You expected Charli xcx to drop one of the British pop albums of the year — rather less so a bloke from Rotherham, known only in the deep underground, playing and recording everything himself at home.
Ben Beaumont-Thomas. It is also about hard-wired failure across history — the album title is a savagely sarcastic dismissal of a planet whose human inhabitants are so wretchedly self-interested and easily given to violence.
Vocalist Raygun Busch often takes the persona of a baffled functionary, operating on orders that have no reason, while his band squall and thunder through their groove-metal rhythms. A triumph of tenacity and independence, Los Campesinos! Whether solo or as frontperson of her band Big Thief, Lenker keeps her release rate high, with quality and emotional intensity to match. You can almost smell the leaf mulch in her latest, recorded in a studio in a forest with pianos, acoustic guitars and the occasional touch of ambient haze.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, both cite medieval nun Hildegard von Bingen as an influence. Laura Snapes. Niger guitarist Mdou Moctar makes desert blues into a fractal art, each insurgent riff embroidered with detail. If justice is dying, Moctar lit the pyre. One third of the xx turned in an expertly produced dancefloor LP, finely chopping up samples and guest artists and emulsifying them into darkly throbbing Jon Hopkins-y techno, emotional trance or sparkling disco-house.
The latter style provides the best track, Baddy on the Floor, made with Honey Dijon — have trumpets ever sounded more euphoric? More Berghain than break point, Reznor and Ross ratcheted the tension with adrenaline-spiking techno, the beat thwacking like a tennis ball against a hard court. The beats are full of old soul and library music samples warping in the sun alongside fresh input from jazzy outsiders such as Georgia Anne Muldrow and Sam Gendel.
