2020 hasn't been a particularly joyful year for most of us, and it certainly has been the worst of my own life, but there has still been an astonishing amount of art to celebrate, particularly in the arenas of gaming and music. So for the rest of the year, hopefully, I will be writing a series on things I enjoyed this year, mostly new music releases but also games and anime series. I will also cover some stuff that didn't actually release this year, but which are new to me for one reason or another. With that out of the way, tonight I'm writing about three fantastic albums from 2020: two electronic albums (one from the UK and the other from Japan), and a short but stellar hip-hop release from my home state of Florida.
It's been more than thirteen years since a teenaged Fleshdog first pressed play on From Here We Go Sublime, but I'll never forget walking through the Plaza of the Americas for Krishna lunch when that classic release by Swedish artist The Field first graced my ears. That minimalist house masterpiece, with its seemingly endless loops going from bare expressions to small parts of a towering whole, endures as one of the best electronic albums of the aughts, and while this album doesn't reach quite the same heights it is undoubtedly worthy of your time. I have not yet listened to her 2017 self-titled LP release, but if it's anything like this year's Inner Song, Kelly Lee Owens is an artist I'll be highly invested in for years to come.
Opening track Arpeggi has a futuristic, spacy chill vibe, especially as the drum breaks kick in during the second half, accompanied by some boopy, wavy UFO sounds. On, with its incomparably sad music video depicting a man's last moments with his dog before he goes off on a ferry to his own death, juxtaposes an upbeat and highly danceable arrangement with enigmatic lyrics about love and loss. Melt! is just a straight to the point club bop, Re-Wild is a slow dreamy vocal track, and Jeanette is the sprawling loop-driven track that most influenced by comparison to The Field. Like Arpeggi, it evokes a futuristic vibe through synths that call to mind Tron but also has some restrained chiptuney elements that come and go. It's probably my favorite track overall, even if it's not as ambitious as some of the other highlights. L.I.N.E. is the most poppy track on the album with hushed lyrics about the pain of vulnerability over a swelling, dreamy tune that reminds me of Chromatics or Purity Ring music from a decade ago. I'll be honest, until I looked it up I had no idea who John Cale is, but his spoken word mutterings on Corner of My Sky make for a cool song to revisit occasionally but a bit of an odd bump on an album that otherwise flows quite neatly from start to finish. Night builds to an absolutely fabulous thudding bass drop that isn't replicated on the album, Flow is another solid instrumental, and closer Wake-Up introduces big strings and a sped-up Donkey Kong Country loop underneath with more dreamy vocals.
The album might benefit from being a bit shorter, with even some of my favorite tracks feeling a touch too long, but it honestly feels like a pretty breezy listen even at fifty-one minutes. If you're talking about this kind of music it feels like the big question is this: if you were entrusted with the aux cable at a cool party, could you put this album on and walk away for a while and not hear any complaints from the crowd? And I think you absolutely could leave Inner Song going without any breaks and only get some questionable glances in the album's final quarter when Corner of My Sky rolls around. If you want to just vibe out this album is a great introduction to this particular style of music, even if it's not the pinnacle.
Japanese artist Dreamweaver's debut LP (EP? it's certainly short enough, but it's apparently an LP) is, curiously, presented in a different order on Spotify than it's intended to be. The second and third tracks have been rearranged, which makes the experience of listening to it slightly different. Opener Between Worlds unmistakably resembles the relaxation music that plays on my meditation app, but then authentic track two 9* (9 degrees) comes on and evokes the cool nighttime air and a fantastical floating night journey. My personal favorite cut on the album comes next, with a much more up-tempo DnB line that sometimes verges into Endtroducing... territory and wobbly, distorted vocals rounding out the fantastic Altered Reality. Dream Home Garden is another slower, mellower track that kind of reminds me of, like, the Nintendo 3DS Home music or something? Not entirely sure but it has that vibe. Hidden by Light appropriately hides a Jungle monster underneath the dreamy synths that dominate the record, FeverDream:raindance is the album's most experimental work and potentially its most grating, but I really love it and its placement right after the lurking but never fully unsheathed aggression of Hidden by Light. Closer Robbie the Rabbit is another chilled out DnB track in the vein of Altered Reality, but it's less interesting and probably my least favorite song overall. If you want something short but sweet, and you like the idea of drum and bass but have never gotten into its traditional sound, this new breed of "atmospheric DnB" might be more your style.
Last but not least, Denzel Curry and Kenny Beats reunited to drop a bizarre short film project as a vehicle for an album that is gone before you know it but lingers on the mind for hours after each listen. I'm not going to bother giving a track-by-track here, because this one is so quick and so unbelievably grimy that it could have wandered out of an early 90s RZA session. It's pretty clear that was the intention from the extremely awesome album art, which calls to mind The GZA's Liquid Swords or Outkast's Atliens. Curry's lyrics are full of witty punchlines but he never resorts to merely settling on these jabs; Pyro in particular includes clever drops for the sort of person who knows Future's real name and still remembers a time when CeeLo was not yet Crazy, but also mixes up rhyme schemes and flows more than once in its sixtyish seconds of lyrics. Take_It_Back_v2 is the song I like the most, probably because it makes me feel like I'm a freshman in college all over again, but this album is so dripping with atmosphere that it really just begs you to rewind and replay the whole thing over and over again. Curry mixes swagger and menace with best of them, and it's incredible to me that even though I've been listening to his music for over eight years he's still only 25 and shows no signs of slowing down or losing his touch. Kenny, meanwhile, is the perfect complement to Curry's style and this project comes together much better than his work with Vince Staples, a similarly talented wunderkind, did. I've always loved Denzel, but if you told me five years ago that I'd be more excited about his future than Vince's, I'd never have believed you.
Anyways, I hope at least one of these three records is new to you (and honestly, if you somehow know obscure Japanese DnB albums you probably don't give a shit what I have to say about music) and that you feel inspired to go find some more new stuff to listen to! And if you have any recommendations, send them my way, because I am always looking for more.
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