My favorite musical discoveries of 2020

My biggest new discovery of recent years is the Manchester-based jazz trio: GoGo Penguin (thanks Badri!). They play in a style of jazz that I've been listening to a lot recently, a style that takes a lot of influence from minimalist classical music, and EDM. There's a lot of emphasis on texture, rather than melody and soloing. GoGo Penguin has a sound that's very integrated, with lots of close interplay between the instruments, rather than one soloing and the others accompanying. If this kind of thing appeals to you, some similar albums I got this year are from Majamisty TriO, Aaron Parks, and EYOT

You Are Wolf is an avant-garde take on English folk music. I've long enjoyed British folk music, with women singers like Sandy Denny, June Tabor, and Eddie Reader all having confirmed places on my virtual shelves. You Are Wolf is a whole new take on the folk sound. Kerry Andrew's voice matches those remarkable voices I named earlier, but the group's take on the music is far more experimental. Three Ravens is a dark English folk ballad dating from at least the seventeenth century. You Are Wolf reimagines this so that it sounds ahead of its time in the twenty-first.

The common take for jazz violin is the gypsy sound from Stefan Grapelli. But the violin can offer much more to jazz that that, and the Polish violinist Adam Balydych demonstrates this in collaboration with the Norwegian Helge Lien Trio. I don't usually pay very much attention to record labels, but ACT has become an exception as they have excellent taste in European jazz and have led me to many favorite sounds in the last few years. A couple of other ACT highlights for me this year were Vincent Peirani & Emile Parisien, and Matthieu Saglio. ACT just started putting their music out on Bandcamp, which I hope will help me explore their catalog further.

Dirty Bourbon River Show describe themselves as “Circus Rock”, which is a fair description of a sound that suggests a big tent from their home of New Orleans. The compositions of singer/multi-instrumentalist Noah Adams mix his gravelly vocals with bayou rhythms and the hyper-active sax of Matt Thomas. I bought what was available of their physical CDs a few years ago, but Bandcamp has given them the opportunity to make the rest of their discography available.

Somi is an American singer-songwriter, who I've heard described as a melding of Sade and Fela Kuti. In this live album she sings with the Frankfurt Radio Big Band, and the combination of her vocals and big band produce that kind of international cocktail that is as magical as it is unusual. The arrangements have the band perfectly backing her songs keeping her, and the distinctly African sound of guitarist Hervé Samb, front and center.

This album is a collaboration between the Danish jazz group I Think You're Awesome and the Berlin-based Taïga String Quartet. A line-up featuring Wurlitzer and Banjo is as quirky as I Think You're Awesome's name, but blends well with the string quartet in a harmony inspired by the marriage of their leader with the string quartet's cellist. The resulting album is uplifting and joyful, and I hope their relationship mirrors it.