Quietus Reissues Etc. Of The Year 2021 (In Association With Norman Records) | The Quietus (2024)

48.

Chris CarterElectronic Ambient Remixes One & ThreeMute

47.

Joseph NEchvatalSelected Sound Works 1981–2021Pentiments

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Robert Barry

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The energetic nature of 101 is one of its greatest strengths, the portrait of a Young Band and Slightly Younger Fans basically having a time together even though they don’t interact all that much, the band more on the grind and sometimes showing it, the kids out for a party. But it’s also the portrait of it being an American fanbase that’s key. More than once I have heard from friends in the UK who are of my age that at that time when 101 came out, they literally could not believe that Depeche Mode of all bands had apparently turned into this huge arena-filling monster over in the US. The band had long continued on from their early eighties breakout but the images and the styles that were most associated with from those days had never quite been shaken, at least up until that point.

Ned Raggett

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Gayest tit* & Greyest sh*ts sees Terre Thaemlitz collect much of her Comatonse output beyond 2009’s seminal Midtown 120 Blues album into one vital collection. This is some of the finest deep house released over the last 23 years and a great introduction to Thaemlitz’s work as DJ Sprinkles if you’re looking to get acquainted. Highlights come particularly in the closing run of cuts as the serene ‘Meditation On Wage Labour And The Death Of The Album (Sprinkles’ Unpaid Overtime)’ rolls into the breezy ‘Kissing Costs Extra’ and eventually to one of Thaemlitz’s crowning glories on record, for me at least: the spellbinding ‘Admit It’s Killing You (And Leave) (Sprinkles’ Dead End)’.

Christian Eede

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A tribute to the great Ghanaian producer Dick Essilfie-Bondzie, Essiebons Special collects some of the greatest funk, highlife and afrobeat music he released through his towering Essiebons label during a particularly rich period in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as a number of prime unreleased cuts from the vaults that he uncovered during a lockdown spent digitising his enormous back catalogue. Sadly, the producer died before the album could be released, and it only scratches the surface of his influence, but it makes a fitting tribute to his brilliance all the same.

Patrick Clarke

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Given that the appearance of a little sticker containing the abbreviation ‘NWW’ can take an old vinyl LP and render it prohibitively expensive and the fact that a lot of modern compilation albums are simply a churn of tracks already available elsewhere, it’s really good news that Strain Crack & Break exists. Stephen Stapleton’s Ur-hipster inventory is in good hands with the folk at Finders Keepers who at no point give in to the obvious commercial temptation of including Can’s ‘Vitamin C’ or Neu!’s ‘Für Immer’, instead choosing to plumb richer and weirder depths. Slap it on the platter, turn the lights down, turn the volume up, lie down on the couch and prepare to have your mind expanded.

John Doran

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Everyone’s favourite cosmic occult Marxist wife and husband duo, Hawthonn, were busy this year; not just with their excellent new Earth Mirror album but also this collection of unreleased and otherwise hard to find tracks. ‘Pan Laws’ features a reverberant turn from Herb Diamante who has plenty of advice to those wishing to witchify their lives: “Cast spells in the woods… reclaim the land… play music to luminaries… imbibe wine and mushrooms!” Elsewhere ‘Vespertilionidae’ features ultrasonic bat sonar, there are songs recorded in the resonant recesses of stone churches, and the range travels from the more typically and splendidly Hawthonnian ‘The Curse (PYAX JWA)’ to the aqueous cave fusion of ‘Bright Waters’.

John Doran

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Rakta and DEAFKIDS are the two outliers of the Brazilian heavy psych scene right now, two caterwauling tornadoes of sound that, on Live At Sesc Pompéia combine into something even more thrilling than the sum of their parts. It’d be understandable, perhaps even expected, for this joint performance recorded in 2019 to be simply an explosion of noise, but what’s most telling about the record is its razor-sharp refinement, their commitment to full-throttle groove and rhythm. Guitars can gnash and wail at the end of their leash, but they’re never allowed to fly off the handle. The album swings on a perfect axis between restraint and release, thrilling tension building to sledgehammer hits of pure power.

Patrick Clarke

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Now into its third year, Anz’s annual Spring/Summer Dubs collections never disappoint, seeing the UK DJ and producer offer up a variety of tempos and sub-genres within the club music sphere. 2021’s entry to the series takes in 18 still unreleased productions from the artist, and sees her move through airy breakbeat and ‘80s freestyle-referencing electro, percussive cuts and warped garage, and even a touch of tasteful donk and ghettotech. Hopefully 2022 will see the individual release of some of these tracks.

Christian Eede

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A musical time capsule, it’s this distillation of the year gone by which makes Unsound Intermission such a special document, and not just another ramshackle compilation. By collating broadcasts from some of our greatest compositional minds in such a cohesive way, it’s music which seems destined to acquire potency as it ages, as these pieces become vignettes from a time we hope will one day feel quite distant.

Liam Inscoe-Jones

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This record is turned from a good one to an epochal one with the avant-guitar playing of Brandon Ross. The bastard riffs and freewheeling fingerpicking of the New Jersey guitarist are liminal and hypnagogic. On the Wertman-written ‘Egypt Rock’, he begins with a monolithic riff, before proceeding to a freewheeling fingerpicking frenzy that glides with great agility around Reid’s tubthumping bombast, whilst a cameo from violinist Terry Jenoure fills the soundscape with a haunting hymenoptera buzz. Ross’ playing is totally free of structural rigidity, but I think the most notable aspect of it is its intimacy. A lot of the tones are muted, a lot it quiet, but each pluck is a pontilist dab of the paintbrush on a painting you can’t help but marvel at.

Cal Cashin

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There is nothing of 1997, or any year, in its sound – the music so big and so bold that the Gregorian Calendar pales in insignificance. Those who heard the record on its release, too, commented on its timelessness. “The work of a man who, having assimilated an army of influences […] has managed to create an entirely new noise out of the wreckage,” said NME’s Paul Moody in his review. Even the cover, in its homage to the simple and unchanging design of prescription medicine, hasn’t dated the way the art for its predecessor Pure Phase has, for example. Upon its reissue, the third in Fat Possum Records’ ongoing series of 180g double vinyl remasters, it still seems to operate in a dimension apart from such petty concerns as legacy and nostalgia. It’s a sublime remaster, the record’s dynamic peaks and troughs more dramatic than ever. The mass of instrumentation, from the subtlest whirling synth line to the most seismic tsunami of sound, are finely balanced like the interlacing orbits of a solar system. With this little sonic touch-up, the music still sounds entirely fresh.

Patrick Clarke

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This latest Duppy Gun drop has been firing me up, big time. I’m properly stuck on these cuts from the vaults – 19 tracks that never made their way onto official releases. Cameron Stallones and M. Geddes Gengras are easily identifiable on the buttons in places, particularly on tracks like standout opener ‘Snapbacks’ by MC I Jahbar with Big Flyte and Velkro. (Killer MCs with Sun Araw-ish bloops and wibbles is basically my dream musical project). Elsewhere Lupo goes for a more heads-down shuffle; G Sudden gets a gnarly stripped back riddim to tear up, and Sniper ducks and weaves around a weird and friable groove.

Jennifer Lucy Allan

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A split folk release by Cambridge guitarist C. Joynes and political nine-piece Shovel Dance Collective makes for an interesting contrast. The former’s playing is deft and delicate, effective via the gentlest of touches, while Shovel Dance play in overwhelming waves. The voices of Mataio Austin Dean – an intense rumbling drone on ‘My Husband’s Got No Courage In Him’ – and Nick Granata’s gorgeously emotive sweep on ‘The Foggy Dew’, are both utterly stunning albeit in completely different ways, while the playing of the rest of the collective swings from one sublime emotional extreme to another.

Patrick Clarke

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Space Afrika’s entry to Resident Advisor’s mix series shares some headspace with 2020’s standout hybtwibt? mixtape from the Manchester duo, mostly in its collage-like quality. Over the course of 75 minutes, they roll through various mostly beatless pieces of music, from Claire Rousay’s peculiar ASMR-esque pieces to a more than decade-old Burial radio rip. It also takes in various new works and reworks of their own, and provides a great companion to their breathtaking album from this year, Honest Labour.

Christian Eede

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The archives of East African studios Radiodiffusion-Télévision de Djibouti (RTD) were opened to Ostinato Records in 2019, revealing something of a treasure trove. Their first record off the back of this opportunity is this anthology of Somali large ensemble dance music. You could say that the overarching vibe is one of low slung but dancefloor-orientated funk reggae but that would ignore the incredible richness of a sound that effortlessly includes nods to Ethio-jazz and Turkish disco, not to mention Bollywood, Yemeni and Egyptian pop.

John Doran

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Each piece on Canto+ exhibits a painstaking attention to detail: every bounce and pluck and hum feels expertly placed, and it’s evident that Ferreyra is as comfortable creating buoyancy as she is liminality. ‘Étude aux sons flegmatiques’ features sparse ringing that floats in a distant background as haunted sounds murmur underneath, while ‘Canto del Loco’ opens the album with bouncy shooting stars that ripple across layers of robotic chimes. The music easily transforms from bright timbres to forlorn rumination, even with just a few notes.

Vanessa Ague

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The hugely influential Joseph Spence was a master of the guitar, that much is more than clear on this compilation of Bahamian songs recorded in 1965. He’s deft and spirited, dazzling when he wants to be but never loses track of an overriding sense of playfulness and joy. His singing, though, is equally remarkable, a gruff and grumbling voice that’s as transfixing in its soulful moments as it is when he’s muttering along to licks of guitar. 37 years after his death, Spence’s music still sounds completely singular.

Patrick Clarke

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Listening now to the reissue of The Esthetik Of Destruction, re-released by Tenement Records with some striking collage cover art by Gavin O’Brien, the music sounds like it could have been made yesterday or tomorrow. Maybe it’s because many of the heavy synth bands of that time have since faded away and Kling Klang appear more of a monolith now. Maybe it’s because they seem even more cleansing in an age of production gimmickry. I get the feeling it’s because of an abiding sense of unfinished business, a sense that the journey they were on was abruptly and unfairly curtailed. You could say that, flirting with chaos and misadventure, the tension and release that comes with almost falling apart, there was always a risk that the band would snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Yet Kling Klang were also subject to an excess of misfortune. There’s a thin line between comedy and tragedy, and it doesn’t take much to tip laugh out loud stories of exploding equipment, enraged sound engineers, and a mysterious manager called The Doctor into grim tales of drug dependency, debts and death.

Darran Anderson

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Listening to Arthur Russell, specifically World Of Echo, put all my worries to rest. It was like, ‘OK, no, I can actually, I can do whatever the hell I want to do because this other person has done it and it’s proved that you don’t need to choose between pop and experimental music. You don’t need to choose between instrumental and singing. You really can do it all.’ Arthur Russell also put my mind at ease because he showed me I could use effects without effects being there to hide your flaws or your inability to do something properly.

Colleen

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Tchiss Lopes left Cape Verde in 1980 and wound up in Rome, finally securing a job as a wiper on a cargo ship. It wouldn’t take long for the former professional footballer to recognise that a sailor’s life was not, in fact, for him. But the experience did give him a global view of contemporary pop music – as well as a new found appreciation of Cape Verde’s own dance sounds. In 1984, hooking up with fellow Cape Verdean musicians, Zé António on guitar, Bebethe on bass and Alírio on drums, he recorded Já Bô Corre D’Mim a thrilling if at times melancholy fusion of reggae, disco, Brazilian funk, funaná, and kizomba. Before Milan’s Arabusta Records re-issued the cut in November, copies used to sell on Discogs for around £200. But a record this infectious is worth every penny.

Robert Barry

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It’s fair to say that in a time when we were starved for the thrill of live music, most of the virtual replacements proved a poor substitute, with most home-recorded live streams and so on like the worst soggy tofu standing in for a glorious hand-chopped steak tartare. Let The Night Return, a new performance film meets live album and fancy book by Karl ‘Regis’ O’Connor, marks an exception to this rule. The Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus in Peloponnese has been hosting varied entertainments in its gracefully curving stonework since the fourth century BC. Still known for its incredible acoustic qualities, it can hold 14,000 people, though an audience of none was present for the recording of O’Connor’s film, beautifully shot by Vasileios Trigkas in June 2019. The Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus was part of a complex devoted to Asclepius, Greek god of medicine, and it was believed that attending performances there could have a beneficial effect on the health of those present – that this socially-distanced, zero audience gig in a medically resonant historic site was filmed long before the COVID-19 crisis is a curious twist of fate.

Luke Turner

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They may be spheres apart but it’s curious to weigh up dire, uncle-who-microdoses-now “jam bands” such as Phish with the legitimacy of those whose jamming means long shifts and likely thought transference in the feverish pursuit of ecstasy. As Easy To Build, Hard To Destroy shows, the latter quest has hinged on two core tenets for Gnod over the years: doing it and doing it a lot. “Most weekends from Friday to Sunday we were in the rehearsal room together,” the band recently recalled. “[We were] experimenting with equipment, setting up mad pedal chains, plugging things into other things and just plain old jamming.” As peaks here, like the hysterical, sax-mangled ‘Deadbeatdisco!!! Part 1 & 2’, fully attest, with the right heads and intent at hand, plain old jamming can go an exceptionally long way.

Brian Coney

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The 12 acts collected here are very much the product of affordable synths and compact recording techniques. A light is shone on a scene which drifted between Berlin School type ambience, clanky industrial and loop-based proto-techno music, largely distributed via a DIY cassette network (the Spaniards seem to have stuck with tapes quite a bit into the ‘90s, when the original cassette culture had otherwise vanished) and mainly contained within the country’s borders. Esplendor Geométrico, inspired by the likes of Throbbing Gristle, were more internationalist in their reach than most of their peers (their first tape, in 1982, was released on a German label). While they still exist today, this comp’s ‘Sheikh’ dates from 1988 and is equally tribalistic and hauntological, to the extent one can ever pin down such terms. They’re the only name here to also feature on La Ola Interior’s sort-of prequel La Contra Ola, released in 2018 and compiling Spanish synthpop, post-punk and new wave from 1980-86; EG’s relatively accessible side is represented in both cases.

Noel Gardner

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Listening to a full near-nine-hour set might take some commitment, but in the case of this recording of Objekt’s recent all-night set at New York club Nowadays, it’s certainly a rewarding experience. Starting on a raft of sparse, introductory cuts (for example, Autechre’s remix of Seefeel’s ‘Spangle’), the recording offers a chance to listen in as one of the world’s most technically gifted DJs, and best selectors, guides a dancefloors through various peaks and troughs. Running through peak-time and on towards a volley of killer D&B and jungle bangers, the closing hour is when the recording really hits its sweet spots as the DJ runs through various chuggers and more reflective pieces for the hardened dancers that remained. His own story of how the night went is very much worth a read while you give the mix a listen.

Christian Eede

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Many of the tracks found on Burn The Night / Bruciare La Notte have something rough and ready about them; elements that are swiftly assembled and presented, both for maximum effect and as a way of capturing the essence of the creative impulse. Fun to play, or to clear your head out while you burn up the night, in other words. Opening track ‘Twist’ reveals itself as a montage of chopped up voices, the cadences and pitches hacked and hustled into a brisk rhythm. These vocal clips morph into the sort of humanoid bleeps that could have been made by contemporaries such as Mantronix or Jean Michel Jarre, as well as the cut ups of more academic sound artists. Tracks like ‘Twist’ and the mysterious title track also betray a distinct feeling of the brashness of the 1980s: all those bold colours, programmed beats and angular shapes, sound and sonic imagery there to shock and sell the latest upgrade in Western pop culture.

Richard Foster

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There is something incredibly vibrant to these recordings. The songs are tight and constructed around a repeating, almost droning riff. These aren’t dark or ominous drones. Instead, they are filled with life and ecstatic energy. Take ‘Obviemama’ by Sir Victor Uwaifo and his Titibitis or ‘Who No Man’ by Osayomore Joseph and the Ulele Power Sound for example. They sound massive. The verses are sung over these bouncy drones until the chorus. Then the main motif is changed and elongated before the band slot back into the original groove again and just play for all their worth.

Nick Roseblade

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Aastiage is the duo Ata ‘Sote’ Ebtekar and Shadi Ziaei, and 1996/2000 compiles tracks they recorded over those years while they were both living in San Francisco. According to Ebtekar, the project aimed to reunite lyrical content with electronic music, creating genuine electronic pop instead of dance music with acapella vocals over the top. As Sote, Ebtekar has released a stunning sprawl of zeitgeist twisting music over the last two decades, and it’s fascinating getting access to these tracks and hearing another angle on his work. There’s a nocturnal warmth suffusing these songs which brings to mind the vibe found on Leslie Winer’s ‘Witch’, while the music constantly feels like it’s straining at the boundaries of what a pop song is. ‘Flesh & Blood’’s beat and synth bass funk seems like it’s constantly trying to shuffle off into a new plane. ‘Just Fine’ sits somewhere between industrial and trip hop, slithers of distortion adding a layer of blistered harmony. Ziaei is the perfect foil for Sote, her gorgeous vocals somewhere between dreamy shoegaze bliss and post-grunge angst, while her guitar playing has a ruthless efficiency. She ends up a powerful centre of soulful gravity, so that even when ‘Color A Dream’ throws in a barrage of beat jumps and twists, it’s never able to override the melodic heart.

Daryl Worthington

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Tezeta captures the great Ethiopian organist Hailu Mergia and his band performing at the Hilton Hotel in Addis Ababa during their 1970s residency there. After the authoritarian Derg regime took power in the country in 1974 and swiftly banned much live music performance, thanks in part to its American owners and well-connected guests the hotel became a refuge for live music and creativity. This tape, long-considered lost until its Analog Africa reissue, was recorded by the band during their downtime in the hotel, and finds them at the peak of their creative powers.

Patrick Clarke

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Batu is one of the UK’s very best DJs right now, having blown me away on club and festival dancefloors on umpteen occasions in recent years – most recently London’s inaugural Waterworks festival this past summer. His debut Essential Mix for BBC Radio 1 goes some way to summing up why, expertly capturing his forward-thinking brand of bass-heavy music and ear for tight mixing. Across two hours, he brings together a number of the UK’s best upcoming club music producers in Metrist, Bruce, Lurka and himself with a wide global cast of figures pushing myriad forms of electronic music forward, whether that’s Lyra Pramuk, DJ SWISHA, Kush Jones, Jay Mitta, Siete Catorce, or a whole host of others.

Christian Eede

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This is music with aspirations beyond any boundaries. Never mind genre bracketing, this is work that gleefully tramples the fences we generally use to divide art forms. One disc (Lights In The Rain) features a suite of compositions inspired by and dedicated to Italian film directors. Poems are deployed as lyrics in some places, cited as inspirational source texts in others. Jo Wood-Brown’s paintings (appearing on the cover and in the booklet) of migrant workers have been chosen carefully, and two pages of the booklet are devoted to her work. Different disciplines seep into one another: Parker associates tones with colours, sounds with imagery, notes with poetry. The end results are less music than a kind of magic.

Angus Batey

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The individual volume names and covers of Swirling In The Backyard – Laos covering his solo work and Sulawesi that of One More Grain – also hint at other, unmapped transitory states of existence that Quinn likes to invoke. Laos and Sulawesi refer to the locations of the mysterious ancient stone jars featured on the sleeves. Doubtless Quinn has mapped them on his travels. Jars, of course, often held grave goods that spoke of “memories, all packed into one time” and offered support in the journeys those departed from this world had yet to negotiate. Other states are suggested to the listener through Quinn’s assertion that he “rarely records without some beer or wine to help multiply the number of illusory choices.” A number of the One More Grain tracks found on both volumes of Swirling In The Backyard suggest this forcibly; especially the live cuts ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ and ‘Tropical Mother-In-Law’, and the gloriously ragged take of ‘Leg Stomper’ we find on Sulawesi. These are ones where the listener can easily picture the damp fug of whisky and beer seeping into the amp cables and loosening the instrument strings.

Richard Foster

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Overmono’s entry into the fabric presents series is the Russell brothers at their very best, distilling various headsy dance music classics and a healthy dose of some of the best new music you could hope to hear in a club of a weekend evening into a sharp 65-minute mix. It’s a mix that sees them move through various gears when it comes to tempo and sub-genre, as loopy ‘90s techno from DJ Zank and Surgeon & James Ruskin early into the mix ultimately give way to rude bass tracks from LCY and Vex’d, killer D&B cuts from Orca and Ed Rush & Optical, and the sumptuous melodies of recent Blawan cut ‘Fourth Dimensional’ in the mix’s dying moments. There’s also a healthy dose of their own recent club cuts, and when they’re as good as ‘So U Kno’ and ‘BMW Track’, that’s certainly no bad thing.

Christian Eede

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Amongst out and out bangers like the 12” edit of Harry Thurmann’s ‘Underwater’, Jon Savage teases out the points at which the head music impulse in electronic music becomes more sophisticated. All phased percussion and ambient funk, I can still hear ideas from ‘Steam Away’ by Flying Lizards (from their still under-regarded 1981 album Fourth Wall) being mined as recently as this week on the new Virginia Wing album. BGM’s ‘And’ swaggers brilliantly, whilst Rayon Laser’s ‘Funky Meteor’ does little of what it says on the tin with a stern, futuristic mood piece.

Fergal Kinney

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Rupt + Flex collates Seefeel’s recordings from ’94 to ’96: two brilliant EPs (Starethrough and Fractured/Tied), their second and third albums Succour and (Ch-Vox) (the latter released on Aphex Twin’s Rephlex imprint) and a host of rarities and unreleased tracks, including an Autechre remix of ‘Spangle’. It’s not their full Warp history, since they returned in 2010 with an excellent, eponymous album, but it marks the point where Mark Clifford in particular became both absorbed by the possibilities offered by digital tools and, in the time-honoured tradition of the production obsessive, disenchanted with touring and promotional duties.

Succour and its associated bonus tracks, remastered by Pole (Stephen Betke), are full of chest cavity-probing bass and gleaming, metallic percussion – especially striking on the likes of ‘When Face Was Face’ and the imperious ‘Vex’ – highly sculpted, digitally buffed textures from indeterminate sources (occasionally a guitar is recognisable), and Sarah Peaco*ck’s by-then almost evaporating vocals. And there are constants from the Quique era, such as the Aphex-like drones and the dub chassis that so much of their work rests on.

David McKenna

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Touring has turned Fly Or Die into a working band, and that sound is captured on FLY Or DIE LIVE. Released in May, the double album complements and surpasses its predecessors. Taped in Zurich shortly before COVID-19 brought the world to a standstill, it finds the band on inspired form. Jaimie Branch has truly come into her own as a bandleader, adding soulful vocals and charismatic spiels to her brilliant trumpet playing. ‘Prayer For Amerikkka Pt 1 & 2’ is positively charged, going from a slow stalking blues to a Morricone western storm. The more abstract and drone-based pieces are radically expanded, reflecting a group of musicians who are totally at one in their collective explorations.

Stewart Smith

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This really does capture something of our shared experience, the alarming isolation of our friends – or ourselves – the loss of family time, young dads separated from newborns, childless couples losing their patience with broken parents because it’s f*cking hard for them too, the denial, the hypocrisy, the utter cruelty of how we have sometimes treated each other. But then the kindness, the community spirit, the support through grief, the gifted work-time gin and tonics on middle-class balconies. All this while we watch despots, thieves, liars, and corrupt officials thrash around their fiscal woes across the globe. We compare everything that disgruntles us with Nazism from both sides of the political spectrum. The project of Woke was turned into a pejorative so fast that all discourse descends immediately into online bickering and omnidirectional calls for cancellation. Oh, and sourdough. It has been, and remains a deeply troubling time, where we see the worst and the best in ourselves.

Inevitably, there will be lots of lockdown art made. Inevitably, we’ll be super cynical about all of it. But, if my previous paragraph chimes with anyone, it will hopefully underscore the emotional need for a beautifully indulgent 40-minute space rock jam. Thank you, Bulbils. As we continue to hurtle through a world that openly lies to us, where we attack each other from safe anonymous social media accounts, where we send death threats to doctors for trying to vaccinate us, the chance to be lost in a repeating major key riff is like being handed a Valium and told to take the day off. I genuinely welcome this release and the time I’ve spent with it. Just Sally Pilkington’s chuckle at the end of the opening track is balm to the noise of our current lives.

Johny Lamb

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At its best, a Tresor Records release completely takes you over and reprograms your cultural receptors to the point where you don’t just find yourself thinking “this is the best sh*t ever,” you’re in the zone of “I am never going to listen to any other type of music again.” I guess that’s the rave mentality in effect – like, doubtless all kinds of music can induce it in different people, but something about being hours deep into a ripper techno club night really brings that feeling to the surface. Right?

I tangibly caught it a few times while listening to Tresor 30, which I have not been doing in a club but which, at around five hours, lasts as long as you might expect a visit to a club to. (Non-British and/or well-travelled techno consumers might consider this the observation of someone living under the yoke of misery guts UK licensing laws – and they’d be right.) An immense undertaking, combining classic tracks from this Berlin label’s back catalogue and new, specially recorded ones from contemporary producers continuing its legacy, it’s by no means wall-to-wall bangers and doesn’t attempt any ‘story of a night out’ type overarching, although the sequencing is at times worthy of praise in itself. The physical version is a box containing a dozen 12-inch records, meaning that the final three tracks of 52 (!) – Carlota’s ‘Breakfast On The Moon’, ‘Deep Mid’ by Torus and Mareena & JakoJako’s ‘30 Perlen’, all varyingly calm and ambient – sit on Side X.

Noel Gardner

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Regardless of context, Grauzone are still in many pop mythologies a band that appeared and then disappeared, leaving four singles (one posthumous) and one great album in their wake. With the singer living in a hut up a Swiss mountain. This is the sort of story that can, in the current climate, allow itself a number of sequels with the same material. The original LP had been re-released ten years previously but now, with the masters in the possession of Stephen Eicher, it appears again as an extended anniversary edition in a box set format, full of tantalising Xerox art and with a live gig from 1980 in tow, released on the very aptly named, (for Grauzone), We Release Whatever The f*ck We Want.

What can be heard when live tape and album are played in chronological order, is a band completely reforming and remodelling itself as a concept. The bonus live gig, recorded at Gaskessel in Bern on April 12, 1980, is very loose and very enjoyable; merely because it feels “alive,” human, and at the mercy of chance. Plus there are tracks you would never associate with Grauzone if your introduction was ‘Eisbär’ or ‘Moskau’. The band rip through a set of numbers that never make their legendary LP with aplomb. Power chords slash and jab through these overheated art punk tracks, making a great counterpoint to some fevered, attempted on-the-one beats and hollered repeat choruses. This really is performance punk, hammered into shape on the creative anvil there and then. Tracks like ‘I Live In A Jungle’ are messy, arty and glam racket yelpalongs. Stripping away another layer of the Grauzone myth we find that most of the numbers are howled out in English. The band, then, sounds more like a punk Palais Schaumberg or a chaotic Subway Sect than the Ice Men of legend. And there is more than a nod now and again, however ill-formed or wayward, to The Velvet Underground, though we do get a recognisable album track in ‘Moskau’ and the opening ‘Grauzone’.

Richard Foster

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Trust No Wave reminds me of when I first started going to indie clubs. I’d wade on to the dancefloor to be with my friends. It was all bouncy and gleeful. Then the song changed and something harder would come on. My friends would disappear. I’d be stuck either in the mosh or next to the slam dancers. Throughout the duration of the song, I’d be getting it on all sides, then at the end my musical tormentors would pat me on the back, and we’d walk off together. The aggression was left on the dancefloor. It was exhilarating. This is how I feel after Trust No Wave finishes. It’s aggressive in places, but not malicious. At no point do you feel threatened during its 20-minute runtime.

The real joy to Trust No Wave is that Special Interest are still active and releasing music that is as good as their searing 2016 demo. 2018’s Spiraling and 2020’s The Passion Of showed they have grown musically but still possess that special quality that made their original demo such a delight in the first place. Not a lot of bands can say that, and that’s why they still deserve our special interest.

Nick Roseblade

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Dancehall rhythms were an ever-present in UK electronic music throughout 2021 as numerous producers sought to build on the ‘techno dancehall’ framework that Mr. Mitch coined in 2018. Now Thing 2, a compilation compiled by Felix Hall, producer Richard Browne and Lil’ Toby, looked back further though to some of the turn-of-the-century dancehall riddims that have inspired new producers probing the sound today, with the sounds featured across the record spanning nearly two decades. Following up on the release of the first instalment of the Now Thing series for the Mo Wax label in 2001, Now Thing 2 presents a journey through the minimalist, bass-heavy instrumentals that light up the dancehall floors that DJs like Felix Hall play on today, from the hypnotically repetitive ‘Heart Attack’ from Dave Kelly to the sub-shattering, canine-sampling sounds of veteran producers Lenky and Andrew Thomas’ ‘Bad Mongrell’.

Christian Eede

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Unsurprisingly, this live document isn’t Sunn O)))’s first rodeo. They have amassed an archive of over 130 concert recordings captured throughout the course of their career. So many, in fact, that they had to start a dedicated Bandcamp page just to cater for their live output. Hell, this isn’t even their first BBC recording at Maida Vale. Back in ’04 they were invited to perform on one of the final Peel Sessions commissioned prior to John Peel’s death. Compared to their previous outing, which sounds like a shredder going potty atop deep, flappy bass, Metta, Benevolence… is stocky. The mids elbow their way through the murk of the low-end and the trebly peaks are given space to warp and expand. 2004’s Peel Session is a physical experience not to be written off, however. It is more than capable of palpitating your eardrums with such a convulsive energy that they’ll feel like they’re attempting to take off.

What Metta, Benevolence… so adroitly achieves is a reproduction of the battering sonic pressure weathered at a Sunn O))) live show. An experience that Harry Sword has referred to as “A juddering blanket of weight that was akin to Deep South humidity” in his drone bible, Monolithic Undertow. People often talk about volume in relation to their performances which, let’s be fair, is an intrinsic element, but it’s the condensing of sound by continual layering, live overdubs and loops, that form the tumultuous physicality. What is felt is practically solid. This is what separates their physical magnitude from, say, the maximal ear-clattering of Swans. Plenty of bands can crank their amps one louder but few pretenders are capable of recreating the sheer sonic intensity, the atmospheric oppression of a Sunn O))) concert.

Jon Buckland

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The reissues put out by Oren Ambarchi’s Black Truffle label are never less than great, but Fiori Chiari, Fiori Oscuri is a particularly special release. Originally released in 1978 on a label run by Curran, Roberto Laneri, and Giacinto Scelsi, and consisting of a single long track by the great American composer, former member of Musica Elettronica Viva, and student of Elliott Carter, the album has a dreamlike, almost diaristic quality, dissolving from a cat’s purr to playful vamps upon a toy piano, a child’s voice (apparently Fred Rzewski’s son), a woozy, fluttery synthesiser, a cacophony of birds and bells and playground whoops. Never has musique concrète felt so personal or so revelatory.

Robert Barry

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I don’t think there’s anything more quintessentially Cameroon Garage Funk – that fulfils each word of its title most completely – than ‘Sie Tcheu’, by Joseph Kamga. A minute-long instrumental intro builds anticipation, and though there’s not actually a lot of vocal thereafter, the lead guitarist (presumably Kamga himself) dazzles with some hard blues riffs worthy of the most basem*nt-dwelling teen pimplies, which again I naturally mean in a good way. The organ solo, when it hits, is pure wavy gravy Nuggets psych idealism.

The 1970s Cameroon bandscape had its own specifics, quirks and idiosyncrasies, just like that of any country from any era, and Analog Africa have ably captured this without going overboard. There’s no obvious reason, short of national affiliation, for someone to focus on its music – which of course cross pollinated with that of its neighbours, plus France later on with the 1980s makossa boom, this perhaps being a colonialist hangover – to the exclusion of others. It’s just full of slinky rhythm, stone funk and some really cool origin stories, the sort of stuff that justifies the continuing existence of the archive reissue market.

Noel Gardner

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New York-born T.L. Barrett had lived many different lives before he took charge of Mount Zion Baptist Church on Chicago’s South Side, where he would later minister to the likes of Earth, Wind & Fire’s Philip Bailey and AACM co-founder Phil Cohran. He had worked in a morgue, shined shoes, become a jazz singer and mostly self-taught pianist inspired by Errol Garner among others. But being the distant cousin and former student of preacher and activist Reverend CL Franklin, father of soul icon Aretha, it wasn’t long before he heard the call.

He would develop ideas with his Youth For Christ Choir, a Tuesday after-school programme for children aged between 12 and 19. It caused quite a stir. Earth, Wind & Fire’s Larry Dunn and Andrew Woolfolk passed through; (the group’s legendary horns feature on Barrett’s ‘Do Not Pass Me By’). Donny Hathaway visited and pulled out his tape recorder.

• 1: Pastor T.L. Barrett And The Youth For Christ Choir – I Shall Wear A Crown
• 2: Various Artists – Cameroon Garage Funk
• 3: Alvin Curran – Fiori Chiari, Fiori Oscuri
• 4: Sunn O))) – Metta, Benevolence: BBC 6Music Live On The Invitation Of Mary Anne Hobbs
• 5: Various Artists – Now Thing 2
• 6: Special Interest – Trust No Wave
• 7: Grauzone – 40 Years Anniversary Box Set
• 8: Various Artists – Tresor 30
• 9:Bulbils – Blue Forty
• 10: Jaimie Branch – FLY Or DIE LIVE
• 11: Seefeel – Rupt + Flex (1994 – 96)
• 12: Various Artists – Do You Have The Force? (Jon Savage’s Alternate History Of Electronica 1978-82)
• 13: Overmono – fabric presents
• 14: One More Grain – Swirling In The Backyard: Volume 2 / Sulawesi
• 15: William Parker – Migration Of Silence Into And Out Of The Tone World
• 16: Faust – 1971-1974
• 17: Batu – BBC Radio 1’s Essential Mix
• 18: Hailu Mergia And The Walias – Tezeta
• 19: Aastiage – 1996/2000
• 20: Various Artists – Edo Funk Explosion Vol. 1
• 21: Tiziano Popoli – Burn The Night / Bruciare La Notte (Original Recordings)
• 22: Objekt – All Night @ Nowadays, NYC
• 23: Various Artists – La Ola Interior (Spanish Ambient & Acid Exoticism 1983 – 1990)
• 24: GNOD – Easy To Build, Hard To Destroy
• 25: Regis – Let The Night Return
• 26: Tchiss-Lopes – Já Bô Corre D’Mim
• 27: Arthur Russell – World Of Echo
• 28: Kling Klang – The Esthetik Of Destruction
• 29: Joseph Spence – Encore: Unheard Recordings Of Bahamian Guitar And Singing
• 30: Beatriz Ferreyra – CANTO+
• 31: 4Mars – Super Somali Sounds From The Gulf Of Tadjoura
• 32: Space Afrika – RA.772
• 33: Shovel Dance Collective / C Joynes – Betwixt & Between 7
• 34: Various Artists – Duppy Vaulted (2011 – 2021)
• 35: Spiritualized – Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space
• 36: Sexual Harassment – I Need A Freak
• 37: New Life – Visions Of The Third Eye
• 38: Unsound – Intermission
• 39: Anz – Spring/Summer Dubs 2021
• 40: Rakta & DEAFKIDS – Live At Sesc Pompéia
• 41: Hawthonn – Vulva Caelestis
• 42: Various Artists – Strain Crack & Break: Music From The Nurse With Wound List Volume Two (Germany)
• 43: Various Artists – Essiebons Special: 1973 – 1984 Ghana Music Power House
• 44: DJ Sprinkles – Gayest tit* & Greyest sh*ts: 1998-2017 12-Inches & One-Offs
• 45: Depeche Mode – 101
• 46: Hood – The Hood Tapes
• 47: Joseph Nechvatal – Selected Sound Works 1981–2021
• 48: Chris Carter – Electronic Ambient Remixes One & Three
• 49: John Coltrane – A Love Supreme Live In Seattle
• 50: SHERELLE – fabric presents
• 51: Bill Callahan & Bonnie “Prince” Billy – Blind Date Party
• 52: Darwin – Dekmantel Podcast 351
• 53: The Long Blondes – Someone To Drive You Home
• 54: Various Artists – Zanzibara 10: First Modern Taarab Vibes From Mombasa & Tanga / 1970-1990
• 55: PJ Harvey – Is This Desire?
• 56: object blue With Kornet – Rinse FM Mix
• 57: Lovett – The Night House (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
• 58: David Tudor – Monobirds
• 59: Michèle Bokanowski – Rhapsodia / Battements Solaires
• 60: Grand Veymont – Grand Veymont
• 61: Les Rallizes Dénudés – Double Heads: Maximum Psychedelic Blues Years
• 62: Okyerema Asante – Drum Message
• 63: Black Sabbath – Sabotage Super Deluxe
• 64: Various Artists – Sounds Of Pamoja
• 65: Bardo Pond – Amanita
• 66: Various Artists – Lee Lines (Landscape Mixtape)
• 67: Radiohead – KID A MNESIA
• 68: Marco Shuttle – Rhythm Büro Podcast 016
• 69: Squarepusher – Feed Me Weird Things
• 70: The Sisters Of Mercy – BBC Sessions 1982 – 1984
• 71: Various Artists – Back Up: Mexican Tecno Pop 1980-1989
• 72: Clint Mansell – In The Earth (Original Music)
• 73: DJ Stryda – Cream Of Bristol Roots Pirate!
• 74: Can – Live In Brighton 1975
• 75: Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe – Candyman (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
• 76: Julius Hemphill – The Boyé Multinational Crusade for Harmony
• 77: My Bloody Valentine – Loveless
• 78: Various Artists – Bills & Aches & Blues (40 Years Of 4AD)
• 79: Le Blaze – La Tape
• 80: Djrum – London Unlocked: At Tower Bridge
• 81: Various Artists – Molten Mirrors: A Decade Of Livity Sound
• 82: Phew – Phew
• 83: Coil – Love’s Secret Domain (30th Anniversary Edition)
• 84: Magma – Simples
• 85: Bambounou – SPND20 Mixtape
• 86: LCD Soundsystem – The Long Goodbye: Live At Madison Square Garden
• 87: “Blue” Gene Tyranny – Degrees Of Freedom Found
• 88: Perko – DIM249
• 89: Various Artists – Resist To Exist قاوم لِوجودك
• 90: Psychic Hotline – The Wild World Of Psychic Hotline
• 91: The KLF, The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu – Come Down Dawn
• 92: Daniel Hart – The Green Knight (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
• 93: Various Artists – Longing For The Shadow: Ryūkōka Recordings, 1921-1939
• 94: Nadsat – Nadsat
• 95: The Ecliptic Newsletter – Lidl Museum Of Ancient And Contemporary Art Audio Tour
• 96: Sun Ra – Lanquidity (Definitive Edition)
• 97: Suburban Lawns – Suburban Lawns
• 98: Ben UFO – At Friendly Potential, Wellington
• 99: Leven Signs – Hemp Is Here
• 100: Tara Busch – Jakob’s Wife (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Amar Patel

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