Next up in our ‘Best of 2020‘ series is our top-ten from Jefferson, Sonic Boom's buyer of all things from the fringe. Be it avant jazz, world music and reggae reissues, modern composers, electronic abstraction, shear noise and experimental music, shoegaze, post-punk, goth, and industrial music, or the heaviest psych and krautrock jams, Jefferson is in! As a regular writer for numerous film and music magazines over the years, and contributor to such sites as Resident Advisor and Headphone Commute, his picks (in no particular order) for 2020 go deep!
Hiroshi Yoshimura Green (Japan Archive)
Light in the Attic's Japan Archive reissue series continues after the excellent assembly of minimal electronics and ambient music found on the "Kankyō Ongaku: Japanese Ambient, Environmental & New Age Music 1980 - 1990", with individual albums from one of the scene's notable figures. "Green" explores an even more spare vein of sublime tonal bliss than heard on Yoshimura's excellent "Music For Nine Post Cards".
Coil Musick to Play in the Dark Vol.1 (Dais)
Another reissue from the warped and weird catalog of England's perverse purveyors of the deeply strange and occult. The Musick (yes, spelled that way) series launched a late-career exploration of austere glitchy electronics and a decidedly ambient, nocturnal, lunar phase to their sound. A transmission from a realm that can only be described as Occult Ambient.
Alva Noto Xerrox Vol.4 (Noton)
Over the course of two decades, Carsten Nicolai has chiseled out some of the most precise electronic music of the 21st century. Often in collaborations with YMO's legendary composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, his sound on the Xerrox series has increasingly embraced a glacial ambience taking cues from Brian Eno's mid-1980s classics like "On Land" and "Apollo''.
V/A Kaleidoscope: New Spirits Known & Unknown (Soul Jazz)
Unearthing gems from a global contemporary jazz and improv scene and compatriot labels like Brownswood Recordings and International Anthem, the UK's Soul Jazz have assembled this hefty array of contemporary players working in the confluence of jazz, psychedelia, funk and experimentation. Possibly the most expansive and satisfying representation of this new sound yet.
African Head Charge Songs Of Praise / In Pursuit Of Shashamane Land (On-U Sound)
Reissues of the slippery and tough albums that percussionist Bonjo Iyabinghi Noah and producer Adrian Sherwood released as the experimental wing of the On-U Sound dub and reggae label. Think dub with an eclectic post-punk and industrial sensibility, the reissue of these genre-elusive 1980s oddities are long overdue.
John Luther Adams The Become Trilogy (Canatloupe)
The Pulitzer Prize winning recordings from contemporary composer John Luther Adams (not to be confused with John Adams), and the Seattle Symphony have now been collected as a complete trilogy. Each of the Become cycle's three stages describing a sonic and material landscape, from the depths of the sea, to windswept deserts, to the flowing forces of America's river valleys.
Boris NO (Blood Sucker)
On the verge of splitting up, Japanese noiserockers Boris instead found themselves in the position of producing three concurrent albums. 2019's "LΦVE & EVΦL", and "Dear" have been followed by one of the strongest entries in their vast and varied catalog. The definitively titled "NO" sees their particular strain of shoegaze, psychedelic rock and metal come together to form a seamless whole.
V/A The Harry Smith B-Sides (Dust-to-Digital)
Musicologist, filmmaker and field recording artist Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music released by Smithsonian Folkways in 1952 is a historic set of recordings comprising selections from almost one hundred American folk, blues and country music sessions that were originally issued from 1926 to 1933. Now, almost a century later, some of the deeper cuts or 'B sides' from these sessions see the light of day in this handsome box set from Dust-to-Digital.
V/A Mogadisco: Dancing Mogadishu - Somalia 1972-1991 (Analog Africa)
The deep avenues of music traveled from the African continent by the Analog Africa label reach another prime intersection of Afro-soul, jazz, and disco-funk with Mogadisco. Their document of this scene's golden-era was an undertaking that took three years, assembling a painstaking expansive booklet with detailed text and over 50 pictures from Somalian Afro-groove culture spanning the 1970s and 80s.
Ben Frost & Marc Streitenfeld Raised By Wolves Soundtrack (HBO)
It was inevitable that Icelandic electro-acoustic artist Ben Frost would eventually be tapped for film and prestige TV soundtracks. The gloaming atmospheres and agitated textures found on albums like "Aurora" and "By The Throat", can now be heard on everything from Netflix' "Dark", to the Ridley Scott-produced sci fi of "Raised By Wolves".