Rarebit Nutter

Every other year I make a resolution to participate more in Watmm but never seem to follow it through. Anyway for what it’s worth here’s my picks of the year in no particular order. Lots more I could mention, but these are all stand-outs Electronic James Holden - Imagine this is a Higher Dimensional Space; probably my pick of the year if I had to choose, just a really excellent, experimental electronic album with one foot in rave culture Nathan Micay - To the God Named Dream; bright, symphonic, unabashedly retro breakbeat rave with a classical bent Craven Faults - Standers; longform analogue electro, better than the previous one Surgeon - Crash Recoil; techno that’s cerebral yet pounding as always Fennesz & Ozmotic; Senzatempo; lovely ambient noise μ-Ziq - 1977; one of his most surprising albums Gacha Bakradze - Pancakes; sprightly beats and expansive melodies, early 90s golden-age influences Doc Sleep - Birds (in my mind anyway); lovely dubby, post-clubby techno Ceephax Acid Crew - Baddow Moods; came out last year but I feel like it missed out on any AOTY lists. Just epic stuff from Andy The Black Dog - The Grey Album; cool live-sounding techno Lee Gamble - Models; beautiful AI-driven acapella ambient Otik - Cosmosis; just really good dance music, kind of Daniel Avery-esque but with a bit of a psychedelic flavour The Chemical Brothers - For that Beautiful Feeling; feels like a return to 90s glory days Future Sound of London - Environment 7.003; I’ve nowhere near kept up with their post 90s stuff but this feels very recognisably the work of the same creative force that produced those classic releases Forest Swords - excellent third album, that stays true to the aesthetic of the project but develops new ideas too Non-Electronic Nation of Language - Strange Disciple; synth pop trio go from strength to strength Sparklehorse - Bird Machine; really lovely posthumous collection, up there with his best imho though a bit more polished production-wise Blur - Ballad of Darren; not my favourite Blur album (saying that as a lifelong fan), but feels like the Blur album we deserve in 2023 Steve Mason - Brothers & Sisters; former Beta Band frontman sounding as confident and assured as ever Bar Italia - Tracey Denim; scuzzy influence-heavy slacker indie Nabihah Iqbal - Dreamer; shoegaze meets new-wave, spoken-word vox and some electronic tracks. Shouldn’t work as an album but does. Looking forward to spending the next few weeks digging into everything else in this thread. As a perennial lurker, thanks for all the recommendations!

Enjoying this, thanks for the recommendation. Fans of Monolake would find much to appreciate here, I feel

I love Mas Amable, and am sensing from the comments above that this release is worth checking out. Disappointing it's not a full length release but maybe he has one on the way...

I meant to add this to my list, epic stuff

I've taken a lot of recommendations from watmm over the years from these kinds of thread. And 2021 was the first year in a very long time where I've kept somewhere close to up to date on new releases, so for what it's worth here's my list... Top pick: Gazelle Twin & NYX Drone Choir - Deep England Just the most remarkable album I've heard all year: serene, terrifying, hilarious. Can't recommend enough. Instant classic of the year: Dry Cleaning - New Long Leg Might not be a popular choice on Watmm but I love it - love the lyrics, love her voice, love the music. Other electronic releases I've listened to a lot Skee Mask - Pool Andy Stott - Never the right time Mu-ziq & Mrs Jynx - Secret Garden Darkside - Spiral Space Afrika - Honest Labour Daniel Avery - Together in Static Lone - Always Inside your Head Leon Vynehall - Rare, Forever Gacha Bakradze - Obscure Languages Loraine James - Reflection Ulrich Schnauss & Jonas Munk - Eight Fragments of an Illusion Facta - Blush Nightmares on Wax - Shout out to Freedom Moritz von Oswald Trio - Dissent Bands Clinic - Fantasy Island Spirit of the Beehive - Entertainment, Death Nation of Language - A Way Forward Pond - 9 Low - Hey What Vanishing Twin - Ooki Gekkou Damon Albarn - Nearer the Fountain... Now to go back and check out all the other amazing music I missed from this year...

argh! and I was doing so well.... lovely stuff. Added to the to-do list....

this is very lovely indeed. "Loss" in particular is a real standout. Never heard anything by Mrs Jynx before, but if it's anything like this I'll be sure to check it out. And not that it's an equivalent comparison, but I prefer this to Scurlage...

This was definitely my first impression too; the pair of tracks at both the beginning and end of the record fall into this trap a bit. I feel like maybe he set out using that new-agey ethereal ambience as inspiration, something to send up and give his 'twist' on it....but then just ended up sounding exactly like the thing he was trying to pastiche. I still think the more upbeat tracks across the middle are up there with his best though....not anything particularly original, just doing a certain sound very very well. Overall, Galaxy Garden is easily his top album for me - it just sounds so much more distinctive and original than anything else I've heard by him. Always takes me to magical retro/futuristic rainforest rave...just like the cover art.

have been enjoying Invariant a great deal over the last few weeks, thanks for the original recommendation species8472 !

yep this is awesome, and beautifully reminiscent of Formless, which is an all-time favourite of mine too. Ideal listening as winter closes in; though I guess it's supposed to be about emerging from stasis rather than re-entering it, as we seem poised to do in the UK..

don't know how I missed this, what a pleasant surprise though. On hearing the first track I was worried he'd turned into a full-on cheese merchant, but then that familiar Lone-sound kicks in. Mouth to God is a straight up banger as well

does anyone who's going to this know if we can submit questions beforehand? I couldn't see anywhere in the booking info, so I guess that means the questions are all pre-selected....

I'm finding AAI patchy to be honest. There's a couple of great tracks on there: Artificial Authentic, Latent Space, some of the others in the middle. But the noisy interludes don't really do that much for me, and in the whole last third of the album there's only really one proper track. And then the machine monologues are kind of interesting in their own right but they don't massively add to the music. I feel they might've been better kept separate. Anyway...I don't like to knock something too much that's only just come out. Maybe some of it is just going over my head little

same here. Totally passed me by before but can't stop listening to No More Dreams now. Such a lovely melancholic 80s degraded synth feel, which I can't seem to get enough of. I love how between a couple of tracks there's the very faint sounded of muffled beats, like he's recorded over the same tape multiple times. You can hear it right at the end of No More Dreams IV and V..

Will definitely have to check this out; been enjoying his Telomic Ghost LP a lot lately, real nice crackly Basic Channel kind of vibe to it