It may be the opening trip-hop-esque beat and jangling guitar that fixes the 90s in my head when listening to this but then I’m more than up for a revival of that era. Elsewhere, for example on A Vision and Dreamliner, Avalon’s background as a techno/house DJ is more apparent but the album rarely breaks a sweat. The melodies seem beamed in from a more innocent time (check out Astrology Poisoning) and the vocals are delivered with a heavy-lidded sigh. Cute without being saccharine, this is a lovely little dream pop treat.
Another low-key-ish album that I just kept enjoying every time I came back to it. Daughter‘s dream pop songs grow from hushed beginnings to climaxes that are bracing and arresting like stepping outside on a cold sunny day. The production is lovely and rich, with swirls of strings and synths wrapping around the delicate yet anthemic vocals.
It was very early in January 2023 when this article caught my eye, talking about a “cheeky dance producer who’s been mistaken for Aphex Twin.” I’m not sure who mistook her, because this is nothing like Aphex Twin – perhaps one of the most distinctive and singular producers ever – but the (more apt) comparisons with The Avalanches were enough to make me want to investigate further. Turns out there is a lot to investigate. In DJ Sabrina’s world, more is more. Charmed, as discussed in the above article, is 31 tracks and just over 3 hours long; I also picked up The Makin’ Magick II Album, The Other Realm and Bewitched!, all of which are double CDs. Then, in August, she released Destiny – an over-four-hour, 41 track set that was eventually released on triple CD. You can question whether this volume of output is necessary but it is clearly part of her modus operandi where everything is a monument to excess. The general vibe (and vibe is a very important thing in DJ Sabrina world) is like ‘Hallmark house’ – house music made with samples from the Hallmark channel: cheesy, heartfelt dialogue from straight-to-TV films, saxophone (or guitar) solos (or both), chord-progressions straight out of power-ballads, often all at the same time so it sounds like five songs are playing at once. The long albums play like mixtapes from a parallel world, albeit a parallel world where it is still the 90s and culture is way less cynical than it is now. As you may well be thinking, “where on earth do I start with all this,” if I could recommend one track as a starting point it would be Call You from Bewitched! [Destiny is linked below that]
James Holden – Imagine This Is A High Dimensional Space Of All Possibilities
James Holden always seems worth paying attention to. He’s not prolific and obviously puts a lot of time and attention into creating albums that have a real narrative behind them. 2013’s The Inheritors used pagan imagery and self-generative sounds suggesting ghosts in his machines; 2017’s super The Animal Spirits added live wind instruments and a tribal feel. Imagine This Is A High Dimensional Space Of All Possibilities brings it all together and somehow manages to live up to both its labyrinthine title and its cosily psychedelic cover illustration. He has created a kind of pastoral trance music which is strongly rhythmic without beats taking centre stage. His ever-changing filters – which may well be more than partly out of his control – have a genuinely organic quality to them, resulting in music that sounds inspired by wind blowing through trees and ripples on ponds as much as it does dance-floors and raves in fields.
When he’s not releasing under his own name, this is Louis Cole‘s other project – a collaboration with Genevieve Artadi. The vibe of this is very similar to last year’s spectacular Quality Over Opinion, albeit with Genevieve’s vocals rather than his own. Effervescent, richly orchestrated jazz-funk-indie-pop, elevated by stunning musicianship, great composition and brilliantly zany lyrics. There’s a real joy in hearing music as rhythmically tight as this, with some absolutely jaw-dropping drumming and piano solos. As with Quality Over Opinion, the slower songs (e.g. Real Nice Moment, Crash The Car) don’t let the side down at all, which is a testament to the great writing. An all-round riot.
A lesson in not judging a book by its cover. One glance at the name of the artist and the cover and I had immediately pegged this as r’n’b (not my thing) and dismissed it. To be fair, with the number of albums getting released every week, one needs some kind of filtering system – I think artists, in general, have probably generally got quite good at using their cover art to subconsciously signal to their target listeners. Anyway, my instinct was proved wrong on this occasion, and happily so. It was just chance that, a few weeks after its release, my eye caught a mention of guitar playing (which I didn’t expect it to involve) in a review which led to me reading the whole review and heading over to Bandcamp to check it out. This is much more dream pop than r’n’b, although shedoes have a voice well suited to the latter. It’s the harmonic progressions here that are beautifully, ear-catchingly weird and unlike anyone else I’ve heard.
In my long-running tradition of including an album in my year-end list that wasn’t released in that calendar year, this is doubly cheeky because I actually bought this at the back end of 2021 – now nearly two years ago. As tends to happen with albums I buy digitally, it fell through the cracks a bit and it wasn’t until this year that I fully appreciated how good it was – so good, in fact, that I bought it on a physical format (vinyl only, unfortunately), so I have now paid for it twice. Oh well! This is deliciously deep and inviting home-listening techno. Early highlight Submerged gains momentum from a lovely octave jump in the bass-line before the delightfully shimmery keyboards gradually join in. Later, Thunder Road utilises a similar octave trick but this time as a regular pulse at a more insistent tempo that contrasts with the slow-moving, wistful chords that alternate over the top, before gradually ushering in a gentle melody line. And so on. Lovely stuff and particularly beguiling on headphones.
The sound of a band growing old gracefully. It’s quite a slight album at only 42 minutes, with such a hushed sense of calm that the first couple of goes at it passed me by completely. A more dedicated listen on headphones allowed it to shine in its very patient and elegant way.
I absolutely don’t have anything profound to add about Sufjan Stevens that hasn’t already been covered in the many gushing reviews about this album. Since 2015’s spellbinding Carrie & Lowell, I haven’t kept up with every single one of his releases. Some of what he does, I love, but not everything – 2020’s The Ascension, like The Age Of Adz (2010), buried his songwriting in sometimes-overbearing electronic arrangements. The cover of 2021’s A Beginner’s Mind was so hideous as to be completely off-putting; neither did I sample Convocations (2020) – a 49-track, five “volume” instrumental release representing the five stages of grief – or his 2023 ballet score, Reflections. However, Javelin is a welcome return to what many (myself included) consider to be his best form, although as he rarely, if ever, retreads ground, this sounds both new and familiar. These excellent songs combine the hushed finger-picking tones of Carrie & Lowell with more expansive arrangements, often changing direction dramatically whilst holding back from the overbearing excess I mentioned earlier.
LostMeow 