The 10 best contemporary music albums of 2020
10 Brandee Younger and Dezron Douglas – Force Majeure
Recorded during lockdown in the couple’s New York apartment, Force Majeure (named after the small print in a contract that refers to extraordinary events, such as a worldwide pandemic) sees harpist Brandee Younger and double bassist Dezron Douglas, duet on a wide range of compositions – spiritual jazz epics by John and Alice Coltrane, soul standards made famous by the Jackson 5 and the Stylistics, pop ballads by Sting and Kate Bush. The results are blissful and beautifully arranged; compressed sunshine to brighten a miserable year. Read the full review.
9 Keith Jarrett – Budapest Concert
The revelation that two crippling strokes, suffered in 2018, could have ended Jarrett’s career as a public performer adds a horrible poignancy to what could be his final release. Like his landmark 1975 Köln Concert, this 2016 show is almost entirely improvised, but Jarrett’s 12 pieces sound like discrete, perfectly plotted compositions. He growls frenetically on the opening track and works through pensive introspection and austerity. By the second half he has shifted into a major key – flitting through fin de siècle Romanticism, ecstatic boogie woogie and heart-rending balladry – before signing off with two deceptively simple, soulful standards. What a way to bow out.
8 Kahil El’Zabar – America the Beautiful
Although it is led by a Chicago jazz drummer, this album is very much a piece of chamber music, arranged for symphonic horns, neurotic strings and spartan African percussion. And the choice of material – including a wonky reading of the 19th-century patriotic anthem America the Beautiful, a staccato string-heavy interpretation of Charles Wright’s Express Yourself, and a drum-less version of Al Green’s How Can You Mend a Broken Heart – not only speaks to the racially fractured America of 2020 but also serves as a beacon for what the nation can become.
7 Katarzyna Wiktorski – From a Distance
This Polish-born, Melbourne-based composer and pianist has been creating superb chamber music under lockdown, and the music on her Bandcamp page has become a source of comfort throughout a year of isolation. These are simple piano figures, deliciously orchestrated for slurring strings, filled with heart-rending chord changes and with fleeting nods to bebop and Canterbury Scene prog.
6 Duval Timothy – Brown Loop
Based between South London and Sierra Leone, this composer, visual artist and fashion designer released a curate’s egg of an album entitled Help in August, featuring guest vocalists and excursions into vapourwave and electronica. But he is in his most potent environment for this solo piano album. Based around jagged ostinato basslines and jazzy right-hand chords, his precise and metrical compositions sound as if they’ve been plotted on graph paper but are always devastatingly effective.
5 Pulled by Magnets – Rose Golden Doorways
A sax/ bass/drums trio that sounds nothing like any sax/ bass/drums trio you’ve ever heard before. This is sludge rock disguised as ambient music; holy minimalism masquerading as gothic grindcore. Drummer Seb Rochford plays his kit like an orchestral percussionist; bassist Neil Charles is put through FX pedals to sound like a symphonic horn section; while Pete Wareham’s crazily distorted tenor sax can sound like an entire string section, like Jimi Hendrix exploring the outer reaches of the solar system, or the death cries of wounded elephant.
4 The Hermes Experiment – Here We Are
An unorthodox album by an unorthodox quartet, one that comprises soprano singer Héloïse Werner backed by harp, clarinet and double bass. Here We Are is a fine collection of chamber music by assorted contemporary British composers, including Oliver Leith, Emily Hall and Errollyn Wallen, but the highlight is Misha Mullov-Abbado’s contribution, which transforms Schubert’s The Linden Tree into a delightfully abstract piece of medieval soul music.
3 Snowdrops – Volutes
A piece of atmospheric electroacoustic chamber music that puts the ondes Martenot – a proto synth developed in the 1920s – alongside violin, viola, cello, piano and Mellotron. What’s remarkable is how radically different Christine Ott manages to make the ondes sound on each track: from a primeval, guttural sound on the 13-minute Odysseus to a chirruping boy soprano on Ultraviolet. Read the full review.
2 Beverly Glenn-Copeland – Transmissions
A 13-track compilation that serves as the perfect introduction to this fascinating musician, who has produced a hugely varied body of work over the past half century. Early 1970s tracks such as Don’t Despair and Durocher are folk-funk, pitched somewhere between Pentangle, Tim Buckley and Joni Mitchell. By the 1980s, Glenn-Copeland had traded in the acoustic guitars for synthesisers, and was creating blissful, burbling electronica like Ever New. In recent years, he’s moved into a minimalist gospel soul, while the most recent track on the album, River Dreams, sets his extraordinary and androgynous voice over a stately and hypnotic backing.
1 Miguel Atwood-Ferguson and Carlos Niño – Chicago Waves
This 44-minute live performance often sounds like a full orchestra, but it’s actually the work of just two multiinstrumentalists. Miguel Atwood-Ferguson plays five-string violin (his cascading arpeggios reminiscent of the leitmotif from Vaughan Williams’s Lark Ascending) while Carlos Niño creates a veritable sonic nature documentary by using exotic percussion instruments; both also trigger samples and electronic effects. The result is a gorgeous and immersive piece of music – minimalism with the harmonic complexity of a Romantic tone poem, ambient music with the rigour of contemporary jazz. Read the full review.
• What were your favourite albums from music’s outer reaches this year? Share your tips in the comments below.