I haven’t had access to my turntable for a significant portion of the year, and thus have been attempting to assuage the heartbreak by stocking up on a somehow even more obsolete class of physical music media. Did it actually help? No. Do I regret spending money I could’ve used for transit, groceries, and weed on flimsy-hinged plastic bricks that constantly litter all surfaces of my disastrously cluttered bedroom? Hell no.

Note: This list should be considered in conjunction with the two summary posts yet to come.

Zbysko Cracker / MO – Mowin’ (Grandmother’s House, Oct 29)

Certainly one of, if not the most “non-musical” musical releases I’ve come across this year. You get exactly what it says on the tin, and whether you listen to these two 15-minute sides of leisurely lawn care as audiotherapy, productivity ambience, lullabies, or just the charming bits of careless pseudo-composition that they are, Mowin’, despite its resolute commitment to artistic minimalism, is a tape with which it’s impossible not to fall in love.

Mažas Kiekis – Much Like Yourself (Chocolate Monk, September)

According to Nyoukis’s introduction, the story behind Gnaw Bone, IN artist Mažas Kiekis’s first-ever tape makes it a perfect fit for Choccy Monk: unsolicited submission, degrees of removal, deep-set idiosyncrasies. Much Like Yourself is an easily digestible but not so easily forgotten slab of messy, delirious sound poetry fed through the murky mastications of magnetic tape cut-ups. Kiekis—and I do not suggest this lightly—may be the next-generation stateside heir to Germany’s Michael Barthel.

Guido Gamboa – Music for Tape and Spectral/Granular Processes (Second Sleep, October)

I’ll buy anything Guido Gamboa puts out without hesitation, but I’ll admit, even I was a bit skeptical about a release so pointedly exploratory and scientific from a technical standpoint from this artist whom I’ve always appreciated because of his seamless assimilations. I shouldn’t have worried, unsurprisingly; the four self-contained pieces collected by Music for Tape are some of the Chicago paragon’s best, and the detailed liner notes offer a look into the specific methodologies utilized for each.

presque fantôme (dents de scie, Sep 6)

A new project from the reclusive Geneva artist also behind the crève-chiens alias and elusively fruitful dents de scie imprint, presque fantôme is clattering outsider tape-noise of the highest order, and this self-titled debut has been one of my most consistent plays since I picked it up back in September. Think early Darksmith, 010001111000, Matt Krefting, Termite Acropolis . . . yeah. This is the good shit.

Bent Duo – Ramble (self-released, Jun 28)

David Friend and Bill Solomon’s Bent Duo collaboration would be fascinating enough without a recorded musical element—their presentations blur the lines between performance and installation, and audience participation is used as a flexible vehicle for exploring spaces that would otherwise remain stubbornly closed—but Ramble, a “re-imagining” of the multimedia project of the same name, is the perfect avenue to sufficiently engage with their work from any distance, because I’m not sure music has ever been this intimate or clandestine.

Van Gelder Skelter – The Aerosol Transit Lounge Showdown (Born Physical Form, April)

The steady flux of new and increasingly more entertaining aliases/projects into the Born Physical Form catalog slowed slightly this year, but the quality underwent no such diminishment. I still haven’t heard Microphone Crumb’s Primate Sequences, the most recent tape by the mysterious Philadelphia tape twiddler, but it’s hard to imagine it being better than The Aerosol Transit Lounge Showdown, a quick pair of squirrely, slipshod sketches that seem to get more bewildering each time.

Tupperware – American Underbelly (Deluxe Bias, Jan 24)

Barely more than three minutes of brash, equal parts angry and arty hardcore recorded in gloriously primitive mono is apparently all it takes to win my heart. There are perhaps no other tapes that I have played more than American Underbelly this year. The Olympia, WA band have also recently erected the other side of their set of year-framing bookends with their nearly just as diminutive self-titled EP, which was released on cassette and 7″ on the 21st.

Hair Clinic – At Work and at Home (Music for People, Jun 24)

With this fairly new alias, Oakland oddball Max Nordile has cemented himself as one of the greats in a scene where “greatness” often holds no esteem, nor even meaning. “Jim’s Place”, released last year by Regional Bears, saw Nordile turn his indiscriminate lens to the unruly outdoors, but At Work and at Home represents almost the exact opposite: a rough, noisy survey of the dross and detritus of domestic spaces. Short but sweet.

Mister Baby – Sidewalk Pop (Paisley Shirt, Feb 5)

A cozy little gem of a tape that can almost certainly provide some much-needed escapism for anyone who pops it in. The fuzzed-out twee bliss of unforgettable cuts like “Moonlight Racing,” “Cake Shop,” and particularly the extended cover of Aqua’s “Dr. Jones” evokes the featherweight carelessness and warmed bones of a dreamy summer day, and has me with my ear to the silk-grassed ground in rapt vigilance for whatever Mashikian comes up with next.

Heejin Jang / Network Glass / Philippe Vandal (Ultraviolet Light, Apr 8)

Three contemporary computer music heavyweights (primarily of the irreverent variety) gather for this spectacular split tape produced by Baltimore’s formidable Ultraviolet Light. The highlight here for me personally is Network Glass’s track on the A side, which nearly broaches the singular territory previously established, explored, and violated via modern classic Twitch, but both Jang and Vandal contribute excellent material as well, the former’s serving as fitting bookends for the whole tape.

Hit with the Joke Hammer (Crooked Branch Collections, Jun 4)

If the rattling spindles and warble-wrack of presque fantôme weren’t enough nourishment for your bag of bones, Hit with the Joke Hammer is here to help. The second in a promising series of short tapes from Nashville’s newly minted Crooked Branch Collections, it presents noise in its most stripped-down manifestation (or one of them, at least), a tightly contained but still dizzying stumble through whirs and rustles and scratches and gurgles.

Alex Cunningham – Rivaled (Void Castle, Feb 23)

For the hopefully large amount of you who have heard Rivaled already, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about when I say that there are few tracks, or even full-length works, from this year that can match (rival, if you will) the searingly seraphic blast of “Faith.” However, the much more subdued, less immediate “Void” on the B side has steadily become just as transcendent, and each of the halves very much feels like a different, unique  attempt at the same thing—but both handily succeed.

This Friendship Is Sailing – Live on Curious Ear Radio (Beartown, November)

When I ordered a pair of tapes from Beartown’s newest batch it was Natalia Beylis’s Variations on a Sewing Machine that I expected to connect with most, but I ended up playing this collection of live-in-studio magic from the quartet of Sam Andreae, David Birchall, Greta Buitkute, and Maggie Nicols even more often. A softer, quieter companion of sorts to Andreae and Birchall’s previous work with Yan Jun on Click Here (and There) for More Information earlier this year.

Connive – Verleugnung (Play & Ceremony, Nov 5)

After last year’s self-titled debut cassette on Reserve Matinee, this plastic-bagged C90 is an impressive next step for Michael Stumpf’s Connive project, a sprawling odyssey filled with screeching, swelling, looping harsh that has that indescribable effect of simultaneously slowing down and speeding up time. Though stylistic lineage in noise music is usually pointless to trace, Stumpf seems to have a spider-leg drawing influence from each and every one of the genre’s notable hotspots, and thus pretty much everyone will find something they like in the maelstrom of Verleugnung.

As someone who also operates an independent label with minimal funds, 2021 was not an easy year for it. And yet, plenty of ambitious artists and curators not only found the time and the resources to bring the music they love to the world, but also the drive to begin doing it in the first place. These are my favorite imprints that were first established in this accursed year of your lord.

Black Artifact (Fort Worth, TX, USA)

Anyone who follows this site is well aware that I never shut up about how much I despise the traditional “noise aesthetic”: obnoxiously provocative black-and-white collages, irresponsible invocations of misogynistic violence, juvenile edginess masquerading as serious art. Black Artifact, which announced itself in early January with tapes by brand new projects Insignificant Spirit and Gemengung, is a perfect example of the glorious antithesis of the aforementioned. Each release deals uniquely in creative minimalism in both visual and auditory contexts, and thus they are all singular mysteries to delve into and decipher. My personal highlights are the crude, clumsy concrète of Temple Garments’ brief Dim Radiance; Gemengung’s brutal wall-ish follow-up to their “remix” of Effigy of the Forgotten, The Indifference of Nature (both of which I reviewed here); and SBTDOH’s An Ode to Rock Throwers C11, which is easily some of the best and most concise harsh I’ve heard all year.

Modern Concern (Chicago, IL, USA)

Founded and operated by Chicago musician and soundmaker Andy Klingensmith, Modern Concern is a reverent outlet for exploratory sound art of all kinds, each release presented in extremely limited, carefully homemade CDr or tape runs. Field Dept., Klingensmith’s ongoing collaboration with fellow recorder/researcher Estlin Usher, has so far been one of the main projects featured in the label’s catalog, but their output has steadily become more diverse (from a stylistic perspective, that is…), and it’s the more recent introduction of the Thick Descriptions series, beautifully amaray-cased editions “dedicated to multi-media placestudies [sic] and works of acoustic ecology which utilize unmanipulated, candid field recording techniques.” For an entity so small, however, it is quite prolific, and at 14 total releases for the whole year I had to concede my original goal of picking up every single one in the interest of my meager bank account, but this, undoubtedly, is far from the worst problem to have.

Bromtol Largesse (Austin, TX, USA)

Some may know Neal D. Retke as the subject of Neal D Retke for President!, a 2013 documentary short in which filmographer Victor Van Rossem makes the cross-continental trek from Belgium to the United States in search of a tenuous Facebook connection—a sort of irreverent follow-up to Searching for Sugar Man, perhaps. Retke has been around long before that though, putting out unusual (to say the least) music under both his artistic and curatorial alias of {An} EeL. The “Antarctica”-based Bromtol Largesse (actually a transnational collaboration with the Netherlands’ Volker Störtebeker) is a much newer excursion, beginning its operations in January and releasing more than twenty digital albums since then. Most, if not all of the projects most likely feature Retke, but satisfying variation is not at all an issue here; from the bizarre first “action report” സാമുദായിക dochádzať दान to the absolutely superb three-way harsh noise split by Bukkake Tech, ElekTrauma, and Takeshita, there is certainly something for everyone . . . or, perhaps, everything for no one.

Dasa Tapes (Thessaloniki, Greece)

Savvas Metaxas and Danai Giannakapoulou’s eclectic new label first caught my attention with a release from Glia, a project by Virginia’s Jonathan Ifiok Ntuk that in my eyes/ears is one of the most exciting recent developments in DIY abstract electronica. Since that first batch—which also contained tapes from the collaboration between Ross Birdwise and Karl Fousek as well as some of Metaxas’s own music by way of RETE, his duo with Vasilis Liolios—Dasa has released two more well-curated sets of three, featuring reasonably recognizable names like Eventless Plot and Ben Vida alongside lesser-known (at least to me) artists: Rahel Kraft, Paul Ramage, Elena Kakaliagou. A clean house cover design theme unifies the fascinating work of these myriad creatives, each highlighting a new “hand drawn acrylic painting” presumably done by one or both of the founder-operators.

Titibête (Vienna, Austria)

Though it has only served as the vehicle for two very short digital-only releases this year, Titibête grew from a tiny blip on my radar to a label I’ll be paying extremely close attention to in the future, mostly due to the strength of that aforementioned pair of works by Rosa and Pigeon Discrimination.

Field Strike (unknown location)

This small tape label only just got started earlier this month, but it’s already easily one of my favorites. The incredible first batch of releases by Retraction Pocket (Deterioration Ceremony), Opaque (Black Moncler Hudson), and Maltreatment (Well Raised) are essential listening for any fan of harsh/wall.

Apologies (London, UK)

Apologies has exactly one release under its belt so far, but that single work will be more than enough to convince those “in the know,” even beyond the fact that I will be watching any venture from the mind of Tom White with rapt attention. The pensive sound, voice, and space sketches of Accidental Stereo at the Peninsula, a short collaboration with Renato Grieco, are a perfect introduction.

Anhedonic Records (NC, USA)

Anhedonic made a brash inaugural announcement back in July with the release of two brutal slabs of merciless harsh, Labor of Love’s self-titled and Calf Puller’s Slaktsvin. The strength of these two tapes alone, particularly the former, would be enough for a great year, but the label continued its efforts with the crushing Three Silver Swords and then a drastic stylistic swerve in the form of Piss Dream.

adhuman (Brighton, UK)

A new archival platform and esoteric distro from one of my favorite artists working today, Duncan Harrison. Collected Voice, Text and Tape Works and Korm 88, which compile recordings by Josh Peterson (previously released on various cassettes) and Emil Beaulieau (unreleased), respectively, are a formidable set of releases for the label’s first year of operation.

Mono Time (UK)

Dealing mostly in subdued, often hauntological ambience both light and dark, Mono Time first came to my attention quite recently due to November’s Zebularin release, Concrete Vague. Most of their modest but still impressive first-year catalog would usually be soft for my tastes, but something about the unutterable realities and unrealities explored in We All Think You Should Leave and Ghosts of the British Motorway makes the music irresistibly beguiling.

Not totally through with the year yet, of course, but I think at this stage I’m ready for at least this list. For most of the posts in this edition of NNMEOYGFFTEAF (Noise Not Music End-of-Year Get Fucked Festival to End All Festivals), quantity is the name of the game. Just trying to bring you as many potential discoveries as possible.

Monnier (Hardcore Detonation, Jun 6)

Although the differences between my mid-year and end-of-year picks are shaping up to be drastic, Monnier’s self-titled cassette, which collects 2018’s original Monnier and 2021’s EP 2, has been a formidably consistent favorite. With its vicious, rough-edged technical crispness and addictive riff wielding it is is everything I could possibly want in grind, and because of that, despite its brutal simplicity, it feels like so much more.

C.C.C.C. – Test Tube Fantasy Extended Edition (New Forces, May 21)

If you’ve been following the site for any amount of time you’re probably aware of the unyielding love I have for C.C.C.C., so all the recent reissuing and remastering of their older work has been an amazing wave to ride. Though the transcendent live recordings of Loud Sounds Dopa remain untouchable, this extended LP edition of the legendary Test Tube Fantasy 7″ may be the best archival offering yet with nearly fifteen minutes of unheard bonus material on each side. Sidekick hell lick perfection.

Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers – First Flight to Tokyo: The Lost 1961 Recordings (Blue Note, Dec 10)

I first heard Blakey hit the skins on Cannonball Adderley’s version of “Autumn Leaves,” probably close to ten years ago now, and his distinct presence and style have been permanent mainstays in my jazz tastes ever since. No matter how bizarre, raucous, or abstract you like your quintet jams to be, the Messengers’ infectious approach to bop will always appeal, and this incredible unearthing from Blue Note is case in point. A longer and better review by a friend

Hayworth – A Nostalgic Battle-Scar (Wax Vessel, Oct 12)

Wax Vessel’s pell-mell descent into the hellscape of cashgrab musical novelties hasn’t been pleasant to witness, but even so there’s something to be said for the digital versions being made available for the modest price of $1 each. The remaster of Hayworth’s two full-lengths that comprises A Nostalgic Battle-Scar is subtle but complementary, enough so that the double LP feels like more than just a simple re-release. The studio recording of “The Industrial Park” still has nothing on the demo version, though.

White Suns – Modern Preserves (Flag Day Recordings, Feb 5)

For me, The Lower Way was a disappointment even after the marked stylistic swerve of Psychic Drift (a record I actually really like), but luckily White Suns didn’t entirely fumble the opportunity for a killer 2021 thanks to Flag Day’s cassette release of Modern Preserves, a grimy basement smorgasbord of no-fi live recordings, meandering jams, and semi-coherent unreleased tracks. Somewhat similar to Black Dice’s Natty Light, Modern Preserves is an invigoratingly violent re-affirmation for a band that has lost their edge.

Armenia – ボロボロ (Swollen Gargantuan Fecal Fetus, Feb 16)

With ボロボロ (pronounced “boro boro”), Leonardo Sabatto’s prolific Armenia project joins the ranks of the most legendary harsh noise endurance assaults—Killer Bug’s Beyond the Valley of the Tapes, C.C.C.C.’s Early Works, etc.—in terms of both auditory causticity and sheer breadth. Amidst countless shorter pieces, each of which scorches with unique intensity, it’s the nearly hour-long bombardments like “Putrefaccion Ficticia” and “Hurana Personalidad” that make this staggering slab of work so memorable.

Ones – “A Going Concern” (Ongoing Discipline, Feb 22)

It’s often true that the musical ventures that never really get off the ground (so to speak) are the best, or at least the most interesting, and in that same vein there’s something unutterably wonderful with which the music is imbued when it is exhumed and redressed in this way. The slipshod genius of outsider improv duo Ones is on full display in the comprehensive “A Going Concern” CD release, a multifarious celebration of the mundane and usefully useless.

Blacks’ Myths I & II (Atlantic Rhythms, Sep 17)

This nifty Blacks’ Myths I & II has been one of my most played in my modest subset-collection since I picked up a copy from Luke himself at one of Chris Williams and Laura Sofía Pérez’s Bien Lit events, and, along with Monnier, is another example of a two-album collection in which each originally individual work somehow (and significantly) gains from being paired with the other. The contemplative sketches and spoken musings by Dr. Thomas Stanley (Bushmeat Sound) of II are a perfect counterpoint to immediately follow the sprawling, spacious jams of I.

Fursaxa – Alone in the Dark Wood reissue (Stench ov Death, Sep 16)

One of the defining albums of the early- to mid-aughts American weirdo-folk scene returns to physical format with Stench ov Death’s official cassette reissue. It’s strangely difficult to write about for a record that has been so ingrained and ubiquitous in my regular listening for many years, but those also into Fursaxa are undoubtedly well aware of this slippery elusiveness; despite the profoundly earthbound and occult atmosphere of Alone in the Dark Wood, it still feels as ephemeral as an anxious cloud of smoke.

…Kagel… – Quartet 1998, Trio 1997 (scatter, Feb 5)

Somewhat of a more austere sibling to the Ones CD listed above, this lengthy archival release draws from recordings of performances executed more than two decades ago, each meandering swath featuring the core trio of Mark Collins, Doug Theriault, and James Wood on a motley arsenal of amplifications and abstractions of objects, instruments, surfaces, and more. The quartet suite also adds an extra double bass to the mix, tweaked, flexed, and tortured by Matthew Sperry.

Trucido – Das Butcher reissue (self-released, Mar 15)

Originally distributed in 1992 in an ultra-limited edition of ten recycled cassettes (with the added guerilla factor of the original music on the extraneous tape not being dubbed over), Das Butcher, one of Michael Nine’s first audio works, has been crudely reanimated from one of these original copies into a dual digital/cassette reissue. Upon its initial creation the material was not actually intended for anyone’s ears other than Nine’s, and this hermitically introspective approach still gives the music a dusty but resolute shine all these years later.

Plants – Tapes 2014-2015 (Hemlock Garden, Jan 11)

There’s no explicit confirmation of the recording timeframe for Tapes 2014-2015 outside of the title, and those years weren’t too long ago anyway, but the vividly organic expanse of Plants’ lengthy audio-scrapbook certainly belongs on this list because the music itself already feels like something that had been entombed for hundreds of years before being retrieved by the artist(s). It’s still not nearly as long as Daughter of Darkness, but I’m still frequently reminded of it; blazing moonlight, burning silence, all of nature folding in on top of you.

Preening – Discography 2016-2020 (Discos Peroquébien, Nov 8)

One of the world’s most hardworking neo–no wave units bares every ugly inch on this compilation collecting work from demos and studio releases over the past four years. Despite that limited range, the tape reintroduces nearly 40 songs, from the humble beginnings of the first demo to the rabid tour-de-force that is Gang Laughter. The even more contorted heirs to The Contortions.

Ahlzagailzehguh – Enemy of the Future (Troniks, Feb 18)

Phil Blankenship’s Troniks continues to build its superb roster of compilations with Enemy of the Future, an intimidating set of 24 winding tracks from the genre-defining artist. The double CD loses a bit of punch from a rather quiet mastering job, but it’s still some of my favorite Ahlzagailzehguh material I’ve heard; this music is a singular but foundational piece in the twisted bridge between atmospheric and cut-up harsh.