ew, exciting records that Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders and The London Symphony Orchestra’s on Luaka Bop. 'Promises'. Utterly sublime from start to finish, the soaring strings on this spellbinding release make it the album of the year!
It's been great to see the popularity of Bicep continue this year after January's release of 'Isles' - the two Northern Irish DJs and producers returned with their second album,
The debut album Black Acid Soul from Lady Blackbird is also one of the standouts for 2021. Think Nina Simone, or as Gilles Peterson described her "the Grace Jones of Jazz". Niko Tzoukmanis gets its vinyl debut in 2021 (and the reason why we don't class this as a reissue!). Originally out only on CD, the album taps into a rich vein of sequencer romanticism, from Tangerine Dream-obsessed-‘Berlin School’ daydreamers to the whole nebula of music inspired by Warp’s Artificial Intelligence series. It also looks forward, prefiguring the return today, in troubled times, to the comforting inner space of ‘90s-worshipping ambient techno.
Enjoy the rest of our round-up of 2021's outstanding albums...
