The Soymilk Book Club's Best Albums of 2021
Marxist disco, intergalactic jazz, pop for the apocalypse and more
Happy New Year! I’m beginning 2022 with the first issue of the newsletter, and I’m really excited to start writing here. Stay tuned for more, and I hope you have a great start to the year. 💎
I didn’t plan to write a year-end list because I should be spending time on my thesis, but I needed a break from academic writing. When my good friends at Big Duck Music approached me to pitch in for their upcoming Best of 2021 list, I figured: why not come up with my own?
After all, the past year has been pretty interesting, musically speaking. It didn’t reach as many highs as I had hoped for—some releases had let me down—but there were also many outstanding records across genres and continents. Spanning experimental music from Ho Chi Minh City to art pop from Brooklyn, here are my top 10 albums of 2021.
10. 333 — Tinashe
Tinashe breaking free of RCA’s dungeon is the best thing that’s happened to her career, and 333 cements her ability to indulge in boundary-pushing while honing in on her artistic strengths. There are instances that catch you off guard: sprinkles of G-funk in ‘Small Reminders’, or a hypnotic jungle beat pulsing through the one-minute runtime of ‘Shy Guy’. Yet, the album truly shines when the R&B cult favourite does what she knows she’s good at—catchy, uncomplicated pop. Heartbreak now sounds airy on ‘Let Me Down Slowly’, while ‘Bouncin’ treats flirting as a mere game of mischief (“I been sending dirty pics/Hope they make it to the cloud”). Deceptively simple and immaculately crafted, 333 is a career-high in Tinashe’s oeuvre.
9. Space 1.8 — Nala Sinephro
I found myself looping Nala Sinephro’s debut album Space 1.8 while churning out essays over the past semester. But far from generic study music, this is a freewheeling rhapsody of ambient jazz from the Belgian-Caribbean composer. While critics have drawn comparisons with cosmic jazz giants Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders, Sinephro’s fluid minimalism and daring electroacoustics elevate the project to something more than its spiritual predecessors. An affective urgency bubbles throughout, with Sinephro occasionally deploying frantic bursts of improvisation and dissonance that disrupt our attention. By the end of the record, a gentle modular fabric reorients us, and we arrive at otherworlds that are both heard and felt.
8. ppp parasites eve (a collection of songs) — Casper Mcfadden
Casper Mcfadden makes music for people on the closet nightcore fan to Machine Girl connoisseur pipeline. I first chanced upon Casper through 2020’s ‘.dancecore’, a mind-bending collage of glitched beats and vaporwave masked behind an innocuously cryptic cover that’s typical of obscure Internet releases. A self-styled “breakcore baddie”, the Chicago-based artist—whose real name is Juane Thompson—has since released a slew of material throughout the year, including the compact but excellent ppp parasites eve (a collection of songs).
Take ‘ppp parasites eve’, where nimble synths cruise over a hyper breakbeat and pitched-up voice samples. It feels like you’re in a Mario Kart dreamscape as Thompson incorporates abrupt twists and turns, deftly manipulating tempos and atmospheres. On ‘fly me 2 the moon’, extraterrestrial synths and inhuman vocals descend into nightmarish abstraction, leaving you disoriented in the best way possible. It’s these eclectic touches that give an understated depth to an otherwise accessible entry to Thompson’s work.
7. TRPP — TRPP
There’s been lots of shoegaze coming out of South Korea these days, and TRPP is another exciting addition to the scene. Comprising Chi-Chi Cliché, Elephant999 and Furukawa Yukio, the Seoul-based act released their self-titled debut album in July. They also recently featured in the OST of K-drama Inspector Koo, which is almost guaranteed to bring in much-deserved attention.
TRPP doesn’t offer anything groundbreaking, but it nails the basics of a solid ’90s revival, with misty vocals and fuzz-drenched pop. The record throws in the cloying acoustic ballad ‘Honey’, but the thudding bass in the background steers the track away from one-note territory, adding an unexpected layer of intensity. True to its British influences, TRPP’s dancier moments on ‘MEdia’ and ‘Liars’ recall Primal Scream, providing a punchy contrast to the moody lo-fi noise that permeates much of the tracklist. Rather than resorting to lazy nostalgia, the three-piece opt for unique moods that ebb and flow, teasing a dynamic new voice in Korean indie rock.
6. Shade — Grouper
5. Jubilee — Japanese Breakfast
For her first two albums, Michelle Zauner had been writing under a cloud of grief, which she also documents in her bestselling memoir, Crying In H Mart. In a well-timed artistic transition, Jubilee turns catharsis into a celebratory affair, culminating in some of Zauner’s strongest pop songwriting to date.
Despite the record’s shift towards brighter soundscapes, pain never truly disappears. The most life-affirming songs are ironically the ones that revisit the most devastating chapters of Zauner’s memories. A parallel to Psychopomp’s ‘In Heaven’, ‘In Hell’ sees the deaths of both mother and childhood pet collide. “Hell is finding someone to love/And I can’t see you again,” she sings, reminding us that loss is brutally compounding, never giving us rest even as we try to move on.
Zauner is acutely aware that joy is not a passive state, but an intentional and ongoing practice. This can involve a multitude of self-preservation strategies, such as forcing yourself to want to be happy (‘Slide Tackle’), or severing relationships that no longer serve you (‘Tactics’). Yet, Jubilee’s most declarative statement can be located in the sublime closer ‘Posing For Cars’, where Zauner confronts her vulnerability front and centre. “Just a single slow desire fermenting,” she croons before launching into the most ambitious guitar solo of her career, a dreamy constellation of noise that renders tangible what’s been unsaid all this while. I’m reminded of this passage from Crying In H Mart:
I had thought fermentation was controlled death. Left alone, a head of
cabbage molds and decomposes. It becomes rotten, inedible. But when
brined and stored, the course of its decay is altered. Sugars are broken down
to produce lactic acid, which protects it from spoiling. Carbon dioxide is
released and the brine acidifies. It ages. Its color and texture transmute. Its
flavor becomes tarter, more pungent. It exists in time and transforms. So it
is not quite controlled death, because it enjoys a new life altogether.
4. Ngủ Ngày Ngay Ngày Tận Thế — Rắn Cạp Đuôi
Vietnam doesn’t necessarily come to mind when we talk about experimental music, which is a great shame when bands like Rắn Cạp Đuôi exist. While the last decade has seen an outgrowth of left-field musicians in the country, the Saigon-based collective’s debut album Ngủ Ngày Ngay Ngày Tận Thế is arguably the first Vietnamese avant-garde record that has captured international attention on a significant scale, thanks to a glowing review from Pitchfork. The brainchild of Phạm Thế Vũ, Đỗ Tấn Sĩ and Zach Sch, the album is also the product of transnational collaboration, with Berlin’s Ziúr playing a hand in production. The result is a sprawling, complex assemblage that sounds as insane as its title, which roughly translates to “Sleeping Through The Apocalypse”.
An assortment of influences can be found on Ngủ Ngày Ngay Ngày Tận Thế , ranging from the deconstructed club of Arca to the glitchy plunderphonics of Oneohtrix Point Never. Rắn Cạp Đuôi themselves are Terminally Online, citing Ecco2k and Boredoms as inspiration—it’s a sonic palette that RYM or /mu/ users would drool over. Yet, what makes the album so refreshing is the trio’s ability to leverage indigenous sounds without falling into the trap of self-Orientalism—a spectre that has long haunted experimental music. There’s a deep reflexivity imbued within; it’s music that compels you to experience it on its own terms. As I listen to Ngủ Ngày Ngay Ngày Tận Thế, I’m in awe of Rắn Cạp Đuôi’s fierce refusal of the East-West binary that continues to plague both music production and criticism today. Instead, they carve out a sonic third space for themselves, embracing a liminal consciousness in all its haphazard possibilities.
3. Fatigue — L’Rain
Where healing can be joyful for some, it can also be an intensely exhausting process for others. That’s what Brooklyn multi-instrumentalist Taja Cheek aka L’Rain sought to examine on her sophomore album, Fatigue. After confronting the immediate aftermath of her late mother’s death on her 2017 self-titled debut, Fatigue serves to interrogate the notion of healing itself, mapping out Cheek’s psychological terrain through swirls of synthesizers, orchestral instrumentation and field recordings.
‘Blame Me’ is filled with piercing emptiness and regret as Cheek performs some of her most crushing lyrics over swathes of strings and guitar: “Gave you nothing inside of my time/Maybe that’s what ends your life.” It sounds like a spectral slow dance with her mother in the afterlife, a vision that Cheek can only conjure up in a dream. Interludes of ambient tape loops and vocal fragments dive deeper into Cheek’s interiority, offering sparse vignettes that flicker with absurdity and pathos. On ‘Take Two’, glowing synthesizers and celestial vocals breathe new life into a wearied body; Cheek teeters on the edge of the unknown, finally confronting the possibility of redemption. In just under 30 minutes, Fatigue articulates a profound vocabulary of grief: one that contains multiple emotional worlds within, each waiting to be excavated under the light.
2. Prosthetic Boombox — Cola Boyy
I previously wrote about Prosthetic Boombox for Bandwagon’s mid-year roundup. Seeing how bleak the second half of 2021 was, this album remains more timely than ever. On his debut LP, disabled musician and activist Matthew Urango asks: how do we create art from a place of joy and liberation?
Perhaps the answer can be found in ‘Mailbox’, when Urango sings: “Let me daydream/Avoiding my responsibilities/Let me daydream/Once I’m done I’ll get back up to speed.” In an unabashed fuck-you to capitalism, he compels us to channel the revolutionary potential of dreaming. But in true Marxist fashion, he reminds us that we must return to reality—where material change happens.
1. Mercurial World — Magdalena Bay
In several interviews, LA-based duo Magdalena Bay often mention the Time Cube, a bizarre theory that claims each day is actually four simultaneous days condensed into one. Given that 2021 literally felt like a mere extension of 2020, the Time Cube reference isn’t so far off for an album that was written during the pandemic. It makes sense, then, for Mica Tenenbaum and Matthew Lewin to literally warp time on their apocalyptic debut album, Mercurial World.
With an opener titled ‘The End’, temporal logic as we know it is upended from the get-go. Tenenbaum and Lewin take us through a pop time capsule, traversing shimmery Y2K R&B in ‘Prophecy’ to 2010s sad girl synth-pop on ‘Chaeri’. Tons of artists nowadays attempt to capture retro-futurism, but Magdalena Bay effortlessly achieve that delicate balance on ‘Secrets (Your Fire)’ without sounding trite. Underpinned by an intoxicating ’90s groove, Tenenbaum sings about the hyper-intimacy of social media, her gossamer vocals floating over a melodramatic combination of synthesizers and saxophone. A short Sega Dreamcast-like interlude cuts in right at the end, quickly teleporting you to the next stop in Magdalena Bay’s musical space tour—it’s in these brief magical touches that the duo’s brilliance shines through.
There’s something particularly Deleuzian about Mercurial World in its ingenious configuration, which recalls the rhizome:
A rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo. The tree is filiation, but the rhizome is alliance, uniquely alliance. The tree imposes the verb “to be,” but the fabric of the rhizome is the conjunction, “and. . . and.. . and. . .” This conjunction carries enough force to shake and uproot the verb “to be.” Where are you going? Where are you coming from? What are you heading for? These are totally useless questions. Making a clean slate, starting or beginning again from ground zero, seeking a beginning or a foundation—all imply a false conception of voyage and movement (a conception that is methodical, pedagogical, initiatory, symbolic...).
—A Thousand Plateaus, p. 25
The album’s (non)linearity speak to its rhizomatic nature, with each track functioning as conjunctions that foreground Tenenbaum and Lewin’s meticulous worldbuilding. Throughout the record, the duo is unwavering in their commitment to their ideas, and the execution is just as—if not even more—satisfying. As a long-time fan, it’s deeply rewarding to witness Magdalena Bay creating a new chapter in their story while also arriving at the finishing line after years of experimentation and fine-tuning. Unsurprisingly, Mercurial World concludes with ‘The Beginning’, a euphoric disco number that celebrates the fruition of the pair’s artistic partnership. It’s a triumph that feels planetary and well-deserved.