Manchester. Using antiquated equipment (including her own childhood Yamaha keyboard), the album sounds richly old, somewhere between New Order at its darkest and The Human League at its most popping.

Propulsive and full of delicious sounds throughout.

Fatigue

Former Things

DOMINO 2021 JAMES YORKSTON & THE SECOND HAND ORCHESTRA THE WIDE, WIDE RIVER FRÀNÇOIS & THE ATLAS MOUNTAINS BANANE BLEUE OWEN PALLETT ISLAND MATT SWEENEY & BONNIE ‘PRINCE’ BILLY SUPERWOLVES VILLAGERS FEVER DREAMS MATTHEW E. WHITE K BAY TIRZAH COLOURGRADE PORCHES ALL DAY GENTLE HOLD !

HAYDEN THORPE MOONDUST FOR MY DIAMOND CLINIC FANTASY ISLAND HARD FEELINGS HARD FEELINGS JON HOPKINS MUSIC FOR PSYCHEDELIC THERAPY RICHARD DAWSON & CIRCLE HENKI www.dominomusic.com

Best of 2021

Billie Marten Flora Fauna

Self Esteem Prioritise Pleasure

Art School Girlfriend Is It Light Where You Are

Fryars God Melodies

Drug Store Romeos The world within our bedrooms

The Horrors Against The Blade 7”

The Mysterines Reeling (Released 11.03.22)

Palace Shoals (Released 21.01.22)

Tame Impala The Slow Rush Deluxe Boxset (Released 18.02.22)

BEST OF 2021

JULY

RECORD OF THE MONTH

07/2021

STEPHEN FRETWELL Busy Guy

Speedy Wunderground

After an absence of 13 years Stephen Fretwell returned in July with his long-awaited third album, Busy Guy. Described by Fretwell as ‘a song cycle of sorts’, the album examines the seasons of a life, exploring fatherhood, grief and rebirth, with Fretwell’s trademark eloquence and wit. The album is strikingly intimate, there is no attempt to hide away from bad choices or regrets. He never paints himself as anything other than human; it’s extraordinarily brave and why this album resonates so strongly. Busy Guy was produced by Fretwell’s close friend Dan Carey, recorded in just two hours during those strange endless months last summer. In the best possible way, this is a document of brilliantly written and performed songs, guitar structures so skeletal in their minimalism alongside his whispered vocals. Whereas the recording was an exercise in simplicity and lack of fuss, these songs have clearly gestated over a long time, with no wasted breath or lack of clarity. It is a bold and masterful set, graceful and totally arresting.

SNAPPED ANKLES

Forest Of Your Problems The Leaf Label

Snapped Ankles returned this year in pulsating form with Danalogue on production duties, on what is perhaps their most propulsive and focused set of songs to date. Conceptually it is focused on eco-hypocrisy and corporate greenwashing, issues that ironically affect one and all, but here act almost as an antagonist to the fury of the groove-locked rhythms and skew-whiff electronics.

Although it is politically charged, it is also a joyous call to arms, with some proper air-punching moments.

MATT SWEENEY & BONNIE ‘PRINCE’ BILLY Superwolves

Domino Recording Co.

THE GOON SAX Mirror II Matador

Brisbane’s The Goon Sax released their third studio LP, rich in eerie post-punk vibes. Whereas their first two albums are some of our most sunshine-jangling favourites of the last five years, it’s great to hear them subtly evolving, especially into darker shades. They recorded it at Geoff Barrow’s Invada Studios in Bristol with producer John Parish who helped them to bring in all sorts of eclectic tones. Still witty, still wry, but somehow more panoramic in their scope.

Pinch us, we feel euphoric at the return of the holy duo...

Some 16 years and six months after the release of the iconic Superwolf album, Matt Sweeney & Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy re-form the pack and release Superwolves. Knowing that we are huge huge huge fans of the first LP (and of all the various tones and twangs the duo have released before and since), it was always going to be a big one for us, but we honestly can’t quite rave hard enough about what a wondrous set of songs this is and what a self-assured spirit this has. Whereas the debut had fragile whispers and intermittent growls, Superwolves covers so many bases and sonics with inimitable style. From bluegrass plucking to desert rock riffs, it plays out like a travelogue with the two protagonists leading from the front with delicious humour, clearly deeply connected. That intertwined understanding is positive alchemy, a brilliant set of songs that are focused and born of the collaborative eccentricities of the authors. An instant classic very much in the spirit of its predecessor, but never in the shadow of it.

EMMA-JEAN THACKRAY Yellow

Movementt

We had been waiting for Emma-Jean Thackray’s debut LP for yonks, anticipation building as each track and EP released had shown her to be an adventurous and ever-evolving artist. Her debut - Yellow - is just such a treat, the full realisation of an artist and producer who is very hard to categorise at all. Soaked in influences from fusion and P-Funk, the spirituals of Sun Ra and Alice Coltrane through to the sheer joy of Beach Boys-esque orchestration, the dancefloor-ready beats punctuate the free jazz ambience, and her distinctive vocals make her a beguiling band-leader. A free-for-all of ideas in less adept hands could have been messy, but the cohesion here is marvellous, and she again proves herself to be one of the brightest lights around.

GUARDIAN SINGLES Guardian Singles Trouble In Mind

Trouble In Mind gave a full international release to the previously self-released debut from Guardian Singles, one of the most exciting young bands in the bubbling and fertile new New Zealand scene. The eponymous album bristles with raw, jangling energy and dark waves.

The production is excellent, understated and very live with pounding drums and howling amp tones. One of those albums that you can spend an afternoon with, just keep flipping over. Great energy.

SVEN WUNDER

ALEX REX

Piano Piano

Neolithic Recordings

Natura Morta

Paradise

The mysterious and (we think) pseudonymous Sven Wunder released their third full-length set in just about 18 months. Highly prolific, but when they have opened a font as musically rich as they have, well, you just keep on pouring. Natura Morta is such a luxurious trip through woozing jazz and 1970s library music. The styling and delivery is just immaculate, a timeless and hypnotic journey with lots of swirling turns. Enticing and totally chic, whilst also recalling sweeping moments from our shared cinematic soundscape-conscious.

‘Lord, I just can’t stand what I’ve become’ croons our protagonist over the swinging drum machine beat, a perfect tone setter for an absolutely stonking new collection from Trembling Bells founder (not to mention all-round drumming magician to the creative all and sundry) Alex Neilson. As darkly funny as his previous solo efforts, but with a punchier jubilance that really does illustrate what an excellent and utterly idiosyncratic songwriter he is. Excellent support (including fellow Bell, Lavinia Blackwall) on an album of weird psych-pop with all the thrills. As genuinely rousing as any outsider-pop record we’ve heard.

DARKSIDE

LES FILLES DE ILLIGHADAD

Spiral

At Pioneer Works

Matador

Sahel Sounds

Spiral is the return of the dynamic duo of Nicolás Jaar and Dave Harrington as Darkside. We love an evocative name, and they are indeed in deliciously dark form here.

There is so much going on, rich and maximal at any given second. In lesser hands the weight and complexity of the droning hums or clunking and crunching beats could have been overbearing, but Harrington and Jaar (whose vocal is also excellent) have created a set positively drenched in resonance. Smart and enthralling music.

A hypnotic new set from the Tuareg avant-rock group Les Filles de Illighadad. Recorded in Brooklyn at the tail end of a two-year-long world tour, At Pioneer Works finds Les Filles at the height of their powers. Scorched desert sounds and interweaving experimental rhythms.

The band was founded by Fatou Seidi Ghali, who is widely regarded as the first Tuareg woman to play guitar professionally. First or not, she’s a badass, and so is this fine record. A heavy and meditative set of music from one of the world’s most exciting bands.

CARGO RECORDS BEST OF 2021

JAnE WEAVER

VAniShinG TWin

FiRE RECORDS LP / CD

FiRE RECORDS LP / CD

ROCKET RECORDinGS LP / CD

MADLiB

hAnnAh PEEL

SOniC CAThEDRAL CD

(ARRAnGED By KiERAn hEBDEn) MADLiB inVAZiOn LP / CD

My OWn PLEASURE LP / CD

nAnOCLUSTER

ThE REDS, PinKS AnD PURPLES

WhiTE FLOWERS

FLOCK

AnDy BELL

AnOThER ViEW

Vol 1 immersion with Tarwater, Laetitia Sadier, Ulrich Schnauss, Scanner SWiM LP / CD

OOKii GEKKOU

SOUnD AnCESTORS

UnCOMMOn WEAThER TOUGh LOVE LP / CD

MARinA ALLEn

GAZELLE TWin & nyX

FiRE RECORDS LP / CD

nyX COLLECTiVE RECORDS LP / CD

CAnDLEPOWER

DEEP EnGLAnD

WWW.CARGORECORDS.CO.UK

GOAT

hEADSOUP

FiR WAVE

DAy By DAy TOUGh LOVE LP / CD

WiLLiAM DOyLE

GREAT SPAnS OF MUDDy TiME TOUGh LOVE LP / CD

KORELESS Agor Young

After fanning the hype-flames back in 2011 with his debut 12”, it’s fair to say that the debut Koreless (Welsh producer Lewis Roberts) album was pretty eagerly anticipated arriving a full decade later. He’s certainly no slouch (spending his workdays writing and producing for artists like FKA twigs and Rita Ora), and Agor is clear proof that he has been fine-tuning his inspirations with chopped-up textures that dazzle. A hugely imaginative collection that genuinely stretches the genres he borrows from.

MEGA BOG

Life, and Another Paradise of Bachelors

The sixth full-length release for Erin Birgy as Mega Bog, surreal transmissions from distant avant-pop orbits. She is eclectic in her stylistic choices, through folk, jazz and chamber pop, remaining whimsical and weirdly uplifting throughout. Recorded over several sessions in various studios, the album beats with instrumental contributions from longtime and new collaborators, a team effort very much under the guide of its principal creator, who is in commanding and distinctive voice.

AUGUST

RECORD OF THE MONTH

08/2021

CHUBBY AND THE GANG The Mutt’s Nuts Partisan Records

Chubby and the Gang are unrelenting, gloriously unrelenting! An explosive and brutal joy ride through back-room punk and barking Oi! energy. The London five-piece has built a reputation for their deliciously wild punk spirit, and their second full LP is a vindicated statement of intent. The first half of this utterly life-affirming album is a pounding and unfussed howl through social and political unrest and simple pleasures. But it is the second half that is perhaps most fascinating. Just before the midway ballad (yep!)

Take Me Home To London, you start picking up panning in the mix and the odd refined harmony. Without sacrificing any urgency or raucous drive, there are some really spacious gestures, harmonica wails and other deft touches to the production (via Fucked Up drummer Jonah Falco) that keep it all evolving. Overall, whilst remaining fiercely legitimate and politically unflinching, The Mutt’s Nuts is a joyous ride, ferocious and knowing. They’re not joking, it’s just funny sometimes.

JOY ORBISON

VILLAGERS

XL Recordings

Domino Recording Co.

The debut full-length project from Joy Orbison, a freeflowing mixtape of textures, tones and voices and a tour de force through a variety of club styles. It has such a bubbling vibe to it, with guest collaborations (including Herron, James Massiah, Bathe, Léa Sen, Goya Gumbani and TYSON) and the voices of his family and most inspirational friends. Exploring bass music with a strong sense of motion, it honestly has such a transient vibe, with little flashes of conversation and spaces.

Fever Dreams is the dreamy fifth LP from Conor O’Brien’s Villagers. Like his previous releases, the songs are hung around his quite delicious voice; wistful and raw, sugary sweet but never pushed or feigned. Fever Dreams sounds just like that; threads of lucidity, washes of grand instrumentation and some wonderfully psychedelic moments. Even from its opening minute or so, it is hugely ambitious. Weird tape loops disintegrate before exploding into a dub bass warble and a euphoric horn section. The best sort of experimentalism, he pushes himself and his band fully throughout to stretch his songwriting. Intimate in voice, massive in scope, it really is a joy.

still slipping vol. 1

Fever Dreams

ANDREW WASYLYK

THE BUG

Clay Pipe Music

Ninja Tune

As the Spring of Discontent took hold in 2020, composer Andrew Wasylyk sought shelter in the familiar, with the sanctuary of low-light morning walks in Dundee’s 19th century Balgay Park. This stunning album chronicles that time, but more so the park’s pastoral beauty and having time to absorb it all. Field recordings with arpeggiated guitars and all sorts of warm swells, this is some of the year’s most emotive music. A transcendental journey through ambient, library and jazz. Absolutely beautiful.

Kevin Martin’s first solo full-length album under The Bug moniker for seven years is quite extraordinary, a deathlydark and utterly gripping aural assault. Some of his very heaviest work, it is concerned with contemporary Britain, a country divided and ripped in two. Fire is the incendiary third part of a dystopian triptych that started with 2008’s explosive London Zoo and evolved through 2014’s murky Angels & Devils. Fire is loud, inventive and aggressive music that is full of textures and foreboding energy. A remarkable listening experience.

STEVE GUNN

YANN TIERSEN

Matador

Mute

Featuring contributions from Mary Lattimore, Julianna Barwick, Bridget St. John and Jeff Parker, Other You is the glorious return of acclaimed songwriter and guitarist Steve Gunn. Recorded in L.A., it has such a gorgeous, flowing energy to it. Spiritually uplifting music without hanging the songs around euphoric sing-along moments or hooks, each track slowly opening up and sitting beautifully in sequence alongside the next. Other You subtly pulls in all the various facets of his writing and playing - American primitive guitar, folk, jazz, indie rock and drones - whilst sounding entirely effortless and rolling along at its own pace.

Following 2019’s Portrait (a collection of newly recorded tracks from throughout his career), Kerber is very much a new chapter in Tiersen’s work and his mostly overtly electronic to date. He is a phenomenal and muchcelebrated composer, and this latest album still uses the piano as its principal voice, but the subtle and mesmerising use of electronics really is transformative.

Inspired by the landscape of his home on an island (Ushant) off the coast of Brittany, Kerber conveys the natural imagery through ebbing and flowing aurals, with lush tiny moments and huge, expansive gestures.

Balgay Hill: Morning In Magnolia

Other You

Fire

Kerber

NATHAN SALSBURG

ISHMAEL ENSEMBLE

No Quarter

Severn Songs

Even as big fans of Nathan, we were not prepared for this and it really stopped us in our tracks. Psalms is a collection of new arrangements of Biblical psalms, sung in Hebrew by traditional guitar virtuoso Nathan Salsburg.

He is doubtless one of the best players we’ve ever heard (and seen), but there has always been a special little flicker when he sings. This deeply personal set has such spiritual vibes. His backing band includes Joan Shelley, Will Oldham, James Elkington and Spencer Tweedy, all supporting him beautifully.

Visions of Light is the expansive new LP from Bristol’s Ishmael Ensemble. These guys blew our heads off on the superb Blue Note Re:Imagined compilation, so we were hyped to get hold of this one, and their impressive second LP is quite the treat. Cinematic vibes, electronic flashes and even dub tones as it skillfully develops through a heady and ambitious mix. Never cluttered, strangely futuristic, it’s got such a lot going on and is a super-engaging listen.

Psalms

DEAFHEAVEN Infinite Granite Sargent House

We’ve always loved the brute force of Deafheaven’s black metal, so hearing that their fifth LP - Infinite Granite was a big step into spacious sonics was initially met with a little apprehension. One spin in had us well and truly placated and floating off into ethereal spaces. The spirit of shoegaze is strong, deep and swirling guitars against pounding drums, but it’s the timbre of George Clarke’s vocals that really got us. No visceral shrieks, this is all about what is held back.

Visions of Light

Partisan Records |

| 2021

Femi Kuti & Made Kuti: Legacy +

Aerial East: Try Harder

Hildegard: Hildegard

Fontaines D.C.: Live from Kilmainham Gaol

Fela Kuti: Open & Close (50th Anniversary reissue)

Maple Glider: To Enjoy Is The Only Thing

Box Set #5 co-curated by Chris Martin and Femi Kuti

Body Meat: Year of the Orc

LUMP: Animal

Chubby and the Gang: The Mutt’s Nuts

Geese: Projector

IDLES: CRAWLER

PARCELS DAY/NIGHT OUT NOW

SEPTEMBER

RECORD OF THE MONTH

09/2021

LOW

HEY WHAT Sub Pop

We’ve said it before, but it bears repeating. Duluth’s (Minnesota) finest and slowcore pioneers Low were already leagues ahead of anyone around them, and could have been well forgiven (and much celebrated) for delivering variations of their deliciously dark formula with each new album.

Instead, what they have done over the last three albums (Ones and Sixes, Double Negative and culminating in this year’s HEY WHAT) is nothing short of revolutionary, stripping their songwriting, production and delivery down into its purest form and running wild with a glitching, crackling and ever distorting space in industrialism. Reuniting for the third time with producer BJ Burton, HEY WHAT is a remarkably sensory album, another evolution of Low into progressively more fractured and decaying digitisation. Yet the heart of the band seems somehow even sharper in focus. The two human voices (of Mimi Parker and Alan Sparhawk) remain like ghostly whispers, pristine and reverberating, whilst everything around them drones and shatters like a long sent digital transmission. There are moments of such gentle fragility, beautiful droning ambience and proper rousing euphoria; every second feels considered, and is a vital component of this fascinating and deeply affecting album. They’re one of the very finest bands we have, and it’s thrilling stuff watching them keep on finding new versions of themselves.

LITTLE SIMZ

Sometimes I Might Be Introvert AGE101

NALA SINEPHRO Space 1.8 Warp

We won’t categorically know until New Year’s Eve of course, but we wouldn’t mind betting that this will be the year’s most listened-to album. An extraordinarily beautiful headspace. Space 1.8 is the debut from Londonbased (Caribbean-Belgian) composer and harpist Nala Sinephro. Across its spellbinding 45 minutes, it resonates such strong emotions and responses with amazing subtlety. Meditative sounds with skilfully interweaved field recordings, this beautiful ambience will sit right at the very front of your consciousness and attention. It is genuinely captivating, an immersive treasure.

The absolutely dazzling return of Little Simz. Vocally she swerves between two distinct modes, furious and gleaming rapping or an uber-confident and deliciously controlled soul. Her phrasing on both is so engaging, she is the best kind of siren. Produced with Inflo (Michael Kiwanuka, Sault), her fourth album sounds amazing. Rich dazzling soul, orchestral swaggering, beautifully selected samples and some straight up dancefloor smashers. An album all about duality, it was only recently pointed out to us that Sometimes I Might Be Introvert becomes an acronym of Simbi, the nickname of its creator Simbiatu Ajikawo. Across the record she explains it all, and writing so brave and skilful is quite a thing to behold.

SUFJAN STEVENS & ANGELO DE AUGUSTINE

One of the year’s most highly anticipated releases, Before I Die is the meticulous but free flowing debut from South Korean-born, LA-based producer and rapper ..............Park Hye Jin. The production is amazing, dubrinsed post-club sounds to float to, a downtempo set entirely written, produced and performed by the young producer. Alternating between Korean and English language adds to the sensory haze, little motifs swelling in the speakers and long in the mind. This is all before the industrial techno of the album’s (nearly) closing banger Hey, Hey, Hey. A real talent.

A Beginner’s Mind Asthmatic Kitty

A Beginner’s Mind is the collaborative debut from Sufjan Stevens and Angelo De Augustine, two beautiful voices with more than a little sonic similarity and a great deal of analogous energy. Their album contains 14 songs (loosely) based on (mostly) popular films. The source material is highbrow, lowbrow, and everything in between, giving the songs a great deal of warm nostalgia and finding Sufjan returning to the psychedelia and folk influences of his earlier discography. Their voices are totally enthralling as they wind around one another, it is a beautiful sounding record.

MILD HIGH CLUB Going Going Gone Stones Throw

Going Going Gone is the third solo LP from psychedelic popper Mild High Club, led by Alexander Brettin, and his first new release since his 2017 collaboration Sketches of Brunswick East with King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard.

Firmly looking backwards, this is a joyously nostalgic ride, a glimmering mix of jazzy instrumentals and slick synths. It’s fun, mischievous and wildly enjoyable, avoiding directly aping other records with a bubbling set of stylistic directions.

SAINT ETIENNE

I’ve Been Trying To Tell You

AMYL & THE SNIFFERS Comfort To Me

Heavenly Recordings

Rough Trade Records

I’ve Been Trying To Tell You is the very welcome return of the much-loved trio Saint Etienne with an album constructed of field recordings and samples from 19972001. The album’s technical parameters are fascinating, creating a hazy and dreamlike bed that washes around Sarah Cracknell’s fragmented vocals. Looping textures and gestures that feel familiar, massive pop reverbs and dubbed-out bass combine for an illusory experience.

Tracks that start melancholic slowly unfold into a blissed euphoria. This is a beautifully crafted record that seems to have the ability to change form each time you hear it.

The absolutely riotous second album from the Australian quartet. At a time when being known as a killer live band isn’t practically that much help, they’ve done a remarkable job of capturing their anarchic energy in the studio. It’s a brash, rocking and totally thrilling set that would suit anywhere from a pub back-room to a stadium tour. As a band they’re fully formed, remarkably tight at breakneck and relentless speed, whilst still sounding entirely like it could all fall to pieces at any moment. Singer Amy Taylor is just phenomenal, rude, deadpan, euphoric and mostly feral throughout. 35 jacked-up minutes that get the buzz pumping like a cold beer on a hot beach.

SMOKE BELLOW

LYRA PRAMUK

Trouble In Mind

Bedroom Community

The trance-inducing new LP from transcontinental, experimental duo Smoke Bellow. The Baltimore-viaAustralia pair (or actually ‘relocating from Australia to Baltimore, MD and back again... and then BACK AGAIN to firmly settle in Baltimore’, as they explained on the album’s release) make dense noises that build and loop to gloriously airy effect. Simple and often quite primitive arrangements, it’s a free-for-all of sonic influences, knotty songs that are ever-evolving. It’s a low key, slowburning beauty.

Last year’s Fountain LP was a quite extraordinarily produced debut, with Lyra Pramuk exploring the outer limits of the human voice to breathtaking effect. Delta is a hugely imaginative set of interpretations of the Fountain album, including both new compositions and direct remixes from Gabber Modus Operandi, Vessel, KMRU, Kara-Lis Coverdale, Caterina Barbieri, Tygapaw and more. Retaining her remarkable vocals (although often further manipulated), each collaboration changes the emphasis in thrilling and ambitious new directions. Vast and spiritual music.

Open For Business

Delta

MATTHEW E. WHITE K Bay

SARAH DAVACHI Antiphonals

Domino Recording Co.

Late Music

Hot on the heels of releasing Broken Mirror, a staggering collaboration with the legendary Lonnie Holley, Matthew E. White returned this year with his long-awaited solo album, K Bay. As you’d expect, the master producer delivers an absolute aural treat, a feelgood tour de force through hooks and motifs that you’ll feel like you’ve heard a million times before. Deliciously stylish sunshine psychedelia, with huge groovy beats. Once he locks you in, this is the soundtrack and you are not leaving the party. Super smart, super imaginative and super fun.

The prolific Los Angeles-based, Canadian minimalist composer Sarah Davachi has been one of our most trusted allies over the last few years, exquisitely sedate music through drones and classical instrumentation. Her latest full-length - Antiphonals, released on her own Late Music label - is absolutely massive in its scope. Using the Mellotron’s lavish tones against organs, pianos, harpsichord and other instruments, she creates epic soundscapes that undulate with such emotion. Some of the tones are positively medieval, but this is spiritually futuristic music.

MOLLY LEWIS

BREATHE PANEL

Jagjaguwar

FatCat Records

Here is the headline... Molly Lewis is the world’s greatest whistler. Seriously, she’s amazing. The Forgotten Edge is her debut release and is drowned in old Hollywood silver screen glamour. Made with the help of producer Thomas Brenneck (best known for his work with Sharon Jones and Charles Bradley), there is nothing hammy here, these are inventive songs that would stand up with any other instrumental arrangements. Like nothing else, this glorious record is such a trip, woozy exotica and smoky tiki bar vibes.

Lets It In is the absolutely dreamy second LP from the south coast-based Breathe Panel and follows their 2018 self-titled debut. It has such a breezy vibe, a distinctly British take on that free-rolling early Real Estate sound.

Smart and tightly wound songs that they make sound super easy. An album of revitalizing energy.

The Forgotten Edge

Lets It In

OCTOBER

TARA CLERKIN TRIO In Spring

World of Echo

In Spring is the beautiful mini album from Bristol’s Tara Clerkin Trio. The 23 minute, four song collection was recorded in various stages and locations over the last 12 months and is just glorious. Avant pop and sonic experimentalism, like echoes that slowly shimmer and change shape, as if ripples in a pond. Released on the World of Echo label, run out of the excellent shop of the same name.

DUCKS LTD

Modern Fiction Carpark Records

Modern Fiction is the jangling full debut from Toronto’s Ducks Ltd. Like sonic descendants of The Go-Betweens, there is a warm and vintage analogue hue to the riffs, ten remarkably self-assured tracks that rumble and vibrate with effervescent energy and inventiveness. Like all great guitar bands, there are moments of melancholy that give a glorious pause as you wait to catch the next endorphinpopping wave of frantic guitar. A joyous album.

JOHN

Nocturnal Manoeuvres Brace Yourself Records

Nocturnal Manoeuvres is the pounding and life-affirming return of JOHN, the London duo of John Newton (drums and vocals) and Johnny Healey (guitar). After the DIY success of their first two albums, the duo again have worked with trusted producer Wayne Adams to ensure that he captured their fierce and seismic presence as a live band. That is what always strikes about JOHN, they sound massive. Like, colossal. Although early album highlight Šibensko Powerhouse features guest vocals from Adam Devonshire of IDLES, it is otherwise just the Johns across the album, and to have crafted some of the year’s fullest and most chest-pounding moments of exhilaration is testament to their awesome powers. A glorious din.

PARQUET COURTS Sympathy For Life Rough Trade Records

The absolutely magnificent Parquet Courts returned this year with their seventh studio album, a dancefuelled LP built largely from improvised jams. Finding its own grooving space between acid-house hedonism and 21st century angst, it is concerned with balancing critique and celebration in equal measure. You get the impression that the band will never stop questioning their place amongst it all, sounding fresh and adventurous on each LP (especially here), whilst also undeniably like themselves. Produced with Rodaidh McDonald and John Parish, this is the most deluxe sounding record they have produced to date, thematically a set of party jams but sonically a rich new set of directions from a band who remain brilliantly untethered.

CINDY

KIT SEBASTIAN

Tough Love

Mr Bongo

The super-dreamy third LP from the San Francisco based Cindy. It’s all built on Karina Gill’s strumming and singing, whispery and ethereal but with a maudlin sense of darkness in the mix. She is brilliantly enchanting in her wryness, delivering killer self-deprecating lines without breaking the pace or cracking a smirk. It’s that substance that keeps Cindy so captivating, alongside their immaculate styling: autumnal wallowings with deftly delivered instrumentation like ghostly cobwebs.

One of the year’s most chic (or perhaps très chic!) releases, with duo Kit Sebastian (aka Kit Martin and Merve Erdem) returning via Mr. Bongo. Melodi is a cinematic-sounding tour de force of world music, jazz and psychedelia with blurred edges, both brand new and gloriously retro. They never stray too far from the love of 1970s Anatolian psychedelic pop that brought its creators together in the first place, but successfully avoid needless revivalism with some great songs and some glorious strain in Erdem’s vocal.

PIP BLOM

VANISHING TWIN

Heavenly Recordings

Fire Records

The Amsterdam four-piece returned with their sophomore LP this year, an album that very much picks up where they left off with fizzing pop bangers.

Stylistically the band have grown ever more confident, clear self-belief in their songs and ability to rip through riffs and big chrouses! A progression from their fine debut, without losing any of the wide-eyed charm that made it all so irrepressible.

Ookii Gekkou (Japanese for ‘Big Moonlight’) is the hallucinogenic return of London-based Vanishing Twin.

Whereas the band’s previous The Age of Immunology (ranked No 5 in our 2019 Albums of the Year) was rooted in library music cinematics, this new LP is even more expansive, with tones of afrofunk, driving jazz and all sorts of other locked grooves. A wide range of styles and vibes, all tied together by Cathy Lucas’s dusky vocals.

Super stylish, super cool and so much to discover.

1:2

Welcome Break

Melodi

Ookii Gekkou

AUDIOBOOKS Astro Tough

Heavenly Recordings

The distinctive pairing of Evangeline Ling and producer David Wrench regroup as audiobooks for their second full-length release on Heavenly Recordings. Whereas their debut - Now! (in a minute) - was painted with weirdo pop colours, the palette here is club music. The propulsive beats lock Astro Tough into grooves, almost acting as a third member and giving the duo room to meander in whatever direction the mood requires. Wildly inventive, great fun and full of irresistible synth-pop bangers.

TY SEGALL Harmonizer Drag City

Harmonizer is the pumped-up, sleek and suitably glam new LP from our boy Ty Segall. We’ve sat with this one for a few months now (as it debuted online back in August) and it really is a grower. His albums often are, with smart little production touches that stay with you as the earworms hook deep down into your cerebral cortex. It’s not his heaviest album, it’s not his most experimental and it’s not his most straightforward either, it has its own space and character with a hell of a lot of groove. It takes a rare artist to pick up an entirely different set of tools and craft an ambitious album that still sounds distinctly like themselves.

SELF ESTEEM

Prioritise Pleasure Fiction

A euphoric and frankly blunt call to arms, Prioritise Pleasure is the second full-length solo release from Slow Club’s Rebecca Taylor as Self Esteem, and it is quite marvellous.

Using the language and imagery of pop music, Prioritise Pleasure is a remarkably honest and hugely important set of songs, shimmering in every radio-friendly second.

She talks about toxic masculinity and gender imbalance alongside altogether more domestic truths, but truths they are, and this brilliant and brave record will ruffle all sorts of feathers by simply naming uncomfortable truths. Produced in partnership with Johan Karlberg (of the Very Best), it is MASSIVE, pounding drums, gospel choruses, brilliantly contorted pop bleeps and above all else, her voice sounds mint. Hugely considered in the best possible way, it’s a quite brilliant pop record and massively accomplished in scale and ambition.

BLACK MIDI

SLEAFORD MODS

AMYL AND THE SNIFFERS

ALABAMA SHAKES

GRUFF RHYS

PARQUET COURTS

“CAVALCADE”

“COMFORT TO ME”

“SEEKING NEW GODS”

DEAN BLUNT “BLACK METAL 2”

“SPARE RIBS”

“SOUND & COLOR”

“SYMPATHY FOR LIFE”

GOAT GIRL

“ON ALL FOURS”

2 0 2 1

SAULT NINE

Forever Living Originals

HAND HABITS Fun House Saddle Creek

Meg Duffy’s third solo LP as Hand Habits, although it is very much about community and collaboration. Duffy lives with producer Sasami Ashworth and musician Kyle Thomas (King Tuff), who both worked to produce and engineer this excellent set as part of the great pandemic readjustment. Vocally still in the loose parameters of country or Americana, but rich with all sorts of surprising and ingenious directions. An honest and inventive patchwork of ideas, especially the Just to Hear You collaboration with Perfume Genius’s Mike Hadreas.

NINE is the elusive (and now Mercury-nominated) UK group’s third album in just over a year, another rich and immaculately produced set of genre-hopping bangers.

The album was made available digitally for 99 days (it has gone now, save the odd pirate copy bubbling up on YouTube), and a short run of physical editions. As politically charged as its predecessors, the vocal delivery is often eerie and quite haunting like playground chants.

Rich on crate-digger vibes, there are some amazing bass culture sounds, plus breakbeats and a turn to warmer African-Caribbean sounds. As ever, it’s just untouchable.

NOVEMBER

RECORD OF THE MONTH

11/2021

DAMON ALBARN

The Nearer The Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows Transgressive

On the release of his quite sublime second solo album, it dawned on us that Damon Albarn’s voice has been a huge part of our musical landscape for just over 30 years now. Not only is it great to have him back, it is thrilling to hear that voice mature and still keep us enthralled. Originally intended as an orchestral piece inspired by the landscapes of Iceland, the record was worked on and developed further in the early part of this year, with Damon and collaborators reining in some pretty wild experimentalism to create an often maudlin, but exquisitely uplifting album. Royal Morning Blue and Polaris are brilliant examples of Albarn’s yearning phrasing and finely crafted songwriting and arrangements, anthemic moments against the album’s magnificent beauty and often madcap inventiveness. It’s both sides that make this record so special, an artist able and vindicated to follow his own beat and do whatever he pleases.

We’d be remiss when reviewing this majestic album (and this quite excellent musical year as we start to reach its end) not to mention that Damon came and played for us and just a few hundred guests in our local church.

When we’re still slowly finding our feet again watching live music, to have someone of his gravity sing his songs almost directly to you… Well, it blew our lids.

CLEO SOL Mother

Forever Living Originals

Mother is the second LP from rising soul voice Cleo Sol, an album about change, love and the incomparable emotions of motherhood, both as child and now mother. It’s a fairly simple setup in terms of arrangements, but it just gives all the space that her alluring voice deserves. You might recognise her rich tones from the SAULT albums, and she is in an equally confident mood here too. Just beautifully delivered, this really knocked us all sideways.

COURTNEY BARNETT Things Take Time, Take Time Marathon Artists

The glorious third LP from Courtney Barnett. The Australian singer-songwriter is in such breezy form, although the album was written almost entirely in isolation, and lyrically the sense of grief and anxiety is palpable... You really just have to listen to what she’s saying. Produced with Stella Mozgawa (of Warpaint), it rolls along brilliantly and her equable delivery is both hypnotic and soothing.

CURTIS HARDING If Words Were Flowers Anti Records

The excellent third studio album from 21st century soul singer Curtis Harding. The voice is WOW WOW WOW, but he’s no one trick pony, this is his most experimental set of songs to date. The classic soul tones are impeccable, but it’s the subtle gestures towards pop and contemporary electronic music that make this album really soar. Stylish and poignant with kaleidoscopic highlights.

GROUPER

SNAIL MAIL

Kranky

Matador

Shade is a stunning new set from Liz Harris that features music Grouper has recorded over the last 15 years. At times not more than a whisper, her vocals are like little secrets that you’ll strain hard to hear, disappearing into the hissing tape and foggy natural reverbs. Strippeddown folk and traditionalism, with washes of distortion and Harris’s ghostly vocal ever present like a siren. Some songs start abruptly, some end in mid flow, it’s like trying to remember dreams in the half light. A remarkable listening experience, quite like no other.

Valentine is the second album from Lindsey Jordan as Snail Mail. Folks, it’s a bruiser; songs about lost love and breakups, delivered from a voice striking ahead of her years. Her honesty is refreshingly frank, and she avoids any unnecessary navel-gazing or fake sentimentalism.

It’s an autobiography of a rough sounding time and a strangely optimistic look at what is next. Euphoric, brilliantly produced and she really is enthralling.

W.H. LUNG

NOLAN POTTER

Melodic

Castle Face Records

2019’s Incidental Music - the bands breakaway debut LP - heralded bright new talents with a heady concoction of krautrock, synth-pop and infectious grooves. For their eagerly anticipated second outing the band took time, carefully focusing on what was at their core rather than leaping back with a straight-up Mark II. Vanities is a thrilling and totally invigorating sideways step into analogue electro pop, merging silky vocals and strutting grooves against the crunching electronic motoriks.

Music Is Dead is the brilliantly self-crafted, new, psychedelic long-player from Nolan Potter. Castle Face founder (and OH SEE) John Dwyer explains that Nolan has, ‘quietly painted us a beatific masterpiece that veers from the whimsical to the wigged-out’. DIY at its core and very much a product of that time in isolation, it’s a maximal composition in both ambition and staggering home-spun grandeur. It really is quite the marvel and not short of the odd killer hook, too.

Shade

Vanities

Valentine

Music Is Dead

DUMMY

IDLES

Mandatory Enjoyment

CRAWLER

Trouble In Mind

Partisan Records

Lots of bands SAY that they liberally take influences from a wide range of genres, but Los Angeles band Dummy are positive magpies here, with celestial ambience, pummelling guitars and some of the year’s finest drone-pop all forged into a krauty, blissed-out dreamscape on their debut full-length album via Chicago’s Trouble in Mind Records.

Overall the songs are suitably pensive, but there are such exhilarating moments that it all translates as such an accessible listen - a much broader audience beckons.

When a band go through a meteoric rise, as Bristol punks IDLES undoubtedly have over the last five years, it is often hard to look past the radio singles, scale and expectations to really focus on what they are doing. CRAWLER is a massively cultured fourth album, finding a band pushing themselves both stylistically and in terms of message.

It retains all the brutal energy and introduces bold and really ambitious new directions - the album’s opening five minutes for example have Joe Talbot wide-eyed howling over an unnerving ambience. It is still really gratifying when they kick into full pelt, but hearing them go up and down through the gears reaps great rewards. For us, these are the most interesting songs they have produced yet.

MAKAYA McCRAVEN Deciphering The Message Blue Note Records

For his first release in partnership with the iconic jazz label, the Chicago-based drummer and producer has deepdived into the Blue Note Records vaults to put a modern bounce on classics by Art Blakey, Horace Silver, Hank Mobley, Dexter Gordon, Kenny Burrell, and Eddie Gale, amongst others. His ability to take fragments of sound and song - even those as well known as these - and weave them into his own rich aural tapestry really is quite thrilling.

Such amazing energy to this one; flashes of new, flashes of old, and it just flows.

new album 18.02.2022

Drift_Halfpage_Metronoy.indd 1

10/11/2021 11:38 am

A.A. WILLIAMS DEEP THROAT CHOIR JOHN GRANT LOST HORIZONS MARISSA NADLER MODERN NATURE PENELOPE ISLES PIROSHKA POM POKO BEACH HOUSE SPIRITUALIZED Arco

In Order To Know You

Boy From Michigan

In Quiet Places

The Path of the Clouds

Island of Noise

Which Way to Happy

Love Drips & Gathers

Cheater

Once Twice Melody

Everything Was Beautiful

2021’s Inventory Courtesy of

BELLA UNION shop all this years releases | www.bellaunion.com

18 FEBRUARY 2022

25 FEBRUARY 2022

DECEMBER

RECORD OF THE MONTH

12/2021

GEESE

Projector Partisan Records

The much-hyped debut from the young Brooklyn post-punks. High in DIY vigour (it was recorded in stolen hours at home with sneakers as mic stands and blankets draped over the amps), it’s all about unbridled energy. For all its lo-fi aesthetics, this is dense and imaginative music, excellent changes of pace throughout and an ebullient passion that is hard not to get lost in. Projector was mixed by the adroit Dan Carey, who successfully retains all the recording’s raw ethic whilst ensuring that everything has its own space. Very much in the mould of the storied NYC greats, with The Strokes’ bustling licks, Talking Heads’ yelping meanderings and the pounding strut of LCD Soundsystem or The Rapture. Certainly not the finished article, but a hugely impressive debut, and a band to be very excited about indeed.

‘The band have escaped their modest confines of a studio where pipes leak onto amps and delivered some of the most compelling new guitar music around.’

- NME

ALSO DUE OUT BEFORE 2021 IS DONE...

BEVERLY GLENN-COPELAND leads an all-star cast of guests,

reimagining his iconic Keyboard Fantasies album. Accordion virtuoso MARIO BATKOVIC returns with the quite stunning INTROSPECTIO. You Heat Me Up, You Cool Me Down documents an intense and electric set of live shows from KING KRULE. NEIL YOUNG & CRAZY HORSE combine forces for the raw and rocking new Barn LP, recorded in said restored 19th century barn up in the Rockies. RIVAL CONSOLES returns with Overflow, a hugely impressive soundscape that was composed for choreographer Alexander Whitley’s contemporary dance production. Awardwinning tuba player and composer THEON CROSS (of Sons of Kemet) returns with his new solo set, Intra-I. NILS FRAHM gathers together 23 solo piano tracks recorded between 2009 and 2021 on his Old Friends New Friends album, his first on his own Leiter imprint. The Time of the Foxgloves is the first new studio record in 12 years from cult traditionalist MICHAEL HURLEY. FEMI KUTI and CHRIS MARTIN co-curate a box set of Fela Kuti bangers for Box Set #5. London three-piece VOKA GENTLE release the gloriously weird and wonky WRITHING!

Mute 2021

Desire Marea Desire

Phew New Decade

CD/Ltd edition white vinyl

CD/Ltd edition clear vinyl

Liars The Apple Drop

Yann Tiersen Kerber

CD/Recycled coloured vinyl

CD/Ltd edition white vinyl

Chris Liebing Another Day

Chris Carter One + Three

CD/Double vinyl

CD/Ltd double purple vinyl

Hackedepicciotto The Silver Theshold

Louis Carnell (Visionist) A Call To Arms

CD/Double vinyl

CD/Ltd edition white vinyl

Apparat Soundtracks

Martin Gore The Third Chimpanzee

4 vinyl box set

CD/Ltd edition Azure vinyl

Daniel Blumberg The World To Come (OST) CD/Ltd edition dbl clear vinyl

A Certain Ratio Loco Remezclada CD/Ltd triple sparkle vinyl

Erasure The Neon Remixed CD/Ltd orange/yellow vinyl

Telex This is Telex CD/Ltd edition pink/green vinyl

The Pop Group Y in Dub CD/Double heavyweight vinyl

Can Live in Stuttgart 1975 CD/Ltd triple orange vinyl

Lee Ranaldo In Virus Times CD/Ltd etched turquoise vinyl

Alessandro Cortini SCURO CHIARO CD/Ltd clear vinyl

Sunroof (Daniel Miller & Gareth Jones) Electronic Music Improvisations CD/Ltd edition clear vinyl

Anita Lane Sex O’clock First time on vinyl

REISSUES

NANCY SINATRA Boots

Light In The Attic

Light In The Attic began an extensive reissue series this year with the wonderful Nancy Sinatra, highlighting her amazing voice and ubiquitous swagger on the 1966 debut LP, Boots. It is absolutely stacked with bangers, including a cover of Bob Dylan’s It Ain’t Me Babe, The Rolling Stones’ As Tears Go By and an absolutely banging version of The Beatles’ Day Tripper. It has been remastered from the original analogue tapes by John Baldwin and sounds absolutely mint.

Leading into the marvellous Boots reissue, LITA also released Start Walkin’ 1965-1976, a definitive new collection that surveys Sinatra’s most prolific period, including her revered collaborations with Lee Hazlewood. Two albums that have us gagging for more.

‘Dumb stuff, as Lee used to call it. Dumb doesn’t mean stupid. It means human and understandable.

I can still see the room, the studio. With Carol Kaye, Glen Campbell, Donnie Owens… I can still see them all sitting there and chunking away. I guess simple was the best way to explain it, uncomplicated.’

– Nancy Sinatra.

MY BLOODY VALENTINE

Isn’t Anything / loveless / ep’s 1988-1991 and rare tracks / m b v Domino Recording Co.

my bloody valentine (the quartet of Bilinda Butcher, Kevin Shields, Deb Googe and Colm Ó Cíosóig, widely revered as one of the most ground-breaking and influential groups of the past 40 years) worked in partnership with Domino this year to reissue their back catalogue. We don’t need to over-egg the pudding here by talking about how loud this band are or how complex the waves of reverb are, we can just testify that opening a record shop one morning in the early summer and playing them all back to back at full pelt was nothing short of a spiritual experience.

NIRVANA

Nevermind [30th Anniversary Edition] Polydor

To commemorate the 30th anniversary of the band’s seminal 1991 release, Nevermind has been newly remastered from the original analogue tapes. The reissue sounds fantastic, but it was more the opportunity to just spend some time listening to one of those albums where you know every click and pop so intimately. The super deluxe editions include four complete live shows that also document Nirvana’s historic ascension.

LEO NOCENTELLI Another Side

Light In The Attic

The first-ever solo album by legendary Meters guitarist Leo Nocentelli. At just 16, Leo Nocentelli was backing up Otis Redding. Soon after, he was playing on hits for Lee Dorsey, The Supremes, and The Temptations.

This solo collection has such great soul vibes, it is unfathomable that it has spent 50 years in the wilderness, an absolute treasure.

IAN CARR’S NUCLEUS Roots

Be With Records

Scottish trumpeter and composer Ian Carr formed Nucleus at the turn of the 1970s, and this funky progjazz-rock masterpiece was originally released on Vertigo in 1973. Other than a couple of versions at the time, Roots was never re-pressed and has gone on to become another of those impossible-to-find records. Some serious molten-hot fusion gold.

RADIOHEAD KID A MNESIA XL Recordings

A multiple format triple-album release, marking the 21st anniversary of the era-defining Kid A and Amnesiac albums. The third disc of both CD/LP sets is Amnesiae, previously unreleased alt versions that show the creative process from the original sessions, which are as fascinating and captivating as the finished studio albums themselves.

JOHN COLTRANE

A Love Supreme: Live in Seattle Impulse!

A never-before-heard live recording from a private collection, this is not just a document or live gig, this feels as free flowing and transcendental as the iconic album itself. This is just how A Love Supreme could have been, or perhaps a reflection of it? The power of that album was no one-time recorded thing, they were clearly living it.

THE LLOYD MCNEILL QUARTET Washington Suite Soul Jazz Records

Another Soul Jazz deep dive into the vaults of AfricanAmerican flautist Lloyd McNeill - here as a quartet with the utterly hypnotic Washington Suite. The album was originally commissioned as a piece of music for the Capitol Ballet Company in Washington, DC, and issued on McNeill’s own Asha record label in 1970.

LESLIE WINER

GEORGE OTSUKA QUINTET

Light In The Attic

Le Très Jazz Club

Celebrating the extraordinary work of musician, poet, and trip-hop pioneer Leslie Winer. Her life is fascinating, one of those characters who not only is in the right place at the right time, but seems to be the catalyst for why that place and time is right. She was close with William S. Burroughs and Jean-Michel Basquiat, and across this collection’s 16 tracks there are contributions from Jon Hassell, Helen Terry, Jah Wobble, Renegade Soundwave’s Karl Bonnie and more… there is so much to discover.

Drummer and bandleader George Otsuka was one of Japan’s most renowned and respected jazz musicians of all time, as adept at leading post-bop as he was supreme ambience. Sea Breeze is definitely more of the latter, spacious vibes with natural reverberations and funk tones. The Fool On The Hill cover version is wild, one of this imaginative album’s many highlights.

When I Hit You – You’ll Feel It

Sea Breeze

ALICE COLTRANE Kirtan: Turiya Sings Impulse!

The perfect introduction to Alice Coltrane’s music concerned with meditation and personal wellness. The set was originally released in 1982 on cassette as a collection of devotional songs including vocals, organ, strings, and synthesisers, and was available only at Alice’s Sai Anantam Ashram. Any of you who got into the 2017’s World Spirituality Classics LP via the Luaka Bop label are just gonna flip out for this, it is incredibly moving.

SOUTHERN ENERGY ENSEMBLE Southern Energy [Reissue] Strut

A jazz-funk classic. Strut presents the first full international release for another lost gem from the Black Fire Records archives with Southern Energy, the only album recorded

by R’n’B and jazz collective Southern Energy Ensemble in 1977. Huge harmonies and big euphoric vibes. When they spell out ‘funky’ on F-U-N-K-Y ‘Til the Day I Die, it’s quite the euphoric high.

METRONOMY English Riviera Because Music

Turning ten this year - first released on 8th April 2011 - Metronomy’s English Riviera remains very close to our hearts, an album that still sounds as warm, weird, fun and smart as it did back then. A rich suite of synth tones, painting a nostalgic view of its protagonist’s adolescence. Utterly charming. Joe Metronomy and Lee Drift also combined to create a limited edition ‘Bay cultural highlights’ tea-towel, which is categorically one of the year’s highlights.

CAN

Live in Stuttgart 1975 Mute

​​ The first in a curated series of Can live concerts made available again in partnership with Mute. It was originally recorded on tape, now carefully restored (remastered and engineered under the supervision of founding Can member Irmin Schmidt and producer / engineer Rene Tinner) to span the entirety of the show. A beginning, middle and end; Can’s performances taking on a life of their own. Absolutely belting stuff.

STEVE REID ENSEMBLE FEAT. KIERAN HEBDEN Soul Jazz Records

Out of print for nearly 15 years, Spirit Walk was recorded at the start of the long relationship between Four Tet’s Kieran Hebden and drummer extraordinaire Steve Reid.

Soul Jazz Records had begun to reissue much of Reid’s radical, deep and spiritual jazz music from the 1970s when an encounter with Hebden effectively launched a new career for Reid, a man steeped in history having played with John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Fela Kuti, Motown and much more.

WILLIE DUNN

Creation Never Sleeps, Creation Never Dies: The Willie Dunn Anthology Light In the Attic

A comprehensive deep-dive into Mi’gmaq folk singer, poet and director Willie Dunn. We first became aware of Willie via his I Pity the Country - which remains a thrilling opening to LITA’s 2014 Native North America (Vol. 1) compilation - and this new anthology further illustrates his fearless and unflinching writing and hard wisdom.

A vital and solemn voice, this is a fantastic collection.

STEREOLAB

Electrically Possessed [Switched On Volume 4] Duophonic

Electrically Possessed is the fourth volume of Stereolab’s Switched On series, compiling non-album tracks and sought-after deep cuts by the group. The long-awaited fourth instalment spans 1999-2008 in the Stereolab story and collates 3 LPs’ worth of material, all remastered from the original tapes and overseen by the band.

I guess the question here remains; did Stereolab ever do anything that wasn’t utterly lush? What a band, folks.

VARIOUS

Blue Note Records

The iconic Blue Note Records continued their amazing archival work this year with some 20 odd reissues as part of the acclaimed Tone Poet Audiophile reissue series, including releases from Art Blakey, Dexter Gordon, McCoy Tyner, Donald Byrd, Bobby Hutcherson, Wayne Shorter, Stanley Turrentine, Grant Green, Hank Mobley, Andrew Hill, Chet Baker & Art Pepper, Freddie Hubbard, Kenny Burrell and more.

SPIRITUALIZED®

Lazer Guided Melodies / Pure Phase / Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space / Let It Come Down Fat Possum

Delivered under the Spacemen Reissue Program title and curated by the band’s frontman and principal songwriter Jason Pierce, Fat Possum reissued luxe editions of the first four Spiritualized® albums this year, a simply extraordinary run of albums. Rising like a phoenix from the flames of Spacemen 3, each new set became grander and more complex, with 1997’s Ladies and Gentlemen… and 2001’s Let It Come Down rarely being equalled in their sheer sonic exuberance. All four albums were specially remastered by Alchemy Mastering and presented in reworked sleeves.

The Tone Poet series is produced by Joe Harley and features all-analogue, 180g audiophile vinyl reissues that are mastered from the original master tapes by Kevin Gray of Cohearent Audio. Tone Poet vinyl is manufactured at RTI in Camarillo, California, and packaged in deluxe Stoughton Printing “Old Style” Gatefold Tip-On Jackets.

They are remarkable artefacts.

COMPILATIONS

COUNTRY FUNK VOLUME III Light In The Attic

The horse still bucks, the band still funks, and well… the fire still burns. That’s right… Country Funk is back!

The long-awaited new volume of Light In The Attic’s loving expose into the crossroads where country music got funky. This third edition picks up roughly where the other two left off (although the specific chronological timelines were always pretty hazy) and follows the country funk sub-genre into the early 1980s, a period that saw the end of outlaw country and Southern rock, the beginnings of yacht rock, the rise and fall of disco, the start of the Reagan era, and the arrival of new sounds and technologies in pop music. The palette expands to include disco patters and synth bass lines against those iconic voices and good old fashioned country themes (yes, you’ll be please to learn that sex certanly remains one of country funk’s favourite topics). Featuring Dolly Parton, J.J. Cale, Conway Twitty, Larry Jon Wilson, and Billy Swan, amongst many others - plus a previously unreleased track by the maverick Tony Joe White - it’s a collection of songs that bucked traditional country tropes and drank liberally from the cosmic Kool-Aid. As they said themselves, this is the true soundtrack of the Urban Cowboy. Saddle up, partners!

CUBA: MUSIC AND REVOLUTION: CULTURE CLASH IN HAVANA Soul Jazz Records

Gilles Peterson and Stuart Baker curate the second edition in the superb CUBA series, exploring the many styles that came out of the country in the 1970s as Latin and salsa mixed with heavy doses of jazz, funk, and disco to create some of the most dancefloor-friendly music ever made.

FIRE DRAW NEAR: AN ANTHOLOGY OF IRISH TRADITIONAL SONG AND MUSIC River Lea

An album of Irish traditional songs compiled by Ian Lynch of Dublin band Lankum. 13 rare, strange and wonderful gems from the Irish tradition, recorded in various parts of the country over a period of over 60 years between 1947 and 2013.

BILLS & ACHES & BLUES 4AD

Albeit late, 4AD celebrated their 40th birthday by setting its current roster loose on the label catalogue, for a varied set of covers that uphold the imprint’s exploratory spirit. Featuring: Aldous Harding, Future Islands, Dry Cleaning, Jenny Hval, Maria Somerville, U.S. Girls, Big Thief and more, covering amongst others, Pixies, Lush, Grimes and The Breeders.

COLD WAVE #1 / COLD WAVE #2 Soul Jazz Records

A double album set curated by the heads at Soul Jazz, introducing a collection of current electronic artists who have all been shaped by the early European cold wave artists of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Ultra-modern tones with the crackling fuzz of their forebears.

GOITSE A THAISCE: A COMPILATION OF IRISH MUSIC VOLUME ONE Skinty Records

A deeply personal new compilation - and love letter to traditional music - from Tom Coll of Fontaines DC. It’s pronounced ‘Get-sha a Hash-kee’ and serves as a glorious introduction to his own mostcherished experiences with traditional Irish music.

I’LL BE YOUR MIRROR: A TRIBUTE TO THE VELVET UNDERGROUND & NICO

JOURNEYS IN MODERN JAZZ: GREAT BRITAIN Decca

A deep dive into some of the most collectable jazz catalogues in the world, with a selection of rare and sought-after recordings from the 1960s and 1970s, a time when British jazz began to find its own identity.

Such a diverse set and an amazing introduction to some long under-discussed talents.

INDABA IS

Verve

Brownswood Recordings

A Tribute To The Velvet Underground & Nico was always going to be right up our Straße, but not only are the guests excellent here, they’re also on tip-top form. Featuring Iggy Pop & Matt Sweeney, Michael Stipe, Sharon Van Etten, Kurt Vile, Matt Berninger and more, they all bring something new to each of these iconic songs.

Curated by pianist Thandi Ntuli and vocalist Siyabonga Mthembu - and released in partnership with tastemaker Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood imprint - Indaba Is deep dives into South Africa’s brilliant burgeoning jazz and improvised music scenes. Stylistically diverse, but gloriously coherent.

DO WHAT YOU LOVE Trunk Records

SOUND WONDERS: A SERIES OF EPICS Touchtheplants

Outstanding second ambient and new age compilation from Touchtheplants, the imprint founded by Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith and Sean Hellfritsch. The contributors were invited to compose work based on the idea of epics, the long poems that have detailed deeds and adventures since the dawn of storytelling.

Looking ridiculously handsome at 25 years old, Trunk celebrate themselves with a glorious new double album, including unreleased work from Delia Derbyshire, unheard Nogmusic (from Noggin The Nog), newly discovered sounds from the Kirchin tape archive and a sex tape from a car boot sale.

CAMEROON GARAGE FUNK Analog Africa

Lost underground funk nuggets that were only recorded thanks to a crooked church sound system engineer and released on a fly-by-night French label. You can feel the heat, cherished and hard-searched-for 45 singles from a buzzing scene, now immortalised.

CUMBIA CUMBIA 1 & 2 World Circuit

Originally released as separate volumes in 1989 and 1993, Cumbia Cumbia brings together the greatest recordings from Colombia’s legendary record label, Discos Fuentes, with meticulously selected singles from thousands of releases between 1950 and 1988.

BADBADNOTGOOD Talk Memory XL Recordings

Our 2021 Record of The Year is Talk Memory, the fifth studio LP from Toronto jazz band BADBADNOTGOOD. A psychedelic jazz record that explores balance and harmony through musical improvisation.

Alexander Sowinski (drums), Chester Hansen (bass) and Leland Whitty (guitar/woodwinds) have long proved themselves to be both skilled players and also deeply intuitive and adaptive collaborators, pioneering some of jazz, funk and rap’s most innovative partnerships. This new studio collection is all about aural odyssey and the power of spiritual collaborations, including contributions from iconic Brazilian producer and musician Arthur Verocai alongside Laraaji, Terrace Martin, Karriem Riggins and Brandee Younger.

The album flows beautifully, like a cinematic soundtrack with moments of ambience and swelling strings adding beautiful counterweight to the driving, urgent and euphoric BADBADNOTGOOD sound. Some of the highlights of the band’s last few releases have been the appearance of guest vocalists (including singer-songwriter Charlotte Day Wilson, Future Islands frontman Samuel T. Herring, Kaytranada, MF DOOM, Tyler, The Creator, and Kendrick Lamar; and the full-length Sour Soul with Ghostface Killah), and Talk Memory is especially notable not only for the absence of human voice, but also that it is not missed. This is such expressive and conceptually rich music, rooted in spiritual jazz, their most emotional and human work yet. Born from collaborative improvisation, each track is compositionally refined, and also so full of life and energy. A beautiful and thoroughly invigorating album.

EXCLUSIVE 7” RELEASE

Photography: Mike Rudd

BADBADNOTGOOD

To celebrate the release of Talk Memory, we met Alexander Sowinski, Chester Hansen and Leland Whitty collectively BADBADNOTGOOD - to talk about memory, connections and the power of collaboration.

Deluxe:

What are your earliest memories of the album taking shape?

Leland: For me it was when Chester and I went to visit Alex on his fa outside Toronto, and a friend of ours Sylvain Chaussée came by and was running projections as we were jamming and developing the songs in their initial forms. Before we had any solid chords or melodies, the seeds of inspiration, period.

Alex: That meeting was the rst getting together and talking through what we were trying to do, or where we wanted to go. Recollecting ol memories and experiences, also musical memories and environments. was something Chester started to improvise live when we were previously touring, which I guess was a couple of year before we started to write the project. It was a period of stretchi all of the experiences and trying to open as many doors as possible, many new pathways as possible. It was also about connecting musical pieces together to create a whole new musical identity, an open concep of where the writing could go.

Deluxe: I really sensed that it comes from improvisation and fragment I especially love you mentioning ‘memory’ as well. Have there ever bee occasions where you’ve lost little moments, or do those incendiary idea stay in the consciousness?

Chester: I am not sure that if on this project we necessarily for anything l ( aughing), but I am sure it’s happened before. We have really long jam sessions so it can be easy to lose something if you don’t rec it or drill into it. Maybe it’s just not meant to be?

Alex: We were using iPhone demos as a way to just leave focus on the live experience, you can always go back and listen back to what we did, hearing what was going on. There were a few months between the sessions so it was good to have time to hear back what had happened to evolve it.

Deluxe: I love the idea of how you might have foreseen the album sounding, then how it does sound. Collectively, does it ‘ feel’ like wh you’d envisioned?

Leland: I’d say so for sure. Going back to the origins of the album a with Sylvain’s projections… he was manipulating footage of lm: nature footage of protests, a car on re; there was such a strong emotional and visual connection. Although the songs had already been developed from the improvisations, the visual element made for an abstract element.

Alex: For myself, I wanted to really imagine what recording a class album would have felt like, experiencing recording Sgt. Pepper’s , or classic Miles Davis session. Not trying to contrive our environment changing our worlds and going with that experience and how it impact us. Because we had a band member move on - Matty M ( atthew Tavares) - who had been such a strong inuence, we needed to nd all the roles

Alexander Sowinski

and how to fill them, how to open avenues and let the music grow and change.

Deluxe: As a fan, it still sounds intrinsically you, but on Talk Memory, especially elements like the orchestrations and flourishes, that is significantly broader, more cinematic almost?

Alex: Very much so, and that is just how it evolved naturally from those sessions and with our collaborators.

Deluxe: I wanted to talk to you about the collaborators.

Without giving you the unanswerable question of (laughing) ‘who is your favourite collaborator’, I wanted to ask you all personally what were the most regarding or surprising moments with all of your various collaborators across the album, the videos and the Memory Catalogue?

Chester: I think in a general sense it was amazing for me being able to see the album in person physically, just the whole process from the magazine through the videos to the packaging, the whole process and the thought behind it feels beautiful. We’ve never been able to put this much time or intention into a project before. It was amazing to put trust in people to just do what they do well, it’s been an amazing open team effort.

Alex: Every stage has been unique and surprising.

When we brought in Sylvain early it was such a mood for the musical development. When we went to the studio and recorded it with Nick the engineer there, he knew what would work and we trusted him, that gave us space and listening back there was just so much flow, there was hardly anything to change because we were so in it. Terrace Martin and Karriem Riggins on different occasions just came in to play on the fly, picking up the tune and ripping the song with us; those experiences were just fun and amazing musical connectivity through trust. It’s been an amazing flow.

Deluxe: Did you see the finished LP pre-release or…

Leland: (laughing) The first time was just days ago, the day before the album was released. We did a signing in New York and, well, it was a cool experience.

Deluxe: The guys at Drift were really geeking out about the packaging and said ‘ah, typeface! You never see the typeface credited on the records!’

Chester: We actually really recently met Francisco and Tawanda (of Alaska-Alaska™) who worked with us on this epic journey to create the visual language for this album. It was amazing to meet these beautiful people that you’ve had 100 conversations and Zoom

Leland Whitty

calls with in real life and just think about that connection.

Deluxe: I get a real sense that everyone who contributed - be it the designers, or guests like Laraaji, for example played a part in something bigger? Did you map out how you wanted people to contribute or was it more natural?

Alex: The only elements that were recorded after the sessions were Laraaji, Brandee Younger and the Arthur Verocai strings and everything was basically a one take, a one time ‘here is what I am thinking’, and we were like… (laughing) ‘that is incredible’. No nit-picking, no specifics, everyone just graciously enhanced our music with gifts.

Deluxe: I obviously heard the album finished and in sequence, so when the strings first appear on City of Mirrors, it’s hugely emotive. I can only imagine what those sessions must have felt like.

Alex: It was magical… like ‘brain opening’.

Deluxe: Across your websites and in interviews, you’ve really directly called out ‘support your local record stores’ - I am assuming that they have been formative to you, so what would be your earliest memories of record stores?

Chester: For me, I got records via my Dad when I was pretty young and that felt like the door was opened.

My first shop experience was a place in Ottawa. I was making beats so I’d just go to the 50 cent bin and pick up whatever was kicking around, (laughing) like Christopher Cross, records that were cheap and might have a tiny flash of something if you dig deep.

Alex: Growing up, CDs were very much more in fashion, so vinyl was a later-teen thing for me, but I had a ton of CDs from Costco, Eminem or whatever? It was more when we started touring as a band we started experiencing the world that jazz lives in, DJ culture, radio culture… how all of it flows together, and the journeys in between.

Thinking about shops specifically, Toronto’s Sonic Boom was key. I went to a lot in highschool and bought a lot of DOOM and J Dilla. Also Aki (Abe) at Cosmos Records is a fantastic curator of funk, jazz and Brazilian stuff, literally every genre actually, and has been a huge influence. I think the network of friends, DJs and promoters have always shown us the alternative shop culture, which is recommendations.

Chester: Some of my favourite shops that we’ve ever been to, I don’t know the name, I can’t tell you how to get there (laughing), it’s just like ‘get in the van, we’re going to the store’.

Alex: Some of the grimier or dustier shops in South

Chester Hansen

America might seem pretty ramshackle, but they always know what they have. The older guys know what they have like old friends.

Leland: (laughing) Yeah, I was drifting away thinking.

Like Chester, I got a bunch of records from my Dad before I had any real shop experience. Like Alex, it is about community, and I do remember a guy in college who would set up this vinyl shop in the cafeteria once a month, and that’s where I really got into Alice Coltrane.

It was a pretty good spot for him.

Deluxe: Hang on, so he wasn’t a student, he was just running a pop-up?

inspiration out of the blue and make connections.

Deluxe: I didn’t actually correctly quote you earlier, the full line was ‘support your local Record Store… and most importantly yourself’. So what do record shops feel like, to you?

Alex: Almost like a library in the sense of information, no scrolling or whatever. They’re like a bar and a library all in one, information, but you might also meet someone who is super dope, just listening to something. You might even find confidence in what you like, having to fight to get on the turntable and listen to what you want to listen too.

Leland: He wasn’t on the music course, he just got the hook-up I guess.

Chester: They just feel like a warm hug or something?

Deluxe: (laughing) Wow, that’s a good hustle, that’s like shooting fish in a barrel?

All: (laughing)

Leland: (laughing) Yeah, student loan arrives, music college, record store in the cafeteria…

Alex: I guess, to go back to ‘support your local record shops’, we live very much in a digital age and we’ve lived through the arc of physical music from CDs to downloads to the resurgence of vinyl; we just think about experience with music and interacting. It’s about how it can spark

Deluxe: … Well, that’s the quote.

Chester: Growing up it felt very much like a place where no one bothered you and you could just absorb it all.

I was and am obsessed with sample-based hip hop, so trying to find the connections and that feeling of finding something new was so exciting. It is fascinating.

Leland: (laughing) Yeah, comfort like Chester says. I love buying used vinyl, I love that there is a story behind it, there is life and love in every item, it’s quite beautiful.