I liked Ascension too! I think it doesn't quite hold up to something like Adz, but still a fantastic album.
For me it's a toss up between Charli XCX's how i'm feeling now and Ka's Descendants of Cain. Charli's album is the perfect quarentine album, tightly composed in just a few weeks and reflects a longing to go back to normal while knowing things will never be the same. The production is great, and some very catchy tracks. That said, Ka's album is pretty much perfect. He has a lane, and he does it very well. Descendants of Cain feels like that lane chiseled into something truly beautiful. Moody, wonderfully sparse yet luscious beats, insane wordplay, and wrapped in allusion and metaphor to the Fall of Man. Appropriately apocalyptic for our time. They're wildly different albums, yet seem tapped into the same energy. That's why it's hard to choose between them.
Long Violent History, by Tyler Childers. It's forty minutes of traditional Kentucky instrumental fiddle music capped off by an empathetic BLM anthem.
The Horror and the Wild, by The Amazing Devil. Best described as "dramatic folk". One half of the duo is the guy who played Jaskier in The Witcher, and the songs sound like they would fit in that world.
It came out last year so I was a bit late to the party but Dorian Electra's "Flamboyant" has been on repeat for me lately. Some pretty groundbreaking stuff in terms of gender politics I think... not only that but its fun and makes me what to white boy dance. The new album is cool so far too but its got like a harder dub-stepier sound that I'm not as into so I've been sticking with Flamboyant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HuVBhD5Jew
California Cursed by Drain The songs are so hard, surf, and apocalyptic. The perfect 2020 hardcore album for me.
U-Void Synthesizer by Machine Girl was my fucking jam before the pandemic really hit lmao, still one of my favs this year
The New Abnormal by the Strokes. It’s their best album in 15 years, and if you’ve got any nostalgia for their older stuff it captures the feel while they try out a bunch of new, weird 80s-y stuff.
Tbh I'm surprised no one mentioned Fetch the Bolt Cutters yet. I think that might take the top spot for me.
Might be SIGN by Autechre or All Thoughts Fly by Anna Von Hausswolff or Three by The Necks, because I definitively don't connect as much to word music as to transcendental humanalien music it seems.
Highlights :
Autechre - Metaz form8, for its layers of quivering noises and bumblebees tinged with shimmering harmonies, with a scattering of hope. There arrives at key moments openings, these being expressed by a note of a sound devoid of its filters, of pure radiant nature. And I love it.
Anna Von Hausswolff - Persefone, for its minimalist but powerful crescendo of organ, culminating in a fucking beautiful high frequency ensemble of harmonies.
The Necks - Lovelock, because Swans - The Nub (featuring.. Anna Von Hausswolff).
