For Those I Love: Ireland's potent new poet of grief

Recalling the delivery of the Streets and the music of James Blake, David Balfe’s project is a cathartic document in the wake his best friend’s death

• Irish drill, jazz violin and supermarket musicals: 30 new artists for 2021

When the Irish recession of 2008 shattered the country’s economy, communities from Dublin’s inner city neighbourhoods of Coolock and Donaghmede were struck hard. The frank lyrics of David Balfe, under the pseudonym For Those I Love, illuminate a generation who emerged from the wreckage.

“I’ve been with people whose families had lost their livelihoods because of the recession,” says the 29-year-old. “At that younger age you don’t have the vocabulary, but you see that displacement, and you think: ‘Why are we suffering? Why has this happened to us?’”

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by Aniefiok Ekpoudom via Electronic music | The Guardian

Irish drill, jazz violin and supermarket musicals: 30 new artists for 2021

From the ferocious hardcore punk of Nicolas Cage Fighter to the ultra-meditative ambient of KMRU, discover new music from right across the pop spectrum

Which new artists are you excited for in 2021? Leave your recommendations in the comments below.

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

'All that mattered was survival': the songs that got us through 2020

Butterflies with Mariah, Bronski Beat in the Peak District, Snoop Dogg on a food delivery ad … our writers reveal the tracks that made 2020 bearable

When it came to lockdown comfort listening, there was something particularly appealing about lush symphonic soul made by artists such as Teddy Pendergrass and the Delfonics. But there was one record I reached for repeatedly: Black Moses by Isaac Hayes, and particularly the tracks arranged by Dale Warren. Their version of Burt Bacharach’s (They Long to Be) Close to You is an epic, spinning the original classic into a nine-minute dose of saccharine soul. But their cover of Going in Circles, another Warren exercise in expansion, is their masterpiece, reimagining the Friends of Distinction original as a seven-minute arrangement with stirring strings and beatific backing vocals that builds into a story about lost love that transcends the genre’s usual parameters. A perfect, if slightly meta, balm for the repetitive lockdown blues. Lanre Bakare

Related: AG Cook: the nutty producer behind the decade's most divisive music

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by Guardian music via Electronic music | The Guardian

Musician, heal thyself: how ambient music brought solace in 2020

With no clubs or gigs to go to and pandemic anxiety to quell, ambient music chimed more strongly in a year when artists reconsidered their sense of purpose

“A balm to your soul” – so went the Observer review of Julianna Barwick’s album this July, which was inspired by the musician’s move from New York City to the wellbeing mecca of Los Angeles. Her one-woman choir of celestial vocals is as calming as the bit at the end of a yoga class where you get to shut your eyes and lie under a blanket, and the album, along with its title Healing Is a Miracle, had extra resonance in 2020. Music is so often a communal experience, but with those possibilities snatched away this year, many of us have looked to sounds like this to soothe us where human connection couldn’t. Another reviewer agreed, writing that Barwick’s new music was “a salve for the collective wound”.

Barwick wasn’t the only one. Earlier this year, I interviewed a collection of musicians, including the pop performer Robyn, about the music of Beverly Glenn-Copeland, a cult Canadian musician whose spirited, otherworldly incantations are only just reaching new audiences, decades after they were first released. A retrospective of Glenn-Copeland’s music, Transmissions, came out last month, and Robyn noted the particular reassuring quality of his songs, especially on his New Age lost treasure Keyboard Fantasies: “It’s the purpose of his music,” she had said. “We all need to release, feel and heal, and Glenn helps us to do that through his own experiences.”

Soundscapes spoke to the claustrophobia and drift of isolation … ethereal singing suggested possibility in some untethered parallel universe

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by Kate Hutchinson via Electronic music | The Guardian

Aunt music: how the lost sounds of Great Aunt Mirry were unlocked

Musician Tom Fraser has reclaimed a late relative’s musical legacy, thanks to the chance find of a scratchy record on a doorstep

The musician Tom Fraser’s memories of his Great Aunt Mirry are few. “I remember her once on the sofa, just sort of being quite a jolly little old lady,” he says. “And I went to her funeral, I remember that.”

It was a long time after her death that he came to learn of another side of Mirry’s life. A box of belongings, left on the street outside his grandmother’s house in Notting Hill, held a record that suggested she was more than just a jolly little old lady.

It just felt right, playing on this woman's music who I'd never met, from over 60 years ago

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by Laura Barton via Electronic music | The Guardian

The 10 best contemporary music albums of 2020

We survey the best albums from the experimental edges of classical, jazz and more, from ambient sludge to blissful electronica

• More on the best culture of 2020

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by John Lewis via Electronic music | The Guardian

The 10 best global albums of 2020

Away from the English-language mainstream was a world of mindblowing sound from Indian raga to Malian mayhem, and Tony Allen and Hugh Masekela’s final work

• More on the best culture of 2020

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by Ammar Kalia via Electronic music | The Guardian

'It speaks to an ancient history': why South Africa has the world's most exciting dance music

Styles like afrohouse, gqom and amapiano are thriving – but with ‘half-baked white kids getting a lot more airplay’, South Africa’s inequalities still hold the dance scene back

Many people got their first taste of South African dance music this year via six Angolans dancing in their backyard, dinner plates in hand. Their viral video, with casual but masterful moves set to Jerusalema by South African producer Master KG, created a global dance craze; the track ended up all over Radio 1 this autumn and topped streaming charts across Europe.

Jerusalema is just one track amid what has now become arguably the most vibrant and innovative dance music culture on the planet. In South Africa, dance music is pop music, from townships like Soweto and KwaDabeka to cities like Durban and Cape Town. The country has 11 official languages, each with their own cultural practices, and even the national anthem of the so-called Rainbow Nation is comprised of the country’s five most commonly spoken: Xhosa, Zulu, Sesotho, Afrikaans and English. Out of this rich cultural heritage, and in a country that has long had distinct dance styles like jaiva, marabi, kwela and mbaqanga, has come wave after wave of astonishing work.

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by Marcus Barnes via Electronic music | The Guardian

Guardian albums and tracks of 2020: how our writers voted

We’ve announced our favourite releases of the year – now the Guardian’s music critics reveal their individual top picks of 2020

• The 50 best albums of 2020
• The 20 best songs of 2020

Here’s how our writers voted: favourite choice first.

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by Guardian music via Electronic music | The Guardian

Andrew Weatherall remembered by David Holmes

6 April 1963 – 17 February 2020

The composer pays tribute to a brilliant polymath with singular musical vision, who was also a warm and wise friend

• Diego Maradona remembered by Angus Macqueen

I’ll start by saying that DJing, remixing and producing were just something that Andrew did. I always looked at him as a much bigger presence. Spending a day with Andrew with a spliff and a cup of tea was an educational experience. I used to leave those meetings with fire in my belly, raring to go. He couldn’t wait to tell you about the new record he had just heard, or the new film he had just watched, or the new book he had just read, because he wanted you to taste what he had just experienced. He wasn’t precious or pretentious. He wanted to share the love.

In 1990, I saw him play at a club in London. He was already this mythical, brilliant DJ. I remember getting up the courage to say: “Hi, my name’s David. I live in Belfast. Will you come and play at my club Sugar Sweet?” He said: “I’d absolutely love to come to Belfast. I’ve read so many books about it.” He arrived with his corkscrew curly hair, motorbike boots, leather trousers and Breton top. He looked amazing. Back then, a lot of DJs wouldn’t come to Belfast, and rightly so! I get it. But Andrew was fascinated by it. He liked to go to the weird, off-kilter, dangerous places. He loved outsiders.

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by David Holmes via Electronic music | The Guardian

One to Watch: Babeheaven

This London duo, one of them behind the scenes, make deceptively sweet, intensely introspective electronic pop

You’d suppose post-rave pop duo Babeheaven were bound to be in a band. Singer Nancy Andersen’s dad makes music for adverts, while producer Jamie Travis’s dad built the Rough Trade empire and his brother once threw up on Morrissey, something we’ve all probably felt like doing at some time or other. Yet Babeheaven ran from their fate. The Londoners became friends as teens, drifted apart, then reconnected while working in retail on the same north Kensington road. Making demos after work, they eventually slipped out some well-received music four years ago, played a few shows and then retreated, resurfacing last year. Now they’ve accidentally finished a debut album, in the absence of any distracting gigs with their five-piece group.

Home for Now is the perfect title for that debut. The pair promise “home” with their unobtrusive grooves and Andersen’s siren voice, then undermine those reliable comforts with her desperately personal lyrics. Nothing is beyond question; everything is only “for now”. Identity, fears, insomnia and desires are the themes that Andersen roams around, trying to map the human icebergs beside her, always worrying away at what may lie beneath. The duo’s songs, despite their playlist-friendly moods, leave you trapped inside questions with no answer, the stasis reflected in the calmly repetitive music. At their best, they raise a quiet thunder, like Friday Sky’s shoegaze soul or Fresh Faced, a heart-stopper about being drowned in infatuation. Enjoy them before they disappear again…

Home for Now is out now on AWAL

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by Damien Morris via Electronic music | The Guardian

Harold Budd's sublime music was a gateway to a brighter world

The work of the composer, who has died from Covid-19 aged 84, can’t be contained with the term ‘ambient’ – it is a guide to dreamworlds and a haven in tough times

It’s no coincidence that so many people discovered Harold Budd’s music this year. Restrained and sedate – even sedative – the disembodied drones and rapt minimalism of 1978’s The Pavilion of Dreams and 1984’s The Pearl feel as if they’d been made to confront unsettled times. His albums are a gateway to a beyond and an invitation to exist, however briefly, above yourself. As he continues to be added to playlists curated to help listeners focus, unwind and, yes, navigate “unprecedented times”, the musician – who died this week aged 84 – is the closest thing contemporary music has come to engendering pure solace in sound.

Related: US composer Harold Budd dies aged 84

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by Brian Coney via Electronic music | The Guardian

US composer Harold Budd dies aged 84

Composer of calmly beautiful works who rejected the term ‘ambient’ collaborated with Brian Eno, Cocteau Twins and more

Harold Budd, the left-field American composer whose work straddled minimalism, jazz, dream-pop and more, has died aged 84. His death was confirmed by his close collaborator Robin Guthrie of Cocteau Twins, who wrote on Facebook that he was “feeling empty, shattered lost and unprepared for this”.

Cocteau Twins wrote on Facebook: “It is with great sadness that we learned of the passing of Harold Budd. Rest in peace, poet of the piano.”

Related: Harold Budd: the ambient music master floats again

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by Ben Beaumont-Thomas via Electronic music | The Guardian

Rico Nasty: Nightmare Vacation review – offbeat rapper is impossible to ignore

(Atlantic)
The high-volume delivery may be an acquired taste but there are gems to be found in this album of chaotic experimentalism

Rico Nasty has never played nice: as her moniker suggests, she’s aggressive, in your face, and refuses to back down. Having amassed a strong cult following through multiple mixtapes, the 23-year-old rapper’s debut album doubles down on her raspy, crushing sound.

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by Timi Sotire via Electronic music | The Guardian

The Avalanches' teenage obsessions: 'I cried hearing Strawberry Fields Forever'

With the release of their new album this month, the Australian psych-poppers reminisce about BMX bikes, Christian Slater and Morrissey’s potent melancholy

My first guitar

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by Interview by Rhi Storer via Electronic music | The Guardian

The 50 best albums of 2020: 50-31

The sounds in our countdown turn to horny pop, neo-soul fantasy, a trap masterclass and some robotic dance moves

This list is drawn from votes by Guardian music critics – each critic votes for their top 20 albums, with points allocated for each placing, and those points tallied to create this order. Check in every weekday to see our next picks, and please share your own favourite albums of 2020 in the comments below.

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