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. 

Monday's Long Song

Down by the River Wye in Lower Lydbrook where we stayed the week before last you can drop down from the road and head down a side road. We were looking for a footbridge which a map told us crossed the river somewhere near where we were staying (an old railway bridge, a remnant of the area's industrial past). As we headed away from the road we passed this hole in the ground, its cover pulled away. It didn't look very deep but I wasn't keen to put a foot in and find out whether the leaves at the bottom were solid. Following the track to the left we found this, a disused and derelict cable works. Corrugated iron peeling back from the bolts, broken windows, boarded up windows, graffiti, all a bit overgrown.

Walking on past the undergrowth were some steps leading to a door which was swinging open- I'd say swinging invitingly open but I've seen enough films to know that people who go up those stairs and through open doors like that don't tend to come back. 

Walking past two evenings later the door was still open, everything exactly as it was previously. The urge to go up the stairs and at least look through the door was strong but I kept walking. Weirdly I dreamt about this derelict cables works and its door the night before last. Which leads me nicely to this...

This is from a new EP by French artist Margee, led by In My Sleep and Wrong Dream, a pair of sleek, low slung, dancefloor oriented tracks, layers of bass and synths and melodic toplines. Sean Johnston's Hardway Bros turn up on the remix of Wrong Dream, an eleven minute, heavy duty, dubby, glide- by job built around a massive, hypnotic groove, appropriately subtitled Cosmic Intervention.