Another year which all our lives have been changed due to a virus and its mutated offsprings.
Great that there are still some great music released as well as some really great reissues to help make life a bit better.
But instead of my usual image-laden listing, I am just putting down my top album of the year (there are actually two sharing the honour, but both from the same artiste) and some really great record labels I deep dived into this year.
So,
Record labels of the year:
Editions Mego - Thanks Peter Rehberg for all the great curation of music on your label since the start of the century, in fact with the expansion of co-curatorial sublabels, the Editions Mego brand has never been stronger until he left us in July. The record shop which I co-ran with Harold would be much lesser without selections from him. RIP,
Southern Lord
Sublime Frequencies
Analog Africa - Africa remains my favourite continent in terms of overall new and old musics with the four labels listed in sequence here. Forward looking, exciting and irreverent. The future of music lies here, I wager.
Nyege Nyege Tapes
Hakuna Kulala
PAN
Old Heaven Books
Modern Sky/Badhead
Dipped into K music a bit, most impressed by CL's Alpha and Jambinai's A Hermitage. Former a quirky syncretic mix of all the urban music styles into but breaking a bit of the K-pop mould and the latter, post rock/whatever from the most popular Asian country in the world now.
Mamer from China is as always great, and discovered the joy of Hualun, China's answer to post rock.
My top albums? Portal - Avow and Hagbulbia
They, to me encapsulates the essence of 2021 and resonate so much with my POV this year.
Signing out but to all out there, stay safe...
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