From improbable collaboration to trajectory-setting debuts.
For all of its ups and downs 2021 has proved an inspiring year for new music, spanning improbable collaboration to a wealth of trajectory-setting debuts. From agonising in the anguish of further government-enforced bouts of isolation to revelling in a newfound sense of freedom, the musical troubadours of this year have affirmed that even when trapped within the belly of the beast there are wells of creativity to be mined from and there is still authentic, boundary-pushing art to be made.
With deep admiration for those included we present to you our ten favourite albums of the year in alphabetical order alongside a slew of honourable mentions that if granted the luxury of time, it would have been a pleasure to also adorn with our praises.
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Arooj Aftab
Vulture Prince
(Verve Records)
On Vulture Prince Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter Arooj Aftab further instills her stature as a voice capable of transcending the boundaries of language to a degree paralleled by few of her peers.
A project that exudes nothing less than timelessness from first play, every vibration of a vocal cord, touch of a string and tweak of an oscillator feels essential, connecting on a profound level akin to the pluck of a heartstring. Sufi poetry steeps in new age, folk and jazz sensibilities for an intoxicating brew wholly worthy of its recent Grammy nomination.
Recommended track(s): ‘Mohabbat’, ‘Suroor’
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BADBADNOTGOOD
Talk Memory
(XL Recordings/Innovative Leisure)
Overcoming the departure of a founding member unscathed is an easy feat for no musical group and a roadblock wherein many would be liable to falter, however with their 2021 return and first full-length album in five years Toronto jazz trio BADBADNOTGOOD not only found firm footing within new ground but also a noteworthy command of their return to a three-piece formation.
Leading single ‘Signal From The Noise’ offered a rapturous precursor to Talk Memory’s full release, its heady synths, bone-rattling drums and hair-raising fuzzed out bass licks telling of a band with renewed focus, an abundance of fuel in the tank and leaving no doubt in the minds of its audience that a career-defining project was due to follow.
Recommended track(s): ‘Signal From The Noise’, ‘Love Proceeding’
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Black Country, New Road
For The First Time
(Ninja Tune)
Through the release of their long-awaited debut album London’s Black Country, New Road were able to thoroughly eclipse the feverish hype and fanfare that has hung upon them since their arrival from the ashes of former project Nervous Conditions in 2018.
Deftly revealing the machinations of seven minds untethered to the clinical and restrictive shackles of genre tags, For The First Time never succumbs to feeling spaghetti-at-the-wall in its approach despite the myriad ideas and disparate sensibilities at play, but rather unfolds with meticulous calculation and a razor-sharp vision.
Its pleasures are obvious: brazen sax lines that morph in to storms at a moment’s notice, deadpan vocals that pick apart the absurdity of our current times with a sinister tongue and wiry guitars that firmly embed under the skin, though for all of the album’s lofty ambition, previews of its fast-approaching successor suggest that the septet are not yet operating at their peak powers and even more seismic revelations are to come in merely a matter of months.
Recommended track(s): ‘Science Fair’, ‘Sunglasses’
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John Carroll Kirby
Septet
(Stones Throw Records)
Whilst long-established and praised as an accompanist operating within the sphere of Frank Ocean, Solange Knowles and more, a fruitful two year period spent in congregation with Stones Throw Records has turned the spotlight to Los Angeles composer John Carroll Kirby’s capabilities as a masterful lone creator.
Succeeding the hushed piano key strokes of Conflict and new age-oriented pulse of My Garden, Kirby returned this year for the release of an ambitious and unshakeable full band album that tackles and deftly conquers the steamy climates of jazz fusion’s 1970s heyday.
Proving its creator as much at home cutting loose within the navigation of slick instrumental solo runs as when meditating on the hazy loops and meandering piano of prior works, Septet marks an exciting new chapter in the Angeleno’s wide-ranging solo discography that further exemplifies his nimble-fingered precision as a force worthy of reverence across a multitude of genres.
Recommended track(s): ‘Rainmaker’, ‘P64 By My Side’
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Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & The London Symphony Orchestra
Promises
(Luaka Bop)
This year the mantra that sometimes less is more was demonstrated by none more effectively than Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra within the fifty-minute runtime of their improbable and remarkably captivating debut collaborative album.
Harnessing the full power of a simple seven note refrain and elevating it to realms of awe-inspiring grandiose, over nine movements Sam Shepherd and the LSO utilise their given tools to conjure a graceful, shimmering, swelling and contracting foundation for Sanders’ melodic and improvisational ideas to unfurl above with an air of restraint and fragility seldom seen within the free jazz trailblazer’s expressive and innovative canon of work.
Its spellbinding allure the unlikely and inter generational marriage of titans from distant musical worlds, Promises is a soothing balm for turbulent times and a glimmer of respite from our dilapidated world.
Recommended track(s): ‘Movement 5’, ‘Movement 6’, ‘Movement 8’
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Godspeed You! Black Emperor
G_d’s Pee AT STATE’S END!
(Constellation Records)
Those indoctrinated to the music of Godspeed You! Black Emperor will likely profess that there are few, if any groups better equipped to interpret the emotions elicited from living within the grips a global pandemic, a sentiment that rings unequivocally true throughout the song cycle that forms the Montreal outfit’s engrossing and timely seventh album.
G_d’s Pee AT STATE’S END! sings to the experiences of the last two years in a vocabulary that relinquishes the need for vowels or syllables, its rolling military drums, brooding strings, clarion call guitar and harrowing whirlpools of noise cultivating an all-encompassing apocalyptic mood littered with fleeting fragments of hope that other bands within the post-rock spectrum could scarcely envisage.
Recommended track(s): ‘“GOVERNMENT CAME” (9980.0kHz 3617.1kHz 4521.0 kHz) / Cliffs Gaze / cliffs’ gaze at empty waters’ rise / ASHES TO SEA or NEARER TO THEE’
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Homeshake
Under The Weather
(Sinderlyn)
Whilst the greater part of the past decade has ushered in a new wave of artists with their fingers on the pulse of an R&B-nodding indie rock realm, Homeshake‘s Peter Sagar remains an enduring catalyst of the movement and arguably the beating heart at its core.
With the release of his fifth album Under The Weather, Sagar’s sensibilities remain as affecting as ever with cloudy ambience and syrupy, subdued funk underpinning lyrical themes of loneliness and isolation that resonate on a global scale and communicate through a vocal delivery as hushed and intimate as a secret whispered to the ear.
Recommended track(s): ‘Vacuum’, ‘I Know I Know I know’
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John Glacier
SHILOH: Lost For Words
(PLZ Make It Ruins)
Surfacing from her existence in the shadows if only for an ephemeral moment, SHILOH: Lost for Words marks an alluring and welcomed introduction to the world of London’s fast-rising John Glacier.
Journal-like streams of thought unravel with a fluid and convictive delivery that feels cathartic for both creator and listener alike whilst executive production from Vegyn offers up a chilly, distortion and reverb-swathed disposition deftly mirroring the Hackney-born wordsmith’s hazy and sequestered nature.
Recommended track(s): ‘Boozy’, ‘Platoon’, ‘On Formulation’
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Danny Scott Lane
CAPUT
(Schematic Music Company)
Over the course of his third full-length album Los Angeles photographer and ambient troubadour Danny Scott Lane weaves an illuminating tapestry of moods, guiding listeners out of the woods toward a futuristic landscape at times cosseting and serene, and others unnervingly haunting.
Acoustic and electronic sounds work in beautiful tandem with emotive hired reeds bringing out the core humanity of Lane’s masterfully curated synthesizer textures and languorous groove.
Recommended track(s): ’10 O’Clock Ride’, ‘Spring Street’, ‘Her Coming In’
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Sons Of Kemet
Black To The Future
(Impulse! Records)
Time and time again British composer and reedsman Shabaka Hutchings continues to deliver on the high expectations that are set from his artistry being lauded as a leading light within London’s musical landscape.
Returning to Sons Of Kemet for the first time since their 2018 breakout third album, Black To The Future presents Hutchings and his cohorts on formidable form alongside a cast of noteworthy collaborators including Moor Mother and Lianne La Havas who add valuable contouring to the quartet’s palette without ever impeding the combustible energy that garnered much of their past praise to date. The dual drum configuration of Tom Skinner and Eddie Hick remains as airtight and inextricable as ever, their grooves yielding more power with every repetition whilst Hutchings and Theon Cross skilfully manoeuvre between gentle reflections and channeling scorched-earth noise through their gleaming golden weapons of choice to ecstatic effect.
Recommended track(s): ‘Hustle’, ‘Envision Yourself Levitating’
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Honourable mentions:
Apifera – Overstand (Stones Throw Records) – Buy / Stream
black midi – Cavalcade (Rough Trade Records) – Buy / Stream
Devendra Banhart & Noah Georgeson – Refuge (Dead Oceans) – Buy / Stream
MIKE – Disco! (10k) – Buy / Stream
Mild High Club – Going, Going, Gone (Stones Throw Records) – Buy / Stream
Marissa Nadler – The Path Of The Clouds (Bella Union) – Buy / Stream
Parquet Courts – Sympathy For Life (Rough Trade Records) – Buy / Stream
The Pattern Forms – The Scenic Route (Belbury Music) – Buy / Stream
The Physics House Band – Incident On 3rd (Unearthly Vision) – Buy / Stream
Pink Siifu – GUMBO! (Dynamite Hill) – Buy / Stream
Pond – 9 (Spinning Top Records) – Buy / Stream
SAULT – Nine (Forever Living Originals) – Buy
Slumgullion – Beautiful Lunches (Shadow World Archive) – Buy / Stream
Vanishing Twin – Ookii Gekkou (Fire Records) – Buy / Stream
Sven Wunder – Natura Morta (Piano Piano Records) – Buy / Stream
Words by Sam Wilkinson.
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Fruit and Grooves Collective 