Continuing on in my efforts to catch up with 2020, are the six electronic albums that have called me back the most. Listen to tracks from all them here or below, along with samples from the last post. For a wider view, scroll down for the full Of Note In 2020 (Electronic) playlist.
Roger Eno & Brian Eno - Mixing Colors Roger's name is first on this gleaming collection of electronic miniatures so I'm going to credit him with adding both melody and concision, two elements often lacking from Brian's recent albums. That's not always a bad thing, as no one else can put together an hour of generative ambiance like Eno did with Lux near the beginning of the last decade. But it was no accident that it was his more songful Small Craft On A Milk Sea that wound up on my list of the best of the 2010's. Mixing Colors is charming throughout, even nodding to Satie at times, and a dazzling display of textural variety. Even when Roger's piano comes to the fore, the sonics are likely the product of many wise choices. It's too easy to take Eno's genius for granted these days and not appreciate the music for what it is. Lose yourself in Mixing Colors long enough and who made it won't matter - but your environment may be transformed.
Seabuckthorn - Through A Vulnerable Occur If a shaft of light powers through a dense thicket to the forest floor, does it make a sound? Probably not, but if it did it might sound like this gorgeous album from Andy Cartwright. As he did on his last, A House With Too Much Fire, Cartwright treats his guitar and various other stringed instruments, building them up with loops and layers into something both monumental and diaphanous. While his music is great at painting pictures inside my eyelids, for some external visual information take a look at the accompanying art book by Australian photographer Sophie Gabrielle. You may just find it the perfect gift for that special someone with adventurous tastes. That special someone may also be you. I won't judge! Either way, delve into the world of Seabuckthorn however you can as there is literally no one else doing what he does.
Beatrice Dillon - Workaround You could breeze through this album and think all the tracks, though beautiful, are kind of the same. But further listening reveals nuances among the eely bass lines, crisp percussion, and chill keyboards. Clever samples abound, like the tabla of Kuljit Bhamra or the cello of Lucy Railton, but the experience is all Dillon and it is sublime. I'm no audio snob but I really lost myself in the sound when it bloomed in my Grado SR60 headphones, which is now my preferred method to listen to this dazzling debut.
Matt Evans - New Topographics Mea culpa - in a post earlier this year I called Evans "one of the best drummers alive," which is now revealed by this astonishing album as a severe undersell. Not only is Evans a master percussionist (catch him with Tigue or Bearthoven) but he is a deep thinker and sonic architect like few others. Taking inspiration from the high-concept thoughts of Timothy Morton, which classify massive classes of sometimes immaterial things - climate, the internet, styrofoam - as "hyperobjects," and a Richard Brautigan poem that pictures us "freed" to rejoin our mammal cousins while being babysat by robots, Evans constructs little landscapes of sound out of field recordings, percussion, and electronics. There's a cinematic structure to the album, too, with the bright, busy charms of the first three tracks giving way to the tense, nervous mood of Cold Moon. By the end, an equilibrium is reached, but it remains ambiguous. That's what I heard, anyway, you can choose just to toy with the marvelous textures as they go by. This also sounds great on headphones, but almost seems mastered for laptop - listening on my MacBook creates a space where sounds are spread in a radius of at least two feet. Or maybe infinity, held back only by my own biology. Don't let yours hold you back from hearing this masterpiece.
Nnux - Ciudad The project of Ana López-Reyes, Nnux was one of my favorite discoveries of 2018, and this short album is yet another example of why she grabbed me from first listen. The incantatory singing and nearly baroque electronics are in full force on several of the tracks, but I also hear new developments. She's giving her voice more room to breathe in parts, while also revealing more of her Mexican heritage on something like the title song, which has the ghosts of old ballads in its DNA. It's been a thrilling experience to be in Nnux's slipstream the last couple of years and I suggest you join me.
Yaeji - What We Drew Queens-born, raised in Seoul and now based in Brooklyn, Yaeji has been scattering singles and mixtapes like sweet little crumbs over the last several years, building a following that includes over one million monthly listeners on Spotify. Now she gives all those hungry ears the full cake with her delightful debut album. Pulling on at least the last 40 years of electronically-infused song craft, from house and drum'n'bass to hip hop and more avant garde realms, she proves the ruler of all she surveys, bringing a deliciously light touch to every tone, texture, and melody.
Keep up with everything I'm tracking in this category - and whatever comes next - here or below.
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