#402

Bill Orcutt - Bill Orcutt (Palilalia)



Orcutt’s ‘nude stumbling down a staircase’ fingerwork will land upon a note within a phrase, linger on it, repeat it, shove it down and open it up into the next portion of the melody that he finds worthy of extrapolating, the ring of the amplifier deepening each moment. — Matt Krefting

#401

Sarah Angliss - Ealing Feeder (Bandcamp)



In an era when London is increasingly open only for business, it is refreshing to feel the city made strange again, to see its weird old ghosts brought out into the light to dance in the sodium glare of the modern city, to hear its history fed through a Max patch. — Robert Barry

#400

Dead Neanderthals - Craters (Consouling Sounds)



This single 36 minute track rolls over your skull like a tank, leaving you breathless and unsettled but weirdly euphoric when it finally ends. — Phil Freeman

#399

Dopplereffekt - Cellular Automata (Leisure System)



Dopplereffekt is now said to be based somewhere in the Alps. (...) it’s reassuring to imagine one of Detroit’s most singular artists toiling wordlessly in his lab coat in the shadow of those peaks, perhaps imagining himself as an invisible assistant to the particle-blasting laboratory just down the mountain range. — Chal Ravens

#398

Various - Total Reggae: Special Request (VP)



Belying its mystifyingly prosaic title, this selection of dancehall mayhem from Greensleeves’ Chris O’Brien is an absolute scorcher, a collection of sound boy killers dating from the time dancehall revivified reggae in the early 1980s by returning to its sound system roots. — Steve Barker

#397

Harriet Tubman - Araminta (Sunnyside)



The music is a sort of atmospheric post-metal, with a strong dub element and drumming that shifts seamlessly between rock and funk rhythms and improvisatory pulse time. — Phil Freeman

#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