STYROFOAM - A soft, deceptively gentle voice draws the listener into a world in which treble is king on ''I'm What's There to Show That Something's Missing'' (Morr Music, also a German import the latest album from Arne Van Petegem, the Belgian musician also known as Styrofoam. The experimentation begins with Generation X in 1977 and moves on through the Clash, the Slits, Public Image Limited, the Pop Group, Stiff Little Fingers and the under-appreciated Basement 5. Collected here are 13 B-sides on which British 70's punk and post-punk bands look to their country's Caribbean population for new sounds, stretching out on innovative dub tracks. WILD DUB - Lest one think that the sounds Lenky is coming up with will remain confined to Jamaica, the ''Wild Dub'' compilation (on the German label Select Cuts) shows what happens when cultures cross. Listen to some of the best new recordings here. Classical Music: 2021 was a year of reawakening for the art form.Jazz Albums: Even the big-statement albums this year had a feeling of intense closeness.Pop Albums: Recordings with big feelings and room for catharsis made the most powerful connections.Best Songs: A posthumous political statement and a superstar’s 10-minute redo are among the 66 best tracks of 2021.Lenky's rhythms - and there are much further-out ones than these - are among the most innovative music produced in any genre this decade.įrom Lil Nas X to Mozart to Esperanza Spalding here is what we loved listening to this year. Though his tweaking of ''Get Busy'' for Sean Paul has been unstoppable, it is the metal-spring beat and street-game handclaps of Wayne Wonder's ubiquitous single ''No Letting Go'' (Atlantic) that most typify his studio genius. WAYNE WONDER STEVEN (LENKY) MARSDEN - Finally, after years of producing Jamaican dancehall so forward-looking that the instrumental versions don't even seem to have descended from reggae, Lenky has surfaced on American top 40 radio.
It should all combine to form a novelty act with a short lifespan, but somehow, on his album, ''The Magic Is You!'' (Hotlink), this Texas transplant now living in Brooklyn makes music that actually holds up on its own. He plays accordion, slide whistle and kazoo, has long blond hair and a beer gut, works as a circus ringmaster, writes songs about wrestlers and Gary Busey and covers songs by Guns 'n' Roses and Tom Jones. Together, the elements seem like they're from completely different songs, tied together by a beat made from the sound of dripping water.ĬORN MO - Also on the borderline between good and bad taste is Jon (Corn Mo) Cunningham. The chorus, a Burt Bacharach-like arrangement of voices listing items to take to the laundromat, is extremely well written and beautifully believable. KELLY - What's great about this duo's single ''Laundromat'' (Jive) is that the verses, a half-spoken and half-sung argument between a couple, feel quickly written and unconvincingly delivered, yet you still can't stop listening to it.