fave science fiction + alternative history

 11 of my fave s.f. novels

(originally wrote this for purposes irrelevant to go into at this juncture)

Keith Roberts, Pavane  

Alternative history/counterfactual set in England where the Reformation never happened, Roman Catholicism dominates the country, and science has been suppressed.

Ward Moore, Bring the Jubilee

Alternative history in America where South won the Civil War, an unacknowledged precursor to steampunk in terms of technological backdrop, very well written and characterized, full of great historical jokes and inversions - e.g. in the impoverished, backwards remnant of the United States of America, the transcontinental railroad was never completed, the Native American tribes never defeated, and Deseret (the original Mormon name for Utah) still has polygamy, while a Klu Klux Klan-like militia called the Grand Old Army fights against the overwhelming economic influence of the Confederate States of America, a/k/a those damn Southrons.

Robert Sheckley, Mindswap. 

The exact plot escapes my memory – something involving a guy who ends up in an alien body and his attempts to get home, involving jaunts across many strange planets, each time ending up inside a wildly different lifeform. But Sheckley is that rare thing, the genuinely hilarious s.f. writer.

John Brunner, Stand On Zanzibar and The Sheep Look Up. 

These weren’t quite sequels but more like companion books, both set in an overpopulated future, Sheep I think nearer the present and more polluted and ruined, Zanzibar more about pop cultural overdrive, the pressures of overcrowding. Both excellent.

Frederick Pohl and CM Kornbluth, The Space Merchants  and Gladiator At Law

Possibly my favorite s.f. book ever - certainly the most reread. Another one set in an overcrowded, ecologically ruined future, this time a world dominated by advertising agencies. Written in the 50s circa Vance Packard and The Hidden Persuaders but surprisingly not dated at all and probably has renewed interest because of Mad Men and our culture of branding, Facebook ads, micro-targeted propaganda etc.   Pohl and Kornbluth wrote a bunch of really excellent books both separately and together – they belonged to this cabal of NY-based, mostly Communist or left-aligned writers who called themselves the Futurians, so the anti-capitalist slant of Space Merchants makes sense in this light.   Gladiator At Law, also excellent, is set in a similarly dark, corporate dominated future, where the masses are kept happy by a revival of  Roman style bloodsports

Walter Miller, A Canticle For Leibowitz 

Absolute classic set in the Dark Ages several centuries after world war three, with monks who preserve the lost knowledge and painstakingly copy onto parchment the circuitry diagrams for machines they no longer know what they were for. Beautifully written and wry

Alfred Bester, the Demolished Man, and Tiger, Tiger (also published as The Stars My Destination)  Two more classics. The Demolished Man involves a future where telepathy has been developed and so has teleportation ... and to be honest my memory of the plot/scenario momentarily fails me, but it’s.... great!   Tiger, Tiger – ditto, I recall more particular amazing scenes.  A great stylist, though, is Alfred Bester and generally accredited as a master.

Harry Harrison, Make Room! Make Room!

The book that was turned into Soylent Green but about 10 times superior to the movie. A very grim and gritty, well imagined scenario of overpopulation and resource depletion in New York circa 1999. ‘Soylent’ is not “made out of people” as in the hokey Charles Heston  movie but is just one of the dreary processed foodstuff that people subsist on along with krill burgers and weed crackers. The rich go to “meatleggers’ and “meateasy’s” where they can get some dog or if they are really wealthy and connected, a sliver of beef steak.

^^^^^^^^^^^^

Things I would obviously add to the list: Philip K. Dick The Man in the High Castle (and a couple of other PKDs), several J.G. Ballards (The Drowned World, High Rise, Low Flying Aircraft, others), an Aldiss or two (Greybeard, Hothouse) Lem's Solaris and Fiasco definitely, possibly Christopher Priest's A Dream of Wessex. 

And I suppose Fahrenheit 451 is undeniable. 

As is Neuromancer. And The Difference Engine.

Ooh, how could I forget - most of John Wyndham - particularly The Chrysalids (that should be a movie, I think) and The Midwich Cuckoos and Chocky, but you can't deny The Triffids. 

Out of recent years reading in the genre, I don't think anything would get added to this core list, which was consolidated in my mid-teens - except for Olaf Stapledon's First and Last Men  and Starmaker - visonary works both. And David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus, which isn't exactly s.f.  (more on it at the bottom).

That said, I was very impressed by Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry For the Future. 

Short stories is a whole other ball game... Dozens by Ballard. Harlan Ellison's "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" is one that lingers in the memory disquietingly. Ray Bradbury's one about the pedestrian who gets arrested for going for a walk at night. 

So many others from paperback collections I got from the local library.

Some major science fiction writers that I have never read: Asimov, Frank Herbert, Arthur C. Clarke, Heinlein (not entirely sure actually that it's zero with him - but certainly nothing has stuck in the memory). A number of other surprising omissions...

Mainstream literati having a go? Well, you'd have to mention 1984, Brave New World, Kingsley Amis's The Alteration (but certainly not Russian Hide and Seek), Burgess's A Clockwork Orange (but certainly not 1985 and nor The Wanting Seed). The Plot Against America. Oh and Nabokov's Ada, although he professed to despise s.f. 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

A Voyage to Arcturus 

One of the strangest novels I've read. By David Lindsay, published in 1920. Not exactly science fiction, nor fantasy, but a tortured religious vision. Absurd, yet with a unsettling quality of reality and gravity that takes it out of that zone of the Marvelous a.k.a. make-it-up-as-you-go-along cobblers.

It starts with a seance or spiritualist type meeting in an Edwardian living room, there are three gentlemen ... but then quickly.... well, it's hard to say what proceeds from that, paraphrase wouldn't quite convey.... Logic and plausibility quickly disappear without any loss of a sense of reality or grim seriousness.. It's a slightly barmy religious vision that you can't shake off. The outer space location (Tormance, a planet around Arcturus) is by the by really...  

The attitude to all things worldly, fleshly and pleasure-giving reminds me of peak-delirium K-punk's Spinozist scorn for "sad passions".

Harold Bloom was such a fan of Arcturus (he claimed to have read it hundreds of times!) that he tried to write a sort of an extension of it, The Flight to Lucifer: A Gnostic Fantasy (1979).His only attempt at a novel. Did I read somewhere that he subsequently tried to get hold of all remaining copies and destroy them? Or perhaps he joked about doing so. 

fave lyricists versus overrated lyricists

(one side of a chat with Carl Neville aka the Impostume, done in the mid-2000s)

FAVES

Ian Dury 

Jim Morrison (but perhaps only his delivery could get away with some of that stuff)

Robert Wyatt (king of bathos)

Kevin Ayers (recently got into into him in a big way... "Decadence" and "Song from the Bottom of A Well", amazing words)

Bryan Ferry (a genius of delivery also)

Marc Bolan (best spangly pop nonsense)

Edwyn Collins

Morrissey (not after a certain cut-off point which is almost as early as The Queen Is Dead except there are moments in the later Smiths stuff and one really great later solo song "I Am Hated For Loving"... actually I just read a really good book on Morrissey by an academic that made a good case for his lyrical genius throughout, broke down his various strategems etc... I was convinced but then the music gets to be mostly so pedestrian post Viva Hate)

Roy Harper

Billy Mackenzie

Green (the early stuff ....  Songs to Remember just is too cute and smugly in love with himself .... some moments on Cupid... the last LP, White Bread Black Beer, very much)

Jarvis Cocker

Martin Bramah

Kristin Hersh 

Poly Styrene

John(y) Rotten/Lydon

Pete Shelley

Syd Barrett (actually there is also one song that was a B-side early on, by Rick Wright -- amazing lyrics, strange fragile emotion i can't think of any prototype for in rock. 'Paintbox" -- well worth checking out if you have any time for Floyd at all)

Captain Beefheart (not always but often)

Lawrence from Felt makes it just for "Primitive Painters" and some of the Denim lyrics.

David Byrne (not always but quite often -- "Mind", "Animals", side 2 of Remain)

Iggy Pop when he was in the Stooges

 

further thoughts 

Stevie Nicks, in a funny sort of way

Rapping is almost like another thing, it doesn't look good written down often, but Jay-Z, LL Cool J, DMX

SPECIAL CATEGORY: can't say I adore exactly but you can definitely see why they're so rated: Lou Reed, Ray Davies, David Bowie

 

OVER-RATED 

it's not that they're bad, they might even be "good", but just substantially over-rated

 

Thom Yorke (just very few really memorable lines)

Manic Street Preachers (I warm to them as people but the lyrics are just fucking wretched aren't they! as is the music and the singing come to think of it. Do not see why Owen and Anwen et al are so into them, guess it might have been a certain-age type thing)

Ian Curtis (it's very young, isn't it? Exception: "Love Will Tear Us Apart" is perfect)

Elvis Costello (used to really like but it's rubbish,  okay it's not rubbish but really masturbatory --  wordplaying with yourself in public heh heh- actually I kind of enjoy it on that level, as grotesque exhibitionism, and also as sensuously sounded nonsense) (see this earlier post, the section on "pubadelia")

Nick Cave (used to like him a lot but now it seems so posey -- the over-written Birthday Party stuff is still pretty great I think, but what's worse is when he tries to do "simple" later on in a sort of King James Bible/Faulkner kind of way, tries to achieve the language of parables and common simple-hearted folk... cod-"timeless").

Mark E. Smith (agenius obviously but his seems to be an approach where you could get away with murder so I wonder if he does that quite a bit)

Brian Eno (the story ones are good, the ones about people marooned on beaches or twilight states of vegetative indolence...  but  the other Warm Jets type stuff is just twee )

Kurt Cobain (some great one or two liners and the odd verse but…)

J&MC, Primal Scream, Spacemen 3, Spiritualized --  it's like the cooler, slightly higher brow version of how metal bands write lyrics, like they've gone to the School of Rock

X, Violent Femmes, etc -- American wannabe poets

Vic Godard (good lines here and there, don't completely understand the fuss I must say - like "Ambition" - why is this considered an all-time lost classic?)

Patti Smith (has her moments, but…)

Joe Strummer and Paul Weller

The Clash lyrics pale next to the Pistols (the exceptions here - "Complete Control", "White Man in Hammersmith Palais", "Lost in the Supermarket" and - while overly abstract  - "Straight To Hell")

Weller has some moments but ("When You're Young", "That's Entertainment". "Down in the Tube Station at Midnight" is great - a 3 minute Play For Today was his goal, he said - but then narrative doesn't make sense - why is travelling by Tube to bring home a curry; midnight is a bit late to be having a curry; how would the muggers work out his address so to be able to use his keys to break in and attack the wife?). "Town Called Malice" makes me wince. Then there's the Style Council... 

Donald Fagen (except for The Nightfly, when he's great) 

That was circa 2006, who would I add now?

Faves

The chap(s?) in Vampire Weekend but only for the first album

It pains me to say it but Ariel P**k

Florence Shaw, obviously

I should have added The Specials (Dammers, Hall, Golding, Radiation)

Also Gang of Four but only the first album (gets clumsy after that - except for "Paralysed") 

Also Joni Mitchell (often)

Also John Lennon (often)

Also Paddy Macaloon except when he's very cloying (which admittedly is quite often)

Also Neal Peart but only for two songs, "The Spirit of Radio" and "Limelight". 

Also David Crosby for "Everybody's Been Burned", "Mind Gardens" and "Triad"

Also Peter Perrett

Overrated

Really not sure - I don't seem to listen out for lyrics in the way I once would have, and for a while now quite a large proportion of my listening is music sans words. 

But in terms of someone for whom the argument is made very much on the basis of the lyrics, I would say Lana Del Rey. 

best gigs (2006)

 some publication asked me the best gigs I ever saw, this is what I said in circa 2006

 

my bloody valentine at ULU

butthole surfers at ULU

orbital at progeny

chemical bros at irving plaza

animal collective at bowery ballroom

young gods at ULU side room

basement jaxx (somewhere in South London? or on the Frying Pan in NYC? or both)

world domination enterprises in croydon 1987 (possibly still the greatest gig i've ever seen)

throwing muses at africa centre 1987

janes addiction at ICA

zapp at hammersmith (so good i went the next day as well - still good but a mistake to go so quickly in succession)

meat puppets at that really gross shabby venue in Hammersmith (clarendon?)

since 2006?

gang of four that same year or thereabouts

buzzcocks and chris and cosey  at Tilburg, Holland festival

scritti politti at bowery ballroom 

the go go's at Hollywood Bowl

LCD Soundsystem at Bowery Ballroom

pre-2006 omissions from the first time round

killing joke - twice (Friars Aylesbury and a place in Dunstable)

adam and the ants (Friars)

23 skidoo (Scamps, Oxford)

bad brains (a big venue in London whose name escapes me)

world of twist at astoria

pulp at a venue in Islington in that moment between "Legendary Girlfriend" and "Babies" when they were just starting to take off

stone roses somewhere in London at their very peak

seefeel (unusual venue in North London, Main also good that night)

PJ harvey at cbgbs

a class of their own: kraftwerk 

(seen them several times - first at Brixton Academy  - the middle one at Roseland NYC might have been best but then I was on one. the most recent, Disney Hall, was spectacular (3D Spex) but the volume was too low)

electrifying for not strictly musical reasons

John Martyn with Danny Thompson at Joe's Pub, NYC, not long before he died

never seen them give a really good concert

smiths or morrissey

far from a complete inventory this.... 

Changed My Life

Ten Records that Changed My Life 

(can't remember who this was done for, or when - 2003?)

 

1/ Sex Pistols, Never Mind the Bollocks, 1977

Awoke me to belief in rock as a revolutionary, world-historical force - a faith I've still not yet fully shaken off.

 

2/ Ian Dury and the Blockheads, New Boots and Panties, 1978

Awoke me to the possibilities of rock as poetic language (Dury) and awoke in me a feeling for funk and disco (Blockheads).

 

3/ Public Image Ltd, Metal Box, 1979

Awoke me to the power of bass weight and dub space,  something that would keep on reverberating across an entire continuum of Jamaica-into-England music, from ska to UK garage.

 

4/ The Byrds, Younger Than Yesterday, heard 1982/released 1967

Awoke me to Sixties psychedelia and its mystical dreams of self-surrender and recovery of the lost child within.

 

5/ The Smiths, "This Charming Man", 1983

Awoke me to Morrissey, the most charismatic frontman and fascinating pop intellect since Bowie, and to the poignant glory of his refusal of the 1980s.

 

6/ Schoolly D, self-titled, 1986

Awoke me to the fact that rap was the major new pop music art form of the Eighties, avant-garde in form and almost Marxist in its coldhearted dissection/dramatisation of the capitalist psyche.

 

7/ Beltram, "Energy Flash", 1990

Awoke me to the dark Dionysian delirium of rave -- to the fact that techno was the new punk, or new heavy metal - either way,  the rock of the future, and the future of rock.

 

8/ Omni Trio, "Renegade Snares (Foul Play Remix)" , 1994

Awoke me to the fact that jungle's breakbeat science was the major new pop artform of the Nineties - regardless of whether it would ever become pop music in the Top Ten hit sense (it wouldn't, but it would get around).

 

9/ Dem 2, "Destiny ", 1997

Awoke me to the fact that jungle's spirit of playful invention had migrated into UK garage and especially its subgenre 2step, which this track defined and blueprinted.

 

10/ Dizzee Rascal, "I Luv U", 2002

Awoke me to the fact that grime (the UK finally coming up with its own ferociously original counterpart to rap) was the major new pop artform of the first decade of the 21st Century.

Atemporal Faves of "2022"

That time of year again, when people make lists and display lists. Musical and otherwise.

Someone of my acquaintance announced on social media that they had winnowed their list down to 118 releases. If this had been in a public place I would have had to stifle a snort. One hundred and eighteen newly released releases – and that is your shortlist? (This is someone in my approximate age range too).

Oh, I can remember making lists of similar size in the late ‘90s and continuing to do so through to the mid-to-late 2000s. I know it's possible to believe sincerely that there are that many likeable and notable releases in a single year. But I also know -  through casting my eye back at some of these lists and having to stifle an incredulous snort at my younger self – that these inventories contain quite a number of recordings about which I now remember virtually nothing. I recall also that a fair few were listened to just the once.  Now it's true that critics develop a freakish capacity for rapid-response assessment of whether a release is interesting or good. Still, a single listen doesn’t seem enough really, if you're going to put it in a list for public display.  There’s a competitive syndrome of ostentatiously liking more - and more varied - things, than the next person; an impulse to seek out things no one else seems to like, or even better, know about. In the 2010s, I tried to reverse these tendencies and cultivate restraint, restricting lists to things that really vividly stood out in the recent memory: records I’d got genuinely stuck on and that seemed (as much as you can predict, which you can't really) to be things that I'd likely be listening to for years to come. 

And then suddenly I didn’t need to make an effort – I simply didn’t like that many things in any given year. 

Nowadays I rarely review records. Uncoupled from release schedules, I don’t listen with a sense of  duty or job-related urgency. But nor is there that FOMO pressure from within: the kind of vocational-existential ravenousness that once drove me on foraging missions. I’ve become more like a regular person who listens to music for pleasure and curiosity. One side effect of that is that I’ve become an increasingly atemporal listener. In 2022, I was as likely to encounter and enjoy a record that came out in 2021 or 2020 as this year. But I was even more likely to hear something for the first time from much further back in time and be blown away by it. Playlists and “your collection” areas in streamers,  YouTube, etc provide traces of my year's listening, but they don’t include vinyl and CD, or files already in my computer. So I've had to rely on memory for the following tally. In no particular order of ranking, chronology, genre, or theme... sometimes accompanied by a short thought or impression, often not... here are my favorite listens of 2022 - only a few of which were made or released in 2022.  

 

Pharaoh Sanders, Jewels of Thought

I’d heard records by Sanders before, but I don’t think I’d ever heard this one – and it hit me as revelation. That warm wide tone.

Knut Wiggen, “Massa”

The entirety of the Electronic Works 1972-75 retrospective – issued a few years ago – is worth a listen, but this track is particularly wigged out.

Nia Archives

A contemporary artist! But one whose work puts into question the whole idea of "the contemporary". My kid Kieran put me onto this. I'm slightly suspicious of my own enjoyment, given that (like PinkPantheress) this is a young woman making jungle and drum & bass -  a genre-era I’ve investments in, you've probably noticed. Beyond my own nostalgia, there’s also a lingering doubt about whether it’s a healthy development for youth today to be makingmusic whose historical heyday was 27 years ago. Even the thing of having her own smoky vocals and songs weaving through it isn’t a totally fresh development (hello Nicolette). But it is absolutely gorgeous stuff – my favorite is probably “Forbidden Feelings” but it’s all very enjoyable. You can hear the whole lot of it here on this YouTube playlist  I made or with better sound and in chronological sequence (although she's only been at it for a little over a year as far as I can tell) in my Tidal playlist (I don’t think you need to be a subscriber)

(Incidentally if you want to get a sense of what's happening in current music - or a corner of current music: hyperpop, soundcloud rap, online micro-genres galore - you would do well to check out Kieran's rundown of the year's highlights, in which a different track by Nia Archives - what an odd name that is!  - features near the top. He's also helpfully made Spotify and YouTube playlists of his 2022 faves) 

Angel Rada – “Carillon”

My fave Creel Pone of this year was The Early Uraniun Recordings+  and in particular the 1983 album Upadesa and in particular particular, this track “Carillon” – a squoinky bubble-bath of  electrobliss.

“Saturn Rings Songs” is another lovely squiggle of synth-froth

More about this Cuban pioneer of “Ethnosonic” music here. 

It was a bumper Creel year with a huge output, lots of doubles and triples, and I haven't really got to grips with it properly. But there were some great things - have a peruse of the recent releases at the site and play the soundclips, starting with the most recent release CNUCE Computer Music which is really cool. The ANS Electronic Music "box" is also brand new and notable, and eerily timely given Eduard Artemyev's death this week

 

Dry Cleaning -  Stumpwork

I feel bad for Dry Cleaning as this excellent album has barely figured on the end of year lists – mystifying to me, as it’s clear that they’ve pulled off that tricky trick of keeping everything good about a beloved debut but twisting things and adding things just enough for it not to feel like reiteration. I suppose the sheer shock impact of a new lyrical voice and delivery that you got with New Long Leg was always going to be hard to pull off again. And the musical approach last time – cold, dry,  slightly claustrophobic – enhanced that impact. Here, the backing boys really come into their own, exploring lots of other textures and feels, and instead of staying within the debut's postpunk zone they are referencing other historical phases of guitar reinvention / uninvention like lo-fi and bliss-rock. “Anna Calls from the Arctic” is gorgeously ethereal, a whole new mood and flow for Dry Cleaning. The second half of “Conservative Hell” (the escape from hell?) is a glowspace of abstract dream-noise worthy of A**l P**k’s The Doldrums. The dirgescapes of “Liberty Log” and “Icebergs” are wonderfully expansive ways to bring the album to its close, pointing to a third album that I for one am excited to hear.

 James Blake, “If The Car Besides You Moves Ahead”

Surprised that this quavering and glimmering "ballad"doesn’t appear to be widely heralded as some kind of career peak and pinnacle of ecstatic vocal science. I suddenly hear it as a 21st Century inverted answer record to "Roadrunner" - fragile, anxious, out of love with the modern world. 

Pause for the Cause: London Rave Adverts 1991-1996, Vol. 1 + Vol. 2

Erroneously reported in at least one place as a compilation compiled by me – in actual fact, Luke Owen, the man behind Death Is Not The End, assembled these glorious collations of pirate  radio adverts for raves and club nights. But I did contribute a couple of  choice ads. And also donated a liner note, reproduced here

  

Brothers Johnson, “Strawberry Letter 23”

And so I find myself thrilling to some Lee Ritenour lickmanship

John Barry - The More Things Change (Film, TV & Studio Work 1968-1972)

Bob Stanley, a-sifting and a-sorting.

  

Sidney Sager and the Ambrosian Singers - Children of the Stones

Jonny Trunk, a-digging and a-exhuming and a-rights-procuring. 

 

 

 Duncan Browne, “Chloe in the Garden”

Metronomy – “The Look”

An odd thing about my favorite records of the year from the mid-2000s onwards is that – as I become more occupied with books than with regularly reviewing records - quite often I never actually get to write anything substantive about the record that turns out to be the one I listened to the most and out of which I derived the greatest delight. Black Moth Super Rainbow’s Dandelion Gum, I wrote a tiny review; there was an end-of-year appreciation of The Good, the Bad and the Queen, also brief . But then Micachu and the Shapes’s Jewellery, Rangers’s Suburban Tours, Metronomy’s The English Riviera – these are records I’ve emitted not a public peep about, beyond a few words on the blog and often not even that. And these are enduring records, returned to many times over the years. Perhaps that is precisely because I’ve never been obliged to think about why I like them so much, to tease out how they work or what is unique or new about them. (With reviewing a record, there is always a danger of using it up – playing it so much during the review process, extracting images and ideas from it… in more cases than you’d probably imagine, I’ve literally never played the album again, after reviewing it).  The non-reviewed record enters a protective enclosure of pure, unreflective enjoyment. (Well, being wired the way I am, there will inevitably be the odd thought or trope).   Metronomy’s wonderful English Riviera got some play this year, and “The Look” went into very heavy rotation.  I’m not even sure why I like it so much. I don’t really know what the song is about. “The look”  - is that when ravers’s eyes meet, the look of complicity and shared ooh-gosh bliss?  “Just remember how we shook, shook / And all the things we took, took”  does suggest drug adventures. Or perhaps it's the look of "let's go for it" - let the night ignite. But the rest of the lyric? Don’t know, don’t really care.  Whenever we play it, I always notice, as if for the first time, the drums and how perfect they are – a simple beat, really, but with a great, loose swing, and the individual parts of the kit are beautifully recorded (Joseph Mount used to make a sort of drum & bass type music before Metronomy became a band-band, right? I don't actually know much about the group or have ever felt the urge to find out). The beat dovetails sublimely with the other elements as they enter – the bobbing 'n' dipping carousel-like keyboard, the chiming curls of high-toned bass. It all adds up – almost literally adds up – to this immaculate construction. A career-defining creation. The lines “And to think they said / We'd never make anything better than this” must surely ring out strangely for Mount whenever he has to sing them at some festival or other.  Because they wouldn’t and they haven’t. But how could they? Besides, most bands, most artists, never attain this altitude even once.  

 

The Good, the Bad, and the Queen - “Three Changes”

Talking of which…. The drums, the drums, the drums. 

Huerco S.  – “Plonk I”

There’s a pained beauty to the plucked-sounding irregular patterns of “Plonk I”, like a player tentatively grappling with a harp that's been fitted with serrated strings, as somebody said. (Rest of the album is also excellent).

A.C. Marias, “One Of Our Girls Has Gone Missing” (the single and the album)

A real snowblinder of a single, as somebody said. Whole album is lost treasure. 

Robert Haigh, Human Remains

 People Like Us, “World of Wonder (Why We’re Here)”

Inducing a hyper-ventilating high through saturating the ear with treble frequencies (falsetto, female vocal harmonies, strings, etc), this is a swoony samplescape on a par with The Avalanches's Since I Left You. A celebration of the consoling power of pop's prettiness.  

Moon Wiring Club – Medieval Ice Cream 

At once dependable and a departure. What you want in one of your favorite artists. 

Nick Edwards - Landfill Elektronikz Vol. 1 

Santana, Lotus

Really not far from the Miles Davis live albums of this era. Yes, I was surprised too. 

Burial, Antidawn

The mark of achieved style for an artist is when you can be parodied – by yourself as much as by others.  Rather than formulaic or deja, though, this impacts with feels-like-the-first-time freshness. And it doesn’t hurt that the hurt in this music - Burial's music’s signature mood of orphaned desolation - fits the raw-feeling fragility of life in these times.

Wet Leg – “Oh No,” "Chaise Longue" etc

Perhaps it’s the image, the droll dry vocals,  the amusing / annoying lyrics  (annoying in the case of “Oh No” – or so I’m told, anyway, by members of the same generation, who know what is cringe and what is not ), perhaps these things get in the way.  But I feel that it is rarely remarked how beautiful - as rock music – the best Wet Leg tunes are – a sense of glistening tensile structure that puts me in mind of Buzzcocks’s “stainless steel love songs”, Chairs Missing Wire, even Neu! in moments... 

Solange, When I Get Home

Brian Eno, FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE 

Doja Cat, "Juicy" 

Simply the loveliest pop song of the last five years. The horchata-like savory-sweetness of Doja's voice, the silky-slinky curls 'n' folds of the rhythmelody, the spangle-stuff entwined around that pert groove - "Juicy" is possibly the most gorgeous thing of its approximate sort since Tinashe's "2 On". And yet... the lyrics are profane ("body-positive" my ass, or rather her ass)... the video is gross... DC seems to be a fairly objectionable figure. Still, whenever it's comes on the radio, I manage to push all that out of my mind. 

Nilüfer Yanya - "trouble" 

 

Nervous / gorgeous. The whole album is good stuff but this is the pearl. 

Ernest Hood, Back to the Woodlands 

A lovely extension to the Neighbourhoods sound 

Bobby Brown, The Enlightening Beam

 

Curtis Mayfield, “Pusherman”

Herbie Hancock, “Bubbles”

Mahavishnu  Orchestra, “You Know, You Know”

Weather Report, “Non-Stop Home”, “125^th Street Congress”, “Cucumber Slumber”

Kool and the Gang, “Summer Madness”

Idris Muhammad, “Piece of Mind”

The Crusaders featuring Randy Crawford, “Street Life”

(the above and a heap of that kind of 70s smoov groov collated here)  

Al Green, “Love Ritual”

Bill Frisell, In Line

Devo - Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! 

As radical a reinvention / revitalization of rock form as any mounted at that time. 

And also the second album’s  “Clockout” - mostly for the drum roll.

Wire, Chairs Missing

As radical a reinvention / revitalization of rock form as any mounted at that time. 

Also the third album's "The 15th" and "Map Ref 41 Degrees N 93 Degrees W" 

Nineties Nuum

This year, like every year, I listened to a huge amount of hardcore, darkcore, jungle, etc and amazingly still managed to hear for the very first time a number of minor delights and the occasional astonishing tune that somehow I'd never come across in the previous 30 years of listening to, collecting, thinking about, and returning to again and again.  So much music was made then it is still possible to have discoveries. Even the second-division and third-division specimens are charged with the electricity of the Zeitgeist. Extracting this year's discoveries and rediscoveries from memory is challenging, so habitual and engrained is my listening to this area. Things come and go, get remembered and then forgotten again.

But I did reimmerse deeply with the genius of Gurley and in particular his Rogue Unit remixes, collated here. 

I rediscovered Cold Mission's compact, immaculate body of work right at the start of the year - artcore without any rufige removed or smoothed away

That then propelled me into a daft personal project of listening to the entire Reinforced discography (well, up to a certain date). Only some of that first half-90s surgeburst of scenius is gathered here. Not forgetting the often glorious Tom and Jerry stuff - a second front of dancefloor-aimed material opened up by 4 Hero under an alias. 

                                          

(The second half of the RIVET '90s is partially collated here , and then again as a crowd-sourced highlight reel here, while my struggles with it are explored here).   

Out of all the Reinforced-related wonderwork, this tune struck me again most forcefully as a miracle: the 4 Hero remix of Scarface's "Seen A Man Die."  It even made me listen finally to the original Scarface tune and its album.