One final transmission from the last-chance saloon: in the spirit of maximising inclusion & recognition, here are 25 more 2020 releases that lightened & brightened a year in profound need of both...
This alternative list is a way of acknowledging the inevitable limitations of the original Festive Twenty (or any list...). While those 20 stood out to us as especially
meaningful or evocative or thrilling, they are of course very far from constituting last year's only great releases.
It also completes our broader picture of the year's music. Besides the two Twenties, this also includes a baker's dozen of compilations & 10 'projects' beyond the bounds of a single release.
As ever, this list is constrained to one pick per artist/label - in order to acknowledge as wide a listening range as possible. Moreover, this one had no prospect of picking up votes for multiple releases from the same artist or label since it's all on jl (whereas the original Twenty is the combined work of al & jl...).
Again as ever, this constraint also meant having to exclude outstanding releases such as Geneva Skeen's Double Bind, Past Walls & Windows by Todd Anderson-Kunert & Pinkcourtesyphone's Leaving Everything To Be Desired (all among a raft of brilliance in Room40's 20th anniversary year, as noted...) - never mind other losses to the hair shirt like Grand River's Blink A Few Times To Clear Your Eyes (Editions Mego) & Romeo Poirier's Hotel Nota (sferic).
Anyway, the (alternative) list:
William Basinski & Richard Chartier :: Something From The Pink House (self-release)
Black to Comm :: Oocyte Oil & Stolen Androgens (Thrill Jockey)
Celer :: Wasted In The Waiting (self-release)
John Chantler :: Doing Nothing / Nothing Doing (self-release)
CLEARED :: The Key (Touch)
EMRA GRID :: five cycles through an empty chamber (LINE)
Lawrence English :: Lassitude (Room40)
FEAN :: II (Laaps)
FRKTL :: Excision After Love Collapses (self-release)
David Fyans :: Crushing Depth (self-release)
Haarvol :: Ridge of Humming Spoils (Moving Furniture)
ISAN :: Nothing Picked & Placed Nowhere (wiaiwya)
Kassel Jaeger :: Swamps/Things (Shelter Press)
France Jobin :: Death is perfection, everything else is relative (Editions Mego)
Kim's Spirit :: Blossom Everywhere (A Red Thread)
The Necks :: Three (Northern Spy)
Jake Muir :: the hum of your veiled voice (sferic)
Lynette Sandholm Evvers :: Fundamental Colours II (Other Forms of Consecrated Life)
Simon Scott :: Apart (12k)
Tom James Scott :: Mine Is The Heron (Students of Decay)
Sontag Shogun, Stijn Huwels :: The Floating World & The Sorrowful World (Thesis)
Richard Skelton :: LASTGLACIALMAXIMUM (Aeolian)
Three Point Circle :: Layered Contingencies (Palace of Lights)
Ida Toninato :: We Become Giants (Dragon's Eye)
Jeremy Young :: Filaments (Eliane Tapes)
Important: LMYE only makes music available that artists/labels have chosen to share freely. Let us know if something here shouldn't be.
