The Quietus Albums Of The Year So Far Chart 2019

It’s a tough record to summarise quickly. There’s jazz, blues, post rock and folk at least. There’s distinctly non-Western strands, a tranced, shamanistic fury to everything, and a deft application of different kinds of harmonic distortion. Yet, it’s not so demanding to hear. In fact, it’s pretty accessible. Nothing here is troubling, nothing jars or feels incongruous.

‘Chi-Congo 50’, originally a Malachi Favors composition from 1970, is a percussion-led heater of intangible rhythmic fluidity, and a showcase of sorts for Titos Sompa and Enoch Williamson, both present in the group’s orbit almost from the beginning, and Famoudou Don Moye, after Mitchell the most venerable full-time member. ‘Saturday Morning’ and ‘Fanfare And Bell’ highlight the Art Ensemble’s rhythm-driven and classical leanings respectively, cellist Tomeka Reid forging an especially striking presence on the latter. And ‘Oasis At Dusk’, which closes the first disc, is perhaps the most prominent platform for Mitchell’s saxophone: free without being tonally harsh, teeming with snaky fervour that belies his age.

Certainly, this is harrowing stuff, but it never feels exploitative. Héroïques Animaux De La Misèreis an act of solidarity. By taking the name Harrga (“a burn”), de Saint Paul and Prado honour the harragas, those refugees who must burn their papers – and by extension, their identities – before attempting a border crossing. It would be easy, I think, for some to describe Harrga’s music as oppressive, but that would be wrong-headed. This is liberation music. How could it ever be easy? Why wouldn’t it have teeth? Why wouldn’t it need to bite?

Where 2016’s A Seat At The Table placed its focus on the black diaspora experience, When I Get Home doesn’t so boldly set out its intentions. Moving further away from the jaunty sheen of the True EP that made so many fall in love with Solange’s music earlier this decade, her latest album has more in common with the spiritual jazz of Alice Coltrane. With many of its tracks clocking in at under three minutes, When I Get Home has a collage-like, breezy feel to it with Solange taking control of all parts of the project, producing the full record herself and assembling an excellently utilised cast of collaborators that includes Playboi Carti, Cassie, Abra, Gucci Mane and Scarface.

In the zany video for the snotty and gloriously pugilistic title track, as bittersweet a banger as you’ll hear about patriotism, Slowthai stands outside a council estate brandishing a sword, wearing a printed white t-shirt displaying an eyeless photograph of Theresa May. With royal poise, he places the weapon on the shoulders of black-hooded souls from lost cities and forgotten towns. These ordinary town folk, he seems to suggest, are the real knights.

Walshe’s work here is manic, cobbled, and unquestionably a product of the internet, but much like the best meme aggregators, its seemingly haphazard presentation is actually serious, well-considered, and a creative act in itself. With that in mind, ALL THE MANY PEOPLS might be compared to someone whispering meme texts in your ear for nearly an hour: it’s surreal and occasionally uncomfortable, but it’s also a barrel of laughs.

Die Nibelungen comes from the mighty Årabrot’s live soundtrack to Fritz Lang’s classic silent films of the same name. Kjetil Nernes’s shifting collective brought in members of Gnod, Nurse With Wound and Current 93 for a five hour long performance, now honed and trimmed into two extraordinary 20-minute movements. ‘Part I’ is disparate, ominous and intense in its sparseness, showing Nernes’ brilliance when it comes to atmospherics. Disparate industrial grinds and screeches cut arrhythmically through the drone, but so to do moments of real beauty. Then, on ‘Part II’, the band begin to let loose a little. Rumbles of guitar give way to a hint of the hard-riffing power of Årabrot’s last two studio LPs, but always handled with a deft dynamism that betrays the depth and skill of one of the modern greats.

The band could not hope to recapture the same sort of angst as they did when they wrote their first two records, so it’s pleasing they don’t make some lame attempt to do that. It might be a little hackneyed to find parallels between the fuckery we face now, and the politics that gave birth to the band in the 70s, but they legitimately reflect a more modern sense of tension. They have the genuine anger and dejection of a group who have already fought racism and violence once, and must now do so again. “We never fought for freedom for nasty little brutes like you / to undo the work we do” sings Lynval Golding on ‘Embarassed By You’.

New albums from some of the jungle and D&B scenes’ originators and key ‘90s figures aren’t always a surefire win in 2019. On his first album in over 20 years though, J Majik reconnects with the bassweight and unrivalled Amen choppage that made his records for labels such as Metalheadz and Infrared over two decades ago classics of the genre still today. While Full Circle sees J Majik looking back to his earlier records, this is certainly no attempt to recapture past glories. Instead, the producer turns in a collection of easy-going, inventive club tracks loaded with cheeky samples, stunning synths and sound system-shattering breakbeats.

The beats here may slap like club beats slap, but the sounds that twist and turn over them are unlike anything else, mixing the energy of punk, the squelch of p-funk, the strut and heat of ballroom house, the future shock of experimental electronica, and the wild, freeform harmolodics of free jazz – not to mention the unique personality of Abdu Ali themselves, a kind of deep space activist mystic sexual libertine straight out of the fiction of Samuel Delany or Ursula LeGuin – all together in one deeply weird and utterly compelling, unpackageable package.

This album isn’t a call-to-arms or doom merchantry, but rather a poetic statement of fact – short stories of and for the anthropocene, the product of a resignation to our inevitable demise. We’re lucky to have got this far, anyway – is it not truly remarkable that everything hasn’t already disappeared?