Writing about music is something I enjoy because, for me, it enhances the listening experience. It also keeps me on my toes to some extent, because I try to write something different about everything I hear. This had led me into lots of different areas and challenged me to think about both the music that I like, as well as that which I don’t. It has also brought me back to music that I thought that I had left behind, and made me think again about music that I have initially found difficult to enjoy.

This selection of releases, largely from this year, includes something from all these categories. My big thing at the moment is analogue synths, with three British musicians being at the forefront of that: Craven Faults, Pye Corner Audio and Runcorn Warrington New Town Development Plan. You can read about the latter of these below through two great new releases.

On the subject of electronic music, I have been having a bit of a techno revival lately, especially, but not exclusively, Berlin’s amazing Tresor label. Two long standing artists that I have been particularly listening to lately being LA’s Developer, and Birmingham’s Surgeon; both of whom have excellent new releases out… I look at both here.

I am always on the look out for bands who somehow defy or transcend genre, and two such are Cazayoux and 10-20 Project, both of whom I look at here. It was these sort of bands that I really set up this website to cover… bands that may otherwise fall through the cracks in the musical pavement…

Then there’s types of music that I thought I didn’t like or had left behind. As a non-specialist in the field of folk and singer/ songwriter sounds (and lumping those two together tells you that) three album have jumped out at me this year to really challenge my assumptions, and I’m very happy to share these challenges here with the releases from Trevor Beales, Joe Hollick and Lankum… albums that are in themselves diverse but all have a broadly similar vibe for me.

Then there are a couple of proper heavy behemoths… as a rule I don’t have a problem with really heavy music… but usually like it to be more fast and frantic than the most recent offerings from The Shits and Machiavellian Art… so come and be challenged along with me as I get underneath why these have broke through my defences.

Finally I am ending with a couple of old friends with recent releases from Rose City People and Edena Gardens… both have musicians in them who I have been following for years, and who just keep on putting out excellent stuff constantly and consistently.

These, then, are some of my favourite releases of the year so far. I hope that you find something here that you like, and please share this post on if you do.

Enjoy!

The Nation’s Most Central Location/ Moonbuilding by Warrington Runcorn Development Plan (Castles in Space).

If one new release from Gordon Chapman-Fox, aka Warrington Runcorn New Town Development Plan (WRNTDP) were not enough, the excellent Castles in Space label has accompanied his new album with a WRNTDP special for the third issues of it’s excellent ‘Moonbuilding’ fanzine. As with the other issues you get a CD with the mag, and this one is all previously unreleased WRNTDP stuff, including an exclusive live set. This is far too good to not get more widely acknowledged (you can also download it from Bandcamp), and I can only recommend this high quality content.

The new album itself, ‘The Nation’s Most Central Location’, continues Chapman Fox’s exploration of the Brutalism of the North West of England… expanding out from previous albums but still finding beautiful ways to express his affinity and frustrations with projects that promised so much but ultimately failed to deliver their utopian goals. If you want to know more about WRNTDP I have written about the previous releases here.

Crash Recoil by Surgeon (Tresor).

There was a time in the ‘90s when I almost made the full transition over to dance music. ‘Indie’ seemed to be getting more and more ‘landfill’ and it seemed to me that some of the most vibrant music was coming out of the dance scene. At the forefront of that for me was techno which had a heaviness to it which I loved, but also a nuance that has been developed over the years by, for me, the likes of Juan Atkins and Motitz von Oswald and Surgeon (aka Anthony Child)… all of whom have featured on the Tresor label.

Techno, however, isn’t a constant for me and it takes something special to get me back to it again…Atkins and von Oswald did a decade ago with their excellent Borderland album…

…and now Surgeon has with Crash Recoil, which feels very contemporary while at the same time reminding me of some old school techno from the ‘90s. I really like the variety of the tracks and the fact that you can enjoy them both as something to freak out to on the dance floor… and listen to as a piece of music. I spent a very happy few hours walking through Berlin in the middle of the night listening to this album… and it was absolutely perfect!

Hexmode by Developer (Modularz)

Like Surgeon, Developer has been around for nearly thirty years now. He (Adrian Sandoval) has been at the forefront of the LA techno scene for all that time and has also brought out an album which really showcases how different and varied techno music can be. If anything his sonic brush is waved even more broadly than Surgeon’s but the results are broadly the same… and album that you can really listen to from start to finish and appreciate it for what it is as well as what it does to your mind and body.

It is clear to me that, with these two releases, techno is in rude health and… while I’m probably not up for a full-on night in the clubs any more I can really get off on these sounds… in fact they are two of may favourite albums of the year so far.

Cazayoux by Cazayoux (We, Here and Now; Echodelick; Worst Bassist; Ramble; The Weird Beard).

The first of two records here that are going to be in my ears all summer. This self-titled album from Austin, Texas-based Cazayoux is an absolute zinger. Comprising musicians from the United States, Mexico, Japan, and West Africa this is as genre-avoiding as you might expect with elements of jazz, funk, afrobeat and psychedelia (amongst others) blending beautifully together in a larger-than-life mix of utterly joyous music which will get the sun shining in your heart even when the world around you is grey.

As for when the sun is shining, as it is here today… well just feel the warmth and let it take you away to wherever you want to be… this one is going to get played, played and played!

Snakes Go Dark To Soak in the Sun by 10-20 Project (We, Here and Now; Echodelick; Worst Bassist; Weird Beard).

There’s something really ‘out-there’ about these three jams from Tunisian band 10-20 Project… in one sense there is nothing that is too remarkable about them other than they are well-played and proper-spacey… but to my ears at least they’ve ‘got the sauce’… there is something more going on here… the atmosphere on these tracks is somehow magical and the groove is canyon-deep…

Perhaps it is because they were conceived at the height of the COVID-lockdown that they have really tapped in to something that is raw and quite fundamental… whatever it is I suggest that you tune in and drop out… as the band themselves say: “We dedicate this session to all the unhappy Hippies around the world who will not follow in this rush of modern times.”

Testify!

Rest Lessness by Joe Hollick (Cardinal Fuzz/ Echodelick).

When I started picking up on the ‘psych’ scene in the early 2010s, one of the bands who saw me on my way were Wolf People, I really enjoyed their live performances in particular having seen them support Wooden Shjips and at the Liverpool Psych Fest. They had dropped of my radar quite a bit until guitarist Joe Hollick turned up on one of my favourite releases of last year from Human Hand…

…so I was intrigued when I saw that he had a solo album out. Half the album is just Hollick playing solo, while the other half provides some accompaniment… however, the whole album is just a joy from start to finish. I haven’t got my hands on a vinyl copy yet but even listening digitally you get a sense of having Joe strumming in the corner, so free-and easy is his playing. However, it is also hugely involving and beautiful music that is played with the delicacy of a craft person honing their work… in short it’s an absolute honour to witness and I am so happy that I can listen to something that feels so personal.

Fireside Stories (Hebden Bridge circa 1971 -1974) by Trevor Beales (Basin Rock).

Staying with lovely guitarists in Northern England, the story behind these long-lost tracks is both unusual and tragic. As the title suggests these were recorded by Beales in the early 1970s, while he was still a teenager and remained largely unheard for several decades. Beales himself sadly died in 1987 at the age of only 33, but these songs, which he recorded in his bedroom in Hebden Bridge, often on visits back from London, have been lovingly restored and stand as a testament to his talent.

These are songs of real beauty and delicacy which sound like they have passed through some sort of time warp… yet also sound fresh and relevant as if they had been newly minted in a studio somewhere. Either way they add up to a prodigious talent which has certainly re-awakened my interest in this sort of music… we can only imagine what might have been had life worked out differently for Trevor Beales.

False Lankum by Lankum (Rough Trade).

When a friend recommended Lankum to me I think that it was more out of hope than expectation. Their particular brand of folk was, on the surface, not in my particular wheelhouse. I was, coincidentally, staying above an Irish Pub at the time and their new album, ‘False Lankum’, somehow made sense to me from the outset. That, I think, is because of the way the band fuse traditional Irish folk with long stretched out drones in a way that really grabbed me… it is like they have taken something and made it contemporary in a way that has perversely also taken against some of the more pernicious trends of modern society and culture.

I think that it has also cut through because much of it is utterly beautiful… with that beauty turning to reflection as the more meditative parts of a song kick in… it is music that gives you time to breathe and time to just be… there’s a real depth to it which I think stays with you. In many ways I am very surprised that I even like it… but, actually, I love it.

You’re A Mess by The Shits (Rocket Recordings).

OK I could pretend that this album came right out of the blue and smacked me full in the mouth but actually, for something so heavy, it didn’t. It rather snuck round the back and mugged me when I was least expecting it. What the fuck is it? It’s not exactly punk in the musical sense, although it has those sensibilities… it’s not exactly noise because, frankly, there’s far too much going on, even by Suicide standards… and it’s not exactly… well actually the more you get into it the more you realise that it’s its own thing… and it’s pretty thrilling.

Listening to the album again I’m struck by quite how much it builds up more and more track by track… the intensity reaching the sort of levels where you feel like you must be in one of those pressurised tanks that divers use… stop this album half way through and you’re going to get the musical bends…

Indoctrination Sounds by Machiavellian Art (Riot Season).

Listening to this straight after The Shits was quite a thing… because the intensity is just as high… if anything more dense as the sludge pours over you and the sax smacks you over the head repeatedly. This is proper full on shit, recorded in the middle of Birmingham in a pandemic with all around becoming gentrified as the band reflect the downward spiral of society.

In many ways this is a great companion piece to The Shits… because in someways they are ploughing a similar furrow but in a way that listening to them back to back does not become in anyway monotonous… as the band themselves put it: “A Maximalist blowout of Sax-honking Noise Rock, Doom Metal, Hardcore Punk, and Shoegaze, with Industrial Noise, Howls, Paranoid Rambles, and pure Disdain for oneself and the rest of you layered on top.”

Quite!

Garden Party by Rose City Band (Thrill Jockey).

After those two absolute behemoths time to slow things down a bit with the second of my summer albums here. Those familiar with the Rose City Band’s oeuvre will know what to expect here… but even at that this feels cooler and more chilled than ever… I have been following Ripey Johnson’s stuff for more than a decade now and just love his guitar sound..

…and again (if there’s a theme running across these albums it’s this) while I’m not a big fan of Country which is clearly fundamental here, there’s so much more being infused here that it just becomes a joy… like just kicking back and taking things reeeeaaaal easy.

Agar/ Live Momentum by Edena Gardens (El Paraiso).

From Garden Party to Edena Gardens, and another couple of albums that are super chilled out… each in their own way… Released virtually together this gives two different angles on the bands playing, with the live one being, as you might expect, slighly more vibrant and strung out.

Both, however, are going to be a treat for anyone who is already in the know, but also a great double-headed introduction not only to the band, but to the label as well. There’s an intense introversion to the music that kind of reflected the way that the label is going too, as it focuses on a core of musicians rather than commissioning music from other bands… this is not meant as a criticism but an observation… this has not meant that everything starts sound the same, but rather enables those musicians to delve deeper into their art… as can be seen/ heard here! For more on Edena Gardens see my previous review here.

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