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

#388

Elza Soares - The Woman at the End of the World (Mais Um Discos)



Over a variety of shattered sonic backcloths veined with electronics, Soares’s voice strains beyond breaking in songs of political injustice and social violence. It is a vital, fearful sound. — Francis Gooding

#387

Puce Mary - The Spiral (Posh Isolation)



Still building with the same base materials as industrial music and its descendants, Puce Mary applies an adroit sense of feng shui to the factory floors she envisions. — Tristan Bath

#386

eMMplekz - Rook to TN34 (Mordant Music)



What brings “Gloomy Leper Techno” to life, coupled to Nick Edwards aka Ekoplekz’s nodding dog electro beats, is the repeated use Hicks makes of “cheers mate bye”, transforming the ubiquitous smartphone sign off into a sustained declaration of resentment. — Ken Hollings

#385

David Bowie - Blackstar (ISO/RCA)



Its collage of jazz, electronica and an off-beat driven percussion is one that is continually spooled out and reined in by an infinitely flexible song structure, something that’s so typically Bowie at his most inventive. — Louise Gray

#384

Roscoe Mitchell - Sustain and Run (Selo Sesc)



He’s developed an approach to circular breathing every bit as innovative and demanding as Evan Parker’s. At the age of 75, he’s still extending himself, as evinced by these pieces for soprano and sopranino recorded live in 2013. — Daniel Spicer

#383

The Sprawl - EP1 (Death of Rave)



A three-way partnership between Mumdance, Logos and Shapednoise, the group first convened in 2015 to play an improvised set at Berlin festival CTM, but have since mutated into a studio unit creating an organic electronic music that defies any easy categorisation. — Louis Pattison