The 20 best songs of 2020

Our writers considered hundreds of contenders – and here are their picks of the year. Listen to all 390 tracks they voted for on our playlist

• Delivered from a nightmare: why our No 1 song works so well

We kick off our end of 2020 music coverage with Guardian critics’ favourite songs, with our album of the year countdown starting tomorrow. As ever, each critic votes for top 20 songs and albums, with points allocated for each placing, and those points tallied to make these lists. There were 390 songs voted for in all – we’ve put (almost) all of them in a Spotify playlist. Please share your own favourite songs of the year in the comments below, and we’ll hopefully see you in a festival field in 2021 …

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by Ben Beaumont-Thomas and Laura Snapes via Electronic music | The Guardian

One to watch: Porij

In just a year, this carefree dance foursome have traded the Royal Northern College of Music for the 6 Music playlist

Squeaky-new foursome Porij (as in porridge) became a proper band quicker than they’d planned. Eggy (vocals and keys), Tommy (vocals and guitar), Jammo (bass) and Tom (drums) were sharing university halls and studying popular music together at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, and had tentatively started to make beats. But when a friend’s band pulled out of a live show, they were asked to step in with only a week to write a setlist.

Just over a year later, and they look like four Christine and the Queenses in their matching check suits – the kind of band you can imagine performing at the prom in Sex Education. And whatever came out of those hurried sessions has bloomed into an endearing blend of house, garage, new wave and lo-fi pop.

Porij’s Breakfast mixtape is out now on Oat Gang Records

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by Kate Hutchinson via Electronic music | The Guardian

Flohio: No Panic No Pain review – rapper leaves no mould unbroken

(AlphaTone)
The south Londoner broadens and deepens her emotional range, while continuing to select unexpected production partners

Flohio escapes labels. In fact, she actively contests them, asserting she’s not a grime artist as so many observers assume London rappers are. Since 2016 the Bermondsey rapper, who goes by a portmanteau of her real name Funmi Ohiosumah, has become known for unabashed stage presence and rapid-fire flows, spitting over the beats of electronic artists such as God Colony and Modeselektor rather than only rap producers. These daring, genre-resistant tracks earned her a place in the BBC’s Sound of 2019 poll.

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by Kemi Alemoru via Electronic music | The Guardian

The xx's Romy: 'I can now write about loving a woman and not feel afraid'

Her forthcoming solo album is a love letter to formative years of queer clubbing and 00s Euro-dance, as the singer swaps black clothes and bleak moods for Technicolor euphoria

The problem with being an introvert writing dance music is that eventually you will have to dance in front of other people. “I’m definitely quite a shy dancer,” says Romy Madley Croft over a video call from the home she shares with her girlfriend, the photographer Vic Lentaigne, in north London. In lockdown, with no prospect of live shows, this wasn’t a problem, but now she’s starting to nervously ponder how she will perform her upbeat, house-indebted new music. “It’s taken a long time to get to the place where I really enjoy being on stage.”

Fifteen years, in fact. The familiar image of Madley Croft is as bassist and singer with the xx, the band she formed with London schoolfriends in 2005: dressed in black, shielded by her guitar, expression ranging between pensive and troubled. Even performing a sparkling dance track on stage, such as Loud Places by her fellow wallflower and bandmate Jamie xx (“I go to loud places to find someone to be quiet with,” she sings on the chorus), she stayed largely rooted to the spot. Yet on the cover of her debut solo single, Lifetime, in an acid-hued image captured – like the ones accompanying this article – by Lentaigne, she is caught in motion, arms raised high, hair swooshed.

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by Aimee Cliff via Electronic music | The Guardian

Cabaret Voltaire: Shadow of Fear review – a fittingly dystopian fantasy from Sheffield's industrial pioneers

Mute
The first Cabaret Voltaire album in more than two decades feels oddly of the moment, their grim presentiments about disinformation, curfews and crackdowns fulfilled

Between 1974 and 1994, Cabaret Voltaire made a career out of being slightly ahead of the curve. They may well have been the world’s first industrial band. Throbbing Gristle coined the genre’s name, but more than a year before they formed, Cabaret Voltaire were ensconced in a Sheffield attic, experimenting with tape cut-ups inspired by William Burroughs, looped recordings of machinery in place of rhythms and churning electronic noise. When their sound shifted in the early 80s to something more commercially palatable, involving funk, the influence of New York electro and, eventually, collaborations with Chicago house pioneer Marshall Jefferson, it presaged their home town’s unique take on dance music, which eventually produced revered techno label Warp.

Related: Sign up for the Sleeve Notes email: music news, bold reviews and unexpected extras

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by Alexis Petridis via Electronic music | The Guardian

Doctor Who's sonic pioneers to turn internet into giant musical instrument

The BBC Radiophonic Workshop made the famous science fiction theme tune and worked with the Beatles. Now it is preparing to make history

The Radiophonic Workshop has always broken new sonic ground, from the Doctor Who theme to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Now they’re at it again – this time using the internet as a musical instrument.

A performance of Latency will take place at a special online event on 22 November using a technique inspired by lockdown Zoom calls. The band includes composers from the original BBC Radiophonic Workshop, which created soundtracks for most BBC shows from the 60s to the 90s and influenced generations of musicians from Paul McCartney, Pink Floyd and Mike Oldfield to Aphex Twin, Orbital and Mary Epworth.

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by James Tapper via Electronic music | The Guardian

'She made music jump into 3D': Wendy Carlos, the reclusive synth genius

She went platinum by plugging Bach into 20th-century machines, and was soon working with Stanley Kubrick. But prejudice around her gender transition pushed Wendy Carlos out of sight

This summer, an 80-year-old synthesiser pioneer suddenly appeared online. She had been silent for 11 years, but now something had appeared that she just wouldn’t tolerate. “Please be aware there’s a purported ‘biography’ on me just released,” wrote Wendy Carlos on the homepage of her 16-bit-friendly website, a Siamese cat and a synthesiser behind her portrait. “No one ever interviewed me [for it], nor anyone I know,” she went on. “Aren’t there new, more interesting targets?”

Given that Carlos is arguably the most important living figure in the history of electronic music, it’s remarkable that Amanda Sewell’s Wendy Carlos: A Biography is the first book about her. This is the musician who pushed Robert Moog to perfect his first analogue synthesiser, from which pop, prog, electronica and film music flourished. Her smash-hit 1968 album Switched-On Bach made the Moog internationally famous and became the second classical album ever to go platinum in the US. Then came her extraordinary soundtracks for A Clockwork Orange, The Shining and Tron. She made an ambient album five years before Brian Eno did, and jumped from analogue machines to do leading work in digital synthesis, but worried that her status as one of the first visible transgender artists in the US would overshadow it.

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by Jude Rogers via Electronic music | The Guardian

Iklan: Album Number 1 review – impressively taut electronica

(Soulpunk)
This collective with connections to Young Fathers and Soho offer up a bold, fat-free debut

It takes a certain year-zero chutzpah for an artist to release a debut album that omits all of their singles to date, but that’s what London/Birmingham/Edinburgh collective Iklan do on Album Number 1. Centred on sometime Young Fathers producer Timothy London, AKA Tim Brinkhurst, and vocalist Law Holt, with able backing from sisters Pauline and Jacqui Cuff (best known for their work with London as Smiths-sampling 90s pop act Soho), they’ve been working together for three years, and their recent prolific output – four standalone singles, with more promised – has almost felt like a clearing of the decks ahead of the album.

Given how much material they’ve chosen to exclude, it’s a surprise that Album Number 1 is so concise. Its 10 songs – all warped and distorted beats, alternately jarring discordance and woozy trip-hop – rattle past in just 23 minutes, their clipped, fat-free structures owing more to early Wire than any more obvious electronica peers, with no idea lasting long enough to outstay its welcome. Against this ever-shifting backdrop, Holt, an NHS nurse, holds centre stage, her unambiguous lyrics addressing racial identity (Who Am I) and police brutality (Pray for Timeless – musically, imagine a more austere take on Anohni’s 4 Degrees). It’s telling, however, that the outstanding moment comes with the irresistible momentum of No Use, wherein lie the most conventional pop dynamics of anything here.

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by Phil Mongredien via Electronic music | The Guardian

Lime Cordiale, Le Pie, The Whitlams and more: Australia's best new music for November

Each month we add 20 new songs to our Spotify playlist. Read about 10 of our favourites here – and subscribe on Spotify, which updates with the full list at the start of each month

Related: Midnight Oil: The Makarrata Project review – a chorus of anger over stolen land

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Related: ‘Loud and proud, wrong and strong’: the ‘Yolŋu surf rock’ of Yothu Yindi’s next generation

Related: From Faith No More to faith healing: Melbourne’s Festival Hall sold to Hillsong Church

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by Nathan Jolly and Guardian Australia via Electronic music | The Guardian

Splendid Isolation: The Second Wave

Listen here!

Intro
Sergio Mendes – Stillness
Kathy Smith – The End of the World
Tenderlonious – Lockdown Boogie
Nu Yorican Soul – The Nervous Track (Horny Mix)
Black Science Orchestra – Holdin’ On
Billy Paul – America ( We Need The Light)
Jarrod Lawson – Be The Change
Benny Sings – Rolled Up
Monkey Business – ‘Ain’t No Fun
Anderson.Paak x Busta Rhymes – Lockdown
Barbara Mason – World In Crisis
Brief Encounter – Human
Iraina Mancini – Shotgun
Mark Capaani – I Believe In Miracles
Family of Swede – Set You Free
Wool – If They Left Us Alone Now
The Doors – The End
SAULT – Scary Times
Jacob Miller – Healing of the Nation
Winston Reedy – World Crisis 2020
The Police – Don’t Stand So Close To Me
Likkle Jordee – Stay Home Order
Jonny Chingas – Phone Home
Flako – Lonely Town
Blaze – Wishing You Were Here
Felipe Gordon – We Got All The Time
Quantic- Nineteen Hundred And Eighty Five
Marker Sterling – Silk Rock
HNNY – Cheer Up My Brother
Wham! – Everything She Wants 
Sandy Barber – I Think I’ll Do Some Stepping On My Own
The Main Ingredient – Happiness Is Just Round The Bend
The Rance Allen Group – Peace of Mind
Rev. Ray L. Weaver – We Are Family
DJ Shadow – This Time (I’m Gonna Try It My Way)
Bill Withers – Lonely Town, Lonely Street (live at Carnegie Hall)
Mel & Tim – Keep The Faith
Busta Rhymes – You Will Never Find Another Me feat. Mary J. Blige 
The Bees – I Love You
Kahil El Zabar – How Do We Mend A Broken Heart?
Gil Scott-Heron – Winter In America
Timi Yuro – Fever
Paul Murphy presents The Take Vibe EP – Golden Brown 
The Jazz Renegades – Do It The Hard Way
Mud – Lonely This Christmas

The post Splendid Isolation: The Second Wave appeared first on Wah Wah 45s.

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Grammy awards rename world music category to avoid 'connotations of colonialism'

Category to be renamed best global music album, described as ‘a more relevant, modern, and inclusive term’ by Recording Academy

The Grammys are changing the name of their “best world music” album category to “best global music” album, to avoid “connotations of colonialism”.

In a statement, the Recording Academy said the change came “as we continue to embrace a truly global mindset … Over the summer we held discussions with artists, ethnomusicologists, and linguists from around the world who determined that there was an opportunity to update the best world music album category toward a more relevant, modern, and inclusive term ... The change symbolises a departure from the connotations of colonialism, folk, and ‘non-American’ that the former term embodied while adapting to current listening trends and cultural evolution among the diverse communities it may represent.”

Related: 'So flawed and problematic': why the term 'world music' is dead

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by Ben Beaumont-Thomas via Electronic music | The Guardian

'I'm an alchemist': Nova, the unknown MC with the Scottish album of the year

With an English accent in a scene dominated by white men, the 24-year-old rapper felt like an outcast at first – but a £20,000 award win is set to supercharge her career

At £20,000, the Scottish Album of the Year (SAY) award is one of the most lucrative in the UK. But for this year’s winner Shaheeda Sinckler – AKA Nova – it’s about more than money: the prize is a vindication of her total self-sufficiency.

The rapper is virtually unknown – she had only around 300 monthly listeners on Spotify prior to her win – but her coolly confident, lyrically deft debut album Re-Up is a deserving winner, spanning grime, trap, Afrobeats, dubstep and frosty electronica in collaboration with some of Scotland’s fastest-rising producers. It beat far more prominent nominees, including Lewis Capaldi and Anna Meredith, by capturing the spirit of the nation’s underground nightlife, but most importantly it cements Sinckler’s own identity as an artist.

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by Katie Hawthorne via Electronic music | The Guardian