#461

Degradation - Leadlined (Brachliegen Tapes)

Extracting eight song-style pieces from one long improvised studio session involving recordings of the River Thames, contact mics, telephone coils, radio receivers, an Irish whistle and a tuning fork, Leadlined emphasises the dynamic and stylistic breadth of noise as a genre. — Jo Hutton

#460

Širom - The Liquified Throne of Simplicity (Tak:til)

Tromping, squeaking and bonging along, the songs sound like music made for and by the metamorphic inhabitants of Bosch’s Garden Of Earthly Delights. — Francis Gooding

#459

Sarah Cahill - The Future is Female Vol.1: In Nature (First Hand)

This album, as the subsequent ones, are more to say that: these female composers existed and here is their work, which needs to be indexed and catalogued in the same way as the rest of the repertoire. We should understand that, as women, they were read as anomalies. Whatever changes are happening now will never happen fast enough. — Louise Gray

#458

Joy Guidry - Radical Acceptance (Whited Sepulchre)

Radical Acceptance is about Guidry accepting their self — as Black, as queer, as nonbinary. (...) On Radical Acceptance, these ideas manifest by see-sawing from eerie, ambient electronics to free improvisations. — Vanessa Ague

#457

System 01 - System 01 (1990-1994) (Mannequin)

The duo’s acid-flecked industrial electronics was emblematic of a vanguard sound that swept Berlin shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a hard and hedonistic techno that found its ground zero at the city’s bunker club Tresor. — Louis Pattison

#456

Hen Ogledd - No Wood Accepted (Weird World)

No Wood Accepted is quirky and compelling, and with each listen it grows curiouser and curiouser. — Leah Kardos

#455

Morton Feldman - Piano and String Quartet (Another Timbre)

This late Feldman opus is a magisterial accomplishment and a sustained evasion; an invitation to get lost. — Julian Cowley

2021

Wire 15 (9)
Israel Vines - And Now We Know Nothing (Interdimensional Transmissions)
Venus Ex Machina - Lux (AD 93)
Futari - Beyond (Libra)
Various - Miniatures 2020 (The 62nd Gramophone Company)
Hedvig Mollestad Trio - Ding Dong. You’re Dead (Rune Grammofon)
Paranoise - Noizu / The 2nd Act (Skank Bloc) +#447
Lauren Sarah Hayes - Embrace (Superpang)
Emma-Jean Thackray - Yellow (Movementt)
Dal:um - Similar & Different (Tak:til)
Siderean - Lost on Void’s Horizon (Edged Circle) +#450
Consorts - Distinctions (Spoonhunt)
Keiji Haino / Jim O’Rourke / Oren Ambarchi - Each side has a depth of 5 seconds ·
A polka dot pattern in horizontal array · A flickering that moves vertically (Black Truffle)
Phew - New Decade (Mute)
Threshing Floor - Threshing Floor (El Studio 444 / Reboot) +#453
Gordan - Down in the Meadow (Morphine)

record of the year
Phew - New Decade (Mute)

#454

Gordan - Down in the Meadow (Morphine)

The songs here emanate from deep Serbian tradition, sometimes using modes and ornaments so rare that they belong to just a single village or singer; Spajić’s dread performance is gripping, like something ancient being born. — Francis Gooding

#453

Phew - New Decade (Mute)



The glorious thing about Phew’s music – for many years now, an assemblage of analogue electronics, hovering synth washes and snatches of barely sung vocals – is that it expresses an edginess that does not allow any easy resolution. — Louise Gray

#452

Keiji Haino / Jim O’Rourke / Oren Ambarchi - Each side has a depth of 5 seconds · A polka dot pattern in horizontal array · A flickering that moves vertically (Black Truffle)



The resulting music is sparser and lighter in an immediate musical sense, but emotionally heavier as serrated, squiggly noises traverse over and collide with modulating static and trembling low frequencies. — Antonio Poscic

#451

Consorts - Distinctions (Spoonhunt)



His orchestral approach is inspired, with a focus on particular combinations of voices – bowed strings, bass clarinet, mysterious amplified scritches at one point, fluttering electronics and braying baritone saxophones at another – while the combined mass of the full ensemble looms in and out of view. — Stewart Smith

#450

Dal:um - Similar & Different (Tak:til)



Suyean plays the gayageum, a 25-string Korean zither; Hyeyoung a six-stringed model, the geomungo. (...) The instruments Dal:um brandish in publicity photos are polished and imposing. — Noel Gardner