Future Shock Watch 2021

December 29, 2021

Future Shock Watch 2021

2020 was the apex, one of the great epochal years in the history of music. It was the point where all the scattershot promises accumulated since 2016 of what vocal psychedelia- of what a truly 21^st century futurism- could be coalesced and erupted onto the listening public. After such a radical leap forward, 2021 was always going to be a time of intensification, perfection and recombination more than it was going to be a year of outright innovation. But even within that relatively narrow remit, 2021’s managed to startle and surprise; it’s kept music alive, wild and ready to revolutionise at any given time. The boundaries of sound continue to be battered down. The parameters of the impossible continue to be stomped upon. This is the music that’s caught my ear this year (in no particular order)…

EleganceGad

Not my favourite music of the year, but probably the most ‘shock of the new’-inducing; the most sonically incomprehensible. EleganceGad’s vocals are mangled and mutagenic- an agonisingly contortive audio animation that brings to mind the T1000’s final moments in Terminator 2:

Tommy Lee Sparta

‘Bubble Up’ was somewhat new territory for Tommy this year- I can’t really think of another track of his where he’s situated himself within these swirling nebulae of vocal reverbs and delays. But even on his other tracks, where he essentially gives us more of the same vocally, he still feels just as exhilarating as he has at any point in the last few years. It’s testament to how ahead of the curve he was that he still doesn’t sound antiquated; there’s a reason why he’s on the Mount Rushmore of vocal psychedelia.

Squash

Scattered bubble voice incantations. The night ‘Cyaa Bruk Back’ came out I did think to myself that it would’ve sounded completely inconceivable only five years ago (as a lot of the tracks on this list would have), which of course is testament to just how how far music’s advanced just in the last half-decade.

Skeng

Looking up from the ocean floor to see ripples overlapping on the water’s surface above you- that’s how Skeng sounds to me with his stacked layers of undulating Auto-Tune.

He’s very much in the Skillibeng mould in terms of carving out a niche for himself. Like Skilli, he’s built an aesthetic by combining an understated yet uncanny kind of vocal psychedelia with a distinctive instrumental pallet that spans most of his tracks. In Skeng’s case, the resulting sound world is austere, overcast and despairing- an abandoned Chernobyl funfair made out of music. It’s subtle, but the restraint in this music does distinguish it from the more grandiose and expansive Jamaican music of last year.

I’d imagined that this is the stuff I’ve actually listened to most in 2021.

Alkaline

This is FutuR’n’B; sex music for the cyborg age.

I got a bit of (polite, reasonable) pushback about the macho aesthetics Neon Screams and to be honest, I do actually find a lot of gyal/culture tunes a bit cloying… except that is, when it comes to Alkaline. You can put him on these diabetic, bubble gum instrumentals and I’ll still lap it up. His vocal timbres are just too ferociously psychoactive to resist- just listen to the searing neon extremes he reaches on ‘Nah Trust Makind’.

Dream Drill

Skillibeng’s the solo progenitor of what you could call dream drill; a druggy, ether kingdom-evoking Carribean cousin of its UK/Brooklyn namesakes. This stuff takes the title as the most uniquely 2021-ish music of the year; there was nothing really like it in previous years (even including Skillibeng’s first couple attempts at doing drill in 2020, ‘My Gun’ and his ‘Dior’ remix). These tracks are recombination done right; recombination that actually manages to create a whole new emotional and synesthetic affect-space even if its constituent parts (drill’s fidgety drum patterns and elasticated bass, Huncho Jack-esque codeine exotica instrumentation, Jamaican impish Auto-Tune) are in and of themselves familiar.

Skillibeng

Even when he’s not doing drill, he’s still got great beat selection- often working with Aalvero, possibly the best producer of the 2020s so far.

I’m warming to Skilli’s jagged anti-flows; the way he just crowbars endless rhymes back to back with little filler in the middle. When he first got big, I’d just assumed that his rhythmic awkwardness- the clunkiness of his bars- arose from him trying to do ‘proper rap’ and actually not being very good at it. Now I’m not sure, I’m starting to think it’s an intentional style or at the very least a happy accident that happens to have some aesthetic merit to it. There is this jerking quality to it that feels at odds with the underlying beats underneath, it's compelling in its own way; that kind of butt-clenching, edge of your seat feeling you get when it feels like you're going to fall off a roller coaster.

Rebel Sixx

Music’s desperately missed Rebel Sixx this year. 2020 was the apex and he was the zenith of that apex. No doubt he’ll be remembered as one of the premier musical futurists of the 2020s- of all time in fact. Definitely another of vocal psychedelia’s Mount Rushmore artists.

Chronic Law

Proper geezer music, none of that squeaky goblin voice shit- this is lager dancehall. His voice with the Auto-Tune sounds a bit like a harmonium or something- there’s almost a droning quality as syllables blur together.

Popcaan

Popcaan leans into Auto-Tune’s grating shrillness and weaponizes it.

‘Jungle Justice (Part Twice)’ is a vigilante anti-rape song that came out around the same time Sara Everard was in the news and its lyrics reference similar tragedies in the Caribbean (Jasmine Dean and Ashanti Riley). At once touching and disturbing.

Vybz Kartel

Kartel’s like an old, reliable, indestructible muscle car covered in dust and cobwebs in some dingy garage. You just need to put the keys in, let the engine roar and remember it still runs better than almost anything else built since.

Miscellaneous 6ixx

The 6ixx are vocal psychedelia’s Wu Tang Clan; a ruthless musical militia.

Miscellaneous Dancehall

Vocal psychedelia in a variety of incarnations.

Johnny Cinco

Jamaica’s pretty much crowded out any other music for me in the last couple years. This stuff’s good though- the logical endpoint of ‘mumble rap’ in which the digitized voice becomes a kind of liquid codeine for the ears.