2021 has been a challenging year in many regards, both personally and professionally, not to forget pandemically, of course. Also in terms of music, the year was marked by concert cancellations and postponements of album releases. In addition, there was the new genre “pandemic album” to consider, which, however, so far has hardly produced anything noteworthy – to the best of my knowledge.

The following list is nevertheless quite respectable, I think, and sums up nicely a very interesting musical journey. There are some slight shifts visible in my spectrum, e.g., towards the currently highly acclaimed British Post Punk wave (Dry Cleaning & Squid representing many more), some musicians who made it into my list with 2 productions each (Aydo Abay: Freindz & Musa Dagh, Brandon Yates & Daniel Fang: Angel Du$t & Turnstile) as well as very few established or mainstream bands (sorry Kings of Leon, nice try, though). Plus, a very strong runner-up came in the very last second (Aeon Station: Observatory) by Kevin Whelan, base player of the much missed indie pop jewel The Wrens. So, at least as far as music is concerned, this was a good year in the end, I guess. As for everything else, well, let’s just move on, shall we?

• Angel Du$t: YAK: A Collection of Truck Songs
• cleopatrick: BUMMER
• Communions: Pure Fabrication
• The Dirty Nil: Fuck Art
• Dry Cleaning: New Long Leg
• The Flaming Sideburns: Silver Flames
• Freindz: High Times in Babylon
• Kamggarn: Kamggarn
• Kiwi Jr.: Cooler Returns
• Musa Dagh: Musa Dagh
• Noga Erez: KIDS (Against the Machine)
• Ovlov: Buds
• Parquet Courts: Sympathy for Life
• The Pighounds: Hilleboom
• Psychedelic Porn Crumpets: SHYGA! The Sunlight Mound
• Quicksand: Distant Populations
• The Sore Losers: Ultra Elektrik
• Squid: Bright Green Field
• Tschaika 21/16: Prinzessin Teddymett
• Turnstile: GLOW ON