#396

Bobbie Johnson - You & I (Escape Route Media)



At her worst Brighton’s Bobbie Johnson is an imposingly brilliant performer radiating righteous anger and eloquent melancholia, something like Little Simz might sound if she had got fully grown before getting famous. — Richard Stacey

#395

Ariel Guzik - Cordiox (VON Archives)



In its physical appearance this electromagnetically activated instrument, sensitive to the presence of visitors, may suggest arcane hardware from a handbook of steampunk science, but the droning radiance and shadowy rumble that emanate from its 180 strings, held taut in towering vertical frames, seem custom-made for a time-worn and cavernous ecclesiastical space. — Julian Cowley

2016

Wire 15 (4)
The Sprawl - EP1 (Death of Rave)
Guttersnipe - Demo (Arcane Pariah) +#383
Roscoe Mitchell - Sustain and Run (Selo Sesc)
David Bowie - Blackstar (ISO/RCA)
eMMplekz - Rook to TN34 (Mordant Music)
Puce Mary - The Spiral (Posh Isolation)
Elza Soares - The Woman at the End of the World (Mais Um Discos)
Let’s Eat Grandma - I, Gemini (Transgressive) +#388
Ben Johnston / Kepler Quartet - String Quartets 6, 7 & 8 (New World)
Der Zyklus - Renormalon (WéMè) +#389
Hedvig Mollestad Trio - Black Stabat Mater (Rune Grammofon)
Teresa Rampazzi - Immagini per Diana Baylon (Die Schachtel)
Moor Mother - Fetish Bones (Don Giovanni)
Joëlle Léandre & Théo Ceccaldi - Elastic (Cipsela)
Peter Evans - Lifeblood (More is More)

record of the year
Moor Mother - Fetish Bones (Don Giovanni)

#394

Peter Evans - Lifeblood (More is More)



Without being a trumpet technician, it’s hard to know exactly how Evans achieves some of these effects. Is that ozone burning rush in the middle of “Abyss” multiphonics and feedback? Or are his lungs just superhuman? — Stewart Smith

#393

Joëlle Léandre & Théo Ceccaldi - Elastic (Cipsela)



Both musicians shape their improvisations into remarkably vivid forms; Léandre’s arco bass brings tremendous weight and vigour to these pieces, with the brilliant Ceccaldi inventing flighty melodic runs and deeply expressive folk figures. — Stewart Smith

#392

Moor Mother - Fetish Bones (Don Giovanni)



[T]his is by far the record that more directly constructs the listener as a participant in ongoing and perpetual violence, from slavery to chain gangs to prisons to segregation to police murder and everyday racism. It says: you cannot escape the history of the present; this is what it sounds like, and it is a nightmare. — Nina Power

#391

Teresa Rampazzi - Immagini per Diana Baylon (Die Schachtel)



Rampazzi’s reaction was immediate and conclusive. She destroyed her piano (...) and thereafter set out to work within electronic music, using the tape, oscillators and other analogue machines available at the time. — Louise Gray

#390

Hedvig Mollestad Trio - Black Stabat Mater (Rune Grammofon)



The massive two-part album opener “Approaching/On Arrival” features some of Thomassen’s fiercest, most psychedelic shredding on record, and thick, driving drums from Bjørnstad. — Phil Freeman

#389

Ben Johnston - String Quartets 6, 7 & 8 (New World)



Quartet No 7 (1984) is the culmination of Johnston’s microtonal explorations. Musicians looked at his palindromic score, with more than a thousand microscopically distinct pitches, and declared it unplayable – which by ordinary standards, it is. — Andy Hamilton