Top 25 Records of 2021

The end of 2021 has been and gone. 2020 taught me to wait until the year fully fizzles out before leaping in with accusations of musical excellence. And this year has been no different - I was still hearing things in December that blew my rickety mind. So many things in fact that I’m going to have to tip my hat to a few here before cracking into the 25 records that hit me hardest in 2021.

First up, however, I wanted to shine a light on 3 wildly different compilations that floored me this year.

Celebrating 30 years of techno excellence, the Berlin label Tresor put out this exquisitely curated boxset encompassing the past and future of envelope steam-rolling music that takes its listener on much more than a simplistic journey through a night out. 

There was also this wild, unhinged, and exemplary ode to women in experimental sound from the always formidable Industrial Coast, fittingly titled Girls Invented Noise Not Industrial Coast.

And the ever reliable folk at A Colourful Storm swept me into their unique and reassuringly soporific world on Time Is Away’s Ballads. If you’ve ever tuned in to their NTS show, you might have a vague idea of the ballpark that this magnificent compilation rests in but, trust me, you really need to take the time to settle in to the whole thing.

So, the ones that didn’t quite make the list then. This is essentially just a cheap get-out for me to be able to big up more than 25 records.

There was the heady drone antics of Ajilvsga, Appropriate Savagery's spine tingling atmospherics, a head-swirling new Aya release, and another fierce manifesto from Backxwash.

With a slightly different approach, Celestial mapped out an oneiric landscape that saw ample revisits, Klein smashed all expectations with this Charlotte Church collaboration, and Raime offshoot, Moin, out Black Midi-d, Black Midi.

Bill Orcutt took what should have been little more than a joke and somehow made it both enthralling and thought-provoking and Skee Mask’s Pool was a prime example of someone daring to go bigger than ever before.

In case you couldn’t tell from these honourable mentions, I’ll again be eschewing any ranking system and plumping instead for that time-honoured method of alphabetic filing.

Here we go.

Aja - Slug [Opal Tapes]

What did we expect from Aja? A gentle new-age odyssey? Course not. But, even so, this is still as mad as old bells, even by Aja’s own pinnacle-high standards. A punchy melting pot of distorted feedback, runaway beats, and dancefloor-corroding whumps. Aja makes dance music for the fever-frenzied minds battling with all their might to hold on to a singular train of thought.

Oren Ambarchi - Live Hubris [Editions Mego] 

An exercise in carefully loosened restraint. The leash is slowly let out on this collision of improvised chops. Tension builds. And, before you know it, what started as a few palm-muted notes astride a voluminous drone has built into a full-blown, psych-roaring, kosmische freak out formed by fifteen players thrashing their respective instruments within 25.4mm of their life.

Mario Batkovic - Introspectio [Invada Records]

A record so well put together it prompted me to write the “most pretentious review of the year” as voted for by one fellow on Twitter. I’m not going to lie, reading that response brought a chuckle to my cheeks.

You can peruse the aforementioned review in all its pompous glory right here: https://thequietus.com/articles/30959-mario-batkovic-introspectio-review

Blackhaine - Did U Cum Yet/I’m Not Gonna Cum + And Salford Falls Apart [Participant / Head II] 

The kick in the arm, the shot in the arse, the fist in the back of the skull that none of us asked for but the second it hit, begged for more. A potent blend of noise, drill, shorting electronics, smokey drones, and bravado masked fear. Over the course of these two 2021 releases a pent-up fire cascaded out from under the radar and lit up all that it touched. Somehow both more explorative and more focused than 2020’s Armour. Tom Hayes (Blackhaine) knows this too. On ‘I’m Not Gonna Cum’ he exclaims “I need a new armour, I can’t get through you”. And Salford Falls Apart showcases that new found protection and, judging by this arsenal of volatile tracks, he has decided that attack is the best form of defence.

The Bug - Fire [Ninja Tune]

A record that I had the golden opportunity to write about for my day job: “Not content with re-scoring an absolute classic of Soviet Sci-Fi cinema and being done with it for 2021, Kevin Richard Martin rounded up a crack squad of sonic allies and set about soundtracking the fucking apocalypse. If London Zoo built this up, Fire scorches it to rubble and stomps around in the wreckage. The Bug deals in low-end worship. His sounds hit you deep in the chest. They burn like oil fields in the night sky. Lyrics fire at you rat-a-tat-tat, lighting up synapses and overwhelming your mind. Roger Robinson, Flowdan, Moor Mother, & FFSYTHO, each guest pushes their game to the point of snapping, spitting bars like bullets. It sounds like the end of days and I can’t think of a better album to go down shooting to.”

Container - Creamer [Drone]

A fully furnished flat full of ideas thrown in a furnace and then carved into nostril-searing lines from the embers. Technically an EP, Creamer’s 14 minute run time is gill-packed with more successful experimentation than most artists could hope for in a couple of pairs of lifetimes. Not only that but it’s fun, fresh, and fucking wallops. Stick this on at a funeral and just see if the corpse doesn’t get to twitching and twerking before you hit the run out. Total brazen bedlam.

Cremation Lily - Cremation Lily Smells The Flowers [Strange Rules]  

A bold and invigorating squall of flaming power electronics, walls of distortion, and vocals that sound like they’ve been clawed from a lacerated throat… In the very best of ways. Cremation Lily Smells The Flowers is a beautifully rendered amalgam of tender violence. That might read like an oxymoron but by the time you reach the affecting finale - ‘But We Made It Mean Something’ - those heavy of heart will find this to be a gentle salve.

Aaron Dilloway & Lucrecia Dalt - Lucy & Aaron [Hanson Records]

The most fun noise record that I’ve heard all year. Much like Dilloway’s collaboration with Body/Head, this is a looped wonder full of left turns, reversals, and sonic face-slaps. Throw in Dalt’s proclivity for emotional tumult and you’ve got a weird recipe featuring ingredients such as loops that sound like lashed whips, backwards speech, time-shifts, bubbles, flickers of melody, and burbling low end squelches. It sounds like someone trying to piece together their fractured memories of a rave in the Red Room from Twin Peaks. In short, it’s a total riot.

Divide & Dissolve - Gas Lit [Invada Records] 

I’ll let the words that I penned for my workplace do the heavy lifting here: "Gas Lit is an angry wielded shovel of a record. It’ll batter you in a variety of magnificent and unanticipated ways. From your head to your gut, via your heart, Divide & Dissolve’s third outing slams, shrieks, roars and ruddy well thunders through your trembling veins. Sax squall, sludge fury, and tempestuous drums piston together to help hammer home this vociferous call to arms. It is something that’s been festering in the margins for far too long and now the righteous Australian duo have reared up like a mathematically improbable hydra and come out all guns blazing."

Gazelle Twin & NYX - Deep England [NYX Collective Records] 

Another one that I was able to write about for my employers:
“Few capture the darkening edge of Britain’s malaise as magnificently as Elizabeth Bernholz. This startling electronic-choral expansion of 2018’s Pastoral is a stroke of genius, with NYX Electronic Drone Choir’s haunting vox layering up the terror to tantalising levels. Dive in if you dare.”

Grouper - Shade [Kranky] 

An intimate work of shimmering beauty that is so wide open that it feels like a confessional. 

Full review here: https://echoesanddust.com/2021/10/grouper-shade/

Terence Hannum - Dissolving The Bonds [Flag Day Recordings] 

Hannum has crafted a distorted throb that deals with repositioning yourself following the dissolution of that which you believed to be permanent. It’s an open book obscured by clouds of fizzing mist. Like a midway point between Bvdub and Jasmine Guffond, this is sometimes melodic, sometimes ablaze but always marching sorrowfully through gnarled time and warping space.

HTRK - Rhinestones [N&J Blueberries] 

I cobbled this together for the old 9-5 back at the start of December… And I stand by it:
“A deceptively simple record that ratchets your ribcage wider & wider apart with every repeated listen. HTRK’s woozy production will sluice through your nervous system, leaving sprigs of disarming poetry quietly blooming inside of you &, before you know it, Rhinestones will be a part of who you are. Almost as if it has chosen you as a host for its magnificence. Don’t fight it. Succumb. You will be better for it.”

Irreversible Entanglements - At The Gates [International Anthem] 

A full-flowing free-jazz record that is inventive without being exclusionary, that informs as much as it entertains, and propels its listeners along on a current of enticing bass, engrossing poetry, and a heightened level of musicianship that manages to wipe the floor with all pretenders. There’s an atmosphere to At The Gates that goes beyond the smoky bars so often invoked when discussing jazz. This is the stuff of planning, scheming, riots, and unrest. It’s a bolt to the hippocampus that you won’t necessary feel from the first spin but, by the time you’ve gone back for a 5th or 6th helping, it’ll be lighting up your synapses like sheet lightning.

Leo - A Buried River [YOUTH]

A paean of discombobulation, swaggering beats, surprisingly melodious pathways, and fired up intent. Just when you think you have it figured out, Leo shoots off in an unexpected direction, deploying drill drums and explosive Francophone bars in one breath and deviant Forest Swords/Clams Casino instrumentals Youth-ed up to the 09’s in the next. Just remember to exhale by the time that you reach white-knuckle album closer ‘Water Features’ to avoid permanently scuffing up your noggin.

Lingua Ignota - Sinner Get Ready [Sargent House]

2019’s Caligula was like a jolt of electricity to my nervous system. It shook me. I can remember listening to it for the first time on a bus ride to Beachy Head, the juxtaposition between the beauty of the natural landscape and its dark, disquieting location as a suicide hotspot aligning frighteningly with Lingua Ignota’s jaw-dropping vocal performance. There were details hinted at and a deep wrath that split the surface wide open. It was almost too much to bear and instantly became a work of art that I will carry within me for the rest of my years. All of this should help to explain that my expectation for Sinner Get Ready were sky-fucking-high. And still it did not disappoint. Kristin Hayter (Lingua Ignota) has channelled a wealth of American Gothic aesthetics into the sonic and lyrical canvas of this record. She has channelled horrors that almost cost her her life (heavy content warnings for this harrowing explanation). And, above everything else, she has channelled all of this into an album of caustic fury with a sadness as deep as the ocean that simultaneously serves as catharsis, vindication, and a beacon of hope for other survivors.

Liziuz - Ex [Hospital Productions] 

One for those who like a bit of mystery. If you’re more interested in getting to the bottom of ‘why?’ rather than finding out ‘how?’, then I’d definitely consider giving this a whirl. Formed from a range of motorik drones with propulsive beats, field recordings, snatches of manipulated sounds, guitar lines that could have been cleaved from Neil Young’s Dead Man score, and a claustrophobic sense of city hubbub, Ex is less a journey and more an enigma with slightly too few clues to be solved.

Lost Girls - Menneskekollektivet [Smalltown Supersound] 

Jenny Hval has been a regular on this here site. I’ve evangelised about her recent solo work here & here and, whilst she didn’t make an appearance in last year’s list, she’s back with this beatific collaboration with multi-instrumentalist Håvard Volden. They may have been at this for a decade but this is the first time they’ve put sounds to disc under the Lost Girls moniker. And, my, was it worth the wait. Rousing house beats and familiar lyrical themes of dreams are weaved together via clever production and a thread of emotional exploration to create a sonic tapestry that is far more than mere decoration.

Walt McClements - A Hole In The Fence [American Dreams Records] 

The second accordion-based record on here. Where Batkovic leaned towards a tsunami of notes, McClements reclines on a sea of reed-y drone. Always serene, rarely equalled, and often drilling into that band between heart and belly where your breathing can become all stilted and lumpen. These tones will do that to you. They’ll upset your solar plexus and they’ll lift you right up from that centre of gravity until you’re so light that you’d damn well swear that you could just dance upon the air.

Midwife - Luminol [The Flenser]

The third full length under Madeline Johnston’s Midwife moniker finds her firing up the fuzz even further on this emotionally wrought treatise on truth, control, and gloom.
I wrote about this one a little more thoroughly here: https://echoesanddust.com/2021/07/midwife-luminol/

Moor Mother - Black Encyclopedia Of The Air [Anti-]

What would an end of year list be without myriad references to the creative chimera that is Moor Mother? By my count this is her third appearance on this year’s list and I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s served up further worthy output whilst I’ve been bashing away at this keyboard. On this one the apocalyptic poet has largely driven her rage under the surface. It’s still there but this time it’s being used to feed the roots of her art so that it can bloom into something subtle, graceful, well-informed and undoubtedly crucial. Hauntology and its notion of lost futures has predominantly been sequestered by a demographic of white male synth prodders but it’s in the potent work of artists such as Moor Mother that it truly comes alive. Which should be of little surprise as, after all, has there ever been a greater theft of destiny than that experienced by those who suffered through the slave trade and their descendants? If Moor Mother’s work has passed you by, now is the time to amend that.

Of Thread & Mist - Static Hymns To No One [Gizeh Records] 

50 minutes of heartbreaking drone creaks that give Basinski’s finest a run for its money. If you can navigate your way through these faltering soundscapes without jerking a tear or having your gut wrenched, I’d love to know the secret to your steely demeanour… And so would your future therapist.

Ronce - Malignant + Aquatics [The Death of Rave / Dawn Records] 

A double dose of deeply disturbing and damn-well vital “Feminist Gore ASMR”. Malignant landed in March like a morning star to the temple and I’d barely finished unpacking the traumatic screams, accentuated whispers, pyre-like electronics and recordings of upsetting acts before the equally unnerving Aquatics appeared 6 months later. Both of these records rage with an incandescent ire at abuse, exploitation, and a rampant male gaze that cannot be shaken off. Whilst they’re unsettling and challenging listens, there’s a sense of optimism that arises from purging the trauma that convulses at the heart of Ronce’s art. Just don’t go into either of these records expecting an easy ride.

Space Afrika - Honest Labour [Dais Records]

Spectral sounds that waiver between Arthur Russell’s mutant cello, Klein’s warped R&B, loops that forge beats from drones, and a swathe of top drawer collaborators including the ace Blackhaine whose solo releases from 2021 also make an appearance on this list. Honest Labour feels like a trip through the city of Salford at night. Introspection and revelry pierce through the soundtrack of motorways, kitchen conversations, bedroom poetry, garbled breaks and boot-bothered puddles. It’s a document of loss in which hope bravely holds on in the shadow of a latent loneliness.

Sunn O))) - Metta, Benevolence BBC 6 Music: Live On The Invitation of Mary Anne Hobbs [Southern Lord]

Thee drone ambassadors ov colossal import went all meteorological on us and it’s fair to say that I dug it. 

Full review here: https://thequietus.com/articles/30902-sunn-o-metta-benevolence-bbc-6music-live-on-the-invitation-of-mary-anne-hobbs-review