This was a good year for music, but I discovered most of the music I bought in 2020 was not from 2020! Probably because I bought a lot of vinyl, and sometimes those are hard to procure immediately. Oh well, some of my favorite listens from the 2020….in no particular order.
This list is 100% vinyl purchases.
Jeff bought this for me, THANK YOU! This is an amazing 7″, all Theremin tunes in honor of the 100th anniversary of the machine! It was the companion record for Electronic Sound #70 magazine.
Bought many ambient records this year, much more than usual; probably due to the mindset I was in. This is a great record from Berlin on the IDO label. Transcendental Movements Volume 1.
This was one of the cool bootlegs I found, note that it is 2016 release, and has a version with different cover (which I also found last year). Bunch of early demos, great record!
Man, Suction Records out of Toronto had a great year in 2020, some favorites include Nordvest and Locust! Nordvest Gr0ndal album is Roger Semsroth from Berlin, aka Sleeparchive aka Skanfrom. We played an event with him back in 2000 in NYC and hung out as well; great guy, love his tunes!
Locust is Mark Van Hoen and he had a very productive year. This is an release from 2019 that came out on lush limited vinyl in Sept 2020. Great ambient record!
James Shinra has been one of the better electro producers in the last several years. This came out December 2019 and I was able to get it mid-summer 2020. What a great release!
Discovered this Los Angeles based ambient record label in late 2019; since I have acquired many of the albums. They are generally beautiful vinyl and great ambient electronic releases. A couple stand-outs from 2020…
Blinkar Fran Norr – Metaphors for Things
Damm – Nautical Dawn
Another 2019 release, this one I ordered from Spain in the summer of 2020, simply too hard to come by through other methods. The Exaltics never dissapoint! I ended up buying 2 copies of the picture disk, one for the wall, the other for the turntable. Again, 2019, but the wall copy came in 2020, so close enough…
Pye Corner Audio produced Where Things Are Hollow 2, several versions on colored wax. Mine is the turquoise color, which is beautiful. Great synth music!
Another great electro record on Trust is Versalife Cosmic Language…
And then I picked up Massive Attack’s Mad Professor Part 2 on vinyl, again a late 2019 release but I didn’t bring it home until this summer.
Plant43 had several great releases this year, some on his own label. This was an earlier release in 2020 on AC Records, a follow up to my favorite release of his Mycology… This is Mycology 2.