100 albums of 2021 you shouldn’t miss, plus playlist

Rouge – War! (Mecha Music Group)

We said: War! is a beautiful album, with one foot in New York’s boom bap traditions, the other in the more left field edges of hip hop. There’s a harshness in its beauty, “a rose growing from a crack in the concrete,” and ultimately, promise in its despair, a resurgent, spring song of hope. In Rouge’s words, an “un-becoming and becoming again.”

read the whole review, alongside an interview with Rouge, here

Scott Von Ryper – Dream State Treasure (Transient Records)

We said: Dream State Treasure’ is an exquisite album, an almost hallucinogenic piece – as its title suggests – being dreamy and remote at times, an arctic chill running through it occasionally, yet still being infused by heart achingly beautiful arrangements and melodies.

Read the complete review, here

Scrimshire – Nothing Feels Like Everything (Albert’s Favourites)

We said: Nothing Feels Like Everything may not be the album you were expecting next from Scrimshire – it sounds as if maybe, it wasn’t the album Adam was expecting either. But it is the right album, the album that needed to be articulated, an album for the 2021 which decided it was just gonna be 2020 with added grind. It sits seamlessly within a lineage that stretches back through the luxurious, string-laden future breaks of 4 Hero, Nuyorican Soul to Wanda Robinson, Roy Ayers, Rotary Connection et al. It’s a seductive listen that already has the feel of an album that has much to reveal over time, and only over time. Come tarry inside me, it whispers. And aren’t they the best records? Slow release, no sugar high. Soulfood. 

Read the entire review, here

Sedibus – The Heavens (Orbscure)

We said: The Heavens sits beautifully alongside that debuting Orb classic, A Huge Ever-Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules from the Centre of the Ultraworld; beautiful, lush, immersive, complex, just a tinge of the eerie and the haunting to make sure you’re attentive, Ideally, you need to think of a way to introduce a gentle zero-gravity to your living room. Yep, it may take a while, but it’ll be worth it. It rewrites current ambient discourse back away from the admittedly hugely seductive dub-textural and post-classical nuclei of Berlin and Tokyo, and reintroduces a good old trippy-as-fuckness to the world. Luxurious. Buy.

Read it in full, here

Sei Still – El Refugio (Fuzz Club)

We said: ‘El Refugio’ is a complex offering; with splashes of post-punk, goth rock, krautrock and psychedelia seamlessly blended to make something startlingly familiar yet brand new at the same time. If you didn’t love them before, you will after this.

For more on El Refugio, click here

Snapped Ankles – Forest Of Your Problems (The Leaf Label)

We said: A tonal masterclass and a comprehensive wheelhouse of sound, perfectly envisioning their fantastical lore; a terrifically twisted yet stark reflection of our society

Read the whole review, here

Snowpoet – Wait For Me (Edition Records)

We said: Overall, the characteristic lightness of Snowpoet’s music emerges here and there (the beautiful “Burn Bright”, the thoughtful spoken word in “Floating Practice”) and this is obviously far from being a ‘difficult’ album. It’s just one that needs a little time and patience for it to fully reveal itself

Check out the full review, here

Spiders From Saigon – Spiders From Saigon (Spiders From Saigon Records)

We said: The guys only had one goal, and that was to bring back huge riff rock that they love. With this album they have brought back the love of the guitar solo and pure down and dirty rock n roll. With some cracking performances all round the whole album is an infectious headbanger from start to finish. 

This band deserve an arena with thousands of adoring fans. Anything less is a crime.

Read the whole thing, here

Spiritczualic Enhancement Center – Carpet Album (Kryptox)

We said: With its dark, layered conceits, its billowing haze of atmospherics, looseness subducted to the greater evocative purpose of the record, this is music to indulge to; music to sprawl to. It opens with a luring lushness only, with a perfect smile, to tempt you to follow it through streets ever less populous to where the wild things are – pulsing with the kosmiche and frankly, psychedelic as fuck. Travel deep and travel wisely.

Read on, here

Still Corners – The Last Exit (Wrecking Corner Records)

Still Corners do evoke a trail of estimable bands stretching, from Ry Cooder to Chris Isaacs, Cowboy Junkies to Mazzy Star and even a dash of the Jesus and Mary Chain in their (highly underrated) acoustic album ‘Stoned and Dethroned’. I even detect a Dire Straits-ian Mark Knopfler Strat guitar sound at times: a laudable and highly impressive feat.

Above all, and identifiable influences aside, ‘The Last Exit’ is magnificent. It is a immersive feast that stands on its own two feet (or four wheels on the desert highway). It shimmers, it glows mysteriously and casts a dreamy spell. The geographical imprint of the desert, the expanse of the sparkling night sky and the indelible air of romanticism pervades the album and creates for me an immense and satisfying sense of joy.

Read in full

Records 91-100