> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.jamesreeves.co/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # 2020 Rotation - URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/2020-rotation/ - Published: 2020-12-27T17:07:16.000Z - Updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:28.000Z - Description: But Christ, who wants to remember this year, let alone provide the soundtrack? - Author: James A. Reeves - Tags: Notebook, Rotation Each year I debate whether I should make an inventory of my favorite albums because it’s such an arbitrary exercise. Then I revisit my lists from the past, and I appreciate how this process generates a unique portrait, a sense memory of a lost season. But Christ, who wants to remember this year, let alone provide the soundtrack? And yet music felt more necessary than ever, carrying me through long nights of uncertainty and heavy bouts of cabin fever, and I’m grateful for these new sounds that provided some much-needed perspective and restored my faith in the human enterprise. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/85/bb/85bbc222-eb2e-4bcf-8b92-f241768e9260/content/images/wordpress/2020/12/Ritmo.jpg) ### Alessandro Cortini – Ritmo / Memorie ###### [Bandcamp](https://cortini.bandcamp.com/album/ritmo-i?ref=jamesreeves.co) Introspective late-night synthetics so polished they seem to gleam in the dark. These songs start off murky, all bass and shadow, but they slowly gather steam, conjuring the optimistic tones of early 1990s electronics, back when there was still a little faith left in better living through technology. Driving down the highway late at night with these tracks on my dashboard, sometimes the synthesizers squiggle or veer a certain way, and I can’t help but let out a little cheer. [Ritmo I by Alessandro Cortini](https://cortini.bandcamp.com/album/ritmo-i?ref=jamesreeves.co) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/85/bb/85bbc222-eb2e-4bcf-8b92-f241768e9260/content/images/wordpress/2020/12/Sign.jpg) ### Autechre – Sign ###### Warp | [Bandcamp](https://autechre.bandcamp.com/album/sign?ref=jamesreeves.co) In this era of algorithmic playlists designed to satisfy our immediate moods, *Signs* is an increasingly rare phenomenon: music that teaches us to meet it on its terms. I’m not sure if I *like* this album, yet I find myself returning to it, almost compulsively. After a decade of increasingly brittle and cloistered records, Autechre has rebooted their software and returned to more poignant terrain. And like many things this year, the emotions here are alien and new. The result is stately and occasionally melancholy, with the residue of melodies flickering within patterns that never stabilize, and it sounds very much like a ghost in a machine. [SIGN by Autechre](https://autechre.bandcamp.com/album/sign?ref=jamesreeves.co) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/85/bb/85bbc222-eb2e-4bcf-8b92-f241768e9260/content/images/wordpress/2020/12/Bohren-1.jpg) ### Bohren & Der Club of Gore – Patchouli Blue ###### Play It Again Sam | [Boomkat](https://boomkat.com/products/patchouli-blue?ref=jamesreeves.co) A soundtrack for these long isolated nights. This is distilled rainy noir with faint neon on the horizon, a companion for a lone car drifting down the street. Bohren & Der Club of Gore’s slow-motion gloom is the music I play most often, usually around midnight. Their *Midnight Radio* album from 1995 is a masterpiece, and this new installment proved to be a logical score for these elastic nights. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/85/bb/85bbc222-eb2e-4bcf-8b92-f241768e9260/content/images/wordpress/2020/12/Cindy-Lee.jpg) ### Cindy Lee – What’s Tonight to Eternity ###### [W.25TH / Superior Viaduct](https://www.superiorviaduct.com/collections/w25th/products/cindy-lee-whats-tonight-to-eternity-lp?ref=jamesreeves.co) | [Bandcamp](https://cindylee.bandcamp.com/album/whats-tonight-to-eternity?ref=jamesreeves.co) A demented version of the Ronettes in the best possible way, like an otherworldly transmission of those mid-century bands named after jewels, their voices reverberated and haunted. [What’s Tonight To Eternity by Cindy Lee](https://cindylee.bandcamp.com/album/whats-tonight-to-eternity?ref=jamesreeves.co) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/85/bb/85bbc222-eb2e-4bcf-8b92-f241768e9260/content/images/wordpress/2020/12/Jonnine-1.jpg) ### Jonnine – Blue Hills ###### Boomkat Editions | [Boomkat](https://boomkat.com/products/blue-hills-0ab599f7-841e-4060-ad89-30af0d8d6386?ref=jamesreeves.co) These songs capture a sensation that lives a few clicks beyond words, something listless and unsettled. Maybe it’s the sense of suspension that defines this season of distancing and isolating, or a childhood memory of killing time in a room while a voice bleeds through the walls. Drowsy guitars and drums blend with the rustling weather of someone pacing and waiting, perhaps sighing for time lost. [Blue Hills by Jonnine](https://jonnine.bandcamp.com/album/blue-hills?ref=jamesreeves.co) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/85/bb/85bbc222-eb2e-4bcf-8b92-f241768e9260/content/images/wordpress/2020/12/KMRU.jpg) ### KMRU – Peel ###### [Editions Mego](http://editionsmego.com/release/EMEGO-289?ref=jamesreeves.co) | [Bandcamp](https://kmru.bandcamp.com/album/peel?ref=jamesreeves.co) Elegant longform ambience that patiently begins at the periphery. Atmospheric hiss and cavernous tones hover at the edge of attention before they slowly, almost imperceptibly bloom into hypnotic loops. This is music that sounds like a shift in the light. [Peel by KMRU](https://kmru.bandcamp.com/album/peel?ref=jamesreeves.co) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/85/bb/85bbc222-eb2e-4bcf-8b92-f241768e9260/content/images/wordpress/2020/12/Olan.jpg) ### Olan Monk – Love/Dead ###### [C.A.N.V.A.S.](https://www.c-a-n-v-a-s.com/canvas006%5Flovedead.html?ref=jamesreeves.co) | [Bandcamp](https://canvas-index.bandcamp.com/album/love-dead?ref=jamesreeves.co) Midnight vapor and pop songs for dead cyborgs. Lurching across a bottomless low end, *Love/Dead* delivers a nervy Joy Division or Suicide aesthetic that’s been ground into matte black sludge. It’s an almost poignant flavor of future dread. [Love/Dead by Olan Monk](https://canvas-index.bandcamp.com/album/love-dead?ref=jamesreeves.co) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/85/bb/85bbc222-eb2e-4bcf-8b92-f241768e9260/content/images/wordpress/2020/12/Oliver-Blank.jpg) ### Oliver Blank – Fin ###### [Bandcamp](https://oliverblank.bandcamp.com/album/fin?ref=jamesreeves.co) Orchestral drift that finds the territory between sorrow and hope. The centerpiece of this record is a magnificently restrained twenty-three-minute meditation that gives every element space to breathe, including the listener. [Fin by Oliver Blank](https://oliverblank.bandcamp.com/album/fin?ref=jamesreeves.co) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/85/bb/85bbc222-eb2e-4bcf-8b92-f241768e9260/content/images/wordpress/2020/12/Ralph-Kinsella.jpg) ### Ralph Kinsella – Lessening ###### [8D Industries](https://8dindustri.es/ralph-kinsella-lessening/?ref=jamesreeves.co) | [Bandcamp](https://ralphkinsella.bandcamp.com/album/lessening-2?ref=jamesreeves.co) This album entered my life as reliable background music while I puttered around the room. Then it quietly moved to the foreground and became one of my favorite records this year. Gathering the soft-focus residue of an old shoegaze song, these ever-evolving compositions are equally comfortable with moments of abrupt silence as with gestures that soar. [Lessening by Ralph Kinsella](https://ralphkinsella.bandcamp.com/album/lessening-2?ref=jamesreeves.co) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/85/bb/85bbc222-eb2e-4bcf-8b92-f241768e9260/content/images/wordpress/2020/12/Jirku.jpg) ### Tomas Jirku – Touching the Sublime ###### [Silent Season](http://silentseason.com/ssv18/?ref=jamesreeves.co) | [Bandcamp](https://silentseason.bandcamp.com/album/touching-the-sublime?ref=jamesreeves.co) A deeply strange and panoramic record that merges the frigid elements of dub techno with moments of unexpected warmth: the half-heat of voices at the margins, a hushed guitar, a sudden flash of brass. These songs roll in like a fog, and the word “sublime” is well-earned in the way this album transfixes you, holding you in its gaze. A perfect soundtrack for reading about failed arctic expeditions and contemplating the allure of such forbidding terrain. [Touching The Sublime by Tomas Jirku](https://shop.silentseason.com/album/touching-the-sublime?ref=jamesreeves.co) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/85/bb/85bbc222-eb2e-4bcf-8b92-f241768e9260/content/images/wordpress/2020/12/Basinski.jpg) ### William Basinski – Lamentations ###### [Temporary Residence](https://www.temporaryresidence.com/products/trr343?ref=jamesreeves.co) | [Bandcamp](https://williambasinski.bandcamp.com/album/lamentations?ref=jamesreeves.co) Dignified heartache that bleeds through the grain of decaying tape loops. “Our world is in a bad feedback loop right now,” Basinski [said](http://www.fluid-radio.co.uk/2013/05/memories-are-loops-a-conversation-with-william-basinski/?ref=jamesreeves.co) a few years ago. “We’re at a point right now where we need to get rid of some bad feedback loops and it’s happening. It’s not gonna be pretty, but eventually things will resolve.” Listening to this album, it’s almost possible to imagine a moment when the loop finally and truly breaks. [Lamentations by William Basinski](https://williambasinski.bandcamp.com/album/lamentations?ref=jamesreeves.co) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/85/bb/85bbc222-eb2e-4bcf-8b92-f241768e9260/content/images/wordpress/2020/12/Vatican-Shadow.jpg) ### Vatican Shadow – Persian Pillars of the Gasoline Era ###### [20 Buck Spin](https://www.20buckspin.com/products/vatican-shadow-persian-pillars-of-the-gasoline-era-lp?%5Fpos=3&%5Fsid=7e2f44a22&%5Fss=r&ref=jamesreeves.co) | [Bandcamp](https://20buckspin.bandcamp.com/album/persian-pillars-of-the-gasoline-era?ref=jamesreeves.co) Vatican Shadow appears on my list of favorite albums every year. So be it. These are dark and conspiratorial times fueled by suspicious energies, and this project has nailed the gestalt. [Persian Pillars Of The Gasoline Era by Vatican Shadow](https://listen.20buckspin.com/album/persian-pillars-of-the-gasoline-era?ref=jamesreeves.co) #### See also: - [2023 Rotation](https://www.jamesreeves.co/2023-rotation/) - [2022 Rotation](https://www.jamesreeves.co/2022-rotation/) - [2021 Rotation](https://www.jamesreeves.co/2021-rotation/) - [2019 Rotation](https://www.jamesreeves.co/2019-rotation/) - [2018 Rotation](https://www.jamesreeves.co/2018-rotation/)