M Sage - The Wind Of Things (Geographic North)
A fully acoustic paen to windswept landscape and waters of Nebraska and Lake Michigan, realised beautifully by an articulate and dynamically aware ensemble.
Macie Stewart - Mouth Full Of Glass (Orindal)
Ornate, intricate and sophisticated guitar based songwriting, with rich arrangements.
Madlib - Sound Ancestors (Madlib Invazion)
A flowing, coherent arrangement of Madlib productions by Kieren Hebden.
Maggie Nicols - Creative Contradiction (Takuroku)
Astonishingly, the illustrious improvising vocalist's first solo album has turned out to be a lockdown work, recorded on a computer at home using Garageband. It's a wide ranging, surprising, quirky and emotional delight.
Makaya McCraven - Deciphering The Message (Blue Note)
A sincere and honest deconstruction and reassembly of moments from the Blue Note archives, in which drummer, composer and producer McCraven combines samples with newly recorded material, often in ways where it is hard to be sure which is which.
Malcolm Jiyane Tree-O - Umdali (Mushroom Hour Half Hour)
Created in the midst of grief, Malcolm Jiyane Tree-O's debut work as a bandleader is still life affirming and fully present.
Marc Ribot's Ceramic Dog - Hope (Yellowbird)
Recorded carefully in isolated booths in the studio in May 2020, Ribot's latest captures the tension and anxiety of the time, as well as celebrating the triumph of the creative impulse in the face of adversity. As usual, Ribot scythes through a range of genres with both irreverence and informed understanding.
Margo Cilker - Pohorylle (Loose)
Searing and stirring country and blues tinged songs.
Maria Elena Silva - Eros (BIG EGO)
I'm baffled as to why this rich and rewarding record hasn't received more attention this year. Its combination of sensuality, flamenco-influenced guitar playing, improvisation and adventure make it a real standout.
Maria Rosenfeld - Teenage Lontano (Room40)
Fascinating reimagining of Gyorgy Ligeti.
Marisa Anderson & William Tyler - Lost Futures (Thrill Jockey)
A guitar duo collaboration every bit as sensitive, melodic, atmospheric and evocative as you would expect.
Mary Halvorson & Sylvie Courvoisier - Searching For The Disappeared Hour (Pyroclastic)
An intimate, but not necessarily comfortable collaboration, exploring new and effective ways of integrating piano and guitar.
Mason Lindahl - Kissing Rosy In The Rain (Tompkins Square)
Circling, enveloping finger picked guitar. The kind of recording where you can hear nails against string and string scrapes, but they are made to feel warm and part of the sensuality of the whole.
Mathias Eick - When We Leave (ECM)
Gentle, ruminative and melodic jazz compositions.
Matt Mitchell & Kate Gentile - Snark Horse (Pi Recordings)
A box set of concise 'one bar' compositions designed as a springboard for improvisation. One of this year's many gargantuan but somehow necessary projects.
Matt Ridley - The Antidote (Whirlwind Recordings)
The composer and bassist's third album as leader is his best, filled with strong writing, distinctive grooves, emotional range and risk taking improvising.
Matt Sweeney & Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - Superwolves (Drag City)
Long awaited return of this empathetic partnership brings some incisive songs and an expansive approach to the music.
Maurice Louca - Satt El-Hazz (The Luck Hour) (Northern Spy)
The Egyptian musician collaborates with the 'A' Trio and uses modified instruments to create something otherworldly and magical.
Maxine Funke - Seance (A Colourful Storm)
Sensitive and softly delivered songs.
Mdou Moctar - Afrique Victime (Matador)
Roaring contemporary Saharan psychedelic rock.
Mega Bog - Life, And Another (Paradise of Bachelors)
Eccentric and richly imagined surrealist songs.
Michael Wollny, Emile Parisien, Tim Lefebvre & Christian Lilinger - XXXX (ACT)
Michael Wollny is a musician who seems to be able to occupy almost any kind of creative space and still make something striking and distinctive. This is a bold electric collaboration that constantly surprises, disorientates and delights.
Mind Maintenance - Mind Maintenance (Drag City)
Meditative minimalism from Joshua Abrams and Chad Taylor.
Monocled Man - Ex Voto (Whirlwind Recordings)
A welcome return from Rory Simmons' project - a small ensemble that takes new leaps into the unknown with each release. Here, all band members expand into recording and producing their parts in isolation, with Simmons and drummer Jon Scott working closely on the final mix. The result is a vivid, cinematic musical world that really reels the listener in.
Moor Mother - Black Encyclopaedia Of The Air (ANTI-)
Moor Mother's highly individual combination of poetry, electronics and uneasiness continues to grow in impact.
Myriam Gendron - Ma Delire - Songs of love, lost & found (Feeding Tube/Les Albums Claus)
Haunting and transporting folk songs.
Mzylkypop - Kiedy Wilki Zawyja (Discus Music)
A dystopian vision of England in 2030 - or much closer to England right now than we'd care to admit?
Nala Sinephro - Space 1.8 (Warp)
With a group from the vanguard of mainstream UK jazz (including Nubya Garcia, Eddie Hick and Shirley Tetteh), Nala Sinephro has crafted a dreamlike, detailed sound.
Nashville Ambient Ensemble - Cerulean (Centripetal Force)
It is remarkable how well suited the pedal steel guitar can be to wildly unexpected contexts, whether it be the improvisation of Susan Alcorn, or the mysterious, languid, droning hums of this ambient group. It works really very well.
Natalie Jane Hill - Solely (Dear Life)
Hill's second album brings an openness to sharing and collaboration, drawing other musicians into her inward looking world. The songs are softly expressive and detailed.
Nate Wooley - Mutual Aid Music (Pleasure Of The Text)
Music as community action. Vital.
Nathan Salsburg - Psalms (No Quarter)
Nathan Salsburg follows up his fascinating experiment with 78rpm records by recording a set of new arrangements of Hebrew psalms. Salsburg is a musician deeply invested in traditions, but capable of drawing something personal and contemporary from them.
Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Barn (Reprise)
Like most of Young's recent albums, Barn oscillates wildly between the transcendent (Heading West, Welcome Back), the awkward and earnest but enjoyable (Canerican) and the occasional terrible knock-off (Shape Of You). But Barn is interesting for being the album to most successfully integrate his pastoral reflection with his questing rock improvising since Sleeps With Angels.
New Bums - The Last Time I Saw Grace (Drag City)
Ben Chasny's duo with Skygreen Leopards' Donovan Quinn is his most relaxed, loose and humorous work.
Nick Cave and Warren Ellis - Carnage (AWAL)
Apocalyptic preaching and keening heartache combine brilliantly here.
OK Aurora - Only In Autumn (Ubuntu)
Drummer Rod Oughton produces a warm and inviting set of jazz infused pop songs, with great horn and vocal arrangements.
Okkyung Lee - Na-Reul (Corbett vs. Dempsey)
Okkyung Lee's contribution to the Black Cross Solo Sessions series - a strong and often distressing work made following a period of time spent apart from the Cello at the start of the pandemic, caring for her dying father.
Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp - We're OK. But We're Lost Anyway (Bongo Joe)
A brilliant large ensemble celebration of turbulence, instability and unpredictability.
Padang Food Tigers - God's Plenty (Shhpuma)
More chimerical, haunted ambient folk from the brilliant duo of Stephen Lewis and Spencer Grady.
Patricia Brennan - Maquishti (Valley Of Search)
Magnificent, spacious, sometimes spooky solo percussion compositions.
Patrick Shiroishi - Hidemi (American Dreams)
Superbly arranged multi-tracked solo saxophone album exploring the personal experience of Shiroishi's grandfather after getting out from a Japanese -American concentration camp. After a brutally abrasive opening, the result is at once mournful, agile, graceful and hopeful. Shiroishi has been a hugely important musician for me over the past couple of years (see also the Fuubutsushi project).
Pauline Anna Strom - Angel Tears In Sunlight (RVNG Intl.)
Strom's first album in over 30 years is also unfortunately her last (she passed away in December 2020) - but this glowing, captivating work has enough depth and detail in it to resonate into the beyond.
Peggy Seeger - First Farewell (Red Grape)
Interviewing Peggy Seeger over Zoom was one of the highlights of the year for me - and this endearing, witty, direct and honest album gave us plenty to talk about.
Pendant - To All Sides They Will Stretch Out Their Hands (West Mineral Ltd.)
Alter ego for Huerco S - similarly shifting and unsettling music.
Perila - How Much Time Is It Between You and Me? (Smalltown Supersound)
Captivating ambient avant garde music and an impressive debut album.
Pink Siifu - GUMBO'! (Dynamite Hill)
Simmering warped soul and hip hop.
Pino Palladino and Blake Mills - Notes With Attachments (Verve/UMG)
One of the great musical sidemen finally steps out to illuminate his melodic and compositional side, together with the justifiably in demand multi instrumentalist and producer Blake Mills and saxophonist Sam Gendel. This album packs such depth and detail into its short running time.
Piroshka - Love Drips and Gathers (Bella Union)
A spectacularly rich, gleaming production from the supergroup of 90s stalwarts (Lush's Miki Berenyi, Elastica's Justin Welch, Mick Conroy from Modern English and KJ "Moose" McKillop) - this feels like a fresh reinvention rather than pure nostalgia.
Plankton Wat - Future Times (Thrill Jockey)
Slow burning majesty from Dewey Mahood.
Powers/Rolin Duo - Strange Fortune (Astral Editions)
Meditative music it's all too easy to get lost inside.
Princess Diana of Wales - Princess Diana of Wales (A Colourful Storm)
Laila Sakini's mischievously monikered project deals in eerie vocal manipulations and unnerving sonic detail.
Punkt.Vrt.Plastik - Somit (Intakt)
The trio of Kaja Draksler, Petter Eldh and Christian Lilinger produce a second exemplary album of musical lattices and puzzles.
Rachel Musson - Dreamsing (577)
Striking, sometimes confrontational solo saxophone.
Rachika Nayar - Fragments (RVNG Intl.)
Rachika Nayar - Our Hands Against The Dusk (NNA Tapes)
Two albums for two different labels, with different approaches to tactile minimalism.
Rhiannon Giddens & Francesco Turrisi - They're Calling Me Home (Nonesuch)
Second highly impressive duo collaboration album. Giddens' project of reclamation continues to yield overpowering results.
Richard Dawson & Circle - Henki (Domino)
An unlikely collaboration between ramshackle folk and a Finnish metal band exploring historical flora and fauna. No, really. And it's tremendous.
Ripatti - Fun Is Not A Straight Line (Planet Mu)
Reorganised fragments from electronic wizard sometimes known as Vladislav Delay.
Rob Frye - Exoplanet (Astral Spirits)
Partially developing transcribed birdsong, this is music of aspiration and ascension from the Bitchin Bajas musician.
Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe - Candyman OST (Waxwork)
Perfectly unnerving and unsettling score.
Robert Finlay - Sharecropper's Son (Easy Eye Sound/Concord)
I've not listened to much of Finlay's music before, but this is a superbly rendered modern soul and blues album.
Robert Plant & Alison Krauss - Raise The Roof (Warner Music)
Very welcome follow up to Raising Sand, mostly traversing similar ground, but doing so with an effortless blend of voices and honesty in delivery.
No comments:
Post a Comment