Hidden gems 2021: great albums you may have missed

From ambient bliss and Swedish pop zingers to Americana’s best-kept secret, the Observer’s critics pick some of this year’s releases that deserve a wider audience

Matthew Liam Nicholson: Nine Movements

(Longform Editions)
A 39-minute immersive meditation, Nine Movements is the work of California-based Australian composer Matthew Liam Nicholson, based around the harmonic interplay of singing bowls, LA jazz outlier Miguel Atwood-Ferguson’s strings and babbling-brook percussion. Encounters with this work in the wild include venues as disparate as the Bargello National Museum in Florence, where the singing bowls received their first airing, and a session of the finished work in “full multichannel spatial audio at a massive outdoor temple at Burning Man”. Ambient music can often be theoretical or medicinal; this record is both. Kitty Empire

Agnes: Magic Still Exists

(Universal Music Sweden)
Imagine releasing what sounds like Abba Gold the year actual Abba returned from a 40-year hiatus. It’s a pop miracle delivered by fellow Swede Agnes on her pulsating fifth album. Nestled between disco thumper 24 Hours and the galloping Love and Appreciation sits the towering majesty of Here Comes the Night. Supported by instantly familiar piano trills and glittering, starburst melodies, the track finds Agnes offering solace under the stars. That urgent search for freedom forms the album’s backbone, be it via Moroder-esque Selfmade’s demands for equality, or the inward-looking exorcism of XX’s electronic pulse. A soothing balm perfect for fleeting dancefloor moments. Michael Cragg

Big|Brave: Vital

(Southern Lord)
Signed to Greg Anderson’s Southern Lord, Big|Brave plot a course roughly midway between the experimental metal of their label boss’s band Sunn O))) and the Sturm und Drang of fellow Montrealers Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Their fifth album is their most compelling yet. Immense blasts of slowly mutating guitar noise are complemented by Tasy Hudson’s thunderous, stop-start drums, with frontwoman Robin Wattie offering her most personal lyrics to date, most notably on the exploration of her dual heritage on Half Breed. Played loud, it’s a scarily intense record. Phil Mongredien

The Limiñanas & Laurent Garnier: De Película

(Because)
Andrew Weatherall would have loved psych-rock duo the Limiñanas and DJ Laurent Garnier’s soundtrack to an imaginary movie about teenage runaways on a road trip. Like the much-missed DJ and producer, the French trio find fertile ground between psych and techno in entrancing, motorik repetition. Saul, where Garnier’s signature effects ripple through the muscular groove, is a stunning invention, while Au début c’était le début conjures Serge Gainsbourg making out with Lee Hazlewood. De Película’s greatest triumph is that it’s so vivid and compelling, it doesn’t need a film to accompany it. Damien Morris

Stealing Sheep & the Radiophonic Workshop: La Planète Sauvage

(Fire Records)
Released on Delia Derbyshire Day in November, the Dinked collectors’ edition of this sci-fi treat from Stealing Sheep sold out in record time. It’s a reworked version of a 2014 live soundtrack the Liverpool psych-pop trio made with the fabled Radiophonic Workshop for the 1973 Czech-French cosmic animation La Planète Sauvage, which follows the fate of the future-human Oms, mere pets of a race of giant blue humanoids known as the Draags on the planet Ygam. Sparing snatches of narration illuminate the tale amid lurching, heavy psych-rock, twinkling, excitable synths and fuzzy, loping grooves – a delightful sonic adventure. Emily Mackay

Wiki: Half God

(Wikset Enterprise)
For the past decade, Patrick “Wiki” Morales has been quietly making some of the best rap coming out of New York City, his work often a spirited love letter to his home. Half God takes it further, Morales’s growling vocals weaving together anger and introspection as he ruminates on the changing face of NYC and being pushed out by gentrifiers (“After all the schooling you did, don’t know what community is?”) and the climate crisis too. Delivered over smudged lines and loops of stoner-y jazz from producer du jour Navy Blue, it’s a perfect testimony to the power of storytelling and place in rap. Tara Joshi

Rosali: No Medium

(Spinster Sounds)
Not to be confused with Spanish singer Rosalía, Rosali is the midwestern musician whose startling voice recalls Chrissie Hynde by way of Laura Marling, and whose third album bridges the dust bowl between nostalgia for a broken relationship and trying to move on, empowered. Starlit Americana and howling country-rock is Rosali’s love language here, her songwriting never indulgent yet haunted by a delicate loneliness, with stylistic references including Bob Dylan’s Desire, Bowie’s Hunky Dory and British folk duo Richard and Linda Thompson. She hasn’t yet had a UK breakthrough on a par with Phoebe Bridgers, but in the States she appears to be a best-kept secret. Although not for long: in February, she’ll tour again with the War on Drugs. Kate Hutchinson

Piers Faccini: Shapes of the Fall

(No Format)
An Anglo-Italian songwriter based in France, creator of six albums and a serial cross-genre collaborator, Piers Faccini has been justly compared to Nick Drake for his intricate fretboard skills and melodic vocals. He hits a high point on an album based on the biblical Fall but steeped in today’s eco crisis, and whose musical roots veer between north Africa, southern Italy and Spanish string quartet. “Watch paradise burn,” suggests All Aboard, a track recalling Noah’s ark and migration sea journeys. The mood is variously forlorn, ethereal and hopeful, the lyrics poetic. Entrancing; an album for the times. Neil Spencer

Ben Crosland: Solway Stories

(Jazz Cat)
Bass guitarist and composer Ben Crosland has fond memories of the countryside around the Solway Firth, and they inspired him to write these 12 musical vignettes. They have his typically light touch, the written parts and improvised solos deftly woven so that you scarcely notice the join. The pieces range from gently melodic to driving and intense, with particularly impressive solos by trumpeter Steve Waterman and Steve Lodder on keyboards. The album came out in May, and its sunny tunefulness sounds even more appealing in the dark days of winter. Dave Gelly

Ryan Latimer: Antiarkie

(NMC)
What to do with that set of Christmas juggling balls? The answer is here. British composer Ryan Latimer (b.1990) is also an amateur juggler. His debut album, Antiarkie, opens with Mills Mess – jubilant, bubbling, punchy – its title taken from a popular juggling pattern. Frigates & Folly, written for and performed by the Crouch End Festival Chorus, draws cheer and optimism from Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. The title work, Antiarkie, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, is a top-speed musical exchange with cartoon soundtracks – allusive, sparkling and emphatically rhythmic. It’ll get you off the sofa. Fiona Maddocks