BEST ALBUMS OF THE DECADE

Six of the best albums to test your system

Browsing our record collection in order to pick six albums that somewhat defined the decade, we found ourselves pondering how on earth we were going to do it, and how we were going to finish with a list we ourselves didn’t disagree with ten minutes after penning.

Difficult decisions, yes, but we’re actually pretty happy with our choices. Regular readers will recognise the titles listed here – this is music we have used time and again while reviewing most of the products you’ll find on our website. From electronic to jazz, modern classical to modern rap: these are six of our most-spun records of the past ten years.

SPACES BY NILS FRAHM (2013)

“I see this release more as a field recording project than a live record,” Frahm writes in his sleeve notes for Spaces. Audiophile-wooing experimentation isn’t restricted to the music on this ambient-cum-modernclassical album, either: “Some concerts were recorded on old portable reel-to-reel recorders, some on simple cassette tape decks. Some were roughly recorded on the house engineers’ mixing desks, and others were more advanced multi-track recordings.” Let him in, he’s one of us.

RIVERS AND STREAMS BY LUBOMYR MELNYK (2015)

Continuous music pioneer Lubomyr Melnyk is without doubt one of Erased Tapes’s finest and most important musical discoveries.

Though Melnyk had been recording his piano music since the 1970s, it wasn’t until he joined the label seven years ago, aged 64, that it found the scale of audience it deserved. He has been prolific since, composing six albums and a ballet, with musical merit liberally sprinkled but with nothing better than Rivers And Streams at showcasing his mesmeric playing.

Dense textures of up to 38 single notes per second offer up the kind of transcendent soundscapes it seems impossible to have come from only two hands.

22, A MILLION BY BON IVER (2016)

The beauty of 22, A Million is that, despite its sonic experimentation and broadly electronic arrangements, it is undoubtedly in the same canon as For Emma, Forever Ago, Justin Vernon’s acoustic debut as Bon Iver.

As the musical group has grown, so has the scope of Vernon’s songwriting and, while this record could so easily have sounded like he’d simply bought a new studio for Christmas, 2016 marked the beginning of a headstrong march to discover just what you can do with an achingly gorgeous melody and some gospel-like harmony.

DRUNK BY THUNDERCAT (2017)

It would be criminal to pigeonhole Thundercat as a virtuoso bassist. Drunk is Stephen Bruner’s third solo studio album, with songwriting that ranges from sombre to wryly comical and spans enough genres to make him a fusion artist. Though ‘fusion’ again is insufficient to properly describe his sonic mastery. All we can say is you’ll need a system with expert timing, and low-end response dexterous enough to navigate the fretboard as swiftly as Bruner himself.

NEW HYMN TO FREEDOM BY SZUN WAVES (2018)

London’s burgeoning modern jazz scene is no more aptly showcased than by Szun Waves’ improvised, unedited second album New Hymn To Freedom. The trio of saxophonist Jack Wyllie, electronic producer and experimental synth player Luke Abbot and drummer Laurence Pike craft a psychedelic landscape that is at once sonically dense and gloriously fluid.

Though with a sound that is distinctively their own, it requires the same of your speakers as any great jazz recording: expert timing to navigate obscure rhythmic patterns, space for each instrument to properly articulate its lines, and dynamic versatility fully to capture the nuance and unpredictability of its improvisation.

PSYCHODRAMA BY DAVE (2019)

It’s galling to think that Dave is still only 21 years of age. He was far from an unknown quantity ahead of releasing his debut album this year – with his punctuated delivery of often wryly humorous, always self-aware social commentary already having elevated him to semi-stardom with a list of singles and EPS – but PSYCHODRAMA is undoubtedly on another level. Indeed, it is on another level to much of what has come before it generally.

Dave’s wordplay is such that references will still be being unearthed long after their cultural significance is lost, but it is toned down somewhat in an important collection of songs exploring what it means to be young, black and in tune with the fragility of mental health in today’s fractured UK.