Bagging Area End of Year List 2025

Today marks the fifteenth Bagging Area end of year list- let's get the album above out of the way first. Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 2, put together by myself, Martin, Dan, Baz and Mark with sleeve art by Rusty and released on Golden Lion Sounds, came out in the summer. It opens with a previously unreleased Sabres Of Paradise track, the full length, thirteen minute techno skank of Lik Wid Nit Wit, and then goes on to showcase brand new tracks by Dicky Continental, Unit 14, Richard Fearless, A Certain Ratio and Number, Red Snapper, Richard Norris, David Harrow, Bedford Falls Players and a cover of Two Lone Swordsmen's Sick When We Kiss by Sleaford Mods. 

Piccadilly Records put it at number 12 in their Top 30 Collections in their end of year booklet (sandwiched between Pink Floyd and The Fall). If you take out the re- issues and just include the compilations, we came in third. Phonica, a very fine record shop in Soho, put it at number five in their compilations chart. It still makes me shake my head in disbelief sometimes that we have accomplished it- the quality of the music is so high, everyone involved is at their very best. 

The entire enterprise is a tribute to Andrew Weatherall, his music, life and work, and given that Andrew's standards were so high, it's no surprise that the people he worked with and who are inspired by him- like the artists on Volume 2 (and Volume 1)- are all also people who produce and create such good music. There are a handful of copies in some record shops- Piccadilly, Stranger Than Paradise, Phonica- and there might still be a few at Golden Lion Sounds but it's close to selling out its entire run of 1500 copies and once they're gone, they're gone. 

Another compilation album I've enjoyed this year is Sean Johnston's A Love From Outer Space, a celebration of the travelling cosmic disco started by Sean and Andrew Weatherall in 2010 and still going boldly to this day. The album starts with a Neville Watson dub of The Blow Monkeys and takes in Phil Kieran (remixed by Andrew), Laars, Secret Circuit, Duncan Gray, Das Komplex, Brioski and many more. Cosmic chug, never knowingly exceeding 113 bpm. 

The third compilation album that has rocked 2025 is Ein Null: 10 Years Of Sprechen, a ten track round up of the Manchester label's artists with new tracks from A Certain Ratio, Psychederek, The Thief Of Time, The Utopia Strong and more. 

The best new old music of 2025 includes Husker Du's The Miracle Year: 1985, a huge live album showing Husker Du at their mid- 80s peak, on fire. I loved R.E.M.'s re- released Radio Free Europe EP which included the semi- legendary Mitch Easter Dub Mix. The Richard Sen remixes of John Grant, sitting unreleased since 2017, finally saw the light of day. My year started with Bob Dylan and the film A Complete Unknown and I've been dipping in and out of Dylan all year as a result. I haven't committed to the latest edition of The Bootleg Series, Volume 18, but have played his 1962 song Rocks And Gravel repeatedly (unreleased in 1962 and part of this year's Bootleg Series Through The Open Window, 1953- 1962). The Return Of The Durutti Column, a comprehensive and remastered re- issue of the 1980 Durutti Column debut is stunning too. Aphex Twin's continued visits into his vaults saw him put Zahl am1 live track 1 up on Soundcloud, a typically brilliant AFX track. Volcanic Tongue, a compilation of obscure, outsider bands from David Keenan's label of the same name was a winner too, with 20 slices of eclectic, underground music dating from 1968 to 2013. 

Albums of 2025

All of these abums have been somewhere near my various listening devices this year and all are albums I'll come back to again- Reverb Delay's The Ghosts Of Dawn, David Harrow's Accelerated Life, a pair of albums from 100 Poems, Rodeo Disco and Let The Horse Run Free, Evan Dando's Love Chant, Sonar// Radar's Weak Sun, Sonnenspot's Sonnenspot, SubDan's Innerleben, Anywhere by Causeway, Red Snapper's Barb And Feather, Decius Vol. II (Splendour & Obedience), Daniel Avery's Tremor, Five Green Moons' very recently released and probably should be in my top ten Moon 2, Rose City Band's Sol y Sombra, Dub Syndicate's Obscured By Version, The Orb's Buddhist Hipsters, Faded by The Liminanas, the vinyl releases of Thought Leadership's Ill Of Pentacles and Ace Of Swords albums, Coyote's Wailing To The Yellow Dawn, Half Man Half Biscuit's All Asimov And No Fresh Air, Jezebell's Jezebellearic Beats Volume 2, KiF's Still Out, Warrington- Runcorn New Town Development Plan's Public Works And Utilities, Tortoise's Touch, Pye Corner Audio's Where Things Are Hollow and Stereolab's marvelous comeback Instant Holograms On Metal Film.

10 Death In Vegas: Death Mask

Four sides of emotional and purist machine techno from Richard Fearless- side four in particular with Your Love and the title track is an immersive, psychedelic techno trip. 

9 Dean Wareham: That's The Price Of Loving Me

On the former Galaxie 500 songwriter, singer and guitarist's fourth solo album, he got back with producer Kramer and they caught Dean at his best- reverb drenched guitars, a dreamy production and a set of reflective, witty and wise songs. Understated but I kept coming back to it. 

8 Mogwai: The Bad Fire

Released at the start of the year, Mogwai are always an essential listen and this album is as good as any they've made- walls of guitars, huge melodies, songs that scrape away and soar. Some members of the band were going through tough times when it was recorded and you can hear the catharsis in the grooves of the album. Fanzine Made Of Flesh may be song title of the year too (although Half Man Half Biscuit's Horror Clowns Are Dickheads runs it close). 

7 Syd Minsky Sargeant: Lunga

Syd's solo album, a switch from the tough, electronic beats and rhythms of Working Men's Club, is a folky, downbeat treasure trove of song, with Nick Drake and Syd Barrett both sounding like they're there inside the songs. Try Long Roads for a taster of Lunga's delights...

6 Adrian Sherwood: The Collapse Of Everything

Adrian Sherwood doesn't release many albums under his own name and on the basis of The Collapse Of Everything he should do it more often. Dub is the foundation (as ever) but The Collapse Of Everything rolls and tumbles between all kinds of sounds and genres, a free flow of sound and texture with a supporting cast including Brian Eno, Keith Le Blanc and Doug Wimbish, and mostly sounds cinematic, like it's the soundtrack to something. An On U Soundtrack. 

5 Escape- Ism: Charge Of The Love Brigade

Ian Svenonius and Sandi Denton's fourth album is short and sweet, just ten songs and just a little over thirty minutes long but it's been near my turntable since its release in March. Minimal sounds, fuzz guitar, vintage synth drones and hissy drum machine, lyrics pared back to key ideas and delivered with drop dead insouciance- on Last Of The Sellouts Ian is both tongue in cheek and deadly serious. One Of The Greats performs the same dead pan trick. On Fire In Malibu he sounds like he's been tipped over the edge. For a while I thought this might be my favourite album of 2025. 

4 Brian Eno and Beatie Wolfe: Liminal

The third of a trilogy recorded by Eno and Wolfe, Liminal is a joy, Liminal is an album that melds songs with ambience and comes up with something very beautiful- the soundtrack to a dream, a simple sounding but very deep record. 

3 Sewell And The Gong: The Patron Saint Of Elsewhere

I've listened to Sewell And The Gong as much as any other artist this year and the album, Patron Saint Of Elsewhere, could easily have topped this list. Seven tracks with pastoral roots, folk melodies and motorik rhythms, bridging the space between the bucolic and the cosmic. Sumptuous and wondrous and a little frayed at the edges.

2 Kieran Hebden and William Tyler: 41 Longfield Street Late 80s

41 Longfield Street Late 80s is a wonderful record- William Tyler's guitar playing and Kieran Hebden's ambient laptop production complementing each other and bouncing off each other, from the extended free form cover version of Lyle Lovett's If I Had A Boat, to the more Four Tet sounds of Spider Ballad through to the album's closer, the intense distortion and acoustic guitars of Secret City, it never lets up and keeps giving.

1 Andy Bell: Pinball Wanderer

Andy Bell bounces around from Ride to GLOK to his solo records, finding time to record with a slew of other artists, and spent much of 2025 on the road with Oasis. In February he released Pinball Wanderer, the title a nod to his musical ricochets, an eight song album that he completed under the influence of extreme jet lag. Dot Allison and Michael Rother appear on his cover of The Passions' I'm In Love With A German Film Star. On Apple Green UFO he channels The Stone Roses, a song they should have written after they made Something's Burning and elsewhere he travels cosmische. His guitar playing is lighter than air, krauty and glistening, and on the title track he transports the spirit of Bert Jansch and Pentangle from the late 60s to 2025, folk melodies married with 21st century psychedelia and shuffly drums. 

Pinball Wanderer

Singles/ Tracks/EPs of 2025

I've tried to not just repeat tracks from the albums in the list above in order to make this list a standalone one. All of these singles/ EPs/ one off releases were of note in 2025...

Hugo Nicolson's Black Stick, M- Paths' Emotivated, Matt Gunn's Nowhere, Dirt Bogarde's Pihkel, a clutch of Richard Norris releases including his remix of Pale Blue Eyes' How Long Is Now and his remix of Wildflower by Gulp, Puerto Montt City Orchestra's And We'd Be So Happy, Florecer's Breathy Drops, Statues' The Pilina Experiment, several Pye Corner Audio tracks including Galaxies and the Matrix EP and Saint Etienne's Glad. 

And here's 25 for 25...

25 Factory Floor: Between You

24 The Moonlandingz ft. Iggy Pop: It's Where I'm From

23 Andy Bell ft. Dot Allison and Michael Rother: I'm In Love... (Justin Robertson's Deadstock 33s Remix and Dub)

22 10:40: An Alternative History

21 Joao Leao: One Of These Things First

20 Raz and Alfa: Windowlicker

19 Rude Audio: Strange Phenomena EP

18 Factory Floor: Tell Me 

17 Psychederek: Thinkin' Bout U

16 Pandit Pam Pam: The Senator

15  Le Carousel: We're All Gonna Hurt

14 Saint Etienne: Alone Together Remix EP

13/ 12 Various remixes of The Cure's Songs For A Lost World but especially the Four Tet remix of Alone and the Orbital remix of Endsong

11 Daniel Avery ft. Cecile Believe: Rapture In Blue (Midnight Version)

10 Coyote: Battle Weary

9 Adrian Sherwood: The Grand Designer EP

8 Coyote and Peaking Lights: Love Letters/ So Far Away

7 Deeply Armed: The Healing (plus the remixes by Keith Tenniswood and Richard Fearless) 

6 Sewell And The Gong: Quiet Storm Remixes (Ruf Dug, Chris Coco)

5 Alex Kassian x Spooky: Orange Coloured Liquid

4 Black Bones: Album Sampler (this release is some kind of blending of an EP, an album, a compilation of 12" singles- whatever it is it's fantastic)

3 Klangkollektor: Dubtapes Volume Two

2 The Light Brigade: Shuffle The Deck

1 Four Tet: Into Dust (Still Falling)

Sheer joy from Four Tet, sampling/ reworking a Mazzy Star song. It was released in June and it lit up summer. It's still doing it in the depths of winter, Hope Sandoval's voice spinning against Kieran Hebden's skippy rhythms- emotive, trippy, endlessly rewarding. If you buy it on 12" there's a stripped down, subtler version of the B-side which hits a slightly different spot.  

I've probably missed something and there will inevitably be a record, track or album I pick up on in early 2026 which should be part of one of these lists. The nature of lists is that they're incomplete. Hopefully 2026 will continue to throw up more great music and more pop culture for us to listen to, dance to, obsess over and dissect. And maybe there will be a Sounds From the Flightpath Estate Volume 3...

The Bagging Area 2024 End Of Year Lists

The end of year list is a bit of an indulgence but also a good way to look back, revisit albums and songs and enjoy again the music that's made my year. People like lists. The exact positions are very arbitrary. What does it matter if I think something was the 26th or 27th best album of the year? It doesn't. But pulling together my favourite releases of the calendar year is always a fun thing to do and a good way to draw a line under the year. Last year I wrote a massive piece with multiple sections, categories, sub- categories and sub- lists, the total number of releases heading up towards three figures. I must have had more time to think about it and to write it last year than I do now. This year I've slim- lined it to two lists, one for albums and one for singles/ EPs/ remixes, each numbering thirty. 

Some years feel like singles years and some feel like album years- 2024 has been a big year for albums, some big hitters and 80s/ 90s bands and artists with big comebacks. I like to think I keep up with new music to some extent and the number of 'old' artists in this list makes me wonder how accurate that is, whether I'm kidding myself about that. But, as they say, it is what it is. Inevitably I will have missed something out from one of these two lists, if not both. Equally inevitably, I will buy an album in the new year that came out in 2024 which should have been in  the top 30. Nothing is ever fixed. Maybe that's the way it should be, a constantly fluid and shifting list. 

Singles, EPs and remixes

30 Silvertooth: Shut Um Down (A Dub From Outer Space)

29 The Liminanas and Bertand Belin: J'Adore Le Monde

28 Richard Norris: Weatherall's Last Stand

27 Jezebell: Weekend Machines EP

26 Causeway: Dancing With Shadows

25 Hinds with Grian Chatten: Stranger

24 David Harrow and Hugo Nicolson: Revolvalution EP and Rude Audio Remixes

23 Cole Odin and Marshall Watson: Voyager

22 Mick Harvey: When We Were Beautiful And Young

21 Electric Blue Vision: Trance Stance

20 BTCOP: The Custom 88 EP and Rude Audio Remixes

19 Mildlife: Return To Centauri

18 Puerto Montt City Orchestra: Hey You (10:40 Remix)

17 Pandit Pam Pam: Pass A Wish EP

16 Theis Thaws: Fly To Ceiling (David Holmes Remix)

15 Ammomite: You Don't Know Me (David Holmes Remix)

14 Ride: Last Frontier

13 C.A.R.: Anzu (Hardway Bros Remixes)

12 Acid Klaus: PTSD By Proxy EP

11 Raxon: Your Fault

10 Peak High: Dance Hall Days

9 Psychederek: Alt! EP

8 Iraini Mancini: Undo The Blue (Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve Re- animation)

7 Lisa Moorish: Sylvia (David Holmes Remix)

6 A Certain Ratio: It All Comes Down To This

5 Galliano: Cabin Fever Dub

A limited edition 7" single that was a very timely release with its line, 'don't want to take my country back man/ Want to take my country forwards', arriving to coincide with the Farage race riots in the summer, Galliano making a return to action and being a voice of reason. The song sampled Andrew Weatherall's remix of the band from 1992's Skunk Funk and borrowed Joe Strummer's vocal phrasings from This Is Radio Clash, and was a very unexpected treat. 

4 Amyl and The Sniffers: Big Dreams

As was this, a single ahead of the Melbourne pub punk's third album that showed a different side to the band. Over a picked, circling guitar riff and some spacious production Amy sang a punk rock torch song for all those people stuck in dead end towns and dead end jobs amid a cost of living crisis who want to get out and realise they're another year older and still stuck. The video for Big Dreams, with the band on motorbikes in the desert, was pure rock 'n' roll cool. 

3 Alex Kassian: E2- E4 (A Reference To E2- E4 By Manuel Gottsching)/ Mad Professor remixes

Twelve minutes and twenty one seconds of perfection- pulsing spaced out synths lines that lit up the summer. Not that summer really happened in the north of the UK this year. But when E2- E4 played it felt like it did. 

2 Orbital, David Holmes, DJ Helen and Mike Garry: Tonight In Belfast

Tonight In Belfast, Mike Garry's beautifully moving poem and voice over David Holmes' remix of Orbital's Belfast, a re- imagining of the Hartnoll brothers 1991 masterpiece is as good as anything else released this yea. It could easily be my number one. David remixed Belfast for the Orbital 30 project, updating it for the 2020s. DJ Helen got Mike Garry to speak his Tonight poem over the top. Mike's words speak to me in all sorts of ways. When I first heard it, so many of the lines for me were about Isaac, it seemed almost like he'd written it for me. Transcendent and emotional, everything music can/ should be. Magical. 

'Tonight I want to paint pictures of you/ Write poems and songs and novels all about you/I wanna hold you up so high you're gonna need a spacesuit'

'I love to speak your name aloud/ Simply 'cos I love its sound/ It feels like I'm kinda calling yer/ It feels like I'm kinda talking to ya/ It feels like I'm trying to break through/ You know across this divide'

'I'll tell you what/ Let's slip beyond the confines of this world/Let's forget every single thing we've learned/ Let's rewrite the way this world can turn'

1 Fat White Family: Bullet Of Dignity (Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve Re- Animation)

This came out in June, a 12" remix of one of the songs from Fat White Family's latest album Forgiveness Is Yours. The Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve Remix takes Bullet Of Dignity, already a fucked up, sordid and groovy number and spins it further, kicking off with percussion, timbales, early 90s kick drum and then a squelchy bassline that oozes dance floor action. It builds, echoes rattling around and the rhythm gathering steam, some piano stabs and then finally, after a drop out and pause, Lias' vocal comes in, a blur of standout lines and attention grabbing phrases- 'You say you're just thirty one/ What's that in cannibal years?' I have no idea what it's about but it keeps giving with imagery, lines about fatal caricatures and suicidal cassettes, words walking in pairs, and how the dialogue's dubbed. There's a Middle Eastern/ North African guitar line that appears and re- appears. At five minutes it takes off even further, the groove and rhythms bouncing around, moving ever forwards. 

Bullet Of Dignity (Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve Re- Animation)

There are a couple of singles that should really be heading up the singles list but they're both going to appear as part of the albums near the top end of this second list, as much for variety as anything. 

Albums

Edit: I've forgotten to include any of 100 Poems brilliant trio of albums from this year- I knew I'd forget something! Out of the three the most recent, Balearic As A System Of Belief, just about edges it. Album number 31. 

30 The Jesus And Mary Chain: Glasgow Eyes

29 Fat White Family: Forgiveness Is Yours

28 Reverb Delay: The Storm Has Passed

27 SubDan: Inhale, Exhale, Repeat

26 Duncan Gray: Five Fathoms Full

25 Saint Etienne: The Night

24 Richard Norris: Oracle Sound Volume Three

23 Khruangbin: A La Sala

22 Mick Head and The Red Elastic Band: Loophole

21 The Woodentops: Fruits Of the Deep

20 Dirt Bogarde: Love, Sweat And Beers

19 M- Paths: Submerge

18 Coyote: Hurry Up And Live

17 Klangkollektor: Dub Tapes Volume 1

16 Various Artists: Virtual Dreams Volume II (Ambient Explorations In The House And techno Age, Japan 1993- 1999

15 David Holmes: Blind On A Galloping Horse Remixes

14 Fontaines DC: Romance

13 Richard Sen: India Man

12 A Certain Ratio: It All Comes Down To This

11 J- Walk: Broken Beauty

10 Five Green Moons: Moon One

9 Sedibus: Seti

8 Underworld: Strawberry Hotel

7 Four Tet: 3

6 Jamie Xx: In Waves

5 The Cure: Songs Of A Lost World

I had no idea, along with thousands of other people I imagine, that what I really needed in late 2024 was a new album from The Cure. The opener, Alone, released as a single in the autumn, was an exercise in majestic beauty and beautiful gloom, a three minute instrumental intro and then Robert Smith singing as well as he ever has, about life, love, loss, mortality, and 'the end of every song we sing'. Stunning. The album continued in that vein for the next seven songs, meditations on aging and loss, ending inevitably with Endsong.

4 GLOK/ Timothy Clerkin: Alliance

Electronics and guitars, swirling, woozy modern psychedelia recorded remotely after the pair met at Andrew Weatherall's funeral. A collision of early 90s sounds and 2024 trippiness. For some time it was all I played, a totally addictive seven track album. 

3 Bill Ryder- Jones: Iechyd Da

This could easily be album of the year, a January release that I keep returning to. Beautiful songs with acoustic guitars, pianos and grand, sweeping strings, a children's choir from a Birkenhead primary school, Mick Head reading Ulysses, a Gal Costa sample, and amazing stirring production- and then Bill's battered and beaten voice, sounding like a man who's reached the end of the road, has nowhere left to go, broken. The pain he sings about is from experience, the death of his brother as a child (Daniel fell off a cliff while they pair where on holiday, his family forever scarred) and mental health issues ever since. 

Nothing To Be Done

In the end though he gets there and we do with him- 'I'm still lost/ But I know love/ I know loss/ But I chose love'.

2 Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds: Wild God

Wild God was a step into the light, a conscious decision by Nick Cave to choose joy over sorrow- a line that appears in the song Joy where Nick is visited late at night by a ghost, a boy with giant sneakers and laughing stars around his head, who tells him, 'we've all had too much sorrow/ now is the time for joy'. It shakes me when I hear it. 

By this song, the fourth on the album, its clear we've stepped into a new Cave world. The first song, Song Of The Lake, explodes orchestrally Nick muttering 'never mind, never mind...'. It's follow by Wild God, with its heart stopping cry of 'bring your spirit down'. That is followed by Frogs, easily one of the best songs of this year and one of Cave's best, a song where Nick walks home on a Sunday in the rain, amazed at the wonders of the world around him- frogs in the gutter, the rain, Kris Kristofferson. The band sound reborn too. The previous albums were so grief stricken and spectral it was difficult for them to find a way in, Warren Ellis's synths were the core of the sound. Final Rescue Attempt tells of Nick being saved by a woman, and how after that, 'nothing really hurt again/ nothing ever really hurt/ not even real pain'. It's extraordinary stuff, magical, life affirming songs. By the end of side two, when former partner Anita Lane's voice appears (from Nick's answer phone. She died in 2021), we've gone through the wringer and come out the other side, the sheer joie de vivre evident throughout, no more so than in the fade out to Conversion where Nick and the choir sing/ shout, 'Stop! You're beautiful!', at each other.

Both Frogs and Wild God could have been near the top end of the singles list- I've not listened to any songs more than either of those two all year- but now they're fully part of the album as a whole, an album that when I put it on, I play all the way through and one I imagine I'll still be playing long into the future. 

Joy

1 Various Artists: Sounds From The Flightpath Estate

What else could it be? I did wonder whether I could/ should put the album me, Martin, Dan, Mark and Baz pulled together into my list, if doing it was a bit much. But in the end, it has been the album of the year for me. This time last year we were receiving tracks from the artists we'd approached, music from Justin Robertson, David Holmes, Timothy J Fairplay, Richard Sen, Hardway Bros, Sons Of Slough, Rude Audio and 10:40. Andy Bell's cover of Smokebelch arriving at the last minute was the cherry on top. An unreleased Two Lone Swordsmen track too.  

We knew we had something good, all the music was so strong, everyone had really responded so well to us (a bunch of unknowns let's be honest). But we did not expect what then happened. Selling out 500 vinyl copies in a day. Repressing 500 more and selling all of them too. Three of the tracks being played on Lauren Laverne's 6 Music show. Having the window display in Piccadilly Records. 

Giving a copy to Paul Simonon at The Golden Lion was as memorable and surreal as anything else that happened in 2024. Appearing in two end of year lists (Piccadilly records and Uncut). All of it has been unreal and yet, there it is, it happened. It would have been nothing without the music though- from the chunky cosmic chug of Sons Of Slough (recorded live at The Golden Lion) to Tim Fairplay's centurion dub, Justin's weird folk/ dub collision and Richard Sen's massive sounding Tough On Chug, Tough On The Causes Of Chug, the dub techno of Rude Audio and 10:40's fairground swirl, Hardway Bros writing our own theme, Theme For Flightpath Estate, and Holmes' magnificent Human: Remains, to Andy's gorgeous cover of Smokebelch, it's a brilliant and beautiful thing and it's my album of the year. To everyone involved, all the artists, my Flightpath friends, Waka, Gig and Matt at the Golden Lion and GLS, Andrew Liles, Rusty for his incredible sleeve art, and the memory of Andrew Weatherall (for whom it is a tribute)- thank you. 

Did someone say Volume 2? Sequels are hard....

2023: My Year In Music

2023 has been a year of 23s for me in many ways. I've written before about the number and its occurrence, its relationship to us since Isaac died and the tattoos the three of us got done in October. This is my end of year post, a list pulling together what has been the best of 2023 for me. Inevitably there are 23 entries (but much more than 23 artists, singles and albums) and as I was writing it I realised that today is 23rd December (I planned to post this today before thinking about what date it would be). I have heard so much new music this year and so much of it has been really good- my long list of albums of the year came to thirty albums without much thought, a new album for every ten days of the year. And while much of this year has been a real struggle with grief and the long aftermath of Isaac's death, I've had some great nights out at events that were (almost) entirely about the music- the grief never goes away, it sits inside me or hovers above me but music- recorded music, live music- often has the power to transport me in a way nothing else does. 

This is a list of my favourite musical things of this year. It's not objective. I haven't heard everything I should have done and I'm sure there are records that I'd love if I had more time and more money. Usually I find something early into the new year that instantly screams 'best of last year' to me. Also, ranking art and declaring one album 'better' than another is inherently subjective but end of year lists are fun and looking back and putting it all into one place is a good way to mark the end of the year. The year of 23. 

Twenty Three: Venue Of The Year

No contest here- The Golden Lion in Todmorden and a fitting place to start the list. I've enjoyed several superb nights out at The Lion this year with the honour of DJing on a few occasions. ALFOS in June was very hot and memorable, David Holmes' album launch party in November was a 2023 highlight, Dan Donovan’s Casbah Club in August (sadly Paul Simonon was unable to attend), our Sabresonic celebration and Q&A with Jagz Kooner and Gary Burns and Jagz’s DJ set (videos of the Q&A to follow shortly), the Tici Taci Party in August with Sean Johnston and Duncan Gray DJing downstairs after a blistering set from Sons Of Slough upstairs, Red Snapper rattling the fittings in November and the legendary, untouchable AW60 in April with a beautiful cast of artists and revellers and a huge headlining set from Justin Robertson. 

Twenty Two: Label Of The Year

There are lots of independent labels putting out loads of good music, keeping things in house and small scale- not that there's anything small scale about the music- with digital and physical releases. These three have kept me busy all year with singles, EPs and albums, one offs and compilations- a three way tie for first place. Leeds based label Paisley Dark has put out releases by Warriors of The Dysthoteque, Jay- Son, The Machine Soul, Hogt I Tak and James Rod, all top notch electronic psychedelia. Duncan Gray's Tici Taci has had a year long celebration of ten years in the business with a tenth birthday party at the Golden Lion, a series of compilations, Decades Volumes 1 to 4 with outstanding new releases from The Long Champs' 'Nostalgia For The Future', Jack Butters' ‘Shake It Off’ and singles and EPs from Mystic Thug, Uj Pa Gaz, Viper Patrol and Mr BC. Along with those two is Exeter's Mighty Force, the label that back in the early 90s put out Aphex Twin's first 12" single, reborn for the digital age. Mighty Force have sent all of these into the ether and all are excellent electronic music- Yorkshire Machines ‘Firing Up’, ‘Fluffy Inside’ by Nylon Corners, M- Paths' ‘Hope’ AP Organism's EP ‘Space Docks And Moon Rocks’ David Harrow's ‘Jitter’ and ‘Described Spaces’ by KAMS. Long may all three labels continue.

Twenty One: Gig Of The Year

I had the pleasure to see some great gigs this year, several of which lived long in the memory. Spiritualized at Manchester's New Century Hall were genuinely breathtaking. Red Snapper at the Golden Lion kicked up a storm of cosmic jazz, trip hop and downtempo. Eyes Of Others at The Castle on Oldham Street were great, another great Heavenly Records artist. Chris Rotter and Andy Bell's two man set on Saturday afternoon at AW60 playing songs from Andrew Weatherall's A Pox On The Pioneers was a gem. 

But the win goes to A Certain Ratio who I saw live three times this year. They toured twice, released a superb new album, 1982, and an EP, celebrating 45 years of making music and they're still forging ahead with new music and ideas. Their gig at New Century Hall earlier on this year, the free one outdoors at Factory International in June and the two set 45^th anniversary celebration at Band On The Wall at the start of this month were all brilliant, a dance floor blend of youth and experience, post- punk/ punk funk/ jazz funk, the old and the new. 

Twenty: Compilation Of The Year

I've already mentioned Tici Raci's four volumes of Decade, several hours of chuggy sci fi, nu disco, house, techno sparkle. Aficionado's 25 Of Aficionado is a celebration of a Manchester institution, the anything goes, genre free spirit of Jason Boardman and Moonboots pressed onto four sides of vinyl is right up there with Colleen Murphy's Balearic Breakfast Volume 2 not far behind. But the stand out compilation of the year was Richard Sen's Dream The Dream: UK Techno, House And Breakbeat 1990- 1994, a perfectly pulled together and superbly sequenced set of tracks from the early 90s that show what a fertile period that was and how much was going on in the underground. 

Dream Frequency: Dream The Dream

Nineteen: Edits Of The Year

Some of my favourite tracks of this year have been edits- do edits count as new music? Or old music? New versions of old music, rejigged for the dancefloor. Jezebell's Jezebalearic Beats Vol 1 is a masterclass in this area and will appear further on in this list. Jezebell's Diavol Edits Vol 7 as a four track joy. Beyonder's Present Case Edits Vol 1 was a stunner, not least Hardway Bros edit of Sleaford Mods' Mork And Mindy, the M&M Acid Edit. Peza's Rock The Spectre, a layering of Joe Strummer's vocal from Rock the Casbah over Mystic Thug also hit the spot for me. But just pipping all of these for me were the pair of edits on the A- side of a recent vinyl only 12" by Coyote, their reworking of Monsoon's Ever So Lonely as Lonely and Gil Scott Heron as Western Revolution lighting up December for me.  

Eighteen: Andy Bell

Pretty soon from here there will be some proper lists and less wittering from me but first Andy Bell who at first glance seemed to have had a quiet year after all his solo albums and GLOK activity in 2020- 2022. Even so he put in a tour, released a lovely ambient/ free jazz mini- album with Masal, Tidal Love Numbers, and a ten minute live cover version of Neu!'s Hallogallo (also with Masal), a live in session album for Electronic Sound called Gateway Mechanics wearing his GLOK hat, two sides of soaring kosmische electronics and guitars, a bunch of remixes for other artists and put out a fanzine, Volume, Fuzz And Delay (which contained my review of his gig at Gulliver's in April 2022. Which, as the man on The Fast Show used to say, was nice). The fanzine came with a download code for three hours of live recordings from Andy's Space Station gigs, live versions of songs from his solo albums and as GLOK, all of which are stunning. 

Seventeen: EPs Of The Year

All of these were essential listening for me at various points this year, all of them somewhere between the single and the album, with Sons Of Slough's chug and cosmic wallop recorded live at Convenanza in September,  Jezebell's messy day and night out in the sun with Siouxsie on Trading Places, the three remixes of Unloved's Polychrome album, Justin Robertson's rocking dub especially, and at the top the wondrous Magic Hour EP by Wigan's Mark Peters, resplendent on 10" yellow vinyl.

• 11. Whitelands ‘Remixes’ 
• 10: Steve Queralt and Michael Smith ‘Sun Moon Town Versions’
• 9: Yorkshire Machines ‘Firing Up’
• 8: Woodleigh Research Facility: Apparently Solo 4 Borderlands
• 7: Sons Of Slough ‘Live at The Castle’
• 6: Chug Norris ‘Dark and Sweaty’
• 5: Richard Sen ‘Dream the Dream’ remixes
• 4: Andy Bell and Masal ‘Tidal Love Numbers’
• 3: Jezebell ‘Trading Places’
• 2: Unloved ‘Polychrome’ Remixes
• 1: Mark Peters ‘The Magic Hour’ EP

Sixteen: Albums Of The Year Numbers 30 to 8

• 30: Laurel Halo 'Atlas'
• 29. Red Snapper 'Live At The Moth Club' 
• 28: Young Fathers 'Young Fathers'
• 27: Dicky Continental ‘Uh?’
• 26: House of All 'House Of All'
• 25: Goat 'Medicine'
• 24: Boxheater Jackson ‘Indigenous State Of Mind’
• 23: Konformer ‘Konformer’
• 22: A Certain Ratio: 1982
• 21: Slowdive ‘Everything Is Alive’
• 20: The Coral ‘Sea Of Mirrors’
• 19: David Harrow ‘Rare Earth Technology’
• 18: Steve Cobby ‘The New Law Of Righteousness’
• 17: HiFi Sean and David McAlmont ‘Happy Ending’
• 16: Woodleigh Research Facility ‘Phonox Nights’
• 15: Andy Bell ‘Gateway Mechanics’
• 14: The Thief Of Time ‘Where Do I Belong?’
• 13: Coyote ‘I Hear A New World’
• 12. Grian Chatten ‘Chaos For The Fly’
• 11: Rude Audio and Dan Wainwright ‘Psychedelic Science’
• 10: Jezebell ‘Jezebellearic Beats Volume 1’
• 9: Richard Norris ‘Oracle Sound Volume 1’
• 8: Yo La Tengo ‘This Stupid World’

Fifteen: Singles Of The Year Numbers 23 to 8

• 23: Four Tet ‘Three Drums’
• 22: Woodentops ‘Ride A Cloud’ and Coyote remix
• 21: Hurdy Gurdy and the Local Psycho ‘The Hurdy Gurdy Song’
• 20: X- Press 2 ‘Phasing You Out’ David Holmes remix
• 19: Rude Audio ‘The Grinning’
• 18: Warriors Of The Dysthoteque and Joe Duggan ‘Fitzroy Avenue’
• 17: Dicky Continental ‘Simon Says’ Congagong Rework’
• 16: Dot Allison ‘Unchanged’ GLOK Remix
• 15: JIM ‘Phoenix’ Crooked Man Remixes
• 14: Flamingods ‘Dreams (On The Strip)’
• 13: Islandman ‘Godless Ceremony’ plus the Hardway Bros Remix
• 12: A Man Called Adam ‘The Girl With A Hole In Her Heart’
• 11: Aphex Twin ‘Black Box Recorder 21f’
• 10: Psychederek ‘Test Card Girl’
• 9: Jo Sims ‘Bass- The Final Frontier’ David Holmes remix
• 8: Katy J Pearson ‘Willow’s Song’ Richard Norris remix

Fourteen: Album Of The Year #7 Eyes Of Others ‘Eyes Of Others’

Eyes Of Others debut album is a heady collage of electronics, synthpop, dub, acid house, early New Order and John Bryden's singular world view.   

Thirteen: Album Of The Year #6  African Head Charge ‘A Trip To Bolgatanga’

Bonjo and Sherwood back on the African Head Charge express, ten songs built over Bonjo's drumming, chanting and dub. 

Twelve: Album Of The Year #5 10:40 ‘Transition Theory’

I first heard Jesse Fahnestock's music a couple of years ago, an edit of Spacemen 3. This album, a complete piece of work, each track containing the seeds of the next one, an eleven song trip through the 10:40 world roaming in the spaces between ambient house, chuggy electronics, indie dance, psychedelia, bleepy dub and atmospherics, floating in inner/ outer space.  

Eleven: Album Of The Year #4 JIM ‘Loves Makes Magic’

Surprise of the year for me, a Balearic song based album that lit up summer- the hot, sunny summer we didn't really get this year. 

Ten: Album Of The Year #3 Sonic Boom and Panda Bear ‘Reset In Dub’ by Adrian Sherwood

Sherwood and the On U Sound collective proving they've lost none of their power, sending Sonic Boom and Panda Bear into echo heaven. 

Nine: Album Of The Year #2 James Holden ‘Imagine This Is a High Dimensional Space Of All Possibilities’

This album came out in March, an album that is endlessly innovative and entrancing. Holden recorded it partly as a memory of 90s rave and the free party movement but it works way beyond nostalgia, twelve tracks that never become predictable, never settle, always looking to twist and move somewhere else, melodies and squiggles, birdsong and synths. I played it again recently and it sounded as fresh as it did in March. 

Eight: Single Of The Year #7 Cole Odin and Marshall Watson ‘Just A Daydream Away’ versions plus Hardway Bros remix

Shimmering indie dance from the West Coast of the USA, in two versions, both equally great and a wonderful Hardway Bros remix serving up ten minutes of cosmic indie chug (a trick Sean repeated with remixes of Holy Youth Movement and Islandman's Godless Ceremony. 

Seven: Single Of The Year #6 Electric Blue Vision ‘Other Skies’ plus remixes

Jesse Fahnestock has been on fire in 23, a flood of music and ideas (see above, number 13). Other Skies is a song that has that magic, the magic that transports and transcends, Emilia Harmony's vocal about being lost and going home a key part of it. The remixes, all three of them, sent it into new places with the Hardway Bros and Monkton's dub version bringing the bass and melodica front and centre. 

Six: Single Of The Year #5 Khidja ‘Do You Know This Record Marius?

Two weeks ago this wouldn't have been here but it shoved its way in and won't let go- trippy, spinning electronic psychedelia from Romania that has been on a loop at home and in the car. 

Five: Single Of The Year #4 Dirt Bogarde ‘Heavy Blotter’

Dirt has provided several tracks this year that have pushed me forwards but this one has an oomph, an electric charge and a big acid house sound that rattles my speakers and hits me in the chest. 

Four: Single Of The Year #3 Matt Gunn ‘Learning By Loops’ Bedford Falls Players Remix

I wrote about this last week, a remix that has been in my ears since the early summer, and one I'm not remotely tired of hearing. A crunch of drums, long vocal sample about binary systems, time travel, the voice of Jesus and shit like this with a ringing guitar part looped in and out. 

Three: Sinead O'Connor and Single Of The Year #3 David Holmes 'Necessary Genius'

There have been a lot of high profile deaths this year, the losses of David Crosby, Tom Verlaine, Bobby Charlton, Jane Birkin, Steve Mackey, Spot, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Mark Stewart, Andy Rourke and Shane McGowan all moments of sadness. But Sinead's death in July was shocking and brought a wave of heartfelt tributes and genuine bereavement from many, her death, coming a year after the loss of her youngest son Shane. I read her book Rememberings last year and the knowledge that Shane would die after the book was written made reading it very moving. 

Back in July when I posted my own tribute to her I included a link to an edit Rich Lane did of Sinead's song Jackie. A friend sent my blogpost to David Holmes who in response sent me the track he played at his own tribute to Sinead at NTS radio, his remix of Orbital's Belfast with Sinead's vocal from Nothing Compares 2U over the top. David also then got in touch with Rich and asked for a copy of Jackie to play when DJing (which he did and which David played at The Golden Lion in November, a moment that made me smile when it came over the sound system and I thought about how it got there). David also then asked Rich to do a remix for him which should be coming out soon. Sinead's face was on the art for David's Necessary Genius single and a print included with the Blind On A Galloping Horse album. She's been a presence all over the second half of 2023, a beautiful and fearless soul and it seemed right to include her in this list. Hopefully the album she recorded with David Holmes will see the light of day eventually. 

Necessary Genius was close to the top in my list of singles of 2023, a rollcall of talent and inspiration with glorious synths and drum machines. But it missed out to this...

Two: Single Of The Year- Fontaines DC 'Cello Song'

I thought long and hard about this, about whether I really think a cover version should be my single of the year and whether given almost all the music above is electronic, a rock 'n' roll rumble in the top spot is right- but in the end it is the song I've gone back to time and time again. Nick Drake's original is my favourite song of his, a song of acoustic and poetic beauty, and in some ways the words have become associated with Isaac for me in the two years since he died. Fontaines DC take the song and do something new with it, a squeal of feedback, a rockabilly drumbeat, acres of Dublin street swagger and Grian Chatten's deep hit of voice breathing new meaning into Nick's words. Back in July I put together a forty minute mix of Nick Drake songs which opened with Nick's version and closed with Fontaines. Here it is again. 

Forty Minutes Of Nick Drake

One: Album Of The Year- David Holmes 'Blind On A Galloping Horse'

The album I've been waiting for since the first single from it appeared in 2021, Hope Is The Last Thing To Die. Fourteen songs long, seventy minutes of music, a proper album from start to finish with contributions from Keith Tenniswood and Tim Fairplay, the voice of Raven Violet and the spirits of Andrew Weatherall and Sinead O'Connor. Songs that take in the personal and the political, the emotional and the righteous, the psychedelic and the electronic, over four sides of vinyl housed in a beautifully designed sleeve. Everything we wanted and more and as someone said to me, exactly the album we needed at exactly the right time. 

There were a slew of remixes to support the singles, all of them worth hearing and some of them right up there with the best music released this year, a case of more is sometimes more. Shout outs to Sonic Boom and Panda Bear's remix of Yeah x 3 and both Vendetta Suite's versions of the same song, Colleen Murphy's acid disco remixes of Stop Apologising, and the remixes of Necessary Genius by Decius (a riot in a sweaty basement), Lovefingers (a slowed down piano dub groove) and especially Phil Kieran's eight minute electronic kraut hammer remix. 

Necessary Genius (Phil Kieran Remix Vocal)

2022: A List

If you ever find yourself in the car park hell of Asda in Stockport, a car park split over two multi- storey sites linked by bridges and with different walkways to enter the supermarket, take some comfort from the fact that even in these unpromising conditions a moment of joy can still arrive- someone painted this little devil on the wall in a corner. This has nothing to do with the post that will follow, it's just a disconnected intro. 

As is traditional here is my end of year list, twenty two musical artefacts 2022 in list form, a list combining singles, albums and EPs into one countdown- you'll notice I've cheated, there are many more than twenty two releases contained within. In a year shot through with all kinds of personal difficulties caused by grief and bereavement following Isaac's death at the end of last year, music has been an area of solace and distraction for me and I have listened to and enjoyed a huge amount of new music this year. I know as well there are albums I haven't heard and should have- Working Men's Club and Fontaines DC come to mind- and hopefully I'll get to them eventually. So, with no further ado...

Number Twenty Two

Some albums that have made the year tick, in no particular order: 

• Coyote: Everything Moves Nothing Rests
• Sheer Taft: And Then There Were Four
• Société Étrange: Chance
• Gabe Gurnsey: Diablo
• Timothy J. Fairplay: Free Andromeda
• Half Man Half Biscuit: The Voltarol Years
• Rich Ruth: I Survived, It's Over
• Wet Leg: Wet Leg
• Red Snapper: Everybody Is Somebody
• Tigerbalm: International Love Affair
• Panda Bear and Sonic Boom: Reset
• The Order Of The 12: Lore Of The Land
• Spiritualized: Everything Was Beautiful
• Warrington- Runcorn New Town Development Plan: Districts, Roads, Open Space
• Jon Hopkins: Music For Psychedelic Therapy

Number Twenty One

Some singles and EPs that have been on rotation at the Bagging Area this year, again, in no particular order:

• Justin Robertson's Deadstock 33s and Brix Smith: Brix Goes Tubular
• Sault: 10
• Phil Kieran and Green Velvet: Enjoy The Day Hardway Bros Meets Monkton
• BTCOP: Just A Disco especially the Lights On A Hill Mix
• Al McKenzie: Sail On
• Steve Queralt and Michael Smith: Sun Moon Town
• D: Ream: Pedestal (Jezebell's Dizzy Heights remix)
• Throne Of Blood EPs 1 to 4
• Matt Gunn: Disko Drohne EP and the massive remix package
• The Vendetta Stone remixes 12"
• Peak High: Was That All It Was Hardway Bros remixes
• Perry Granville: Lumux and Cleveland Sundays
• Confidence Man: Feels Like A Different Thing (Daniel Avery remix)
• Cantoma: Alive Remixes EP
• Unknown Genre: Elevator Ride
• Dirt Bogarde: Triumphe De Liebe and So Far Away
• Curses: Gina Lollobrigida
• Orbital and Sleaford Mods: Dirty Rat
• Hifi Sean and David McAlmont: All In The World (and just wait for the album that gets a full release next year, a stunning record- the title track alone is one of next year's best songs)

Number Twenty

Various albums by Various Artists

There have been a slew of great compilation albums this year, multi- artist releases containing umpteen gems and treasure- The Chill Out Tent Volume 1, a compilation from Warm titled Home complete with animal and bird sounds between the tracks, Spun Out's Oompty Boompty Music compilation, the Shelter Me compilation from Leeds based Paisley Dark label and the cream of this crop, Higher Love Volume 2 (from the Brighton label of the same name).

Number Nineteen

Fontan: Iriz

A 7" single released on Hoga Nord at the start of the year, a gorgeous spaced out, instrumental warm bath with slowly building drums. 

Number Eighteen

Boxheater Jackson: We Are One

Exeter's Mighty Force label has had quite a year. Boxheater Jackson's ten track album We Are One is a sublime set of chugging, optimistic, cosmic acid house. Also worth checking out on Mighty Force are Golden Donna's The Truth About Love, lovely washes of ambient techno, and the funky acid house/ indie- dance crossover Pro- Oxidant by Long Range Desert Group. 

Number Seventeen

Mark Peters with Dot Allison: Sundowning/ Richard Norris ambient remix

Mark's latest album, Red Sunset Dreams, is pointing away from Wigan and towards the wide open landscapes of the US. With Dot Allison on vocals Switch On The Sky was a highlight- and then Sundowning came out, shimmering instrumental floaty ambience with a superb pair of Richard Norris remixes. Dot also had a solo EP out with the final remix from Lee 'Scratch' Perry, a lovely dubby version of Love Died In Our Arms. 

Number Sixteen

The Orielles: Tableau

Tableau is one of the year's most unexpected treats, a double album spanning spoken word, dream pop, 60s jazz, indie and whatever else the trio decided they could turn their hands to. The recent Eyes Of Others' remix of Darkened Corners was superb spun out psychedelia and The Orielles own remix of Unknown Genre's Elevator Ride an unexpected visit to early 90s ambient techno. 

Number Fifteen

Anatolian Weapons: Selected Acid Tracks

Strong acid from Greece, 808s set to stun, seven tracks of mind bending stuff. Acid Research 63, Acid Research 20 and Desert Track 66 are the picks and so much more than their functional titles suggest. 

Number Fourteen

Rude Audio: Big Heat

A five track EP with typically brilliant tracks and remixes. Big Heat is a low slung, throbbing, dub techno groover, straight outta South London. 

Number Thirteen

Pye Corner Audio: Let's Emerge

The latest Pye Corner Audio album left the dystopic sounds of last year's Entangled Routes and looked towards the summer, as typified on the glorious Warmth Of The Sun single with Andy Bell adding guitar to the analogue synth ambience. Sonic Boom remixed three tracks from the album, released as an excellent EP, Let's Remerge. A PCA remix of Principles Of Geometry's First I Heard Color is in the same area. 

Number Twelve

Rhenizand: Atlantis Atlantis

More brilliant Belgian dance pop/ Balearic pop, an album that lights up any room it's played in. They can do no wrong for me. 

Number Eleven

Unloved: Turn Of The Screw/ Turn Of The Screw (Erol Alkan Rework)

The new Unloved album, The Pink Album, found David Holmes, Keefus Ciancia and Jade Vincent and their 60s Now! sound extended over four sides of vinyl, twenty two songs (with Raven Violet, Etienne Daho and Jarvis Cocker along for the ride). On songs like Mother's Been A Bad Girl the woozy, disturbed, reverb drenched sound hit the spot and on Turn Of The Screw they nailed it, a driving, urgent, psychedelic pop song with Raven Violet on vocals and in charge. The remixes were bang on too, Erol Alkan's remix of Turn Of The Screw especially (and it sounded huge when David spun it at the Golden Lion in October). There's' an exhibition of Julian House's sleeve art at The Social in London too if you're in that neck of the woods.

Number Ten 

10:40: three EPs

Jesse Fahnestock's 10:40 has one of 2022's ongoing delights, a slew of tracks and remixes from the start of the year to it's recent advent calendar end. Kissed Again, a gorgeous piece of emotional slow motion Balearic dance first came out in 2021 but was released this year by Brighton's Higher Love as an EP with the equally lovely Fin and Coat Check. Thickener (both versions) and The Knack (three versions) were both wonky dancefloor oriented thumpers.

Number Nine

The Summerisle Six: This Is Something/ This Is Something (Rico Conning Remix)

Sean Johnston's Wicker Man/ Todmorden inspired psyche folk/ indie dance side project grew from a trio to a sextet for this release (Andy Bell, Jo Bartlett, Duncan Gray, Kev Sharkey and Mick Somerset Ward all on board) for one of the year's best 12", an indie dance floor filler. Rico Conning's remix, a ten minute blissed out sunset journey, is the remix of the year.

Number Eight

Jazxing: Pearls Of The Baltic Sea

An album of Polish Balearica that appeared seemingly out of nowhere. Start with the sax led Fala and go from there. 

Number Seven

Michael Head and The Red Elastic Band: Dear Scott.

Mick Head's latest wonderfully crafted and written set of songs, tales of life lived and lives observed, with typically lovely melodies. 

Number Six

Daniel Avery: Chaos Energy

A double vinyl ambient/ industrial/ techno album- emotive and hard hitting human/ machine music. 

Number Five

Jezebell: Jezebellearica

A nine minute tribute to DJ Alfredo, the White Isle and an open minded approach to music, Jezebellearica was the song of the summer round here. Jezebell's The Knack, Dancing Not Fighting, Et Moi and Concurrence were all worth mentioning here too. 

Number Four

Decius: Vol 1

Decius's album is twelve tracks of heady, sleazy, minimal, techno, inspired by the proto- house of Ron Hardy, with it's tongue firmly in its cheek, single entrendres rubbing up against distorted synths and banging beats. I reviewed it for Ban Ban Ton Ton back in November. In a turn of events I wasn't expecting some of my review has been pulled out for the press release, where my words are directly below a quote from Iggy Pop. As a year end treat Decius have made an end of year mix available, a pay what you want deal, with many of the tracks from the album included in it. You can get it here. 

Number Three: EP |Of The Year

Andy Bell: Untitled Film Stills and I Am A Strange Loop

Andy Bell's Flicker came out at the start of the year, a beautiful and fully realised solo album with songs spanning the range of his influences- backwards tracks, guitar songs reprising the chord sequences from the earliest Ride records, cosmic instrumentals and straight ahead guitar pop. During the course of the year cover versions and remixes appeared, compiled in the autumn onto two four track 10" vinyl EPs (with a third of acoustic versions) and extras available digitally. Untitled Film Stills is a beautiful way to spend twenty minutes, his covers of Pentangle's Light Fight, Yoko Ono's Listen, The Snow Is Falling and The Kinks' The Way Love Used To Be all right up there and the small hours, quiet devastation of his cover of Arthur Russell's Our Last Night Together capable of bringing tears. The remixes EP is superb too with David Holmes Radical Mycology Remix of The Sky Without You and Richard Norris' lovely slowed down, string laden version of Something Like Love the standouts. 

Number Two: Album Of The Year

A Mountain Of One: Stars Planets Dust Me

Existential Balearica, yacht rock, symphonic dark pop- however I slice it this album has been the one I'v enjoyed and played more than any other in 2022. Bubbling synth basslines, FXed vocals, acoustic guitars, piano, tom tom drums, cosmic hippy questions with no answers, spaced out and widescreen sun baked music with Rolo from The Woodentops on board for good measure. The remixes of Star in the summer stretched things further still, the Glok remix linking this with Andy Bell (at number three).

Star (GLOK Starlight Dub)

Number One: Single Of The Year

David Holmes: It's Over, If We Run Out Of Love

It's Over, If We Run Out Of Love was released on Valentine's Day and has been there throughout the year for me, played daily at times. David's tribute to the youth movements of our youths- the mods, rockers, rastas, punks, soul boys, teds, ravers and clubbers- sung by Raven Violet is a triumph, its two note keyboard blast and boom- tish drums capable of lifting the spirits on the lowest of days and the lyrics- 'I remember back when we were young/ They said the people's day would surely come/ It's over now if we run out of love'- don't really need picking through. It's the best single/ song I've heard this year and hopefully at some point will, along with last year's Hope Is The Last Thing To Die, form the centrepieces of an album. But if not, on its own, it's more than enough. 

There was a remix a little while later, the song being toughened up and stretched out for late night revelry- Darren Emerson's Huffa Remix and the Hardway Bros one were the pick of the bunch for me. Holmes has had quite a year, his DJ gigs in small venues have been on fire- the Golden Lion in Todmorden was particularly memorable not least because I was on the turntables that evening and handed over to him, a chain of events a younger me would struggle to comprehend. Friends who went to his gig at the Social in London in February raved about it as did friends who saw him in Glasgow more recently. A few months ago David released a 7" on Hoga Nord, the motorik/  Joy Division glide of No One Is Smarter Than History another highlight of 2022 and his remix of The Vendetta Suite's Purple Haze, Yellow Sunrise is another 2022 peak as is his remix of Orbital's Belfast, thirty years after the original. You'll notice David appears elsewhere in this list as Unloved and with a remix of Andy Bell too. When you're on a roll, just keep on rolling. 

2021: A List

I've done an end of year list at the end of every year since starting the blog in 2010. I started to pull a list of albums and songs together back in November and thought I should at least try to finish it off. Everything I've listened to since the end of November has been coloured by Isaac's death so I'm not sure if this is how the lists would have turned out if things had been different but we are where we are, as people say. 

Albums of 2021

I've heard loads of good albums this year. My initial list ran to over twenty albums (and that was before the Pye Corner Audio album turned up) and there are several I've not heard yet that would surely be contenders had I got round to listening to them (I'm thinking of Carnage by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis and this year's releases from LoneLady, WH Lung and Low). Floating around somewhere outside my top ten are these albums (in no particular order): Andres Y Xavi's Sounds From The Secret Bar; Stinky Jim's It's Not What It Sounds Like; The Vendetta Suite's Kempe Stone Portal; Steve Cobby's Shanty Bivouac (which has a close to perfect side 2); Richard Fearless's unsettling ambient techno masterpiece Future Rave Memory; Roisin Murphy's remixed Crooked Machine; Bicep's Isles; Reinhard Vanbergen and Charlotte Caluwaerts' Souvenir Des Bon Gout; Sons Of Slough's Bring Me Sunshine; Sonic Boom's remix album Almost Nothing Is Nearly Enough; Cheval Sombre's pair of albums Days Go By and Time Waits For No One; Dry Cleaning's New Long Leg; Cerulean by Nashville Ambient Ensemble; The Liminanas and Laurent Garnier's De Pelicula; The Grid and Robert Fripp's Leviathan; Rose City Band's Earth Trip. The Bagging Area top ten looks like this-

10. Pye Corner Audio 'Entangled Routes'

9. Mogwai 'As The Love Continues'

8. Richard Norris 'Hypnotic Response'

7. Dean Wareham 'I Have Nothing To Say To The Mayor Of L.A.'

6. Sedibus 'The Heavens' 

5. Daniel Avery 'Together In Static'

4. GLOK 'Pattern Recognition'

3. Coyote 'The Mystery Light'

2. Circe Sky 'Dream Colour'

1. Saint Etienne 'I've Been Trying To Tell You'

I wasn't expecting Saint Etienne to make an album as good as this, at this stage of things- made in isolation but sounding like the work of three people in a room together, I've Been Trying To Tell You is a woozy, reflective album digging away at late 90s nostalgia (but not sounding itself nostalgic), built around samples from that period and with a strong undertow of bass and a warm wash of effects. On top of this Sarah Cracknell's voice is used almost like a sample library, cut up phrases and snatches of dialogue. 

EP of 2021

5. Rich Lane 'Camo' 

4. Three EPs of outstanding new music from A Certain Ratio, 'EPA', 'EPC' and 'EPR'. I couldn't separate them so have bunched them together. 

3. SUSS 'Night Suite' 

2. Hugo Nicolson 'Lost And Found'

1. Andy Bell and Pye Corner Audio 'The Indica Gallery EP' 

No question here, the single piece of vinyl/ mp3s I've probably played as much as any other this year since it came out in April, six wondrous remixes of Andy Bell's 2020 album The View From Halfway Down. Pye Corner Audio's sunshine dreamscape remixes were the sound of this year for me in lots of ways, especially the analogue cosmische of Skywalker, Indica and Cherry Cola. 

Indica (Pye Corner Audio Remix- Glok Re- edit)

Songs/ Tracks/ Singles

So many good songs/ tracks/ remixes, I could easily list a top fifty. Someone wrote recently a top ten should be enough and I kind of agree- but all of these have been essential listening in 2021 (again, in no particular order);  AMOR 'Unravel' from Lemur; Daniel Avery's Lone Swordsman as remixed by Chris Carter; Craig Bratley and Amy Douglas' No In Between; 10:40's Sleepwalker; a pair of remixes of Fontaines DC, one of A Hero's Death by Soulwax, the other Televised Mind by Dave Clarke; A Mountain Of One's Stars Planets Dust Me; Perry Granville's Dexter In Dub; Mat Ducasse's Bunny's Lullaby; Dan Wainwright and Rude Audio's Early Morning; Future Beat Alliance's Primordial Sky; Daniel Avery's remix of Winter In The Woods by Leaving Laurel; Coyote's remix of Original Cell by Projections and Coyote's two track 12" Will We Ever Dance Again; Cheval Sombre's Althea; various Pye Corner Audio one offs (Fictional Drilling and Eyes Open stand out); and last but not least Woodleigh Research Facility's All Is Not Lost and Vernal Invocation releases. 

As well as all of those Sean Johnston has been responsible for a steady stream of remixes in his Hardway Bros guise, any one of which could/ should be in the list below but they can have their own sublist here- 

Hardway Bros Sublist

10. Martyn Walsh and Simon Lyon 'Afterglow' Hardway Bros Dub

9. Shadowlark 'Come Around Here' Hardway Bros Remix

8. Cold Beat 'Double Sided Mirror' Hardway Bros Meet Monkton Noch Einmal Remix

7. Rheinzand 'Obey' Hardway Bros Stereo Odyssey

6. Deo' Jorge 'Sparking Plugs' Hardway Bros Sueno Cosmico remix

5. James Bright 'Suburbia' Hardway Bros ALFOS Has Risen remix

4. Psychedereka 'Screamdereka' Hardway Bros Meet Monkton Downtown

3 IWDG 'In A Lonely Place' Hardway Bros Axis Dub

2. Secret Soul Society 'Yo, We've Landed' Hardway Bros Redux remix

1. Margee 'Wrong Dream' Hardway Bros Cosmic Intervention

The top eleven songs/ tracks of 2021 at Bagging Area therefore finish looking like this-

11. Andrew Weatherall 'Y.W. Eleven'

10. Richard Norris 'Music For Healing- December' (but most of the other monthly releases in this series could get in here too)

9. Private Agenda 'Malania Ascending' Seahawks remix

8. 10:40 'Kissed Again'

7. Rheinzand 'We'll Be Alright'

6. Psychederek 'Screamadereka' 

5. IWDG 'In A Lonely Place' (plus remixes from Hardway Bros, Keith Tenniswood and David Holmes )

4. Rude Audio 'Railton Ruckus' (plus remixes by Hugo Nicolson and Bedford Falls Players)

3. Coyote 'The Outsider'

2. Coyote 'Cafe Con Leche' from the Return To Life EP

1. David Holmes 'Hope Is The Last Thing To Die' 

This song, a tour de force from Mr Holmes with vocals by Raven Violet, provided a glimmer of light in a year that has been bleak as fuck for all kinds of reasons, personal and political, macro and micro. The song is political, a call to arms, a lyric about not putting up with it any more,a demand to say enough is enough, but it works on a variety of levels for me. Hopefully 2022 will see it get a vinyl release. 

2020: Two Lists

2020, it goes without saying, has been a year unlike any other. When the first lockdown kicked in back in March, schools were closed and everyone bar essential workers was told to stay at home, I briefly wondered if writing a music blog was suddenly a redundant activity, a bit futile and inadequate in the face of what was happening. The fear back in March was real, the scenes of people dying in hospital corridors in Italy coupled with rising case numbers and deaths and the sheer ineptitude of our government made everything else- even Brexit- seem inconsequential. In fact, as the weeks of lockdown turned into months and now almost a year of lockdowns and Tiers, music has been one of the things that has helped and despite our individual isolation has been one of the things that has brought us together. Anyone that has logged onto one of Sean Johnston's Emergency Broadcast Sessions and seen a community coming together in the chat function, enjoying hours of Sean DJing and chatting away will have seen how important music is as a release, as a connection and as simple escapist enjoyment. And despite everything there has been loads of great music made, written, recorded, produced and released this year. In some ways, I've enjoyed more new music this year than in many recent ones. 

Albums Of The Year

The best albums this year seem to have reflected the year (some of been made as a result of lockdown and time artists have had to create). There are masses of albums that have been floating around and that caught my ear. Before I get into the list proper, these ones have all been part of 2020- Wedge by Number, an exuberant post- punk, dance album with an ACR remix to boot, Julian Cope's Self Civil War (my last gig before lockdown, in February, was Julian at Gorilla), Steve Roach's Tomorrow, Rickard Javerling's 4, The Orb's Abolition Of The Royal Familia (or at least parts of it), Youth and Jah Wobble's Acid Punk Dub Apocalypse (an album with multiple guest stars, including Hollie Cook, Alex Paterson, Blue Pearl and beats from Andrew Weatherall and Nina Walsh and which sounds good when it's playing but which I can't remember much about when it's not), Rose City Band's Summerlong (the latest Ripley Johnson project, cosmic country/ boogie, some of which is superbly out there, a blissed out version of Laurel Canyon), the nine remixes that made up Unloved's Why Not release (including a superb Richard Sen remix and dub plus outstanding remixes from Phil Kieran, Hardway Bros and The Vendetta Suite), a similar release by Joe Morris, nine remixes of his Balearic album from the year before compiled as Exotic Remixes, and a follow up to his The Malcontent Volume 1 by Duncan Grey (who drip fed us some great standalone songs throughout 2020 before giving us The Malcontent Volume 2). An honourable mention too to three albums that were made decades ago but only saw the light of day this year- Neil Young's legendary Homegrown, Rig's Perfect and Bushpilot's 23, three very different but better late than never albums.  I also loved A Man Called Adam's career spanning oddities and extras round up Love Forgotten, a digital only release that packs a huge amount into it's twenty songs. 

I know that I should have heard Working Men's Club by now and just haven't got round to it despite them appearing to be right up my alley. They're on my list, as are Sault who everyone else I know raves about and I just haven't dived in there yet. 

These are the twelve albums that have been the pick of 2020 at Bagging Area, in roughly this order even if finding a meaningful way to rank them is really tricky. The albums at the top of the list could be placed either way round depending on which I'm listening to at the time. 

12. Future Beat Alliance 'Beginner's Mind'

An immersive nine track trip taking in ambient, drones, acid and the melodic futurism of 2th century Detroit techno.

11. Kelly Lee Owens 'Inner Song'

A strong set of electronic songs and grooves from Kelly and a step on from her debut (which I loved). Corner Of My Sky, intense, weather beaten 2020 techno with John Cale's vocals stood out but everything else on it, from the banging grooves of Melt! to the bleary eyed soundscapes, sounded as good.  

10. GLOK 'Dissident remixes'

GLOK's 2019 record was as good as anything else out last year. The remix album was trailed by one of the final Andrew Weatherall remixes, a beautiful but low key, urban ambient remix of Cloud Cover. Across the rest of the record were some equally innovative versions from Richard Sen, C.A.R., Leaf, Minotaur Shock and others and from GLOK (Andy Bell himself). 

9. Brian and Roger Eno 'Mixing Colours'

A beautifully meditative set of treated piano pieces that drift out of the speakers and around the room. Made perfect sense back in May when I was raging about VE Day and contemplating turning fifty.

8. Richard Norris 'Elements'

Five long tracks made with modular synths, lovely pulses and washes of sound, hypnotic analogue sequences and gentle drones that built on his Abstractions records from 2019 and his excellent Music For Healing series from the spring and summer- deep listening for difficult days. Richard has made some of the defining sounds of 2020 for me. 

9. The Long Champs 'Straight To Audio'

A one man band from Wales (Lloyd Jones) making chuggy, trippy instrumentals that found favour with Andrew Weatherall's Convenanza and the Weatherall/ Johnston travelling disco A Love From Outer Space. Multiple, shimmering guitar tracks, washes of FX, slow motion dance beats and a style of upbeat shoegaze that transported me when things seemed irredeemably gloomy. 

8. Four Tet 'Sixteen Oceans'

Released as lockdown struck Kieran Hebden's latest record, three sides of vinyl plus a fourth of locked grooves, is a distillation of everything that he's good at. Teenage Birdsong came out in 2019, those skippy beats and lighter- than- air melodies pointing the way, and the rest of the album lived up to it. When I was hearing this in March it seemed like it made a stake to be the year's defining record and it hasn't diminished that much in the time between. A cut above most of the rest.

7. Rheinzand 'Rheinzand'

Rheinzand are a trio from Belgian who have made the darkest disco and the headiest sounds of 2020, a stunning twelve song record with a hot, sticky cover of Talking Heads' Slippery People and in Fourteen Again a song to keep picking up the needle and putting it back to the start. One of those albums that made you/ me forget everything and just focus on being in the music, in the moment. 

6. Daniel Avery and Alessandro Cortini 'Illusion Of Life'

This record sound tracked March for me and will forever be the music of lockdown 1- drones, industrial ambience, some intense and dense atmospheres and mesmerising waves of noise. It is beautiful and ominous and sometimes a really difficult record to pin down. These are the sounds that increasingly have been where I've headed as the year has gone on and if Daniel hadn't recorded another album in lockdown that just pips this one, this could easily be my album of the year. 

5. Sonic Boom 'All Things Being Equal'

Pete Kember's first new album in decades, an analogue synth based set of songs that are exactly what he's been doing for three decades but which sound like a new idea. The lead single, Just Imagine, is one of my favourite songs of this year and it sits among the hypnotic, beguiling, psychedelic trip of the rest of the record. When it's on the turntable it engulfs you and fills the room, Pete seeing through his own hallucinations to deliver a political message of kinds- the way you live your life matters.

4. Roisin Murphy 'Roisin Machine'

The glitterball, dancefloor dynamics of Roisin and DJ Parrot turned into album form, songs segueing into each other, tension and release, and Roisin's singular vision front and centre. Dazzling in places and dizzying in others, 2019's single Incapable and 2020's Something More showcasing the just- this- side- of- demented disco pop that she's made her own. If New Year's Eve parties were a thing, this record would be best slipped on at about 10.45pm and then played through to midnight. This performance was filmed in lockdown in Ibiza. 

3: A Certain Ratio 'Loco'

Loco, the first ACR album for twelve years, came out in September, a ten song record that seems to try to fit onto one disc everything that makes them who they are: post- punk veterans, 80s funk experimenters, late 80s/ early 90s acid house dance movers, a motorik Berlin- inspired pop group and writers of Mancunian love songs. It's a completely self- contained record- it sounds like them and could only have been made by them, and Jez, Donald and Martin sound revitalised. Sadly, it came only weeks after the tragic death of Denise Johnson, who had sung with the band since the early 90s and who sings on four of the songs on Loco. Along with her solo album which came out at the same time, it's a fitting tribute. 

2: Daniel Avery 'Love + Light' 

In lockdown Daniel shut himself away in his studio, a shipping container overlooking the Thames and made music. Ghostly ambient moods, intense sounds that ripple and shudder out of the speakers, late night/ post- club washes of calming noise, bleepy melodies that pull at the emotions and some blistering techno capable with a few heart- stopping moments. A gorgeous, immersive record that sounds like the respite we've all needed this year. 

1. Andy Bell 'The View From Halfway Down'

Andy stopped off from the Ride re- union and his cosmic adventures as GLOK to make a solo album and it hasn't been far from my turntable since it's release in the autumn. Opened by the late 80s guitar attack bliss of Love Comes In Waves and then followed by the rolling reverse groove and backwards vocals of Indica, the album is the perfect marriage of texture, sound and feel with songs- Skywalker is beautiful, sun kissed psychedelia, Cherry Cola is upwards looking, dreamy psyche- pop and album closer Heat Haze On Wayland Road is seven minutes of shoegaze updated for 2020, a Hooky- esque bassline and some achingly lovely synth sounds. 

Neither Album Nor Single But Something Else Entirely Releases Of The Year

 

Richard Norris 'Music For Healing 1- 12'

In between my albums and singles of 2020 there is a series of releases by Richard Norris, twelve twenty minute ambient/ deep listening tracks, recorded and released with the intention of giving people music to help them switch off and to cope with the stresses of the first lockdown. The twelves pieces are all beautiful, meditative, immersive pieces of work that are as much part of 2020 for me as anything else I've written about here- they are neither albums nor singles but something else entirely (although the twelve have been edited down to much shorter pieces and compiled as a CD which is highly recommended).  

Singles/Songs / Remixes/ EPs Of The Year

I'm not sure what even constitutes a single anymore and it probably doesn't matter. Anyway, a top forty five, the number most associated with the single format (apologies to anything I've missed and there will be something).

45. Fireflies 'The Machine Stops'

44. Joe Morris 'The New Dawn Will Come' EP

43. Stray Harmonix 'Mountain Of One'

42. Apiento and Tepper '17- 44- 58' EP

41. A.M.O.R. 'The Decline And Fall Of A Mountain Of Rimowa'

40. Fontaines DC 'A Hero's Death'

39. Rich Lane 'Barry Island'

38. Michael Son of Michael 'Babylonian Beaches' Rude Audio Remix

37. Pye Corner Audio 'Where Things Are Hollow 2' EP

36. Golden Fang AsTRiD

35. Doves 'Carousels'

34. Sink Ya Teeth 'Somewhere Else'

33. The Orielles 'Bobbi's Secret World' Confidence Man Remix

32. Thurston Moore 'Hashish'

31. Sinead O'Connor 'Trouble Of The World'

30. Roisin Murphy 'Something More' Crooked Man Remixes

29. Massey v Sir Horatio 'Music Control'

28. Leo Mas and Fabrice ft. Sally Rodgers 'This Unspoken Love' and dub mix

27. Rich Lane 'Prusik' (Live From The Woods) from the Knots EP.

26. Dreems 'Shark Attack' EP

25. Night Noise 'Dancing In Space' EP

24. Fjordfunk 'It's All Black' Hardway Bros Remix

23. Woodleigh Research Facility 'Woodleigh's Lament' 

22. Number 'Wedge' A Certain Ratio v Number (ACR Rework)

21. Dan Wainwright 'Raindance' EP especially the pagan house of A Blessing

20. Duncan Grey 'Steve Killage'

19. The Avalanches ft. Jamie Xx, Neneh Cherry and CLYPSO 'Wherever You Go'

18. Richard Norris 'Golden Waves' EP

17. Woodleigh Research Facility 'Medieval Dub'

16. The Venetians 'Son Sur Son' Andrew Weatherall Remixes

15. Django Django 'Marble Skies' Andrew Weatherall Remix (from 2018 but unreleased until this year).

14. Cantoma 'Closer' Apiento remix 

13. The Orb 'The Weekend It Rained Forever (The Ravens Have Left The Tower)'

An album track but I'm sneaking it in here because it shows what Dr. Alex Paterson can still do when he gets everything exactly right- a long, meandering, slightly spooky ambient future classic, Blade Runner and pouring rain, and another track that chimed in tune with lockdown in March. 

12. Moon Duo 'Planet Caravan'

A ten minute long cover of a 1970 Black Sabbath song that is the pinnacle of chilled out, take your time guitar playing and whispered vocals. From a Sacred Bones compilation. 

11. Andy Bell 'Chery Cola' Pye Corner Audio Remix

The album song made even better, layers of cosmic synths and the ending, where it breaks down into folky acoustic guitar, is sublime. 

10. Andy Bell 'Love Comes In Waves'

Shimmering guitar lines beamed in direct from 1989 and a vocal that surfs over the top. Euphoric guitar pop. Summer 2020.

9. Woodleigh Research Facility 'Monthly EP Series'

These should probably be presented above with Richard Norris's Music For Healing series. In January Andrew Weatherall and Nina Walsh began a series of digital only, three track EPs to be released monthly throughout 2020. Events overtook them but the releases kept coming and there are some magnificent pieces of music contained within the folders- a few highlights include Birthday Three from January, Fume Homage a month later, Somnium from March, the tracks from the autumn with Joe Duggan's poetry over the top (Downhill and Play Bingo With Me), the Karra Mesh EP in May and July's Substation Glow and from the latest release The Fallen. 

8. Bicep 'Atlas'

I slept on this a bit at first, thinking it was just another Bicep track, but its peaks, the ebb and flow, the rippling toplines, rattling drums, snatches of vocal and happy/ sad house music have been coming around again and again since it came out in March.

7. Formerlover 'Correction Dub'

A bonkers but enthralling collision of dub and Nigerian rhythms by Justin Robertson with his wife Sofia on vocals, speaking/ singing about domination and suchlike. 

6. Aimes 'A Star... In The Sky' plus Hardway Bros remix'

Massive sounding sci fi chuggy dance music with a bouncing bassline and portentous vocal sample. Ridiculously good and with Saturn and Jupiter about to be in close conjunction in the sky next week well timed for pulling out again.  

5. Sonic Boom 'Just Imagine'

I mentioned this in the album review above but it's such a wonderful, tripped out, wiggy song, Pete asking us to imagine being a tree/ simplicity/ being truly free as the analogies rhythms and synths whirr by.

4. Andrew Weatherall 'Unknown Plunderer/ End Times Sound

This pair of deep cuts, experimental end of the world dub with spaced out sound effects and some guitar from beyond the solar system by Andy Bell (him again), were released on February 21st, four days after Andrew died, a piece of timing no- one expected or wanted. The two tracks demonstrate why he was such a gifted producer and why he is so missed.

 

3. Green Gartside 'Tangled Man/ Wishing Well'

This came out of nowhere on 7" in the summer, a gorgeous pair of covers of songs by British folk singer Anne Briggs, the golden voice of Green Gartside reborn with some sumptuous dubby folk- pop music. I love it when a single blindsides me and this did exactly that. 

2. Andrew Weatherall 'The Moton 5' EP

Four slices of Lord Sabre's customary, easy brilliance, not least in the title track of this EP which glides in with a propulsive bassline, a mechanical rhythm and some very moody synths. The strings that come in at two minutes add some drama to the chug and then it all then glides on, seemingly endlessly but actually only for another five minutes. The Moton 5.2 strips it down and delivers an alternate take. The 12" EP came out in April, two months after he passed and sounds like what he always promised on his Music's Not For Everyone radio show for NTS- tomorrow's music today. 

1. Daniel Avery 'Lone Swordsman'

On the morning of February 17th Daniel Avery was in his metal box studio when he heard of the death of his friend and mentor Andrew Weatherall. He captured his feelings in this piece of music, four minutes of emotional, instrumental dance music that captures the spirit of the man and how many people felt with him suddenly gone- a breakbeat, some synths, an unfolding chord sequence and what appear to be the root notes of Smokebelch occasionally peaking through. In a year where emotions have often been very close to the surface, Daniel made a piece of music that is simple and minimal but layered and nuanced and extremely moving. Proof as well that music helps, and that when times are hard music is often the answer.