Top 25 Records of 2020

Flippin’ ‘eck. That was a lot, weren’t it? I doubt I need to belch on about the trials and tribulations of this bastard year so it’s probably enough to say that I didn’t really feel like ranking music this time round. Aligning most accurately with my shifting and seasonal tastes isn’t exactly a competition. Despite the fetid state of this year, the quality of music released was astounding. To the point that anyone dropping this sort of list a month ago now seems a little foolhardy as late additions have bumped otherwise locked-in records straight out of the running. If that seems a little unfair or callous, even, here’s a little run down of those nearly-theres:

Not quite making the final cut was the smoky, Lynchian dinner party jazz from that chirpy Strap chap under his Nyx Nótt moniker. Shirley Collins followed up Lodestar with a swagger and a surprising penchant for getting a little bit noisy. Similarly the two big reissues from Yellow Swans served as brain-cleansing thought irons. Nazar unleashed techno hell, Julianna Barwick soothed some (but definitely not all) of my spiky edges, whilst Hey Colossus riffed me to pieces. I was also swept up by the heartfelt grandiosity of The Academy Of Sun’s Quiet Earth opus. See also Memnon Sa’s drone & synth quest as well as the new age rhythms of D.K. for further sweeping. Cremation Lily was prolific under a number of different aliases but it was More Songs About Drowning that really took hold of me. Likewise, the twisting futuristic beats of Mønic’s In A Certain Light relocated my mind into a cavernous club… if only for a brief spell. The festering, unadulterated rage of Pink Siifu essentially tore my face off, whereas Mark Leckey took a maximalist approach to sound collage and had a lot of ruddy fun with it and, on the opposite end of the serious spectrum, Alison Cotton’s scything strings split me a new one.

So, cutting the nonsense short, here are 25 records that sieved some gold out of these 12 foul months. In one particular order (alphabetical), ‘ere you go then:

Backxwash - God Has Nothing To Do With This Leave Him Out Of It

From the looped plea of “Oh no no, please God help me”, that permeates the album opener, to the heartfelt outpouring on closer ‘Redemption’, you know that you’re into something that refuses to compromise. And nor should it. This is vicious, visceral, and downright apoplectic. It comes straight for your jugular, blasting, screaming and stomping. Whether it’s incandescently invoking ‘Black Magic’ or raging ‘Into The Void’, the whole record is peppered with the language of the occult. Backxwash is reaping from the pages of Milton, Dante, and Crowley as we’re taken on a journey, through the underworld, and into celestial beyonds, that serves as a metaphor for transformation and forgiveness. It also boasts, hands-down, the album title of the year. No competition. Satan is too timid to dare get behind this but that ain’t gonna stop you, right?

Bomb Sniffing Dogs - Acid Zoo

Probably my favourite musical discovery of this year. The house band for Salford’s The White Hotel seem to have emerged fully formed, spouting wry lyricism over washed-out electronics, soaring guitars, and insistent beats. Who else is referencing testicular retraction, Madeline McCann, and Shergar in 2020? This isn’t so much an album (it’s an EP so get your facts straight) as a statement of intent from ye dags. It’s unequal parts Mark E Smith, Blue Jam, and My Bloody Valentine. Throw in mind-scuzzing remixes by Christoph De Babalon, Leyland Kirby, and Richard Fearless and you’ve got a heinous entourage pawing away at your skull. If anything, this pack of like-minded mischief makers have made me miss going to gigs more than anyone else this year. So, thanks for that.

Cindy Lee - What's Tonight To Eternity

Pop music seemingly made by someone in the throes of an exorcism. This demented cacophony intertwines catchy melodic lines with the sound of someone scraping a tower block empty from the inside out. It’s demonic, fearsome, and downright captivating. Patrick Flegel immediately followed this up with the ‘hard to get hold of’ Cat O’ Nine Tails (you’ve got to, like, pay via Paypal, man) which leaned a little more heavily on the 60s pop influences and just didn’t seem to wrench my gut, heart, and brain around quite as much. Either way, Cindy Lee’s enveloping sounds make a darn good swaddle for keeping the outside out.

Clipping. - Visions Of Bodies Being Burned

Here are some words I cobbled together for the day job at Resident: “Bustin’ into our ears just before Halloween, this horror-laced follow up to 2019’s exceptional There Existed An Addiction To Blood had us quivering in our collective boots from the the first blast of earth-shattering static. Whether they were sampling banged doors or the cries of ouija board meddlers, the inherent creepiness of Visions… meant that we were looking over our shoulders at the same time as violently nodding our noggins. It’s no wonder, then, that half of us were cricked to buggery the week this was released. If you’re not in bits by the time that they hit you with ‘Enlacing’ it might be time to check if you’ve already joined the legions of undead. All together now “Get your ass down to the floor””

Ian William Craig - Red Sun Through Smoke

If you’ve stumbled into these parts before, you would had to have trodden very carefully to avoid crossing paths with IWC. Continuing on the journey into fuzzier climes from last year’s Minor Pieces collab, Red Sun Through Smoke is more than a little frazzled around the edges. Like an old letter rescued from a fire, the corners are charred and crinkled. It ought to be held lightly. The slightest gust might spill it out into dissipating specks like dust caught on an upward breeze, glinting in the light as it disappears out of arm’s grasp. There is a sense that these sounds are both fragile and transient. Lyrically, Craig is delving into deeply emotive waters. The line “We had grief for supper” haunts poetically, perfectly accompanied by trembling notes formed from looped tapes of his own voice. By the time that he hits us with the thick, Sunn O)))-esque, waves of booming drones on ‘Open Like A Loss’, all sense of emotional composure has leapt gleefully out of the window. Touché Mr Craig, touché.

Craven Faults - Erratics & Unconformities 

The passage of time in 2020 is plastic, stretchy and prone to the odd explosion.

Seconds sprawl out whilst months blink by. January 2020 seems like 5 years ago. Yet, in that month, the shadowy figure of Craven Faults predicted the swirling discombobulation of time that was in the post.

[Click here for the full length write up I pulled together for Resident]

Sarah Davachi - Cantus, Descant

A gentle scoop of organ drones that recall Kali Malone’s masterful release from 2019. Davachi leads us on careful and intricate trails that unspool across broken hills, step away from the path and zone in on something that surges within each one of us. It’s quiet and meditative, solemn yet hopeful. Inevitably, considering the focal instrument employed on Cantus, Descant, notions of worship float to the fore. That we might see this as religious or otherwise, is a dilemma left for us to grapple with. What starts off as a little distant, perhaps even stand off-ish, gradually warms and reaches out until it’s nestled inside us like a nurtured sense of self. It is precious and not to be taken lightly. As to which I’m referring there, again, is entirely up to you to consider.

Delmer Darion - Morning Pageants

This is another one that I got to write about for that Resident place: “Odd pop at its warped & chaotic best. The devilish duo behind Delmer Darion seized on the trappings of quite odd bedfellows (glitch, industrial, folk, pop, and noise) and spun them into a viscous web that is nigh on impossible to escape from. There’s a magic moment around the 11 minute mark where all of the squeals and squalor give way to a delightful pop stomp the likes of which Ariel Pink would be proud. It’s then immediately followed up by an introspective drone piece that wouldn’t be out of place in Roly Porter’s cacophonous back catalogue. After that we’re treated to a lo-fi folk ballad. It’s not so much all over the place as fearlessly genre-smashing. Long story not that short: if you’ve got musical boxes that you like to tick, this record is here and raring to daub with its musical marker.”

Duma - Duma

The shot in the arm, arse, and ears that 2020 has been crying out for. Nah, it’s not the vaccination, it’s dizzying thunderbolt grindcore from Kenya. Obvs. Pure nihilism from the get go, these skin-searing claustro-skull-fucks pummel and pummel and pummel until you’re more floor than person. Which is grand for me - in many ways, I’ve always wanted to be a rug. This year has been bat-shittingly weird so lets get extreme with it. Drag the feral peripheries into the mainstream and shake heads up a bit. If this doesn’t sound like it’s doing exactly that, then you’ve been a rug for too long, my friend.

E-Saggila - Corporate Cross

Relocating from Northern Electronics to Hospital Productions for this ‘un, E-Saggila seems to have taken this opportunity to try a new approach to her sonic constructions too. She’s a little more restrained. A little more willing to take her time. Choosing to patiently build up to the teeth-rattling, bass throbbers that we know that she’s more than capable of. This sense of dynamics and, dare I type it, theatricality has totally paid off. The opportunity to get lost in the swirls of padding electronics and twirling sequences before being jolted back into the room by a tiny invasion of promised catharsis only whets appetite, arouses hunger, and gets the old saliva glands flowing like the Pavlovian pooches that we are. By the time that the low end really gets a-rumbling on, fittingly, ‘Mouth Of Reach’, the sense of anticipation is completely off the mercury and the listener is left with little choice other than to strip shirt from shoulders and run laps around the lounge, drop-kicking anything with a raised eyebrow, and proclaiming at the top of hoarse lungs that “IT’S SHIT HOOFING TIME”. Or maybe you could just tap your feet or summat. Whatever works for you.

Fleshlicker - Mondo Flesh

Sixty minutes of intense, unadulterated, sonic pustules. Just total ego erosion. I caught Fleshlicker a few weeks prior to the first lockdown and the fact that his table of ferocious electronics was on the verge of tumbling from the stage for the duration of his set added a sense of unsettling jeopardy that the music only exacerbated. For this double cassette, the stop/start “death gaps” were shunned in favour of thick and overwhelming static tides, leaving nowhere to hide. There is no escape. Listening to this is like being cremated.

Guilt Attendant - Suburban Scum 

If the world had ended this year, I had the perfect soundtrack to see humanity out to. It would just have been Suburban Scum, looping over and over again whilst we all decompose in an orgy of disease. I’m not sure that I can (nor need to) expand on that much further, other than to say this was the apocalyptic, ritualised, floor-cleaving techno that I hankered for and was duly fed by the unwavering hand of Guilt Attendant. Go forth and spread thee word.

Knifedoutofexistence - A Fragile Future 

A tender approach to harsh noise. There is less here of Dean’s tortured vocals and more compassionate reams of distorted sound. A Fragile Future follows on from the blistered gasps of Just Barely and moves the work into a more carefully measured realm. There are still great big jutting boulders of static to grapple with and feedback that sings as if through the remains of a banshee’s throat but it all feels as if it is part of a greater masterplan. Something that tells a wordless tale through corrosive sonic imagery. Whilst writing about that previous EP, I typed the sentence: “It feels like, in 2020, full-bodied, earth-shuddering noise is just about the only sane response to the constant mental, physical, societal, and ecological unravelling that appears to be occurring around us.” A Fragile Future is an apt embodiment of this notion.

Lord Of The Isles - Whities 029 

Initially I was fairly impressed. Intriguing synth swoops and swooshes cut through a heavenly drone, followed up by bubbly keys dancing around bass notes that trod carefully like giants trying not to toe a forest into mulch. What’s not to like? Literally nought. But it was the introduction of Scottish poet - Ellen Renton - on the back half of the album that had the old neck hairs clamouring for attention. Her lilting delivery of a love letter to her child, in a not too distant world ravaged by climate change amidst creaking winds, unfolding flames, squeaked birdsong, and long, foreboding notes, stopped me in my tracks.

“A place void of brightness
Not the world I knew
But a charcoal likeness
And a tightness in your frail chest
So that, at best?
You’ll get to see your twenties through
And I would give you
The sky if I could
But it’s too scored and scorched from long haul holidays
So for my youngest I leave an apology”

That track (‘Passing’) alone was sufficient to floor me. That it was then followed up by the equally devastating ‘Inheritance’ with its evocation of wiped sunrises and emergent broken beats really sealed the deal.

Midwife - Forever 

“Nature will give you clues if you are brave”

In 2017 the artist formerly known as Madeline Johnston/Sister Grotto re-emerged with a new moniker – Midwife – and blew my flimsy little mind. Like Author, Like Daughter somehow managed to lock into a deep part of my psyche and then proceeded to lovingly unspool it over 51 delicately crafted minutes of reverb-doused guitars, hauntingly distant drums, and an enveloping sense of mysterious familiarity.

[Continue Reading The Full Review Here]

Moor Mother & Billy Woods - Brass 

This record right here is evidence why you shouldn’t be in such a rush to get your lists out. Landing on December 18th, this one blew holes in all of my plans. It came in yelling questions over the sounds of gunfire and didn’t stop firing either until there was nothing left to aim at. Moor Mother isn’t exactly renowned for resting on her laurels but 2020 was hectic even by her incredibly high standards. Not only did we get a number of solo releases (often coinciding with the good people at Bandcamp dropping their fees), a couple of compilations, a live album, the excellent Irreversible Entanglements record, collaborations with Armand Hammer, Yetta, Olof Melander, and Rasheedah Phillips, but we also got this absolutely seismic, tensed bicep of an album with Billy Woods (of the aforementioned Armand Hammer). It’s sinewy, punchy, well-read, engulfed in history yet sounds both modern and like it’s invading from the future. Imagine Alice Coltrane and Sun Ra set to Def Jux beats whilst righteous verses are somehow restrained from being literally spat. That’s Brass in as constrictive a nutshell as I can muster. I haven’t even come close.

Mrs. Piss - Self-Surgery 

Slashing aside all other contenders for band name of the year, Mrs. Piss not only took home all of the silverware but succeeded in trashing the joint to the point where they’re considering hosting next year’s award show via Zoom. Formed from rampaging guitars and cataclysmic drums, this rotten union of Jess Gowrie and Chelsea Wolfe slops about in sludge, dances in dirt, and parties in, well, it’s not champagne. Self-Surgery is an impure celebration of scabbed knees, booze-soaked shirts, phlegm-filled microphones, and the taste of someone else’s sweat. It is everything that 2020 has warned you against and it is glorious.

Pharaoh Overlord - 6 

The most fun album on here by a country mile. This is like playing Hotline Miami when, just as you’re about to unleash a hail of bullets on hopefully deserving henchmen, Satan himself bursts through the screen and serenades you with his most bowel-despatching, guttural bellow. It’s electro-disco accompanied by motorik beats and a mic’d up asylum-escapee (in this instance performed by SUMAC and former Isis frontman, Aaron Turner). I, for one, cannot wait to witness this absolutely sledgehammer the vibes out of unsuspecting dance floors.

Revolutionary Army Of The Infant Jesus - Songs of Yearning & Nocturnes 

A double album of heartbreaking darkened folk. Taking up a similar sonic space as Lankum’s superb album from last year, Songs of Yearning & Nocturnes are contemplative neofolk whilst eschewing the dangerous political flirtations which other artists in that genre have opted to embrace. They create multi-lingual, unsettling, brooding works that thump and shriek with the best of them. With the rise of folk horror and pagan imagery (I’m thinking here of films like The Witch, Hagazussa, and Midsommar as well as zines such as Hellebore, Weird Walk, and Rituals & Declarations specifically), Revolutionary Army Of The Infant Jesus ought really to be at the forefront, soundtracking these psychogeographic explorations.

Roly Porter - Kistvaen 

Compared to the loftier ambitions of his previous work (Aftertime referenced various celestial bodies from Frank Herbert’s Dune, Lifecycle Of A Massive Star was concerned with precisely that, and 2016’s Third Law focused its attentions on Newton’s third law of motion), Roly Porter has opted to utilise his trademark ecstatic electronics in order to investigate something a little closer to humanity this time around. In studying death rituals from the Neolithic period onwards, Porter is attempting to cast a light upon our own modern tangles with mortality. [Click Here For The Full Review]

Constantine Skourlis - Eternal Recurrence 

Constantine Skourlis is no stranger to crisis. Whilst he was in a Lesbos cave weaving together his masterful debut, Hades, small boats bearing the broken bodies of human beings began making their way towards that very same island. This became one of the worst humanitarian tragedies in recent memory. Now, 3 years later, with the world in a bafflingly worse state, his follow up Eternal Recurrence has been unleashed. [Full Review Continues Here]

Slow White Fall - Pushing Through A Wall 

Glassy electronics, BURRRRing bass, gut-punch drums, and mid-seizure violins make up the core of this caterwauling runaway train. It’s in the same realm as last year’s Environment from My Disco and is another one that I’m anxiously awaiting the green light to witness live. Listening to this feels like offering yourself up to Oliver Ho’s nefarious needs. It takes as much away from you as it gives, musically. A real shared experience of unsettling sacrifice.

Sly & The Family Drone - Walk It Dry 

Boisterous drum ‘n’ brass from that London. This lot don’t just dabble with experimentation, they ride it like a furious steed. Bareback and gunned up on Buckfast, Walk It Dry rampages through its 33 rabid minutes with its attention deficit and all the pent up energy of a shirt-ripper in fresh togs. It’s like hanging off the back of a banana boat that’s been tethered to the tail of the shark from Jaws. In short: it’s fun, it’s terrifying, and it makes you feel more than a little glad to be alive.

U - Lowlands 

Lowlands flits and scoots around musical touchstones like a toddler in one of those plastic walking aids - arms aloft, rattling, and screaming. One moment they’re banging out some big beat drums, next they’re shuffling cassettes and reeling in unzipped bass burns. It goes from four to the floor to clinks and clangs, with a dollop of sizeable unsettling drone thrown in for bad measure. It even gets a bit New Age-y in places (‘Storegga Slide’) and then slows things right down by the time you reach the big twist finale. I don’t do spoilers here so you’ll have to trek through these musical highlands under your own steam. Just make sure that you follow their sage advice and ‘Don’t Fuck With The Dragon’.

UKAEA - Energy Is Forever 

Far reaching, kaleidoscopic sonic bedlam. It’s like a musical vortex drawing in sounds from all corners of the globe, dragging them together into a breathtaking meld of heart-pumping sounds that go and go and go. When they say that Energy Is Forever, you better fucking believe ‘em cos this thing has legs and it’ll run you into the ground. It slams like the best of them, whispers like a creep, and even dares to head to lofty heights just when you thought you had it pegged. Each time I stick it on there’s another layer waiting to be peeled back like some kind of musical onion. Only this one doesn’t make me cry… Well, alright, just that one time.