First Floor's Favorites of 2021
a.k.a. The music that made a profoundly strange year a bit more tolerable.
At this point, who needs another year-end list? Probably no one. Every December, I wrestle with what feels like my growing ambivalence about listmaking; while things thankfully aren’t feeling quite as grim as they were last year, the idea of “ranking” music has always been pretty ridiculous, and the creation of these lists, which once felt like a niche exercise for nerdy music obsessives, has gradually ballooned into an industry-wide orgy of clickbait creation. After all, few things are more likely to get readers clicking than a ranked list. Human curiosity is a powerful thing, and as soon as we ask ourselves, “What did (publication X) put on their best-of list?,” most of us are going to scratch that itch, even when we know that the answer is bound to be underwhelming.
Knowing that, I’m perennially tempted to simply opt out of the annual listmaking bonanza. There’s no shortage of lists out there, and there’s certainly no need for me to add my thoughts to the pile. At the same time, old habits die hard—I’ve been doing year-end lists for more than 20 years now—and I must admit that I do still find some enjoyment in simply taking stock of what music I actually enjoyed the most during the past 12 months. Although recommending music has basically become a constant in my life—it literally happens every week here in the newsletter—the endless onslaught of new releases means that very few things stick with me for longer than a few days. Such is the life of a music journalist, and I’m not complaining about it, but if I still want to listen to something more than a few months (or even a few weeks) after it first came out, it must be pretty special, at least to me.
Furthermore, considering the volume of people that read First Floor every week, I have to assume that at least some of you are here because you trust my taste in music, so perhaps those folks will appreciate an official year-end round-up. So here I am, doing it again. To be clear, these lists are highly subjective and are based entirely on the music that I personally enjoyed the most in 2021. They’re not ranked, and they’re certainly not meant to be the “best” of anything, but if you like the music that gets featured here in the newsletter, there’s a decent chance that you’ll like these too.
TRACKS
I have to admit, this list has a lot of songs with a notable pop bent, and while none of them are exactly Top 40 material, they’re not really rowdy club bangers or mind-bending experimental freakouts either. Those looking for more sonic variety will find it in my albums list, but during a year that I spent very little (i.e. almost zero) time on dancefloors, perhaps it’s not surprising that the individual songs that stuck with me the most are ones that tend to be both soothingly soft and / or stuffed with memorable hooks. Has COVID made me basic? Maybe a little bit. That said, it’s not that these songs wouldn’t be fun to hear at the club or on a big sound system, but they’re all immediate enough to perk me up when I’m sitting at the dining table and pounding away at my laptop for hours on end.
Note: You can click the track titles to hear each song individually, or you can also just head over to this convenient Buy Music Club list to find them all in one place.
Sofia Kourtesis “La Perla” (Technicolour)
Dream pop meets deep house on this shimmering gem.
HTRK “Kiss Kiss and Rhinestones” (N & J Blueberries)
A fuzzy, stripped-down and country-flavored lullaby.
Doss “Strawberry” (LuckyMe)
Sultry, high-gloss shoegaze for the ’90s chillout room.
India Jordan “And Groove” (Ninja Tune)
Joyously loopy, sun-filled house music with funky pop center.
Joy Orbison “better (feat. Léa Sen)” (Hinge Finger / XL)
Post-dubstep street soul for lonesome late nights.
Logic1000 “I Won’t Forget” (Therapy)
Classic diva-powered piano house, updated for the playlist pop generation.
DJ Seinfeld & Teira “U Already Know” (Ninja Tune)
Twirly, technicolor pop-house with a subtly funky strut in its step.
Dark0 “Shining Star” (YEAR0001)
A dreamy ballad-turned-banger that sounds like it was written by an android raised on a steady diet of anime soundtracks and theatrical trance anthems.
Brogan Bentley “Ecstasy” (Leaving)
The year’s most agreeably emo slice of soaring drum & bass.
Kilig “Honey” (Self-released)
Burial-style weepiness stitched to a perky, garage-influenced breakbeat.
Delay Grounds “Glass_Refract” (Tropopause)
Hypnotic chimes and deep bass blooms power this immersive tune, which was literally assembled out of sounds its creator pulled out of the trash.
Sal Dulu “Girl” (Duluoz)
Is digger-pop a genre? “Girl” fashions gorgeous soul samples into a heart-tugging electronic earworm.
Rochelle Jordan “Love You Good” (Young Art)
Breathy R&B atop a rolling jungle beat.
Fatima Al Qadiri “Medieval Femme” (Hyperdub)
Haunting and sparse, the fantastical “Medieval Femme” sounds like something from an ancient fairy tale that’s far too scary for modern children.
DJ Q & Hans Glader “Thief in the Night (Al Wootton Remix)” (Local Action)
A deliciously deep transformation of a skippy garage-house tune (that was already quite good to begin with).
Huey Mnemonic “Groove Thing (P. J. Swerve Mix)” (Self-released)
Gleefully swinging house grooves on this fabulous flip of a ’90s R&B jam.
RELEASES
Note: You can click the release titles to check out each one individually, or you can also just head over to this convenient Buy Music Club list to find them all in one place.
Moin - Moot (AD 93)
Post-hardcore? Post-punk? Post-dubstep? This raucous album is all of those things, and it rips.
Car Culture - Dead Rock (Lighthead)
Physical Therapy goes ambient (or hypnagogic, if you prefer) and strikes paydirt while occasionally channeling the melodic opulence of Talk Talk.
CFCF - Memoryland (BGM Solutions)
A gloriously bloated, genre-hopping celebration of the Y2K era and all of its garish optimism.
Hollie Kenniff - The Quiet Drift (Western Vinyl)
Polished ambient serenity for anyone who’s been wishing that Enya would come down from her castle and put out a new album.
Kevin Richard Martin - White Light (Self-released)
Kevin Richard Martin - Red Light (self-released)
An introspective counterpoint to the mayhem he unleashed as The Bug this year, this simmering pair of ambient(ish) releases find Kevin Martin reconnecting with his first instrument: the saxophone.
SKY H1 - Azure (AD 93)
Techno, drum & bass and grime distilled into a richly melodic (and largely ambient) brew.
Topdown Dialectic - Vol. 3 (Peak Oil)
A virtually unclassifiable (and undeniably compelling) blend of dub-techno, electronic funk and other experimental grooves.
Hoavi - Invariant (Peak Oil)
Hoavi - Music for Six Rooms (Balmat)
Two albums that dropped within the span of a month, showcasing the wide-ranging talents of a Russian producer who stirs up ambient, jungle, techno and more—and intriguingly leaves that blend suspended in the ether.
Tristan Arp - Sculpturegardening (Wisdom Teeth)
Endlessly playful and rhythmically inventive, this LP borrows from new age, ’80s Japanese ambient, Arthur Russell and the oddest corners bass music.
Nammy Wams - Paradise South (AP Life)
A wonky combination of old-school grime and modern UK drill that echoes the spirit of late-night London.
HTRK - Rhinestones (N & J Blueberries)
The sound of a distortion-loving outfit stripping their music down to its gorgeously melancholy essence—and adding a little bit of twang to the mix.
Joy Orbison - Still Slipping Vol. 1 (Hinge Finger / XL)
Decades of London street sounds—house, garage, hip-hop, soul, R&B and more—distilled into a cohesive (and engagingly human) mixtape.
Sofia Kourtesis - Sofia Magdalena (Technicolour)
Warmly melodic, sample-heavy house that combines the whimsy of DJ Koze with a hint of fuzz and a headphone-ready attention to detail.
Not Waving & Romance - Eyes of Fate (Ecstatic)
Stuffed with symphonic strings and devotional grandeur, ambient music rarely gets this lush—or this rapturous.
Green-House - Music for Living Spaces (Leaving)
Walking the line between ambient and new age, this glistening record feels like the soundtrack to a bucolic spring morning.
UNKNOWN ME - Bishintai (Not Not Fun)
An aural floatation tank that swerves ambient clichés by indulging its distinctly Japanese quirkiness.
Penelope Trappes - Penelope Three (Houndstooth)
Brooding atmospheres, gothic pianos and emotionally naked vocals; few records make sadness sound this luxuriously divine.
Doss - 4 New Hit Songs (LuckyMe)
Euphoria concentrate; four irreverent tunes that sound like the dancefloor equivalent of cotton candy.
Space Ghost - Dance Planet (Tartelet)
Impossibly cool and undeniably funky, this laid-back collection of chilled house and boogie beats feels like the second coming of Larry Heard.
Dylan Henner - Amtracks (Phantom Limb)
Moody (albeit gorgeous) ambient meditations for long train rides through the wilderness.
Sustrapperazzi - Return from Shibuya (Ilian Tape)
Stones Throw joins Ruff Sqwad on a trip through the Dirty South on this stunning beat tape.
Olivia Block - Innocent Passage in the Territorial Sea (Room40)
Lockdown anxiety and busted gear funneled into stirring sci-fi soundscapes.
Internazionale - Vestiges of Nature (Janushoved)
A cinematic, distortion-laced tribute to the dying wonders of the natural world.
Owl - Infinite Horizon (Silent Season)
The gloom of a foggy coastline, only blown up for the big screen. Weighty drones and slow-brewing ambient rarely sound this grand.
Yu Su - Yellow River Blue (Bié)
Ambient, dub, new age, synth pop… this album is all of these things and none of them, but the music revels in its oddity and has a great time doing it.
Grouper - Shade (Kranky)
It’s Grouper. What else do you need to know?
Shawn Reynaldo is a freelance writer, editor, presenter and project manager. Find him on LinkedIn or drop him an email to get in touch about projects, collaborations or potential work opportunities.