2021 Review: Top Tunes (Part 1)
First part of my Top Tunes of 2021 - this year, in a format where each entry comes with a bonus track that is somehow related (in my head at least). There should be three or four parts in total. Click through the links to buy on bandcamp (where possible) and enjoy!
Hassan Abou Alam – It Spills [Naive]
The first time that huge bassline comes in, 60 seconds into ‘It Spills’, is one of the most explosively wonky moments of the year. The stop-start structure of the track is also highly unusual (in a good way). And then there’s the way Alam briefly teases in some beautiful keys well past the halfway mark, persuading us for a moment that this otherwise pounding track is in fact all sweetness and light. Then that bassline comes back in.
+ BONUS
Where ‘It Spills’ smuggles beauty into wonk, ‘Gemini’ kind of does the opposite. Released on Jaye Ward and Ranks’ PLU (People Like Us) label at the very end of 2020, the track’s initial simplicity and pretty harp motif are instantly appealing, but as it progresses some serious wonkiness starts to emerge. I’m assuming the title is a nod to the great Spencer Kincy and in the case of this track I think it’s fully warranted.
New Air Pigments – Pigments In The Air [Ritual Acquaintance]
Ritual Acquaintance is a label succeeding on excellent music, a DIY aesthetic and a good helping of mystery. Anonymous aliases, minimal old-school promotion (check the thermal printed stickers and the bare bones website), incredible tunes. Of course the party bangers found elsewhere on these releases are of the highest quality, but it’s the beatless meditations – this one and ‘Spelling’ on the first EP from 2020 – that set the label apart. ‘Pigments In The Air’ is half swirling ocean, half calm sea, all of it shimmering. You can feel the waves lapping at your feet. That it occupies a whole side of the record is a statement in itself, which I hope indicates further moves in this direction from its mysterious author.
+ BONUS
Kellon – Zambique [Spillway]
‘Now ceased trading’ is what it has said on Spillway’s discogs page since late 2020, leaving the label’s six-record catalogue as a contemporary instance of that early 90s archetype: labels with faceless or confusing aliases that burned briefly but very brightly. I’m thinking Big Sound Works (four releases), Zodiac Trax (only three), New Ground Dance Division (seven) and so on. ‘Zambique’ is attributed to Kellon but could just as well be by Neuron Network or Polycron (from SPILL05), its refined and updated Detroit formula managing to transcend pastiche entirely and becoming simply a timeless track. What next for Kellon? We wait expectantly…
Decada 2 – Exstasy Bondage [Philoxenia]
I’ve written about this LP in a Midweek Mixes as well as in a blurb for Say What Magazine, so I won’t add much more here. It’s a striking reissue both sonically and visually and I continue to find new angles in its multifaceted sound, which is basically 80s and 90s European rave music seen from an outsider perspective. My pick is ‘Extasy Bondage’, which stands out for its slanted Cab Vol swagger and suggestive vocals.
+ BONUS
Banana Moon – Tie Me Up [Funnuvojere]
Besides guiding the Decada 2 LP into the world, Philoxenia label head Luigi Di Venere this year also collabed with Massimiliano Pagliara on a 4-tracker as Banana Moon. Like Decada 2, the Delphinium Blue EP straddles 80s and 90s genres though of course now with an updated production sound. There’s house of the disco/hip, acid and dream varieties, and, on my favourite track ‘Tie Me Up’, a hefty dose of EBM. File alongside ‘Extasy Bondage’ for those times you get booked to play at a sex party and feel like being overly literal about it.
The People In The Fog – New Period [Sound Of Vast]
I don’t really know much about The People In The Fog, but I do know that their album closer ‘New Period’ is one of the tracks that has given me the most pleasure to play this year. Indeed, at one particularly stressful and frankly not very gratifying gig this summer, when I was being harassed about playing harder and faster stuff, my response was to stick this on – as soft and gentle a “fuck you!” as I could think of at the time. The complainers weren’t happy, but as soon as that deep and warm bassline came in I certainly was. So thanks, The People In The Fog, and “fuck you!” (again), bad ravers!
+ BONUS
‘Select A’ hits the same breaksy-dreamy sweet spot as ‘New Period’ but is a little harder-edged. It drives things forwards, especially at those moments when almost everything drops out except the breakbeats and then it all drops back in again. I played this early on in my sets at both Dimensions and CDV this autumn and it really helped set my mood. (I also reviewed this record and its Unruh 01 counterpart earlier this year so go and read that if you want the full lowdown.)
Lukey – Other Worlds Vol. 1 EP [Carpet/Lab]
Combine the well-documented failings of the pressing plant business with the added complications of covid and you have a pretty strong argument for not bothering with vinyl at all – and that’s without even mentioning the environment. Yet here we are still making and buying records. I even started a bloody record label, under the wing of Carpet Distribution here in Lisbon.
Jorge and Rui from Carpet produce and distribute music on vinyl because they believe in its experiential value. Yes vinyl can sometimes seem like the sacred cow of an established and in many ways exclusive system. But it is also emblematic of craft, creativity, exchange and persistence – and it remains a vital format through which to appreciate and conserve dance music culture.
It’s exactly these arguments we made when Carpet applied (successfully!) for emergency cultural funding earlier this year. That’s why the new releases – including this one by Irish producer Lukey – have the funding logos on the back of the sleeves. It’s a source of pride to me that we fought for these releases at a time when it would have been easy to give up. It helps to believe wholeheartedly in the music itself, and I can say with some assurance that this record is one of the best of its kind this year.
+ BONUS
ADMNTi – Hypersphere [Dansu Discs]
A story to bring my high-flown rhetoric down to earth while illustrating my point. At the Ritmo party at Star Lane a few months ago ADMNTi introduced himself and gave me this record as a gift, for which I was very grateful. How did I show this gratitude? I left the record on a bench at the back of the room next to my rucksack, from where it promptly slipped out of its sleeve and got wedged between the bench and the wall. I found it in this position about five hours later, scuffed but (thankfully) not irredeemably so. I got it home, cleaned it up and proceeded to play it at pretty much every gig since.
You can’t drop a WAV down the back of a bench now can you.