Patrick Clarke
, January 29th, 2021 12:00
The new year brings a continuation of old miseries, but a resurgence of extraordinarily good music. Here s our guide to the best albums and tracks of a particularly strong month
I m not sure why, but in a year so far as disastrous as the last, in which musicians fortunes continue to plummet to the point that total collapse looms as a real possibility, the art they ve been releasing sounds stronger than ever.
From Sleaford Mods blistering career-best new album, to anti-colonialist duo Divide And Dissolve s unbelievably powerful cascades of crushing doom, to The Body s latest head-melting extremity, music has provided plenty of necessary catharsis.
Jennifer Lucy Allan
, January 27th, 2021 09:21
Jennifer Lucy Allan enjoys extended versions of Don Cherry tracks, architectural ambience from Romania, French bagpipes, gnarly dancehall and Welsh dub this January
Alina Kalancea
This month I’ve got a lot of music to catch up on, so there’s as much in my intro as there is in the actual reviews. Since Christmas and New Year is the only time I step off the new release train, I spend a month listening to music without a care for when it came out. I stockpiled for a cancelled Christmas by buying all three volumes of Jamaican doo-wop from Death Is Not The End, and a hand stamped paper bag containing five CD-Rs by Tuluum Shimmering, which was the best £10 I’ve spent in a very long time – their latest is my first entry for this month’s column.