10. Caroline Shaw – Narrow Sea
So much new composition seems to make connections between contemporary minimalism and early music. Narrow Sea sees Pulitzer prize-winning composer Shaw create a very American variety of antique minimalism, featuring opera soprano Dawn Upshaw. The ancient folk song Wayfaring Stranger and other Sacred Harp hymns are placed in a disorientating sonic environment, with Gilbert Kalish providing discordant piano and the New York ensemble Sō Percussion switching between Steve Reich-ish marimbas and atmospheric effects on ceramic pots, water bowls and dulcimers.
9. Robert Ames – Change Ringing
Robert Ames, founder of the London Contemporary Orchestra, is a crucial connector in modern music, the arranger and conductor linking Jonny Greenwood, Frank Ocean, Little Simz, Jónsi and Actress with contemporary minimalists. His solo debut Change Ringing features six meditative, drone-based pieces, but the highlights are Tympanum and Rounds, where Ames’s slow-motion, multilayered approach gets more microtonal and harmonically complex.
8. Spindle Ensemble – Inkling
Bristol’s intriguing Spindle Ensemble feature composer and pianist Daniel Inzani backed by vibes, violin and cello. Their second LP showcases some compelling Philip Glass-style minimalism but also pushes into Morricone-esque exotica, Japanese-inflected country and western and Satie-ish romanticism.
7. KMRU – Logue
The Bandcamp page of KMRU – a sound artist based between Berlin and Nairobi, AKA Joseph Kamaru – is always worth checking out for ambient textures. Logue, the third of five mini-albums he released this year, is an addictive mix of meditative electronica, slow-motion synth-pop and bucolic field recordings from east Africa.
6. Gazelle Twin & NYX – Deep England
Gazelle Twin’s 2018 album Pastoral was a febrile journey into the heart of middle England, mixing menacing folk chants, thuggish techno and satirical lyrics, with vocalist, composer and producer Elizabeth Bernholz serving as a retro-futurist court jester. Deep England sees her collaborating with the six-piece drone choir NYX to turn the album’s themes into drumless, paganistic a cappella soundscapes, filled with eerie pitch-shifted vocals, mouth percussion, microtonal harmonies and endless layers of reverb. Read the full review.
5. Ichiko Aoba – Windswept Adan
This Japanese singer, songwriter and guitarist is best known for her wonderfully wayward take on bossa nova, but her first collaboration with pianist and composer Taro Umebayashi is a marked change in direction. Beautifully played and sung, it is a soundtrack to an imaginary film; a dreamlike conceptual voyage through the East China Sea; and a piece of orchestral music that slyly references Erik Satie, Philip Glass, Astrud Gilberto and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan while maintaining a unique artistic vision.
4. Blank Gloss – Melt
The latest by this Sacramento duo is a fascinating addition to the burgeoning genre of ambient Americana. It reassembles the defining sonic tropes of American roots music (woozy pedal steel, slurring fiddles, brushed drums and reverb-drenched electric guitar) as disembodied sounds put through an ambient filter. Where so much electronica conjures up concrete brutalism, this suggests huge skies and dust-dry roads; it’s the sound of Harold Budd, Dick Dale and Pat Metheny melting in the Mojave sun. Read the full review.
3. Space Afrika – Honest Labour
The third proper album by the Manchester duo is a truly immersive voyage – 19 tracks of manipulated field recordings, synth drones, haunted bass lines and barely there breakbeats. The spoken-word tracks have a certain Mancunian swagger but most of the record comprises icy, futuristic instrumentals which seem to distil the most ominous sonic implications of dubstep and drill without using any beats at all.
2. Stick in the Wheel – Tonebeds for Poetry
Best known for their punky, London-accented folk music, this LP sees the Walthamstow duo draw from their background in experimental electronica to provide a psychogeographic voyage through the capital. Anglo-Saxon poems are recast as sludge metal; ancient cockney nursery rhymes become sinister pieces of digital minimalism; urban field recordings are turned into terrifying pieces of musique concrète. This is music that draws from 1,000 years of history, fed through a portal into a dystopian future.
1. Floating Points/Pharoah Sanders/London Symphony Orchestra – Promises
Promises is a remarkable three-way collaboration that is simultaneously an orchestral suite, a piece of free improvisation and a groundbreaking electronic masterpiece. Yet none of those definitions really do it justice: this is a haunting piece of sound art that slowly seduces you over its 47-minute duration, using drones, frictionless modal jazz improvisations and a constantly mutating baroque harpsichord riff, all the time slowing down your perceptions of time and space. Read the full review.
