[Skinny]

I understand I'm posting this about two and a half hours too soon, but I can't guarantee I'll get the time to actually post it tomorrow. Better early than late, I suppose.

OK, my pick is an album I mentioned in my listening log a while back, and it's an album I find myself returning to quite a bit and finding more and more that I appreciate. Gonna basically copy what I said in that other thread about it, albeit with a couple of minor edits (things that have occurred to me across repeated listens).

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

Sophia Loizou - Singulacra

My 2016 chart is in desperate need of an update, and this one will be landing very near the top of the the pile. I guess this album shares a kinship with other recent releases such as Four Tet's Beautiful Rewind, the past few Burial EPs, and Shape Worship's A City Remembrancer (and, to a lesser extent, Millie & Andrea's Drop the Vowels, and even some of the stuff Dean Blunt has done over the past few years) in that it uses tropes from early-'90s British hardcore and pirate radio, yet utilises them and puts them together in ways that deliberately obfuscate their origins, in the process creating a yearning and romanticised version of the music it pays tribute to. This is an album that merges a very foggy, grey, melancholy, distinctly British atmosphere with a much more mischievous bent, full of flickering, lighthearted nods to early jungle. Rolling sub-bass and fragments of breakbeats snake in and out of a dense, almost sleepy layer of reverb and static, recalling Burial if deconstructed even further, and managing to conjure that same sense of human longing that Bevan's music so often does. Whilst this is heavy, gloomy stuff, Loizou makes sure the listener never strays too far from the party, and there's significant joy to be had in waiting to see how a particularly hazy, gargling drone is going to be transformed into a brash (if always tasteful) piece of rave nostalgia, be it through sweeping, overwhelmingly gorgeous strings, or through bitcrushed pads skittering away and forming into familiar, welcome drum'n'bass patterns. Her bass-heavy, oceanic drone isn't necessarily anything new, and neither is her desire to connect with the music of UK dancefloors gone by, but the way in which she melds the two feels unique and genuinely exciting, whilst also feeling very current in its abstracting of more straightforward strands of dance music. It's hypnotic, and at its very best it brings to mind the fragmented memories of half-hearing music drift through asbestos-riddled ceilings into balcony smoking areas. It's not necessarily my favourite album of the year (although it isn't far off), but it is a record that I feel could definitely appeal to a fairly broad cross-section of users here, and one that I feel hasn't received the acknowledgement it deserves, either here or more generally across the internet.

Label: Kathexis (which was, to my surprise, also home to previous ALC pick Douve by Ehnahre)

For fans of: Burial, Four Tet, Shackleton, Millie & Andrea, Goldie, Massive Attack, kode9

Best listened to: at night, alone, glowstick and whistle in hand, preferably in a haze of hash smoke

Stream it: over yonder

Enjoy, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts, positive or otherwise.
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2021 in full effect. Come drop me some recs. Y'all know what I like.

[Muslim-Bigfoot]

Great description; really piqued my interest esp. with the comparison to Shape Worship's debut.
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"I feel like for the last two years there’s been sort of a sonic evolution happening and I’ve been experimenting more and more."

[Tap]

Huh, so this wasn't in the database? I just added it. This is really great! It reminds me a little bit of Lee Gamble's work, degraded ghostly echoes of rave in an ambient sort of context. She doesn't go as hard on the degradation, but it seems to be coming from a similar sort of space. Though her aesthetic is way different and pushes me toward a different sort of feeling, more of an ambient 'blissin on the gorgeousness' sort of thing, especially with that bass, I love that bass. I'll think of more later but yeah, thanks for the additional prompting to listen to this, this one is a keeper.

[Skinny]

[RockyRaccoon]

Really really liked this. I gave it a fairly quick listen but had other things I had to do so I'll give it a more detailed review/listen tomorrow, but at first glance, I really enjoyed it.
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Progressive Rock

Early Psychedelic Rock

Live Albums

[Grzywa]

[newuser]

it's very good. props to op.

[RockyRaccoon]

So yea, I loved it.

From my music diary

[Allabaster]

I am familiar with her debut, Chrysalis, and though I enjoyed it at times, I found it to be rather inconsistent overall. Has anyone heard both and if so, did they find Singulacra to be much better?

[Skinny]