This issue is reflecting back on the calendar year in music. Rather than trying to rank works of art (because y’doi!), I've written about albums that really resonated with me personally. I tried to stick to things I haven’t seen covered too much elsewhere + a few I just couldn’t resist including. What I noticed while trying to write about these albums is that a lot of them contain a kind of emotional suppleness that I found comforting and/or a sense of playfulness I found intriguing.
ICYMI, last month I started an Instagram account for Music Regular. Then I announced and promptly sold-out of a series of short-run, two-dollar mixtapes that I’d put together for Expozine. I’m hoping IG can facilitate new ways of sharing music and interacting with folks, so I encourage you to go follow it and share it around. And in case yr worried—don’t be: the math on a $2 tape does not a profit make. The Reg will never be about putting money in my own pocket.
As ever, please consider supporting the artists + labels that excite you in a way that befits your financial capacities.
click on the covers to listen or go your own way ~~
M. Sage with The Spinnaker Ensemble - The Wind Of Things | M. Sage - Wants A Diamond Pivot Bright | Fubuutsushi - Shiki
The quantity+quality of work that Chicago-based composer M. Sage put out this year is incredible. I absolutely adore each of these releases. Spanning ambient, chamber jazz, contemporary composition, field recordings, among other adjacent tributaries, Sage’s soundworld is contemplative and ambrosial. Shiki is an anthology of four seasonal albums he released with saxophonist Patrick Shiroishi, violinist Chris Jusell and multi-instrumentalist Chaz Prymek, known collectively as Fuubutsushi (which translates roughly to ‘evoking nostalgia for a season’). Wants A Diamond Pivot Bright features a different collaborator on each track, all of whom were asked to spend time with the poetry of Wallace Stevens while working on the project. And The Wind Of Things finds Sage working in full-blown acoustic mode with a large ensemble that includes the homies from Fuubutsushi. All and each a pure wonder.
Blanche Blanche Blanche - Seashells
There’s really no way to describe the unique tone and ~very particular~ pleasures of this album. Seashells is somehow perfectly realized yet completely ramshackle. It’s coy and brazen, absurd and direct. It’s confusing in the best possible way. It’s pop and it’s jazz and it’s twee. It’s funny and it’s fucked up. About halfway through the album, singer Sarah Smith gives us: ‘I’m gonna barbecue you motherfuckers / unless you suck me off / you better fuckin’ dance like a mother fuckin’ boss’. And honestly? That ain’t even the half of it…
Boldy James & The Alchemist - Bo Jackson
A friend recently described this album as ‘everything I want in a rap record’. And you know what? I feel the same way, friend. Steely, nuanced storytelling from veteran emcee Boldy James and clever-as-ever production from the one and only Alchemist.
Cleo Sol - Mother
Another absolute gem of modern soul music from this young British vocalist. With the straightforward title and candid cover photo, there’s no mistaking what this work is about. On cursory listens, I had the worry that Sol was leaning a little too hard into genre clichés for my taste. But returning to it, she completely melted my cold, dead, critic’s heart. Mother is a top-notch exploration of what it is to be a mother, and further, what it means to be in relationship to the matriarchal. The fact that it sometimes feels like it could be soundtracking a Disney-animated reboot of the Sister Act franchise is just the cream on top baby!
Merope - Salos
An avant-folk trio working with a chamber choir to interpret traditional Lithuanian songs? It doesn’t get more ‘my jam’ than this. Seriously: this gentle, pastoral, somewhat lysergic album is a world I’d gladly inhabit forevermore.
Molly Herron + Science Ficta - Through Lines
The pieces in this collection are written for and played by an ensemble of viola de gambas, a somewhat obscure instrument that’s been largely forgotten since the 17th century. To my ears, it sounds like a viola with a little more… oomph. A little more boom-chicka-boom-boom, y’know? Speaking on the process of creating Through Lines, composer Molly Herron states that “each piece focuses on a different ‘found’ element: a form, a gesture, a tuning, an articulation, or an aspect of physicality.” This manifests in a wonderful kind of rigour/ambiguity. Through Lines feels more concerned with motion than emotion; moving more than being moving. Which is not to say it lacks emotional resonance, rather, it treats emotionality with a spacious generosity. Supporting the listener in feeling, rather than encouraging them to feel a particular way.
Tara Clerkin Trio - In Spring
When this UK trio dropped their debut album in 2020, a handful of critics noted the degree to which the group felt fully-formed upon arrival. Picking and pulling bits from jazz, minimalism, pop and trip-hop, they manage to build an immersive world that feels both referential and completely fresh. This four-track EP sees the group honing in on the tender, dub-oriented aspects of their work, gliding effortlessly into an ivory-sparkeled stratosphere all their own.
Hayden Pedigo - Letting Go
The cover of Letting Go, a collection of tender, desert-dusted guitar soli, is awfully cheeky. It’s not trucker rock, it’s not hard rock… it’s not really any kind of music you might imagine situated within trucker/KISS/wrestling culture. Though Texan musician Hayden Pedigo is the type of artist who’s always trying to get a look under the hood, so to speak; to see what’s really going on, quietly revealing the tender machinery within the southern culture that surrounds him. In that way, what might seem misleading ends up feeling truer than ‘the truth’.
Bruiser Wolf - Dope Game Stupid
The persona that is Bruiser Wolf absolutely consumed my thoughts for the better part of two months this year. At first, I found myself listening to Dope Game Stupid out of pure fascination. Like: is this guy for real? What’s immediately apparent is that his vocal delivery is absolutely one-of-a-kind. Pitchfork’s Dylan Green really nailed it when he described Wolf’s flow as ‘a helium-toned yawp that sits somewhere between scatting and a breathless jogger attempting to talk’. Add to that some wickedly playful lyrics and you have one of the most unlikely figures to rise out of the Detroit underground.
Tirzah - Colourgrade
Easily one of my most anticipated albums of the last few years, I’m absolutely head over heels for Tirzah’s 2018 debut, Devotion. Colourgrade picks up exactly where that album left off, with Tirzah penning otherworldly, greyscale pop in collaboration with Coby Sey and Mica Levi. The songs are fantastically sketched with emotional process and impressions; so lived-in yet somewhat absent-minded. The resonant quality of the work reminds me of the 50s/60s output of French filmmaker Robert Bresson, who was famous for asking actors to perform emotionally-charged scenes ad nauseam, until only the reverberations of the feelings remained on screen.
JJJJJJJerome Ellis - The Clearing
An intricate meditation on communication, (dis)ability, silence, and perception. JJJJJJJJerome Ellis is a composer, saxophonist and language artist who lives with speech dysfluency. His condition results in large intervals of silence within his speech, which Ellis refers to as ‘clearings’. In his work, Ellis frames these ‘clearings’ as spaces of great potential. Through a weaving of spoken word, personal myth-making, abstract poetry, ambient composition, jazz and home recordings, Ellis invites the listener to meet him in The Clearing. A beautifully unique record that works to challenge assumptions about communication while reframing black music and black rebellion. Deeply thought and profoundly felt.
Loren Rush - Dans Le Sable
This is the first new album in over 40 years from octogenarian Bay Area composer/pianist Loren Rush. It’s my first encounter with his work and each time I listen, it completely transfixes me. Dans Le Sable feels like a truly monumental work: its scale, dynamic, content and flow are rich beyond comparison. It feels like I’m being hyperbolic, but just like… listen to this thing. It’s GRANDE. If I should be so lucky, someday I’ll be well into my eighties, still fawning over the cinematic perfection of this music.
FURTHER LISTENING
Bernice - Eau De Bonjourno | The Body & Big|Brave - Leaving None But Small Birds | 8ULENTINA - Departure | cktrl - zero | Cop Tears - Piano Works: Theodor W. Adorno claire rousay - a softer focus | Cypro - I Have Eaten From The Timbrel I Have Drunk From The Cymbal | Dorothea Paas - Anything Can’t Happen | Employee - Hold Music Volume 2 | Equiknoxx - Basic Tools Mixtape | Felinto - Futuro Antigo Perpetuo | Fievel Is Glauque - God’s Trashmen Sent To Right The Mess | Fugitive Bubble - No Outside | House Of Ho - Aiaiai / Please Hold | JAB - Currents | Jazz Ali - You Can’t Go Home But You Can’t Stay Here | Jeremy Young - Amaro | John Glacier - SHILOH | Ka - A Martyr’s Reward | LGHTR KRU: Nite Mode Vol . 1 | Massai - With The Shifts | Mas Aya - Mascaras | MoMA Ready - BODY 21 | Myriam Gendron - Ma Delire | Myst Milano - Shapeshyfter | Nala Sinephro - Space 1.8 | Navy Blue - Navy’s Reprise | New Chance - Real Time | Perila - How Much Time Is Between You And Me? | Ruth Mascelli - A Night At The Baths | Saint Abdullah - To Live A La West | Sam Gendel & Sam Wilkes - Music For Saxofone & Bass Guitar More Songs | Secret Witness - Volume 1 | Space Afrika - Honest Labour | Tarta Relena - Fiat Lux | Tomaga - Intimate Immensity | Tomutonttu - Hoshi | Toumani Diabate & The London Symphony Orchestra - Kôrôlén | Trii Group - Interest In Music | Vanishing Twin - Ookii Gekku | Vibrant Matter - Boomerang | Wau Wau Collective - Yaral Sa Doom | Wildflower - Better Times | You’ll Never Get To Heaven - Wave Your Moonlight Hat For The Snowfall Train
I’m super interested in feedback / dialogue / suggestions. If you have ideas about the newsletter, want to share music with me, have specific questions / requests, don’t hesitate to get in touch. And please: share this newsletter with a pal if you feel so inspired!
Yrs.,
Andrew P.
andrewdanielpatterson [at] gmail [dot] com