Top 10 Albums 2020–2029
After a considerable amount of handwringing, I allowed myself a night of nostalgia, a chance to perhaps relive the glory days of rave. At the venue, a friendly figure handed me an envelope that turned out to contain a faint yellow powder. “It’s the latest, man. Doesn’t even have a name yet. Indescribable trip. I really can’t explain it, you just have to experience it. The glint in his eyes was quite convincing, his explanation about the origin in Russian laboratories not so much. The idea of being found comatose around 3 A:M with my face sticking in dried beer didn’t appeal to me so I carefully bagged the gift and headed for the stroboscopes where the first Mentasm chords of the evening reverberated.
A few weeks later while emptying my winter coat I chanced upon the envelope again. Soon an opportunity presented itself, an evening alone at home with the cat. Slightly nervous I filled a glass pipe with a teaspoon of powder, a moment of doubt like standing on the high diving board, and then the flame followed by a full inhalation. The last normal thought I remember was surprise at it actually tasting quite good. The subsequent revelation was so immense that it is impossible to put into words. My modest attempt to organize the memories of this experience is as follows.
I assume that I spent the following hour draped on the couch with my eyes closed. Everything unfolded visually in my mind, completely realistic. The future opened up as a multidimensional web where I could somehow experience different moments synchronously. Afterward, I was exhausted because I had lived fragments of countless lives and not only of myself but also of numerous strangers. And no, I did not witness my own death. The further you move into the future, the more noise is generated, a kind of feedback between the timelines that blocks further exploration. Moreover, you are vaguely aware of a taboo preventing you to face this moment.
Anyway, at one point I moved through a timeline and somehow ended up in 2040, right in front of a record store. Propelled by routine I immediately entered the shop. By now I realised that time was malleable which gave me some control over the trip. I was able to walk calmly through the aisles wondering about the titles emblazoned on a host of audio formats. I don’t know exactly how I managed it, but in what felt like a knowledge injection my choices became immediately part of my consciousness as if I had listened to the music for years.
Elsewhere I hope to go into more detail about the mission to the moons of Jupiter, intimate love relationships and extraordinary possibilities of living in a world haunted by a chaotic climate, although with every note I make more and more details of this miraculous vision disappear. To make matters worse, my cat ate the rest of the powder and then went to sleep. In any case, the musical memories have largely stayed with me. In my opinion, these are the best albums of the next decade in most branches of the future.
Aphex Twin — Selected Ambient Works 93–99 and Selected Ambient Works Vol. 3
Fans of Richard D. James had long dreamed about the possibility of its existence. And then out of the blue, it was there: the third installment of Selected Ambient Works. Thirty years after Vol.2 it was announced almost off-handedly and made available a week later. The customary online anti-hype didn’t even get a chance to mobilize. After opening the cover of the double album one was treated to a characteristic Aphex Twin surprise, a card with the statement End 2024: Selected Ambient Works 93–99. Double ecstasy.
Vol.3 is defined by a new emotional core, no longer the sense of wonderment of childhood, psychedelics and innocence of the rave days but an invocation of approaching shadows, a sense of acceptance, an almost zen-like balance eschewing the sardonic jokes of the past. The most conventionally beautiful Aphex Twin release in four decades as an artist with the ambient acid of the ninth untitled song highlighting its unique charms.
Released in November of that same year Selected Ambient Works 93–99 collects 42 tracks from the golden nineties. Some were part of the Soundcloud dump of 2015 and have been finally mastered to reveal their splendour. This is the wild Aphex Twin of yesteryear with buzzing miniatures, tentative piano pieces and druggy experiments. Both releases are indispensable for any adventurous music lover, but especially for the rave generation that is preparing itself for another period of life, of memories and steadily declining serotonin levels. The question always lingers whether these will be the final statements by Aphex Twin, although it never was mentioned during the interviews accompanying the releases. In one conversation he cheerfully talked about yet another discovery of a forgotten shoebox filled with MiniDiscs. For the fan, there is always a new desire. There is never enough Aphex Twin.
Addictions — Empty House
There never really was a band that embodied the atmosphere of the first twenty years of the 21st century like P.I.L. did for the end of the 1970s. A music that manages to capture political turmoil, fears, unconscious discontent and even the colours and weather of an era. I invoked Public Image with a reason: because Addictions is a quartet that sometimes sounds like the members are on four different drugs while playing different songs at the same time, driven by a characteristic bass sound, here not the playful dub of Jah Wobble but an impossibly low and physical shift of air, blocks of synthetic sound that the listener should feel, combined with a conventional bass guitar and drummer. Addictions made a name for itself in the old-fashioned way, with a long series of gigs, where a fast-growing crowd of fans succumbed to the sub-bass and charisma of singer Donna S, three E.P.’s, followed by the debut album Empty House. Finally, a British band that combines intelligence and innovation with a certain natural claim to the spotlight. A band that also makes the atmosphere palpable of the United Kingdom living on the edge of chaos thanks to a continuous threat of riots, terror attacks and seemingly irreversible poverty: “You got what you wished for!”
Weird Silence — Weird Silence Sessions
Any finely attuned clubber began to pick up the first signals in the late ’10s that club culture, which had been the leading paradigm of innovation in pop music since the beginning of disco, was coming to an end. The combination of club, music, dancing and drugs was holding back progression, a realization that should fascinate and challenge creative minds. Was a new concept of the club (the party, the festival) needed? Or even a completely new musical genre beyond the club? The Scottish trio Weird Silence went in search of a new Year Zero. Their main inspiration was the futuristic ambition of jungle, but at the same time, they advocated a self-conscious abandonment of the models created in the nineties. “A necessary release, however painful it may be,” as one of the Weird Silence members put it. This process resulted in a free music which escapes classification. Weird Silence tries to keep moving forward, relentlessly. Records seem secondary to performances and are mainly intended as the basic material for their Weird Silence Sessions, where music is played unannounced in unexpected places, for example in an abandoned factory, or from a car that drives through the city for hours. Other sessions patiently lift the barrier between musician and audience to create a casual and unpredictable togetherness (“the lost promise of house” according to another member.) Weird Silence Sessions forms the first document of the project, a fascinating collection of sound worlds, presented in a special package with a poster, book, exclusive Polaroids and video material. In a way, a melancholic and self-aware media experience since the listener was probably not present at the Sessions and at the same time exciting because it stimulates the imagination regarding future sessions. That you could organize yourself.
Anonymus — Projection
Undeniably the pop record of the decade. After all, Anonymus was the media phenomenon that completely dominated the second half of the ’20s. Who was this singer that delivered an unexpected series of number 1 hits? Who always sang behind a screen during rare performances, for instance at the Grammy Awards 2028 where she won a record number of prizes. After all these years her identity is still unknown, which drives the press and some fans into a rage. The first group can be annoying but is largely harmless, the last group regularly poses death threats to the record company and producers. Her hit singles, clever constructions built around melodies that slyly took possession of your consciousness and sung in accent-less English, French, Spanish and Japanese, should have garnered enough conventional attention. The hidden identity made her a completely new pop star onto which the listener could project anything. Is she beautiful? Or perhaps the opposite? Is she multiple singers? Is it a woman? Or is there no real singer and is Anonymus the product of a quantum computer, the person behind the screen no more than an arbitrary body? No wonder that in some circles there have been whispers of the Twilight of the Pop Idol.
First Contact — Deep Frontiers
For too long, dreaming about first contact with extraterrestrial life had seemed something from the past. A cliché from vintage science fiction where the year 2001 was still far into the future. And it must be said that clickbait articles of degenerated scientific journals about possible extraterrestrial civilizations that time and again turned out to have an unspectacular, lifeless explanation, devolving all enthusiasm into an online ritual, material for silly memes instead of a beautiful, but naive hope. That situation has shifted radially during this decade after mankind received a number of signals that, with growing certainty, prove the existence of extraterrestrial life. The highlight, without a doubt, the news that Voyager II made a bizarre return to our solar system. A return that in itself is sensational. The fact that the probe turned out to transmit radio signals which could not be traced back to a human source caused an unprecedented excitement that only the most fundamentalist skeptics and believers try to disprove. It will take years before Voyager reaches Earth, until then another source of signals outside the solar system garners specific attention with many scientists suspecting it is a so-called router which should bring humanity into contact with other civilizations.
All in all, plenty of reasons for artists to start gazing at the stars again. Electronic music always has been the most cosmic, so it’s no surprise that the first serious attempts at formulating a musical answer on the new reality that awaits us came from the post-techno landscape. Deep Frontiers is techno-beyond-techno, dance floor functionality has been left behind and what remains is a music that moves between a desire for the big dreams of yesteryear (Voyager’s radio signals incorporated in the music have a strange melancholic feel) and an attempt to imagine what music the opening towards new lifeforms will bring us. In that sense, Deep Frontiers is the ultimate techno album, the realization of a long-running collective project and the announcement of Detroit’s imminent black diaspora.
Lana Del Rey — Dead Ocean Songs
Just before her fortieth birthday, veteran (how time flies) Lana Del Rey released her eighth album on which she perfectly captures the spirit of the times. The basis is still downtempo, musically more minimal than ever, often no more than hints of acoustic guitar or ambient electronics. But the lost lovers don’t appear to be men anymore but a complete landscape. Dead Ocean Songs is an ode to a California that has been definitively lost, a ghostly world of blackened forests, noxious fogs and deserted beaches. A gloomy variant of solarpunk. Also features a beautiful cover which at first sight resembles a classic photo of night-time Los Angeles, which upon closer inspection reveals entire neighbourhoods shrouded in darkness.
Various Artists — Raum
The underground label of the decade was founded in Mannheim in 2021 as a CD-only label. Predictably, the compact disc made something of a comeback after the CD was phased out of most English speaking countries. Of course, almost immediately a run began on vintage CD players from the 1980s. Second-hand shops specialized in CDs appeared in high streets accompanied by endless discussions on which generation of CDs sounds best. In this climate, Raum became the cult label. On a series of affordable, but hard to find, releases, all the artists propagated the puristic DDD sound. An ECM for the 21st century focussing on post-house electronics recorded in different spaces to “let music breathe”. CD-5, a recording of Mann & Burgin on the edge of Lake Constance where the Alps start to slope, is generally regarded as the highlight of the first series of releases from which ten tracks were collected on Raum. Including a one-off return of Oval who once again exhibit their characteristic remix skills on ‘Zeit/Raum’. A music with unprecedented depth.
Fumi Sasaki — 四季
The drug that made this all possible had another strange effect, namely the sensation that you met other people who gained access to the network of timelines through use of the powder. One such traveler made a lasting impression because she moved frantically between past and future. Later I recognized her as the 19-year-old singer Fumi Sasaki. I have considered contacting her, in order to verify if she actually experienced the same, but I’m afraid I will sound like an online maniac. Anyway, she will make an extraordinary record in 2027 with the translated title Four Seasons. Confidently Sasaki places herself in the lineage of the great Japanese poets of the Middle Ages, from which she adapts a number of poems on the first half of the album, accompanied by traditional instruments and field recordings. On the second half, she presents her own lyrics in collaboration with Sachiko M, a veteran of the Japanese electronic avant-garde. The result consists of eight songs for voice and ghostly machines. In the deep 21st century, the passing of the seasons is given a new expression of mono no aware. Will the surroundings of the temples in Kyoto still turn red in autumn? Will the summit of Fuji ever be white again? “Blossoms in low light / Young love overwhelmed.”
Various Artists — Heliolatry Vol.1
Solarpunk originated in the ’10s as a necessary subgenre of science fiction. Despite the -punk in the name and the interest in cultural practise, it remained for a long time limited to a literary and political-philosophical movement. Finally, in 2022 a musical breakthrough materialized thanks to the double compilation Heliolatry Vol.1 (in some timelines a second part follows, in others not.) Solarpunk had some influence on modern music before but the effect was initially noticeable in the infrastructure of, for example, green festivals. An artistic statement was needed to force solarpunk into the collective consciousness. The compiler at Virgin EMI took an ambitious approach by inviting 14 contemporary artists to give their interpretation of solarpunk (disparate names like GAS vs Fennesz, Niño de Elche, Ultramarine, Robyn and newcomers like Malakbel, Theo Jackson and Underwater Light). The second part presented an intriguing inventory of proto-solarpunk from pop history in the form of remixes and covers of tracks by Sun Ra, A.R. Kane, Tim Buckley, Hiroshi Yoshimura, Junior Murvin, Beach Boys, with the alternative version of ‘Sun King’ dug up by Paul McCartney as a surprise gift. A road map for the rest of the century.
Augustus Pablo — King Tubby’s Meet Rockers Uptown (Mix It Yourself edition)
Sacrilege! Of course. And yet this time I couldn’t resist the temptation (also because my old vinyl copy is dirty after all those years of loyal service.) King Tubby’s Meet Rockers Uptown is the best dub album of all time, that discussion ended decades ago. Interestingly, vintage seventies dub made a comeback in the second half of the twenties, probably due to the large-scale legalization of cannabis in parts of the world (with the Netherlands apparently becoming one of the last European countries to finally make the move in 2032). To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary (!) of the record, an extraordinary virtual version was created. The King Tubby mixer has long since become a museum piece but was digitally recreated down to the last detail. With great care, the source material was collected by reggae historians and then it is up to the listener to mix his own versions (reading the extensive instructions is indispensable.) Some perseverance is needed to master the art of live dubbing, which sometimes can lead to miraculous discoveries and ultimately provides a deeper knowledge and appreciation of dub reggae. An intriguing experiment, supplemented with remasters, like a new spatial mix recreating how the music would have sounded in King Tubby’s studio. All those possibilities and choices, but his mix will always remain unsurpassed.
