Suffice to say it’s been a time. Between the pandemic and its attendant toll of illness, death, isolation and unemployment; ongoing state violence against black and brown citizens, immigrants and refugees; the legitimization of white extremism; the utter cruelty and incompetence of the powers that wannabe and the fool on the hill dynamiting what’s left of the adjacent beacon before skulking off, music has been a vital salve during the dog days of this benighted, multi-plagued year. Whether it spoke directly to the issues of the day or not, it seems everything was filtered through the quarantine, the daily shenanigans in DC and the Black Lives Matter movement. Without live gigs, clubs and physical records listening was an even more solitary and disconnected experience than usual and yet felt more important as a connection to the world. Working alone onsite throughout this year meant IPod and headphones on the subway and streets, then blasting through speakers at work. In early March I started listening to the 15,000 some tracks on the pod in alphabetical order; as I write this we’ve reached “Towers Of Strength” by Died Pretty. Maybe there’s a message in that but then again. At home we had music going constantly. Old favorites frequently revisited, new music absorbed for enjoyment and review despite those periods of lethargy and distraction where concentration goes out the window and hours drift by without registering.
Below are the records of 2020 that have stayed with me, been on high rotation and spoken with redemptive force, escapist joy or consoling intimacy. They are loosely grouped in a way that makes sense to me and I hope to others.
Irreversible Entanglements — Who Sent You? (International Anthem)
Aquiles Navarro & Tcheser Holmes — Heritage Of The Invisible II (International Anthem)
Moor Mother — Forever Industries (Sub Pop)
Irreversible Entanglements as a collective of musicians have produced several records that have been on high rotation. Who Sent You? is for me the most essential, electrifying and inspiring record of 2020. As I said in my review, it is an extraordinary statement both lyrically and musically which encompasses history, politics, religion, violence and most importantly how structures of power entrap everybody, warping both the oppressed and the oppressors, tainting us all with lies, complicity, delusion and self-censorship.
The band’s trumpeter and drummer Navarro and Holmes’ release Heritage Of The Invisible II explores community and identity through a collaboration of deep empathy and music intelligence. Vocalist/lyricist Camae Ayewa AKA Moor Mother remains a vital voice fired by fierce intelligence and clear-eyed dissections of structural inequality. Her EP Forever Industries combines visceral poetry and experimental electronica in two short tracks. A mention also to bassist Luke Stewart’s Exposure Quintet for their eponymous album on Astral Spirits and Ayewa again twice for Circuit City and with Mental Jewelry as Moor Jewelry the rather excellent, punishing punk of True Opera both on Don Giovanni.
Speaker Music — Black Nationalist Sonic Weaponry (Planet Mu)
Black Nationalist Sonic Weaponry by Speaker Music
Moodymann — Taken Away (KDJ)
SAULT — Untitled (Black Is) (Forever Living Originals)
Shabaka & The Ancestors — We Are Sent Here By History (Impulse!)
Black Nationalist Sonic Weaponry speaks directly to the Black Lives Matter with a coruscating collage of poetry, found sound jazz, and fractured techno; it is a summation of the darkness at the heart of the American experiment. Speaker Music seeks not to preach, not to salve but to show and by showing force us to listen and to see and to act.
Moodymann, SAULT and Shabaka and The Ancestors dug deep into techno, funk, soul, gospel and jazz to produce outstanding albums that spoke to the Black experience here and in Britain.Taken Away is riven with betrayal and anger even as the music lifts with transcendent beats, voices and strings. Untitled (Black Is) is both direct and elliptical in its range of styles and voices but never less than compelling and We Are Sent Here By History is fire music for the 21st Century steeped in the lessons of Shepp, Coltrane and Fela Kuti.
Wire — Mind Hive (Pinkflag)
The Cool Greenhouse — The Cool Greenhouse (Melodic)
Fontaines DC — A Hero’s Death (Partisan)
Ganser — Just Look At That Sky (felte)
Kvalia - Scholastic Dreams Of Forceful Machines (Old Boring Russia)
Protomartyr — Ultimate Success Today (Domino)
Tvii Son — Tvii Son (MIC)
It’s been a good year for Post Punk and adjacent bands. Mind Hive arrived early and stuck through the year. As I said in February “35 minutes of Wire is enough to fuel a multitude of pretenders.” Not that the rest of this section are that. The Cool Greenhouse’s shambolic, rollicking, sarcastic songs will hit a chord with fans of Half Man Half Biscuit, Sleaford Mods and The Fall. Fontaines DC’s second album was an unexpected pleasure after Dogrel failed to excite. Ganser’s combination of exhilaration and enervation, Kvalia’s intense, industrial thump and Tvii Son’s bracing detachment hit different nerves but with inescapable precision. Protomartyr expanded their palette to create, as Tim Clarke said on these pages “a thrilling and brutally effective” album. Shopping, Las Kellies, Hypoluxo, Sweeping Promises, Peel Dream Magazine and Lunchbox also released records that held the ears.
Quicksails — Blue Rise (Hausu Mountain)
Blue Rise by Quicksails
Autechre — Sign (Warp)
William Basinski — Lamentations (Temporary Residence)
André Bratten — Silvester (Smalltown Supersound)
Oliver Coates — skins n slime (RVNG)
Dinorwic — Llyn Y Cwn (Cold Spring)
Davey Harms — World War (Hausu Mountain)
Fire-Toolz — Rainbow Bridge (Hausu Mountain)
Hausu Mountain continues to release high quality, challenging experimental albums that are both immensely entertaining and thought provoking. Blue Rise is an amniotic oasis. World War and Rainbow Bridge are always on hand to jolt one out of the doldrums and focus the mind. On days when the temptation to drift with the passing time or succumb to darkness presses, the homeopathy of Basinski’s swoon, Bratten’s obsidian depth and Dinorwic’s environmental calm provided accompaniment, guide and consolation. Coates conjures bleak beauty from his enhanced and manipulated cello while Autechre untangle some of their knottier inclinations without letting the listener completely relax on a relatively straightforward return to the album format.
Archival releases and reissues:
Melt Yourself Down — The Complete Leaf Recordings 2013-2016 (Leaf)
Pole — 1,2,3 Box Set (Mute)
Pylon — Box (New West)
Rowland S Howard — Teenage Snuff Film (Fat Cat)
Stalker — Empire2020 (Ruf Kutz)
Thelonious Monk — Palo Alto (Impulse!)
Various Artists — Strum & Thrum: The American Jangle Underground 1983-1987 (Captured Tracks)
German/Ukrainian trio Tvii Son embraces desolation and wrests pop chimes from minimal elements on their debut album. Writer and vocalist Lucy Zoria worked with video artist Mika Shkurat in Kiev trio Nisantashi Primary School, Florian Zimmer is best known for his modular synthesizer collaboration with Andreas Gerth as Driftmachine for whom Shkurat does live visuals. As Tvii Son they explore their love for synth-based textures, industrial dub, the fractured groove of early experimentalists like Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire with the glitchy minimalism of Oval and snd. Zoria is an oddly compelling voice; sardonic, mechanical yet pop facing with a cadence and delivery that plays with and against the fractured layers of noise conjured by the trio.
“Yalta” opens thumping across a windswept landscape, the hiss of driven snow and hydraulics battling ice. It is one of the poles between which Tvii Son operates, abstract instrumentals and begrimed observational songs. Double tracking Zoria’s melodious “la di da da” motif behind her spoken word lyrics “Out Of Vogue“ is rough hewn version of the sort of minimal pop very much in vogue at present. Tvii Son revel in tousling the formula, so it feels like concrete rather than velvet and all the better for it. “What is supposed to start hasn’t started yet/What is supposed to end hasn’t ended yet” is a lyric for the moment as time loses sense as a marker for our quotidian lives. “Am I” has a staccato synth bass straight out of DAF with whip cracks of percussion and Zoria reciting a lyric that asks the object of her affection to display their interest while sounding like she gives zero fucks about the response. It’s as offhand as anything by The Flying Lizards but too astringent to be coopted as a novelty. “Simple Ends” on the other hand is woozy mash of Sade and Basic Channel.
The instrumentals on the record are likewise bracing. “Iryna” hides a shuffling techno beat under a barrage of junkyard percussion and static hiss like a detuned pirate radio station in a foundry. “ND” layers arpeggios of synthesized harp over stentorian beats and manipulated vocal samples.
Tvii Son salvage elements from familiar if somewhat forgotten sources and forge them into an impressive opening statement, finding a voice and sound that echoes but transcends its influences.
