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Berlin boasts two zoological gardens, a consequence of decades of political and administrative division of the city. The older one, called Zoo Berlin, founded in 1844, is situated in what is now called "City West". It is the most species-rich zoo worldwide. The other one, called Tierpark Berlin ("Animal Park"), was established on the long abandoned premises of Friedrichsfelde Palace Park in the eastern borough of Lichtenberg, in 1954. Covering 160 ha, it is the largest landcape zoo in Europe, but with less species.
A consequence of the recent re-organisation of Stagecoach operations in the North West of England has seen the Preston and Chorley-based operations transferred to the Cumbria and North Lancashire business, resulting in the pair of Ribble Express liveried Scanias technically now no longer with Ribble, although still seeing regular use on the X2, a service which serves a part of the region unrelated to the pair's new parentage. 15300 illustrates the point when seen in Preston at the start of its journey.
This image is copyright and must not be reproduced or downloaded without the permission of the photographer.
A personal consequence of BREXIT?
Haus Lange in Krefeld is an address of pilgrimage for architectural studies and those people interested in Ludwig Mies von der Rohe’s style setting early work. Splendid and ageless architecture and garden environment.
Most recently this building became a new home for BREXIT refugee family that felt no longer welcome in England. Has it really become ‘a home’? If you watch the series of photos I took you might feel shocked as I was when I first lingered thru the stylish rooms. The car was still packed. The door was open… I entered as invited, saw valuable furniture, most goods still in boxes, piles of books. The pantechnicon obviously just left. Also very obvious: The landlady, mother and wife also left and will stay absent: ‘You will never see me again’ written on the mirror. That wasn’t a good sign. I felt sorry.
Then to my utmost horror I found the host floating dead in the pool… A husband, a father: dead! And nobody seems to care!
Even more desperate the boy hiding in the dining room – his distressed body language seems to ask: Can this my home? Where is my mother? Who is my mother? Where are my roots?
You may form your own opinion on this photo story – but being uprooted is the worst prerequisite for a new and positive start. Reasons are manifold. But if it comes to politics as a cause: Think before you vote, choose well whom you elect. It might affect your families’ life, too.
The artists Michael Elgreen and Ingar Dragset make us think with their fictive story and installation of an unhappy start in Haus Lange, Krefeld.
I as a photographer tried to transfer this mood and the atmosphre into 17 picture series ‘Die Zugezogenen’.
Krefeld, February 2017
Thomas Kopf
This picture is taken at one of my favorite spots in town, Fjällgatan, looking west.
Taken on Sunday, at approximately 4:50 pm.
Look at the number of cars on a Sunday afternoon, and not during rush hours.
The demolishing / restructuring of Slussen sure takes it toll in many ways.
From what I understand, the project will not be finished until the year 2023....
As a consequence of London Euston being closed over the August bank holiday weekend, for engineering work to be undertaken, an enhanced service operated over Chiltern lines between Marylebone and Birmingham on 26th & 27th August. Included in a recast Chiltern timetable was the hire-in of an additional coaching set to operate three return workings on each day. The trains were top and tailed by Rail Operations Group (ROG) Class 47/8s, and No. 47812 is seen passing Bordesley Junction with No. 47813 at the rear, having just departed from Birmingham Moor Street with service 1Z18 0940 to London Marylebone on 27th August 2017. Copyright Photograph John Whitehouse - all rights reserved
The best know event in which the Leslies of Pitcaple got entangled, was the 'Tragedy of Frendraught'. I have told this story before, but I will write it out again here, as told by Andrew Leith-Hay in his book 'The Castellated Architecture of Aberdeenshire', printed in 1849, and of which I recently came by a copy! It is, as they used to say in my father's day, a 'ripping yarn'! I shall type it out in full.
"The dispute which occurred between Crichton of Frenraught and Gordon of Rothiemay led to disastrous consequences, and amongst others the well known and often related burning of the house of Frendraught, in which strife James Leslie, second son to the laird of Pitcaple, was much implicated. The lands of these proprietors (Crichton & Gordon) being adjacent, disputes as to right of property led to personal hatred, and of course, as was inevitably the case in those licentious days, the friends of either party espousing the cause of the hostile barons, armed to support the pretensions of their respective champion.
With others, the above mentioned James Leslie joined the Crichtons, and on the 1st of January 1630, they left Frendraught for Rothiemay, with the purpose either of making its owner their prisoner, of of insulting him by fierce defiance on his own territories.
Information of this onslaught having been given to the laird of Rothiemay, he resolved to set forth and encounter his assailants, accompanied by his son and a small party of horsemen and foot. Having crossed the river Deveron, his party soon encountered the Crichtons, and a serious conflict took place, which terminated in the defeat of the Rothiemay party. Considering the violence of feeling, and the nature of the encounters of these times, the loss of life seems to have been unusually limited. The laird of Rothiemay died of his wounds, as did the brother of Gordon of Lesmore, while on the side of the Crichtons, John Meldrum of Reidhill was the only person seriously wounded.
John Gordon, the eldest son of the deceased laird, resolving to revenge the death of his father, collected his followers and assisted by the freebooter, James Grant, and his associates, he resolved to lay waste the lands of Frendraught, in which he had greater probability of success from the absence of Crichton, then in England, who lost no time in submitting his case to the king, and soliciting the interference of the law to check these violent and reckless proceedings.
A commission was in consequence issued by the Lords of the Council, empowering Frendraught and others to apprehend John Gordon and his associates. This delegation proving insufficient, the Council sent Sir Robert Gordon, Tutor to Sutherland, and Sir William Seton of Killesmuir, to the north with fresh powers; and believing that additional influence would be requisite to produce an amicable settlement, and to quiet the district agitated by warfare of these hostile barons, the commissioners were instructed to solicit the aid of the Marquis of Huntly and the Earl of Moray, in their labours for the restoration of amity and peace.
The Commissioners lost no time in proceeding to the North, and having separated at Aberdeen, Sir Robert Gordon went to Strathbogie, but was disappointed in seeing the Marquis of Huntly, who had gone to attend the funeral of the laird of Drum. The day of Sir Robert's arrival at Strathbogie, the Grants, James and Alexander, descended from the mountains, with a party of two hundred Highlanders, to join in the foray against the laird of Frendraught. The intervention of the commissioner now became most important, and the result eminently successful. Having heard of the advance of the Grants, he immediately proceeded to Rothiemay, where he found John Gordon and his vassals armed, and in the act of setting forward to meet their lawless associates. It so happened that the Earl of Sutherland, the nephew of Sir Robert, was then at Rothiemay on a visit, and joining him in persuasion, they not only induced John Gordon and his friends to desist from their intention, but they prevailed upon James Grant to disperse his band and retire to the wilds from whence they came.
Subsequently the commissioners visited Huntly Castle, and, in conjunction with the Marquis, prevailed upon the hostile lairds to reconcile their differences, and refer all matters in dispute to their decision. The terms of this adjustment were agreed to by the parties, and they shook hands in apparent amity and reconciliation.
The laird of Frendraught had no sooner brought this serious quarrel to an end, than a dispute arose with the laird of Pitcaple. John Meldrum of Reidhill having been wounded in the scuffle where old Rothiemay lost his life, had been allowed some compensation by Frendraught in recompense of his partizanship, but Meldrum conceiving this gratuity disproportioned to his own estimate of his services, he thought abuse might induce Frendraught, particularly when accompanied by threats, to bestow upon him a more liberal allowance.
Frendraught continuing obstinate, Meldrum acted very much in the custom of the times, and without ceremony carried off two horses from the park, for which act he was prosecuted for theft, and refusing to appear, was declared rebel. Meldrum had taken refuge in the house of John Leslie of Pitcaple, whose sister he had married. As a commissioner, Frendraught on the 27th September 1630, went in search of Meldrum, and on the lands of Pitcaple he met with James Leslie, the second son of that family, and one of his former adherents in the skirmish with Rothiemay.
Instead of giving Frendraught assistance in the object of his visit, Leslie remonstrated with him, bringing to his recollection the services performed in his behalf by his brother-in-law, Meldrum, and himself, in his feud with Rothiemay. This seemed to soften the laird of Frendraught, but Robert Crichton of Conland became incensed at the freedom with which Leslie addressed his kinsman, and high words having passed, Conland drew a pistol from his belt and shot young Leslie in the arm, but with such effect that he was carried home apparently in a dying state.
This laid the foundation of the fearful tragedy, which events growing out of this quarrel tended to produce. The Leslies confederated and flew to arms, while Frendraught, apprehensive of the powerful attack he had every reason to anticipate, proceeded on the 5th October to solicit the intervention of the Marquis of Huntly and also of the Earl of Moray. With the latter he was unsuccessful, but Lord Huntly agreed to mediate.
Accordingly a messenger was dispatched to Pitcaple requesting his attendance at the Bog of Gight (Huntly's castle). The laird learning Frendraught was at the Bog, determined to proceed there without an escort; but having assembled and equipped about thirty horsemen, he marched to the conference. Upon his arrival, as might naturally be expected, he complained bitterly of the injury which his son had sustained, declared his determination to be revenged and declined to listen to any amicable adjustment until it was ascertained whether his son would survive the wound he had received. Irritated at the defence made by the Marquis for Frendraught, Pitcaple mounted and abruptly left the castle with his followers.
Hearing that the Leslies were assembled and watching the return of Frendraught, Lord Huntly detained him for two days, and would not then permit him to depart without an escort, ordered to see him home safely. At the head of this party were John, Viscount Aboyne, and the laird of Rothiemay. They arrived without interruption at Frendraught, where they were hospitably received and entreated to remain for the night. To this they unfortunately acceded and the following dreadful occurrence took place :-
The sleeping apartment of the Viscount was in the old tower of Frendraught, leading off from the Hall; immediately below this apartment was a vault, wherein there was, according to (the historian) Spalding "ane round holl devised of old, just under Aboyne's bed." His page, English Will, as he was called, and Robert Gordon from Sutherland, slept in the same room. The laird of Rothiemay with some of his servants were in an upper chamber, immediately over that in which the Viscount slept; and in an apartment directly above the latter were laid George Chalmer of Noth, Captain Rollock, one of Frendraught's party, and George Gordon, servant to Aboyne.
About midnight, the whole tower almost instantaneously took fire, and so suddenly and furiously spread over and consumed the edifice, that of its inmates the Viscount, the Laird of Rothiemay, English Will, Colonel Ivat, a friend of Aboyne's and two other persons, perished.
Robert Gordon, who lay in the same room with the Viscount, made his escape, as did George Chalmer and Captain Rollock. As Robert Gordon saved his life, it is probable that Lord Aboyne might also have done so, had he not resisted advice to get away as fast as possible, instead of which he ran to the chamber of Rothiemay and awakened him to his danger. While performing this friendly action, the staircase took fire and cut them off from all means of retreat; they then appeared at a window looking to the court, calling for assistance, which in all probability it was impossible to afford them.
Spalding, without explaining what possible effort under such circumstances could have saved the inmates at the summit of the tower enveloped in flames, with its narrow staircase and surrounding wood work on fire, and filled with smoke, seems to reflect on the conduct of the family of Frendraught. He states "The laird and the lady with their servants all seeing and hearing this woeful crying, but made no help, nor manner of helping, which they perceiving, they cried oftentimes mercy at God's hands for their sins, syne clasped in other's arms, and cheirfully suffered this cruel martyrdome."
28" x 21"
Ceramic, unglazed porcelain, geode slices, red jasper
This piece began taking shape in my mind's eye shortly after the BP oil spill began. Although my thoughts & feelings about the event are full of ugliness & angst, the work itself was a joy to create .... Camouflaged Emotion
01/12/17 #1796. You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs...Grating some cheese is a welcome bonus.
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clicca sulla piccola icona per attivare lo slideshow: sulla facciata principale del photostream, in alto a destra c'è un piccolo rettangolo (rappresenta il monitor) con dentro un piccolo triangolo nero;
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www.fotografidigitali.it/gallery/2726/opere-italiane-segn...
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June 10, 1940, from the balcony of Palazzo Venezia in Rome, seat of the Grand Council of Fascism, the Duce Benito Mussolini announces the Italian entry into the war on the side of Nazi Germany; Mussolini already now stands as a military goal to have an enemy to be defeated in order to start the so-called "parallel war" on Germany (Italy would fight so with the German allies, but pursuing autonomous and independent objectives); In fact, the Duce, he wanted to prove to Hitler (who took the decisions on the course of the war without first consult Him) that Italy had to be considered military, political and economic of equal importance to the German one, so in order to achieve that, he need an opponent militarily within his reach, this opponent seemed to be Greece as it was geographically close, seemed to have weak military, a political class unwilling to fight, but the reckless attack proved be a serious military mistake with heavy consequences. This is the scenary as a backdrop to a group of military Sicilians catapulted on the Greek front, young soldiers who immediately realize of the prevailing military disorganization, their life appears hanging by a thread ... but there is a Saint who can help them... they finance the construction of the float of St. Sebastian, patron saint of the town of Melia in the municipality of Mongiuffi Melia (Messina), maybe (the figure is not certain) the idea of the float is from corporal Cingari of Melia, so asking S.Sebastian for help and protection (S.Sebastian is the principal patron saint invoked against the plague .... . isn't the War a plague...?!); participants enter their names in a silver casket bearing cantilevered effigy of the Royal Army, if they will die will remain at least a trace of their earthly life. This particular float has the Saint Sebastian who seems to have the military salute, on the basis of float is written: "The Infantries of the first company and officials of the 3rd Regiment.Infantry. Piedmont Fighters in the year 1940 during the battle of Greek devotees offered" .
This is a short and long reports on the traditional festival that the village of Melia (Mongiuffi Melia - Messina) celebrates in honor of its Patron Saint San Sebastian, with thet float that was so ardently desired by those Sicilians soldiers in those bleak darkest hours in our history.
A curiosity, every year on the occasion of the procession are distributed to the population of loaves in the shape of arrows (to remember the 1st martyrdom of the Holy Bimartire), with the priest Di Bella who celebrated mass, while the loaves acquire the form " cuddura "(donut-shaped), for the procession for of San Leonardo, celebrated in the other hamlet of Mongiuffi, opposite Melia (both villages form the Sicilian municipality of Mongiuffi Melia).
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il 10 giugno 1940, dal balcone di Palazzo Venezia in Roma, sede del Gran Consiglio del fascismo, il Duce Benito Mussolini annuncia agli Italiani l'ingresso in guerra dell'Italia a fianco della Germania nazista; già da subito Mussolini si pone come obiettivo militare quello di avere un nemico da sconfiggere per poter avviare la cosiddetta "guerra parallela" alla Germania (l'Italia avrebbe combattuto sì con gli alleati tedeschi, ma perseguendo obiettivi autonomi ed indipendenti); il Duce infatti, voleva dimostrare a Hitler (che prendeva le decisioni sull’andamento della guerra senza preventivamente consultarlo) che l'Italia doveva essere considerata potenza militare, politica ed economica di uguale importanza a quella tedesca, quindi per poter raggiungere tale scopo, aveva bisogno di un avversario militarmente alla sua portata, questo avversario sembrava essere la Grecia in quanto era geograficamente vicina, sembrava avere forze armate deboli, una classe politica poco disposta a battersi ed una popolazione poco interessata agli eventi nazionali, ma l'avventato attacco si rivelò essere un grave errore militare con pesanti conseguenze. Questo lo scenario che fa da sfondo ad un gruppo di militari Siciliani catapultati sul fronte Greco, giovani soldati i quali subito si rendono conto dell'imperante disorganizzazione militare, la loro vita appare appesa ad un filo...un Santo a cui votarsi forse c'è...si autotassano per finanziare la costruzione della vara di San Sebastiano, Santo Protettore della frazione di Melia del comune di Mongiuffi Melia (Messina), forse (il dato non è certo) l'idea della vara è del caporale Cingari originario di Melia, chiedendo così protezione ed aiuto a S.Sebastiano, Santo Protettore invocato contro la peste (esiste una peste meno grave della Guerra ?!); i partecipanti alla colletta inseriscono i loro nomi all'interno di una teca in argento recante a sbalzo l'effigie del Regio Esercito, se moriranno resterà almeno una traccia della loro vita terrena, in più collegata al Santo. Viene realizzata questa particolare vara col Santo che sembra eseguire il saluto militare, sulla base della vara è scritto " I FANTI DELLA 1a COMP. E UFFICIALI DEL 3° REGG.FANT. "PIEMONTE" COMBATTENTI NELL'ANNO 1940 AL FRONTE GRECO DEVOTI OFFRIRONO".
Questo è un breve e lungo report sulla festa tradizionale che il borgo di Melia compie in onore del suo Santo Patrono San Sebastiano, portando in processione quella vara che fu così ardentemente voluta da quei militari Siciliani in quelle ore tetre e buie della nostra recente storia.
Una curiosità, ogni anno in occasione della processione vengono distribuite alla popolazione delle pagnotte a forma di frecce (a ricordare il 1° martirio del Santo Bimartire), col sacerdote padre Di Bella che ha celebrato la messa, mentre i pani acquistano un'altra forma, detta a "cuddura" (a ciambella), per la processione in onore di San Leonardo, festeggiato nell'altra frazione di Mongiuffi, dirimpettaia di Melia (entrambi i borghi formano il comune siculo di Mongiuffi Melia).
Berlin boasts two zoological gardens, a consequence of decades of political and administrative division of the city. The older one, called Zoo Berlin, founded in 1844, is situated in what is now called the "City West". It is the most species-rich zoo worldwide. The other one, called Tierpark Berlin ("Animal Park"), was established on the long abandoned premises of Friedrichsfelde Manor Park in the eastern borough of Lichtenberg, in 1954. Covering 160 ha, it is the largest landcape zoo in Europe..
Im Tierpark Berlinsind 2023 rund 20 lebensgroßen Dinosaurier, über den Park verteilt, zu sehen.. Die tonnenschweren Nachbildungen sind nicht nur optisch bis ins Detail ihren lebenden „Vorfahren“ nachempfunden. Spezielle Technik lässt die Dinosaurier täuschend echt wiederbelebt erscheiunen. Sie zeigen so auch typische Bewegungsabläufe und geben akustische Laute von sich. Zusätzlich zu den beweglichen Exponaten erfahren die Besucher*innen in einer thematischen Ausstellung mehr über die Lebensweise der Dinosaurier und können erstaunliche Parallelen zur heutigen Tierwelt entdecken. „Dinosaurier gelten als das bekannteste Symbol für ausgestorbene Tierarten – die Faszination für T-Rex und seine Artgenossen ist bis heute ungebrochen“, verkündet Zoo- und Tierpark-Direktor Dr. Andreas Knieriem. „Und das Thema Artensterben ist hockaktuell – über 37.000 Arten gelten derzeit weltweit als unmittelbar vom Aussterben bedroht. Auch heutige Giganten, wie der Afrikanische Elefant oder das Spitzmaulnashorn, könnten – wenn wir nicht intervenieren – ausgerottet werden“, ergänzt Knieriem. Die Dinosaurier-Ausstellung ist von April bis Oktober 2023 zu sehen. Der Besuch bei Triceratops und Co. ist im regulären Eintrittspreis enthalten.
Quelle: www.tierpark-berlin.de/de/aktuelles/alle-news/artikel/din...
In 2023, around 20 life-size dinosaurs are on display in the Berlin Animal Park, spread throughout the park. The replicas, which weigh several tonnes, are not only visually modelled on their living "ancestors" down to the last detail. Special technology makes the dinosaurs look as if they have been brought back to life. They also show typical movements and make acoustic sounds. In addition to the moving exhibits, visitors can learn more about the dinosaurs' way of life in a thematic exhibition and discover astonishing parallels to the animal world of today. "Dinosaurs are considered the best-known symbol of extinct animal species - the fascination with T-Rex and his fellow species is still unbroken today," announces Zoo and Animal Park Director Dr. Andreas Knieriem. "And species extinction is highly topical - more than 37,000 species are currently considered to be in imminent danger of extinction worldwide. Even today's giants, such as the African elephant or the black rhinoceros, could - if we don't intervene - be wiped out," adds Knieriem. The dinosaur exhibition is on display from April to October 2023. A visit to Triceratops and Co. is included in the regular admission price.
Source: www.tierpark-berlin.de/de/aktuelles/alle-news/artikel/din... (German only)
I was on a lunch break from my job in the operating theatre, a couple of hundred yards from here. I had my camera with me, as I often did, when I noticed this bus. As a type, it wasn't unusual on the 192 route and I certainly didn't know much on the technical side about them but I have to say I recognised it! Only a few years had passed since I rode these on a regular basis to my school in Chorlton. I recognised a 'foreigner' in Stockport! My family moved to Stockport in 1968 and I was a regular traveller on local buses. When 'SELNEC' was created as the South East Lancashire and North East Cheshire abomination of business and liveries, 'borrowing' buses became commonplace. This carries the BS sticker, identifying it as belonging to Birchfields Road Depot. My 1974 reference book by A. Witton tells me that it's a Leyland Titan with a Metro Cammell body, dating from 1963 or 1964, ex Manchester Corporation.
That aside, we have a 'moment in time' in Stockport. The businesses on the right are long gone but the Garrick Theatre above them still exists. Part of the frontage on the right is now a real ale/live music venue called the 'Spinning Top'.
The scaffolding surrounds the construction of a post office facility that has since been run down with the rest of the post office.
The Unity Inn, just visible to the left of the bus, has been boarded up for years
The building behind the construction site was demolished to make way for Stockport's biggest McDonald's franchise, the current focal point for teenage violence in the area, mostly in the night hours, though nobody seems to correlate that with a 24 hour facilty.
As for the rest of the vehicles, I'll leave them you! Enjoy!
Berlin boasts two zoological gardens, a consequence of decades of political and administrative division of the city. The older one, called Zoo Berlin, founded in 1844, is situated in what is now called "City West". It is the most species-rich zoo worldwide. The other one, called Tierpark Berlin ("Animal Park"), was established on the long abandoned premises of Friedrichsfelde Palace Park in the eastern borough of Lichtenberg, in 1954. Covering 160 ha, it is the largest landcape zoo in Europe, but with less species.
Nail technicians and skin-care specialists (the salon workers who do the most waxing) earn a mean annual pre-tax wage of $22,150 to $31,990. This figure doesn't include tips, which can total another $4,430 to $6,398—a clear financial incentive to befriend your clients in this service-based, nonreciprocal way.
And yet. When it came to 38, I wanted the cash, not the compliment, to show the value of my abilities. And maybe, to compensate for how she got to leave feeling so clean and sexy—but I could still smell her body on me, ever so faintly, even after I threw away the gloves and washed my hands.
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I’m not sure what the phrase “owning your sexuality” means to you, but for me, one thing it entails is responsibility: doing my best to make sexual choices that are sound for me and a partner. (That’s also part of doing consent well.)
If I am offering something sexually light and fun but anticipate that it will be emotionally or interpersonally complex–or if I’m feeling stressed, confused and worried about it–then I can know that easy-breezy is neither what I can expect nor earnestly offer.
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You are here: Home / Health / Can Sex “Just for Fun” Be Emotionally Healthy?
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Can Sex “Just for Fun” Be Emotionally Healthy?
October 11, 2011 by Heather Corinna
msmagazine.com/blog/blog/2011/10/11/can-sex-just-for-fun-...
This week’s installment of Heather Corinna‘s sex-and-relationships advice column tackles the issue of casual sex.
...Q: So excited for this new blog spot! Can you discuss whether it’s emotionally healthy to have sex outside of relationships? I want to own my sexuality, but all of the advice around me seems to be no-sex-outside-of-relationships-or-marriage. I know this depends on the individual, but any insight would be great! I’ve been toying with asking an ex–whom I am friends with–to have sex just for fun. I’m 98 percent sure he’ll agree, but I am worried about emotional health consequences. He has always wanted a much closer relationship than I do. I’m worried I’ll feel guilty for possibly leading him (or myself) into wanting more.
You’re right: this is a very individual and situational decision. To give some context, a recent study found that, on average, for 20-year-olds, casual sex and committed relationships led to the same level of psychological health. But individuals aren’t averages. Not everyone wants or is comfortable with sex in the same kinds of relationships or scenarios (including committed relationships). Context and interpersonal dynamics factor in, too.
There are some guidelines, however, that everyone can apply. When a sexual situation is likely to be sound, we usually feel good heading into it, as does anyone else involved. If we feel uncertain or predict negative feelings on anyone’s part, those are strong cues not to proceed.
I’m not sure what the phrase “owning your sexuality” means to you, but for me, one thing it entails is responsibility: doing my best to make sexual choices that are sound for me and a partner. (That’s also part of doing consent well.) If I am offering something sexually light and fun but anticipate that it will be emotionally or interpersonally complex–or if I’m feeling stressed, confused and worried about it–then I can know that easy-breezy is neither what I can expect nor earnestly offer.
Even when I’m having sex-for-sex’s-sake–which I would define as sex that takes place outside of a larger intimate relationship, without any agreed-upon, intended or implied commitment–that doesn’t mean I have zero responsibility for my emotional health or that of others. My partner (or wanna-be partner) and I still owe one another respect, care and consideration, which includes considering possible outcomes, even if we don’t intend to be there with each other for them.
It sounds like you’re on board with that, and you’ve already voiced your own sense that this specific situation probably isn’t sound for you or your ex. While he’d likely agree to sex, clearly some of this wouldn’t be fun for him or you, and could be an emotional landmine. While your romantic relationship may be over, you two are in a relationship: you have a history and a friendship, and it sounds like you have strong feelings for and about one another that are not only or primarily sexual. If what you want is just a roll in the proverbial hay, this isn’t likely to be it.
It also sounds like you’ve been curious about sex outside of romantic relationships, but you haven’t felt supported in or exposed to alternatives. So you might also want to give yourself more time to take a bit more stock of what you want and to find people to talk with who aren’t all saying the same things. If that’s not currently available to you, Sex & Single Girls is a great anthology with a diverse array of women writing about various sexual experiences. I also think Jaclyn Friedman’s new book, What You Really Really Want, could be just the thing for you.
My best advice is that you hold out for an opportunity to explore casual sex if and when you feel a lot better about it. That will also likely entail a partner or scenario you don’t feel so conflicted about; that feels more likely to be explosive in the ways you want, rather than the ways you don’t.
Check out last week’s advice about lube blues.
Have a sex, sexual-health or relationships question you want answered? Email it to Heather at sexandrelationships@msmagazine.com. By sending a question to that address, you acknowledge you give permission for your question to be published. Your email address and any other personally identifying information will remain private. Not all questions will receive answers.
Photo from Flickr user skampy under Creative Commons 2.0.
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You are here: Home / Life / When the Sweet Spot Becomes a Sore Spot
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When the Sweet Spot Becomes a Sore Spot
October 31, 2011 by Heather Corinna
msmagazine.com/blog/blog/2011/10/31/when-the-sweet-spot-b...
Q: I’m a 21-year-old lesbian. A problem has popped up in me and my girlfriend’s sex life. When we practice tribadism with just skin, after a while a very small raw spot will show up, bringing with it a sharp pain. Both of us have this problem. Neither of us is clean-shaven, but we do trim–would shaving help? Is there anything else we can do?
A: Ah, friction. Sometimes it feels so awesome. Other times it hurts. Part of what makes genitals so sensitive is that genital tissue is far more delicate than other kinds of skin on our bodies. With genital friction, there’s a tipping point after which a wowie can turn into an owie.
To avoid being rubbed raw, first make sure you and your partner are always very well-lubricated. Lube from a bottle tends to do the job better than our bodies’ lubricant when it comes to friction-intensive sex.
Apply lube before you start and add more as needed throughout. Be generous and don’t skimp.
I checked in with Searah Deysach, the fantastic owner of Early to Bed, to see if she had any specific lube suggestions; she keeps up with brands and types like nobody’s business. She suggested a high-quality silicone lube, such as Uberlube or Sliquid Silver–they tend to be longer-lasting and slicker than water-based lubricants. But if you prefer water-based, she suggests glycerin-free brands such as Sliquid Sea or Liquid Silk (my fave), which are kinder to vulvas and vaginas than those with glycerin.
Searah and I are of one mind about hairy issues. She says, “Hair that is growing back after shaving can be especially irritating, as stubble can be vicious on delicate tissues. “ I agree. Stubble from hair removal is more likely to irritate than the softer pubic hair we tend to have when we don’t shave. If all you do is trim, chances are hair isn’t the problem.
Consider positioning. I’d suggest experimenting with an eye for reducing how much weight is being put on each of your genitals. Try finding ways you can scissor without anyone really being “on top” at all, like lying on your backs toe to head. Searah suggested straddling your lover’s thigh as an alternative. Similar feeling, less pain. If you do like a missionary-style V-on-V position, whoever’s on top can try to balance so less weight rests on the other person’s tender bits–e.g., by bracing their hands on a headboard. Mixing up positions often helps, too. And if and when either of you start feeling raw, don’t keep going with the activity that got you there–take a break from genital sex or at least consider that spot done for the day. If it remains raw the next day, lay off the intense pressure for as long as it takes to heal.
Now and then this still might happen, especially because, when we’re very aroused, pleasure can cause us to space out on signals of pain. But with these adjustments, you can probably make it a rarity instead of a norm.
Check out last week’s advice to a woman whose fiancé monitored her vagina’s size.
Have a sex, sexual-health or relationships question you want answered? Email it to Heather at sexandrelationships@msmagazine.com. By sending a question to that address, you acknowledge you give permission for your question to be published. Your email address and any other personally identifying information will remain private. Not all questions will receive answers.
Photo from Flickr user Gray Marchiori-Simpson under license from Creative Commons 2.0
Line drawing from Wikimedia Commons.
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......item 3).... Slate ... www.slate.com ... HOME / DOUBLEX : WHAT WOMEN REALLY THINK ABOUT NEWS, POLITICS, AND CULTURE.
My Year in Waxing School
Naked people don't tip well, and more tricks of the trade.
By Virginia Sole-Smith|Posted Friday, Nov. 19, 2010, at 12:08 PM ET
www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2010/11/my_year_i...
The 38th client I worked on at Beauty U. was my first full Brazilian wax—the kind where you remove all (or almost all) of your hair below the belt. I'd waxed many bikini lines and other body parts. I'd also assisted on Brazilians, handing my teachers wax-dipped Popsicle sticks the way nurses hand over scalpels. But now, it was my turn to wield the wax, solo. "I know—I'm a hairy beast!" Client 38 apologized, hopping onto the waxing table, clad in disposable thong. "You have to fix me. I'm going on vacation with my boyfriend."
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She spread her legs. I put on some vinyl gloves and worked down and across her pelvis, twirling clumps of hair and trimming them free. You have to trim any hair longer than eyebrow-length to prevent "locking" with the wax. You also have to act like this is normal, even though a part of your brain is thinking, "Pubic hair, pubic hair, oh my God, pubic hair." But I was getting better at trimming, and also at acting. And so clouds of hair piled up on the paper-covered table while 38 chatted about her vacation plans (the Poconos; if she was lucky, a proposal), her C-section scar, and how she liked my red glasses.
The $1.8 billion business of superfluous hair removal is our most intimate and uncomfortable kind of beauty labor. When I enrolled in a 600-hour aesthetics program at my local strip mall beauty school, I knew the standard feminist rhetoric against hair removal: Women wax because we've been culturally indoctrinated to hate our bodies in their natural state. I also knew the women's magazine defense, that removing excess hair celebrates our femininity and increases sexual pleasure. And I'd been in 38's position enough to know that waxing can make you feel vulnerable in ways feminists haven't even considered and hurts more than women's magazines (or at least, their beauty advertisers) let you believe.
But being on the other side of the waxing table turns out to feel simultaneously more exploitative and more empowering than I ever expected. There is, for example, the moment when your client shuts off from you, closing her eyes to "relax." Your client is in charge, having commissioned you to perform this service. And yet they are also terribly vulnerable, half naked, exposed and—eyes closed—hoping for the best.
After I trimmed, I tested the temperature of the hot wax on the inside of my wrist and painted a stripe along 38's inner thigh, quickly covering it with a muslin strip. She tensed before I ripped, then relaxed even as her brown skin tinted pink: "That hurt so much less than last time!" I watched some spots of blood well up. "I'm going to have you do my eyebrows, too," she added. And as I waxed my way along the crevice of her inner thigh to some very sensitive parts, 38 closed her eyes, drifting into that blissful state we enter whenever a spa service goes well.
With most Beauty U. clients, I liked offering this respite from their harried lives and from the even more harried relationship they had with their bodies. Before beauty school began, I hoped this body shame part wouldn't be so true. Instead, I saw women hating their bodies—in subtle ways, like 38's matter-of-fact "I'm a hairy beast!"—with every spa service I performed. So I saw my role as providing a kind of safe haven of acceptance, where a client could feel comfortable enough to drift away
Two hours into 38's appointment, I was the one who could not relax. I had waxed right through my dinner break and my back ached from hunching over the table. I removed all the hair 38 had asked me to (all but a delicate landing strip) and cleaned up her brows. I held a hand mirror between her legs, angling it so she could decide if she was satisfied. I'd snipped off her paper thong, so we looked together like those consciousness-raising women's groups from the 1970s. Only with me still wearing my vinyl gloves, now sticky with a layer of wax.
By that time, I knew that 38 had two kids, was divorced, and was going back to college. I liked 38. I wanted her to enjoy vacation and get engaged and have a good life. But we weren't friends. There was nothing reciprocal in our conversation. We were taught to avoid sharing personal information about ourselves whenever possible. "Customers don't care about your life," teachers told us. "They're buying your full attention." And that seemed to work. Once clients relaxed, they told us all sorts of personal things, like when they next expected to have sex and why their mothers made them crazy. And we learned that letting clients share these intimate details was good for business. "Remember to mention something about them or their life that they've talked about previously. Keep notes about each customer on file if you need to," advised one handout. It was much like being a therapist, serving soul and body.
In April, the New York Post reported that "NYC Women are Strangely Bonded to the Beauticians who Wax Their Brazilians," quoting smitten spa-goers who viewed their waxers as surrogate moms. But the story didn't explain how this one-sided friendship is made all the more awkward by socioeconomic differences. No matter how friendly their relationship, the client still pays and the waxer still needs that money. Nail technicians and skin-care specialists (the salon workers who do the most waxing) earn a mean annual pre-tax wage of $22,150 to $31,990. This figure doesn't include tips, which can total another $4,430 to $6,398—a clear financial incentive to befriend your clients in this service-based, nonreciprocal way.
Before starting, I assumed that most clients tip the industry's expected standard of 20 percent. They don't. I wasn't surprised, for example, when 38 tipped me just $5 (under 15 percent) because we never got big tips when clients got naked. Like johns who mistake their hooker's acrobatics for true love, clients can put such emphasis on the girlfriend-bonding time that slipping us a wad of cash would destroy the fantasy.
If her tip had been bigger, I would have been more delighted that 38 had taken time to write a "Client Kudos!" card about me: "She was professional and friendly at the same time. … Thanks so much!" She even drew a star on top next to my name. "That makes up for the bad tip," said my classmate Campbell about my Client Kudos. "Look how happy you made her!" Most salon workers say making clients feel good is their biggest source of job satisfaction. But I'm not convinced it's enough to balance out the often exhausting, difficult, and underpaid labor. No matter how much we liked our clients, we still had to brush stray pubic hairs off our sleeves, pick seaweed-stained disposable thongs out of the shower, and work around the occasional menstruating bikini wax client.
But it's also true that many waxers find this work empowering because the services require such skill and our clients are so thrilled with the results. Even if we don't totally return our clients' affections, we feel a kind of sisterhood with them and our fellow salon workers, because we're all toiling away together to meet some impossible beauty standard. When Campbell and I practiced our first Brazilian together, she rubbed the back of our "client" (another classmate), singing songs to distract her from the pain. We all traded stories about waxing and then, childbirth—that other time when a woman spreads her legs in pain and the support of other women gets her through.
And yet. When it came to 38, I wanted the cash, not the compliment, to show the value of my abilities. And maybe, to compensate for how she got to leave feeling so clean and sexy—but I could still smell her body on me, ever so faintly, even after I threw away the gloves and washed my hands.
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"My first mistake was trusting you to keep your word."
"You're not wrong."
Beast Route: Normal Ending.
A personal consequence of BREXIT?
Haus Lange in Krefeld is an address of pilgrimage for architectural studies and those people interested in Ludwig Mies von der Rohe’s style setting early work. Splendid and ageless architecture and garden environment.
Most recently this building became a new home for BREXIT refugee family that felt no longer welcome in England. Has it really become ‘a home’? If you watch the series of photos I took you might feel shocked as I was when I first lingered thru the stylish rooms. The car was still packed. The door was open… I entered as invited, saw valuable furniture, most goods still in boxes, piles of books. The pantechnicon obviously just left. Also very obvious: The landlady, mother and wife also left and will stay absent: ‘You will never see me again’ written on the mirror. That wasn’t a good sign. I felt sorry.
Then to my utmost horror I found the host floating dead in the pool… A husband, a father: dead! And nobody seems to care!
Even more desperate the boy hiding in the dining room – his distressed body language seems to ask: Can this my home? Where is my mother? Who is my mother? Where are my roots?
You may form your own opinion on this photo story – but being uprooted is the worst prerequisite for a new and positive start. Reasons are manifold. But if it comes to politics as a cause: Think before you vote, choose well whom you elect. It might affect your families’ life, too.
The artists Michael Elgreen and Ingar Dragset make us think with their fictive story and installation of an unhappy start in Haus Lange, Krefeld.
I as a photographer tried to transfer this mood and the atmosphre into 17 picture series ‘Die Zugezogenen’.
Krefeld, February 2017
Thomas Kopf
Berlin boasts two zoological gardens, a consequence of decades of political and administrative division of the city. The older one, called Zoo Berlin, founded in 1844, is situated in what is now called the "City West". It is the most species-rich zoo worldwide. The other one, called Tierpark Berlin ("Animal Park"), was established on the long abandoned premises of Friedrichsfelde Manor Park in the eastern borough of Lichtenberg, in 1954. Covering 160 ha, it is the largest landcape zoo in Europe.
Auf einer Fläche von 60.000 m² hat nun die einzigartige Tierwelt des Himalaya Einzug gehalten. Dabei begegnen den Bergsteiger*innen nicht nur bekannte Gebirgsbewohner wie Rote Pandas, Schneeleoparden und Bartgeier, sondern auch weniger bekannte Arten wie Goldtakin, Goral, Manul und Satyrtragopan. Nach einer Bauzeit von gut einem Jahr verwandelte sich der 60 Meter hohe Trümmerberg in eine asiatische Gebirgslandschaft mit zahlreichen neuen Aussichtpunkten. Rund 100 Individuen aus 22 verschiedenen – größtenteils in der Natur bedrohten - Tierarten haben in Berlins Hochgebirge ihr neues Zuhause gefunden. (Tierpark Berlin)
Auf einer Fläche von 60.000 m² hat nun die einzigartige Tierwelt des Himalaya Einzug gehalten. Dabei begegnen den Bergsteiger*innen nicht nur bekannte Gebirgsbewohner wie Rote Pandas, Schneeleoparden und Bartgeier, sondern auch weniger bekannte Arten wie Goldtakin, Goral, Manul und Satyrtragopan. Nach einer Bauzeit von gut einem Jahr verwandelte sich der 60 Meter hohe Trümmerberg in eine asiatische Gebirgslandschaft mit zahlreichen neuen Aussichtpunkten. Rund 100 Individuen aus 22 verschiedenen – größtenteils in der Natur bedrohten - Tierarten haben in Berlins Hochgebirge ihr neues Zuhause gefunden. (Quelle: Tierpark Berlin)
The unique animal world of the Himalayas has now found its way into an area of 60,000 m². Climbers will not only encounter well-known mountain dwellers such as red pandas, snow leopards and bearded vultures, but also lesser-known species such as takin, goral, Pallas'scat and satyr tragopan. After a construction period of just over a year, the 60-metre-high mountain of rubble was transformed into an Asian mountain landscape with numerous new vantage points. Around 100 individuals from 22 different animal species - most of them endangered in the wild - have found their new home in Berlin's high mountains. (Source: Tierpark Berlin)
Berlin boasts two zoological gardens, a consequence of decades of political and administrative division of the city. The older one, called Zoo Berlin, founded in 1844, is situated in what is now called the "City West". It is the most species-rich zoo worldwide. The other one, called Tierpark Berlin ("Animal Park"), was established on the long abandoned premises of Friedrichsfelde Manor Park in the eastern borough of Lichtenberg, in 1954. Covering 160 ha, it is the largest landcape zoo in Europe.
Rund 15 Prozent der Erdoberfläche werden von Savannen bedeckt. Damit gehören sie zu den größten und wichtigsten Lebensräumen des Planeten. Seit dem 26. Mai 2023 wird Besucher*innen im Tierpark Berlin ein Einblick in diese faszinierende Landschaft gewährt und sie können mehr über die unterschiedlichen Bewohner der ostafrikanischen Savanne und ihren natürlichen Lebensraum erfahren.
Ein wahrer Höhepunkt der neuen Tierpark-Savanne ist der 120 Meter lange Giraffenpfad: Hier werden die Gäste den bis zu fünf Meter hohen Grazien der Savanne zukünftig auf Augenhöhe begegnen können – wer sich traut, bahnt sich den Weg durch den Wald bis zu den Aussichtsplattformen über eine abenteuerliche Hängebrücke. Der Tierpark Berlin erreicht mit der Eröffnung der Afrikanischen Savannenlandschaft ein neues Etappenziel auf seinem Weg zu einem Zoo der Zukunft. Seit knapp neun Jahren wird der 1955 gegründete und 160 Hektar große Tierpark Berlin zu einem naturnahen Geozoo umgebaut. Um einen Einblick in den Lebensraum der einzelnen Tierarten und deren Interaktionen, Besonderheiten und Problematiken zu ermöglichen, werden die Tiere im Tierpark größtenteils nach geografischen Gesichtspunkten zu sehen sein.
de/de/aktuelles/alle-news/artikel/wil...
Around 15 per cent of the earth's surface is covered by savannahs. This makes them one of the largest and most important habitats on the planet. Since 26 May 2023, visitors to Tierpark Berlin have been given an insight into this fascinating landscape and can learn more about the different inhabitants of the East African savannah and their natural habitat.
A true highlight of the new zoo savannah is the 120-metre-long giraffe trail: here, guests will be able to meet the up to five-metre-high graces of the savannah at eye level in future - those who dare will make their way through the forest to the viewing platforms via an adventurous suspension bridge. With the opening of the African Savannah Landscape, Tierpark Berlin has reached a new milestone on its way to becoming a zoo of the future. For almost nine years, the 160-hectare Tierpark Berlin, which was founded in 1955, has been transformed into a near-natural geozoo. In order to provide an insight into the habitat of the individual animal species and their interactions, peculiarities and problems, the animals in the zoo will largely be seen according to geographical aspects.
Built in 1936, the Jewel Box is a greenhouse located in Forest Park, St. Louis, Missouri. In 1913, the City’s Commissioner of Parks and Recreation expressed concern that the high levels of smoke and soot within the city might have negative consequences for the survival of local plants. A display greenhouse was set up to showcase various plants which could survive. The beautiful displays were described to be "like a jewel box." Later, in 1933, the Mayor of St. Louis decided to build a new facility. Designed by architect William C. E. Becker, the Jewel Box consists of 16,664 square feet of plate glass in over 4,000 panes, set in wood and wrought iron supports and framed by copper. The building cost $125,000 and opened on November 14, 1936. It now serves as a public horticultural facility and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
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The Temple Church was consecrated in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary on 10 February 1185 by Heraclius, Patriarch of Jerusalem.
The whole Temple community had moved from an earlier site in High Holborn, considered by the 1160s to be too confined. The church was the chapel serving the London headquarters of the Knights Templar, and from them it took its name. The Templars – as the knights were popularly known – were soldier monks.
After the success of the First Crusade, the order was founded in Jerusalem in a building on the site of King Solomon’s temple. Their mission was to protect pilgrims travelling to and from the Holy Land, but in order to do this they needed men and money. For more details of the Templars and this early history of the Church, see The Round Church, 1185.
The London Temple was the Templars’ headquarters in Great Britain. The Templars’ churches were always built to a circular design to remind them of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, a round, domed building raised over the site of the sepulchre where Jesus was buried. At first, the Templars were liked and respected. St Bernard of Clairvaux became their patron and they gained many privileges from popes and much support from kings.
In England, King Henry II was probably present at the consecration of the church; King Henry III favoured them so much that he wished to be buried in their church. As a consequence of this wish, the choir of the church was pulled down and a far larger one built in its place, the choir which we now see. This was consecrated on Ascension Day 1240 in the presence of the king. However, after Henry died it was discovered that he had altered his will, and he was buried in Westminster Abbey.
On 10 February 1185 Heraclius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, processed into the Round for the church’s consecration. The King was almost certainly present. A grand church for a grand occasion; for the Round had no such quiet austerity as we see in it today. The walls and grotesque heads were painted: the walls most probably with bands and lozenges of colour. The Round was proudly modern: Heraclius entered through the Norman door to find the first free-standing Purbeck columns ever cut; above them curved in two dimensions Gothic arches rising to the drum. A chancel, some two thirds of the present chancel’s length, stretched to the east. There the Patriach’s procession will have come to rest for Mass. And there the altar stayed. What, then, – on that great day or later – was the function of the Round?
Its most important role was played by its shape. Jerusalem lies at the centre of all medieval maps, and was the centre of the crusaders’ world. The most sacred place in this most sacred city was the supposed site of Jesus’ own burial: the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Here the crusaders inherited a round church. It was the goal of every pilgrim, whose protection was the Templars’ care. This was the building, of all buildings on earth, that must be defended from its enemies.
In every round church that the Templars built throughout Europe they recreated the sanctity of this most holy place. Among the knights who would be buried in the Round was the most powerful man of his generation: William the Marshal, Earl of Pembroke (died 1219), adviser to King John and regent to Henry III. His sons’ effigies lie around his own. The Marshal himself (who lies recumbent and still) took the Cross as an old man; his sons (drawing their swords) did not. Their figures lie frozen in stone, forever alert in defence of their father’s long-forgotten cause. Such burial was devoutly to be desired; for to be buried in the Round was to be buried ‘in’ Jerusalem.
The Patriarch Heraclius may well have been the most ignorant, licentious and corrupt priest ever to hold his see. Our reports of his character, however, reach us from his enemies. The great Western chronicler of the Crusades, William of Tyre, was for decades Heraclius’ opponent and rival. In 1180 William had (and had been) expected to be appointed Patriarch of Jerusalem. But the king of Jerusalem was swayed by his mother, said to be a mistress of Heraclius – who was duly appointed Patriarch. William himself was honorably reticent in the face of this reverse. His followers were less restrained. ‘Ernoul’ tells (with more indignation, it seems, than accuracy) how his hero William was excommunicated by the new patriarch, went into exile and died at the hands of Heraclius’ own doctor in Rome. William’s narrative was expanded and continued in Old French as L’Estoire d’ Eracles: its story starts with the Emperor Heraclius who recovered the True Cross in 628 – and includes a prophecy that the Cross, secured by one Heraclius, would be lost (as it was) by another.
Can anything redeem our Heraclius’ reputation? Far more was at stake on his visit than at first appears. He was in London as part of a larger mission:- King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem was dying. His kingdom was riven by factions and under threat from Saladin. He had drawn up in his will the rules for the succession: if his nephew, due to become the child-king Baldwin V, were to die before the age of ten, a new ruler should be chosen through the arbitration of four potentates: the Pope, the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, the King of France and Henry II of England. Late in 1184 a deputation headed west from the Kingdom of Jerusalem: Heraclius, the Grand Master of the Templars and the Hospitallers’ Grand Prior. They visited the Pope, Frederick, Philip II Augustus – and finally Henry. The emissaries reached Reading. As credentials they brought the keys of the Tower of David and the Kingdom’s royal standard. According to some English chroniclers, they offered the Kingdom itself to Henry. The incident is hard to analyse. To plead for protection was to offer the power that would make such protection effective. Did that call for the Kingdom itself? The apparent offer of keys and standard may have been misread; for the ambassadors were reworking a performance already presented to Philip of France. (One French chronicler later derides Heraclius: he was offering the keys to any prince he met.) But the Kingdom of Jerusalem was in desperate straits; and behind the pageant may have lain hopes for the subtlest solution of all: to side-step Jerusalem’s factions; and instead to secure one – any one – of Europe’s leaders as king. How strange, to entrust any such delicate mission to the buffoonish Patriarch of myth.
The story offered welcome ammunition to Henry II’s enemies. Gerald of Wales, bitterly opposed to the Angevins, sees here the turning-point in Henry’s reign: the king failed to rise to this one supreme test; from then on his own and his sons’ adventures faced ruin. Gerald inherited the topos from an old story with a quite different cast. His new version gave Heraclius a starring role. The Patriarch confronted Henry, Gerald tells us, at Heraclius’ departure from Dover. Here is the king’s last chance. ‘Though all the men of my land,’ said the king, ‘were one body and spoke with one mouth, they would not dare speak to me as you have done.’ ‘Do by me,’ replied Heraclius, ‘as you did by that blessed man Thomas of Canterbury. I had rather be slain by you than by the Saracen, for you are worse than any Saracen.’ ‘I may not leave my land, for my own sons will surely rise against me in my absence.’ ‘No wonder, for from the devil they come and to the devil they shall go.’
Gerald’s Heraclius was no coward, and no fool. ‘That blessed man Thomas of Canterbury’ had been killed in 1170. The penance of the four knights who killed him was to serve with the Templars for fourteen years. Henry himself promised to pay for two hundred Templar knights for a year; and in 1172 he undertook to take the Cross himself. Thirteen years had passed. Henry was growing old. Such a vow, undischarged, threatened his immortal soul – as both Heraclius and he knew well. Henry must tread carefully. He summoned a Great Council at Clerkenwell. Surrounded by his advisers, he gave Heraclius his answer: ‘for the good of his realm and the salvation of his own soul’ he declared that he must stay in England. He would provide money instead. Heraclius was unimpressed: ‘We seek a man even without money – but not money without a man.’ Virum appetimus qui pecunia indigeat, non pecuniam quae viro.
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Our church’s consecration was deep within the diplomatic labyrinth at whose centre lay the future of Jerusalem. The Templars had come a long way. The Order was founded in 1118-9 by a knight of Champagne, Hugh of Payns, who led a group of his fellow-knights in vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. At their foundation they were deeply suspect: it was unnatural for one man to be soldier and monk together. A handful of such ambivalent knights had little chance, it might seem, of attracting support. In the twelfth century the significance of their seal was well known: Matthew Paris, monk of St Albans, explained that the two knights on one horse recalled their lack of horses and poor beginnings.
In Champagne and Burgundy lay the Order’s origin and the seed of its success. Over the course of fifty years a star-burst of spiritual energy illumined all of Europe; and its centre lay in a small area of eastern France. Hugh’s town of Payns was near Troyes, the local city of one Robert, who became a Cluniac monk. In 1075 this Robert, already an abbot, left his monastery with a group of hermits to found a new house: at Molesme. The list of those influenced by Robert and his houses reads as a roll-call of Europe’s spiritual leaders. There was Bruno, who lived briefly as a hermit near Molesme before establishing the most ascetic of all houses, La Grande Chartreuse; Bruno had already been master to Odo, who later became Pope Urban II and preached the First Crusade. When Robert moved again, in search of a yet more rigorous life, he took with him Stephen Harding, later Archbishop of Canterbury. They set up their house at Citeaux.
Harding would in time become abbot. The rigour of the house made it few friends among the local nobility. Its future was uncertain. And then arrived as remarkable a monk as any of that remarkable age: Bernard. He spent three years at Citeaux before a local lord, Hugh Count of Champagne, gave him in 1116 an area of inhospitable woodland well to the north, back in the neighbourhood of Payns. It was known as the Valley of Gall. Bernard gave it a new name: Clairvaux, the Valley of Light.
Bernard secured single-handed the Templars’ future. Hugh of Champagne became a Templar; so did Bernard’s own uncle Andrew. The Templars’ constitution, the Rule, shows all the marks of Bernard’s influence; at the Council of Troyes in 1129 he spoke up for the Order; and, most influential support of all, at the repeated request of Hugh of Payns Bernard wrote In Praise of the New Knighthood.
The New Knighthood’s first half is well-known: in a text advising and praising and warning the knights, Bernard speaks as well to their critics. He is under no illusions: Europe was as glad to be rid of these warring knights as the Holy Land (in Bernard’s eyes) was glad to see them; their army could be a force for good – or for lawless violence. In the tract’s second half Bernard turns to the Holy Land and to Jerusalem itself. Here was his sharpest spur to the pilgrims’ understanding and to the Templars’ own.
Bernard reads Jerusalem itself like a book. In the tradition of Cassian’s fourfold reading of scripture, dominant throughout the Middle Ages, Bernard saw beneath the appearance of the city’s famous sites a far more important spiritual meaning. The land itself invited such a reading:- Bethlehem, ‘house of bread’, was the town where the living bread was first manifest. The ox and ass ate their food at the manger; we must discern there, by contrast, our spiritual food, and not chomp vainly at the Word’s ‘literal’ nourishment. Next, Nazareth, meaning ‘flower’: Bernard reminds us of those who were misled by the odour of flowers into missing the fruit.
And so to Jerusalem itself:- To descend from the Order’s headquarters on the Temple Mount across the Valley of Josaphat and up the Mount of Olives opposite, – this was itself an allegory for the dread of God’s judgement and our joy at receiving his mercy. The House of Martha, Mary and Lazarus offers a moral: the virtue of obedience and the fruits of penance. And above all: in the Holy Sepulchre itself the knight should be raised up to thoughts of Christ’s death and of the freedom from death that it had won for his people: ‘The death of Christ is the death of my death.’ Bernard draws on Paul’s famous account of baptism, and finds in the pilgrims’ weariness the process of their necessary ‘dying’: ‘For we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, so we shall be also in the likeness of the resurrection. How sweet it is for pilgrims after the great weariness of a long journey, after so many dangers of land and sea, there to rest at last where they know their Lord has rested!’
***
The Temple Church is now famous as a backwater, a welcome place of calm. The tides of history have shifted; their currents have dug deep channels far from our own Round Church. It was not always so. The effigies of the Marshal and his sons bear telling witness to the Temple’s role in the court’s and nation’s life. In the 16th century the chronicler Stow described the Templars’ seal. The story of their poverty was by then forgotten or incredible. Stow saw rather an emblem of Charity: a knight on horseback takes a fellow Christian out of danger. Perhaps there had always been romance in that picture of knights sharing a horse. The Order’s Rule, after all, allowed each knight three horses and a squire.
The effigies testify as well to a rich ‘reading’ of Jerusalem. The New Knighthood is double-edged: all that Bernard writes in praise of Jerusalem frees the faithful from the need to travel there: it is the spiritual sense of the city that matters – a sense as readily grasped at home. To find ‘Jerusalem’, as Bernard would have it, the faithful should rather come to Clairvaux, and not just on pilgrimage. So resolute a reading was hard to sustain. Bernard might detach Jerusalem from the benefits its contemplation could bring; but those around him sooner attached Jerusalem’s blessings to such places as fostered its contemplation.
Our effigies seem to us frozen in stone, their figures forever poised to fight battles that ended 700 years ago. But these knights’ eyes are open. They are all portrayed in their early thirties, the age at which Christ died and at which the dead will rise on his return. The effigies are not memorials of what has long since been and gone; they speak of what is yet to come, of these once and future knights who are poised to hear Christ’s summons and to spring again to war.
By 1145 the Templars themselves wore white robes with red crosses. White was linked with more than purity. In the Book of Revelation the martyrs of Christ, clad in white robes washed in the blood of the Lamb (Rev 7.14), are those who will be called to life at the ‘first resurrection’. For a millennium they will reign with Christ; at its end Satan will lead all the nations of the earth against ‘the beloved city’ (Rev 20.9). The final battle will be in Jerusalem. Our knights have good reason to draw their swords. For buried in ‘Jerusalem’, in Jerusalem they shall rise to join the Templars in the martyrs’ white and red. Here in the Temple, in our replica of the Sepulchre itself, the knights are waiting for their call to life, to arms and to the last, climactic defence of their most sacred place on earth.
Little more than fifty years after the consecration of the chancel, the Templars fell on evil times. The Holy Land was recaptured by the Saracens and so their work came to an end. The wealth they had accumulated made them the target of envious enemies, and in 1307, at the instigation of Philip IV King of France, the Order was abolished by the Pope. The papal decree was obeyed in England and King Edward II took control of the London Temple.
Eventually he gave it to the Order of St John – the Knights Hospitaller – who had always worked with the Templars. At the time, the lawyers were looking for a home in London in order to attend the royal courts in Westminster. So the Temple was rented to two colleges of lawyers, who came to be identified as the Inner and Middle Temples. The two colleges shared the use of the church. In this way, the Temple Church became the “college chapel” of those two societies and continues to be maintained by them to the present day.
It was King Henry VIII who brought about the next change in the church. In 1540 he abolished the Hospitallers and confiscated their property. The Temple again belonged to the Crown. It was then for Henry to provide a priest for the church, to whom he gave the title ‘Master of the Temple’.
‘Be of good comfort,’ said Hooker: ‘we have to do with a merciful God, rather to make the best of that little which we hold well; and not with a captious sophister who gathers the worst out of every thing in which we err.’
Richard Hooker was appointed Master of the Temple in 1585. England was in alarm. The threat from Catholic Europe had revived: there had been rebellion against the Queen and Settlement in 1569; in 1570 the Pope had excommunicated Elizabeth and declared her subjects free from their allegiance; Mary Queen of Scots was linked with ever further conspiracy against her cousin; and the danger of Spanish invasion was growing.
England’s radical reformers were convinced: England’s only hope of spiritual and political safety lay in the example of Calvin’s godly state, Geneva. The ‘head and neck’ of English Calvinism were Thomas Cartwright and Walter Travers. Since 1581 Travers had been the Reader (lecturer) of the Temple. In 1584 the Privy Council ordered the Inner Temple to continue his stipend ‘for his public labours and pains taken against the common adversaries, impugners of the state and the authorities under her Majesty’s gracious government.’ Hooker and Travers were to be colleagues. Their differences soon became clear. To recover the purity of the primitive church, Travers would be rid of all that intervened and would forge the English church anew. Hooker was steeped in classical and medieval thought; saw the roots of his own (and Travers’) understanding in Aristotle, Augustine, Thomas and Calvin himself; and acknowledged –even valued – the differences to which such a rich tradition could give rise: ‘Be it that Peter has one interpretation, and Apollos has another; that Paul is of this mind, and Barnabas of that. If this offend you, the fault is yours.’ As then, so now: ‘Carry peaceable minds, and you may have comfort by this variety.’ When Hooker carefully and bravely explored the possibility that individual Catholics could be saved, the scene was set for the most famous public debated of the day. ‘Surely I must confess unto you,’ said Hooker: ‘if it be an error to think that God may be merciful to save men, even when they err, my greatest comfort is my error. Were it not for the love I bear unto this “error”, I would neither wish to speak nor to live.’
We hear of Hooker’s preaching at the Temple: ‘his voice was low, stature little, gesture none at all, standing stone still in the pulpit, as if the posture of his body were the emblem of his mind, immovable in his opinions. Where his eye was left fixed at the beginning, it was found fixed at the end of the sermon. …The doctrine he delivered had nothing but itself to garnish it.’ Travers, by contrast, was a natural orator, and he was himself a distinguished thinker; he later became the first Provost of Trinity College, Dublin. Hooker held his ground and deepened his reasoning. It was to disclose and offer the comfort of faith that he spoke: ‘Have the sons of God a father careless whether they sink or swim?’ The Temple sermons that survive stress the simple conditions of salvation: ‘Infidelity, extreme despair, hatred of God and all godliness, obduration in sin – cannot stand where there is the least spark of faith, hope, love or sanctity; even as cold in the lowest degree cannot be where heat in the first degree is found.’
The debate was brought to an end by Archbishop Whitgift: In March 1586 Travers was forbidden to preach. In 1591 Hooker resigned, and was appointed vicar of Bishopsbourne in Kent. Here he developed his thought in his masterpiece, Ecclesiastical Polity, the foundational – and still, perhaps, the most important – exploration of doctrine in the history of the Anglican church. Hooker elaborated a theory of law based on the ‘absolute’ fundamental of natural law: this is the expression of God’s supreme reason and governs all civil and ecclesiastical polity. ‘Of Law there can be no less acknowledged, than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world: all things in heaven and earth do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power: both angels and men and creatures of what condition soever, though each in different sort and manner, yet all with uniform consent, admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy.’ Hooker’s influence has pervaded English thought ever since. He was admired by Laud and by the puritan Baxter, extolled by the Restoration bishops, and brought once more to prominence by Keble and the Oxford Movement; he has now been rediscovered (in a recent monograph by Richard Atkinson) within the modern evangelical church. His reach has extended far beyond theologians. Ecclesiastical Polity was the starting-point for Clarendon’s History and seminal for Locke’s philosophy; its self-critical balance touched Andrew Marvell; and Samuel Pepys read it at the recommendation of a friend who declared it ‘the best book, and the only one that made him a Christian.’
THE BATTLE OF THE PULPIT
In 1585 the Master of the Temple, Richard Alvey, died. His deputy – the Reader, Walter Travers – expected to be promoted, but Queen Elizabeth I and her advisers regarded his views as too Calvinist, and Travers was passed over.
Instead a new Master, Richard Hooker, was appointed from Exeter College, Oxford. On Hooker’s arrival, a unique situation arose. Each Sunday morning he would preach his sermon; each Sunday afternoon Travers would contradict him. People came to call it the Battle of the Pulpit, saying mischievously that Canterbury was preached in the morning and Geneva in the afternoon. There was a lasting result of all this: Hooker published his teaching as Ecclesiastical Polity and came to be recognised as the founding father of Anglican theology.
By the end of the 16th century, the two Inns of Court had erected many fine buildings at the Temple, yet their position as tenants was not a secure one. In order to protect what they had built up from any future whims of the Crown, they petitioned King James I for a more satisfactory arrangement. On 13 August 1608 the King granted the two Inns a Royal Charter giving them use of the Temple in perpetuity.
One condition of this was that the Inns must maintain the church. The Temple and the church are still governed by that charter. In gratitude, the Inns gave King James a fine gold cup. Some years later, in the Civil war, his son Charles I needed funds to keep his army in the field. The cup was sold in Holland and has never been traced.
In February 1683, the treasurers of the two Societies of the Temple commissioned an organ from each of the two leading organ builders of the time, Bernhard Smith (1630-1708) and Renatus Harris (1652-1708). The organs were to be installed in the halls of the Middle and Inner Temple, to enable them to be played and judged. Smith was annoyed to discover that Harris was also invited to compete for the contract; he was under the impression that the job had already been offered to him. Smith petitioned the treasurers and won permission to erect his instrument in the church instead of in one of the halls. It was set on a screen which divided the round from the quire. This advantage was short-lived as Harris sought and obtained approval to place his organ at the opposite end of the church, to the south side of the communion table. It is thought that both organs were completed by May 1684.
Harris and Smith engaged the finest organists to show off their respective instruments and were put to great expense as the competition intensified and each instrument became more.
In 1841 the church was again restored, by Smirke and Burton, the walls and ceiling being decorated in the high Victorian Gothic style. The object of this was to bring the church back to its original appearance, for it would have been brightly decorated like this when first built. Nothing of the work remains, however, for it was destroyed by fire bombs exactly a century after its completion. After the Victorian restoration, a choir of men and boys was introduced for the first time. The first organist and choirmaster was Dr Edward John Hopkins who remained in this post for over 50 years, 1843-96, establishing the Temple Church choir as one of the finest in London, a city of fine choirs. This tradition of high-quality music was maintained by Hopkins’ well-known successor, Henry Walford Davies, who stayed until 1923.
In 1923 Dr GT Thalben-Ball was appointed organist and choirmaster. This musician, later world- renowned, was to serve the church even longer than his predecessor, John Hopkins, retiring in 1982 after 59 years in office. One reason for his fame was the record made in 1927 of Mendelssohn’s Hear My Prayer by Thalben-Ball and the boy soloist Ernest Lough. The recording became world-famous and brought visitors to the church from all parts of the globe.
In 1941 on the night of 10 May, when Nazi air raids on London were at their height, the church was badly damaged by incendiary bombs. The roof of the round church burned first and the wind soon spread the blaze to the nave and choir. The organ was completely destroyed, together with all the wood in the church. Restoration took a long time to complete. The choir, containing a new organ given by Lord Glentannar, was the first area of the church to be rededicated in March 1954. By a stroke of good fortune the architects, Walter and Emil Godfrey, were able to use the reredos designed by Wren for his 17th-century restoration. Removed by Smirke and Burton in 1841, it had spent over a century in the Bowes Museum, County Durham, and was now re-installed in its original position. The round church was rededicated in November 1958.
Probably the most notable feature of today’s church is the east window. This was a gift from the Glaziers’ Company in 1954 to replace that destroyed in the war. It was designed by Carl Edwards and illustrates Jesus’ connection with the Temple at Jerusalem. In one panel we see him talking with the learned teachers there, in another driving out the money-changers. The window also depicts some of the personalities associated with Temple Church over the centuries, including Henry II, Henry III and several of the medieval Masters of the Temple.
As the COVID19 pandemic creates economic consequences throughout the airline industry, two long-standing 747 fleets have been brought down. On March 29 both Quantas and KLM operated their last flights with the jumbo jets before parking their fleets, an expected move accelerated by current events.
Here's VH-OGH, the Hervey Bay from the Australian carrier, landing at JFK in 2015.
best_of_2021: The Wire, Uncut, Resident Advisor, The Quietus, Rough Trade UK, Gorilla vs Bear, Mojo, Rolling Stone, Louder Than War, Stereogum, Billboard, AllMusic, Consequence of Sound, Pitchfork, NME, Slant, NPR, PopMatters, Gigwise, The Guardian & deepskyobject.
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The 50 Best Albums of 2021 by deepskyobject
1. Crystal Canyon - Yours With Affection and Sorrow [shoegaze]
2. Wolf Alice - Blue Weekend [alternative]
3. Черноплодь/Чернохор - И З Г О Р А [drone, russian avantgarde metal]
4. Nation of Language - A Way Forward [new wave]
5. Amyl and The Sniffers - Comfort To Me [punk]
6. Trigg & Gusset - Black Ocean [dark jazz]
7. TRPP - TRPP [dream pop]
8. Biosphere - Angel's Flight [ambient]
9. Alessandro Cortini - Scuro Chiaro [drone, electronic]
10. Divide and Dissolve - Gas Lit [doom]
11. Flyying Colours - Fantasy Country [shoegaze, dream pop]
12. Stereolab - Electrically Possessed [Switched On vol. 4] [lo-fi]
13. НОМ - МАЛГИЛ [Посвящается ОБЭРИУ] [russian avantgarde]
14. Kraków Loves Adana - Follow The Voice [darkwave]
15. Kælan Mikla - Undir Köldum Norðurljósum [icelandic post-punk]
16. Soft Blade - Softic [minimal wave, russian electronic]
17. Drug Store Romeos - The World Within Our Bedrooms [indie pop]
18. Vollam - Mirror EP [shoegaze, dream pop]
19. Ethereal Shroud - Trisagion [atmospheric black]
20. Olivia Rodrigo - Sour [pop]
21. Goat Girl - On All Fours [indie pop]
22. Faye Webster - I Know I'm Funny Haha [indie pop]
23. The Splashers - Homesick EP [dream pop]
24. Françoiz Breut - Flux Flou de la Foule [french pop]
25. Jarvis Cocker - Chansons D'Ennui Tip-Top [pop]
26. Tape Waves - Bright [dream pop]
27. 김민하 [BrokenTeeth] - 편지(The Letters) [shoegaze, dream pop]
28. Blankenberge - Everything [shoegaze]
29. Midwife - Luminol [ambient pop, shoegaze, slowcore]
30. Dry Cleaning - New Long Leg [indie rock]
31. Minuit Machine - Sainte Rave [darkwave]
32. Leila Abdul-Rauf - Phantasiai [dark ambient]
33. Alice Phoebe Lou - Glow [pop]
34. Wednesday - Twin Plagues [dream pop]
35. Lucid Express - Lucid Express [shoegaze, dream pop]
36. Suffering Hour - The Cyclic Reckoning [black, death]
37. Vessel of Iniquity - The Doorway [death, industrial]
38. Space Afrika - Honest Labour [ambient]
39. Still Corners - The Last Exit [dream pop]
40. Seefeel - St / Fr / Sp [unreleased][electronic]
41. Pia Fraus - Now You Know It Still Feels the Same [shoegaze, dream pop]
42. BadBadNotGood - Talk Memory [jazz fusion]
43. White Flowers - Day By Day [dream pop]
44. Dummy - Mandatory Enjoyment [noise pop, kraut]
45. Mogwai - As The Love Continues [post-rock]
46. Elephant9 - Arrival of the New Elders [nu-jazz]
47. Shamblemaths - Shamblemaths 2 [avant-prog]
48. Ora Clementi - Sylva Sylvarum [electroacoustic]
49. BRUIT ≤ - The Machine is burning and now everyone knows it could happen again [post-rock, drone]
50. Valentina Goncharova - Recordings 1987-1991, vol. 1,2 (2020-2021) [musique concrète]
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The Wire's Releases of the Year 2021
1. L'Rain - Fatigue
2. Moor Mother - Black Encyclopedia of the Air
3. Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & The London Symphony Orchestra - Promises
4. Low - Hey What
5. Daniel Bachman - Axacan
6. Apartment House - Number Pieces
7. Hamid Drake, Elaine Mitchener, William Parker, Orphy Robinson & Pat Thomas - Some Good News
8. Jana Rush - Painful Enlightenment
9. Circuit Des Yeux - -io
10. Phew - New Decade
11. Dry Cleaning - New Long Leg
12. Angel Bat Dawid - Hush Harbor Mixtape Vol. 1 Doxology
13. James Brandon Lewis - Jesup Wagon
14. Chris Corsano & Bill Orcutt - Made Out Of Sound
15. Les Filles de Illighadad - At Pioneer Works
16. Tomaga - Intimate Immensity
17. Anthony Braxton - 12 Comp (ZIM) 2017
18. The Bug - Fire
19. Sons of Kemet - Black To The Future
20. Maggie Nicols - Creative Contradiction: Poetry, Story, Song & Sound
21. BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra - Minds in Flux
22. Muqata'a - Kamil manqus
23. Alpha Maid - CHUCKLE
24. William Parker - Migration of Silence Into and Out of the Tone World (Volumes 1–10)
25. Aaron Dilloway & Lucrecia Dalt - Lucy & Aaron
26. Space Afrika - Honest Labour
27. Clarissa Connelly - The Voyager
28. Perila - How much time it is between you and me?
29. Grouper - Shade
30. Sourdure - De mòrt viva
31. Madlib - Sound Ancestors
32. Moor Mother & Billy Woods - BRASS
33. Divide And Dissolve - Gas Lit
34. RP Boo - Established!
35. Eliane Radigue - Occam Ocean 3
36. Karkhana - Al Azraqayn
37. Pauline Anna Strom - Angel Tears in Sunlight
38. Pamela Z - A Secret Code
39. Patricia Brennan - Maquishti
40. Rambutan - parallel systems
41. Mdou Moctar - Afrique Victime
42. Azita - Glen Echo
43. Raed Yassin - Archeophony
44. Damon Locks Black Monument Ensemble - Now
45. William Parker - Mayan Space Station
46. Meemo Comma - Neon Genesis: Soul Into Matter²
47. Patrick Shiroishi - Hidemi
48. Ahmed [حمد] - Nights on Saturn (Communication)
49. Ben LaMar Gay - Open Arms to Open Us
50. IZ Band - IZ: 路过旧天堂书店 Drop by Old Heaven Books
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Uncut's 75 Best Albums of 2021
1. The Weather Station - Ignorance
2. Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & The London Symphony Orchestra - Promises
3. Nick Cave & Warren Ellis - CARNAGE
4. Low - Hey What
5. SAULT - Nine
6. Arooj Aftab - Vulture Prince
7. Cassandra Jenkins - An Overview On Phenomenal Nature
8. The War on Drugs - I Don't Live Here Anymore
9. Black Country, New Road - For the first time
10. Richard Dawson & Circle - Henki
11. Lana Del Rey - Chemtrails Over the Country Club
12. Sons of Kemet - Black To The Future
13. Mdou Moctar - Afrique Victime
14. Saint Etienne - I've Been Trying To Tell You
15. Mogwai - As the Love Continues
16. Sleaford Mods - Spare Ribs
17. Dry Cleaning - New Long Leg
18. Hiss Golden Messenger - Quietly Blowing It
19. John Grant - Boy from Michigan
20. Modern Nature - Island Of Noise
21. Little Simz - Sometimes I Might Be Introvert
22. The Coral - Coral Island
23. St. Vincent - Daddy's Home
24. Valerie June - The Moon And Stars: Prescriptions For Dreamers
25. Jane Weaver - Flock
26. Paul Weller - Fat Pop (Volume 1)
27. Arlo Parks - Collapsed In Sunbeams
28. Ryley Walker - Course In Fable
29. Steve Gunn - Other You
30. Teenage Fanclub - Endless Arcade
31. Robert Plant and Alison Krauss - Raise The Roof
32. The Hold Steady - Open Door Policy
33. Chuck Johnson - The Cinder Grove
34. Courtney Barnett - Things Take Time, Take Time
35. John Murry - The Stars Are God's Bullet Holes
36. Arab Strap - As Days Get Dark
37. Dean Wareham - I Have Nothing to Say to the Mayor of L A
38. Madlib - Sound Ancestors
39. Squid - Bright Green Field
40. Sturgill Simpson - The Ballad of Dood & Juanita
41. Damon Albarn - The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows
42. Faye Webster - I Know I'm Funny haha
43. My Morning Jacket - My Morning Jacket
44. Rhiannon Giddens With Francesco Turrisi - They're Calling Me Home
45. Bobby Gillespie & Jehnny Beth - Utopian Ashes
46. Israel Nash - Topaz
47. Elephant9 - Arrival of the New Elders
48. David Crosby - For Free
49. Sunburned Hand Of The Man - Pick A Day To Die
50. Lindsey Buckingham - Lindsey Buckingham
51. Yasmin Williams - Urban Driftwood
52. Damon Locks Black Monument Ensemble - Now
53. The Black Keys - Delta Kream
54. Daniel Bachman - Axacan
55. LoneLady - Former Things
56. Damon & Naomi - A Sky Record
57. Haiku Salut - The Hill, The Light, The Ghost
58. Big Red Machine - How Long Do You Think It's Gonna Last?
59. Strand of Oaks - In Heaven
60. Grouper - Shade
61. The Besnard Lakes - The Besnard Lakes Are the Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings
62. Sufjan Stevens & Angelo De Augustine - A Beginner’s Mind
63. Chris Schlarb & Chad Taylor - Time No Changes
64. Pino Palladino & Blake Mills - Notes With Attachments
65. Moor Mother - Black Encyclopedia of the Air
66. Sarah Davachi - Antiphonals
67. Lucy Dacus - Home Video
68. Cathal Coughlan - Song of Co-Aklan
69. Dave - We're All Alone In This Together
70. black midi - Cavalcade
71. Buffalo Nichols - Buffalo Nichols
72. Marianne Faithfull With Warren Ellis - She Walks In Beauty
73. Sleater-Kinney - Path of Wellness
74. Rosali - No Medium
75. Rose City Band - Earth Trip
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Resident Advisor's Best Albums of 2021
1. Space Afrika - Honest Labour
2. AceMoMa - A Future
3. Eris Drew - Quivering in Time
4. Emeka Ogboh - Beyond the Yellow Haze
5. Erika De Casier - Sensational
6. George Riley - interest rates, a tape
7. Hoavi - Invariant
8. Virtual Dreams: Ambient Explorations In The House & Techno Age, 1993-1997
9. Various Artists - The Sound Of Limo
10. Skee Mask - Pool
11. Yu Su - Yellow River Blue
12. Perila - How much time it is between you and me?
13. Andy Stott - Never the Right Time
14. Wanton Witch - Wanton Witch
15. Dawn Richard - Second Line
16. L'Rain - Fatigue
17. Various Artists - Amapiano Now
18. Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & The London Symphony Orchestra - Promises
19. DJ Manny - Signals in My Head
20. Dean Blunt - Black Metal 2
21. Tirzah - Colourgrade
22. aya - im hole
23. HTRK - Rhinestones
24. Joy Orbison - still slipping vol. 1
25. Mr. Mitch - Lazy
26. Loraine James - Reflection
27. Arushi Jain - Under the Lilac Sky
28. Conclave - Conclave
29. Nala Sinephro - Space 1.8
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The Quietus Albums Of The Year 2021
1. The Bug – Fire
2. aya – im hole
3. Dean Blunt – Black Metal 2
4. The Weather Station – Ignorance
5. William Doyle – Great Spans Of Muddy Time
6. Loraine James – Reflection
7. Richard Dawson & Circle – Henki
8. Scotch Rolex – Tewari
9. Sleaford Mods – Spare Ribs
10. Gazelle Twin & NYX – Deep England
11. Tanz Mein Herz – Quattro
12. Liars – The Apple Drop
13. Divide And Dissolve – Gas Lit
14. The Armed – ULTRAPOP
15. L'Rain – Fatigue
16. Tomaga – Intimate Immensity
17. Tirzah – Colourgrade
18. Arab Strap – As Days Get Dark
19. Rắn Cạp Đuôi – Ngủ Ngày Ngay Ngày Tận Thế
20. black midi – Cavalcade
21. Natalia Beylis & Eimear Reidy – Whose Woods These Are
22. Eris Drew – Quivering In Time
23. audiobooks – Astro Tough
24. Ben LaMar Gay – Open Arms To Open Us
25. MICROCORPS – XMIT
26. Joy Orbison – still slipping vol. 1
27. Little Simz – Sometimes I Might Be Introvert
28. The Transcendence Orchestra – All Skies Have Sounded
29. HARD FEELINGS – HARD FEELINGS
30. Part Chimp – Drool
31. Rochelle Jordan – Play With The Changes
32. ioulus – oddkin
33. Kìzis – Tidibàbide / Turn
34. Black Country, New Road – For The First Time
35. Space Afrika – Honest Labour
36. Shirley Collins – Crowlink
37. Skee Mask – Pool
38. Shackleton – Departing Like Rivers
39. Grouper – Shade
40. Ed Dowie – The Obvious I
41. Dry Cleaning – New Long Leg
42. ---__--___ – The Heart Pumps Kool-Aid
43. Godspeed You! Black Emperor – G_d's Pee At STATE'S END!
44. Erika de Casier – Sensational
45. Hawthonn – Earth Mirror
46. Rufus Isabel Elliot – A/am/ams (come ashore, turn over)
47. Japanese Breakfast – Jubilee
48. Ruth Goller – Skylla
49. Succumb – XXI
50. Melvins – Working With God
51. Frog Of Earth – Frog Of Earth
52. Oliver Leith – 'Me Hollywood'
53. Andy Stott – Never The Right Time
54. Goodbye World – At Death's Door
55. Slikback – MELT
56. Max Syedtollan / Plus-Minus Ensemble – Four Assignments
57. Time Binding Ensemble – Nothing New Under The Sun
58. William Parker – Mayan Space Station
59. NONEXISTENT – NONEXISTENT
60. Årabrot – Norwegian Gothic
61. Sylvie Courvoisier & Mary Halvorson – Searching For The Disappeared Hour
62. Manic Street Preachers – The Ultra Vivid Lament
63. Claire Rousay – a softer focus
64. Helm – Axis
65. Clairo – Sling
66. Aging ~ Land Trance – Embassy Nocturnes
67. Rien Virgule – La Consolation Des Violettes
68. Jane Weaver – Flock
69. Jeff Parker – Forfolks
70. Vapour Theories – Celestial Scuzz
71. At The Gates – The Nightmare Of Being
72. GNOD – La Mort Du Sens
73. Ursula Sereghy – OK Box
74. Bloody Head – The Temple Pillars Dissolve Into The Clouds
75. Jorja Chalmers – Midnight Train
76. Leather Rats – No Live 'Til Leather '98
77. Koreless – Agor
78. Snapped Ankles – Forest Of Your Problems
79. Hedvig Mollestad – Tempest Revisited
80. Richard Youngs – CXXI
81. Squid – Bright Green Field
82. Mirage – Mirage
83. Laura Cannell & Kate Ellis – May Sounds
84. My Bloody Sex Party – Vol. 2
85. Taqbir – Victory Belongs To Those Who Fight For A Right Cause
86. The Altered Hours – Convertible
87. Perkins & Federwisch – One Dazzling Moment
88. Converge & Chelsea Wolfe – Bloodmoon. I
89. Fluisteraars – Gegrepen Door De Geest Der Zielsontluiking
90. Angharad Davies – gwneud a gwneud eto / Do And Do Again
91. Vanishing Twin – Ookii Gekkou
92. Antonina Nowacka – Vocal Sketches From Oaxaca
93. Turnstile – GLOW ON
94. Mdou Moctar – Afrique Victime
95. Senyawa – Alkisah
96. Ruth Mascelli – A Night At The Baths
97. LoneLady – Former Things
98. Low – HEY WHAT
99. Marco Shuttle – Cobalt Desert Oasis
100. Celestial – I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night
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Rough Trade UK's Albums of the Year 2021
1. Dry Cleaning - New Long Leg
2. Arlo Parks - Collapsed In Sunbeams
3. Little Simz - Sometimes I Might Be Introvert
4. Black Country, New Road - For the first time
5. Idles - CRAWLER
6. Squid - Bright Green Field
7. Jane Weaver - Flock
8. Wolf Alice - Blue Weekend
9. Cassandra Jenkins - An Overview On Phenomenal Nature
10. Madlib - Sound Ancestors
11. The Weather Station - Ignorance
12. black midi - Cavalcade
13. For Those I Love - For Those I Love
14. Bicep - Isles
15. Japanese Breakfast - Jubilee
16. St Vincent - Daddy's Home
17. Courtney Barnett - Things Take Time, Take Time
18. Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & The London Symphony Orchestra - Promises
19. Mdou Moctar - Afrique Victime
20. 박 혜진 [Park Hye Jin] - Before I Die
21. Leon Vynehall - Rare, Forever
22. L'Rain - Fatigue
23. Koreless - Agor
24. Alfa Mist - Bring Backs
25. Vanishing Twin - Ookii Gekkou
26. Viagra Boys - Welfare Jazz
27. Snapped Ankles - Forest of Your Problems
28. Pip Blom - Welcome Break
29. Jungle - Loving In Stereo
30. Damon Albarn - The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows
31. shame - Drunk Tank Pink
32. Godspeed You! Black Emperor - G_d's Pee AT STATE'S END!
33. Lady Blackbird - Black Acid Soul
34. Amyl & The Sniffers - Comfort to Me
35. Sleaford Mods - Spare Ribs
36. Altın Gün - Yol
37. Nick Cave & Warren Ellis - CARNAGE
38. Marina Allen - Candlepower
39. Clairo - Sling
40. Tindersticks - Distractions
41. Tirzah - Colourgrade
42. Saint Etienne - I've Been Trying To Tell You
43. LUMP - Animal
44. Durand Jones & The Indications - Private Space
45. Joy Orbison - still slipping vol
46. Sunroof - Electronic Music Improvisations Vol
47. Sufjan Stevens & Angelo De Augustine - A Beginner’s Mind
48. Desire Marea - Desire
49. Mogwai - As the Love Continues
50. Lingua Ignota - Sinner Get Ready
51. SAULT - Nine
52. Public Service Broadcasting - Bright Magic
53. Martha Wainwright - Love Will Be Reborn
54. Julien Baker - Little Oblivions
55. Orla Gartland - Woman on the Internet
56. Low - Hey What
57. FUR - When You Walk Away
58. Nao - And Then Life Was Beautiful
59. Goat Girl - On All Fours
60. Drug Store Romeos - The world within our bedrooms
61. Jordan Rakei - What We Call Life
62. Portico Quartet - Terrain
63. Sedibus - The Heavens
64. Elder Island - Swimming Static
65. Sons of Kemet - Black To The Future
66. dodie - Build a Problem
67. Paul Weller - Fat Pop (Volume 1)
68. Greentea Peng - MAN MADE
69. Manic Street Preachers - The Ultra Vivid Lament
70. The Joy Formidable - Into the Blue
71. Bobby Gillespie & Jehnny Beth - Utopian Ashes
72. Parquet Courts - Sympathy for Life
73. Olivia Rodrigo - SOUR
74. John Grant - Boy from Michigan
75. TORRES - Thirstier
76. Django Django - Glowing in the Dark
77. Faye Webster - I Know I'm Funny haha
78. The Goon Sax - Mirror II
79. Tot Taylor - Frisbee
80. Pom Pom Squad - Death of a Cheerleader
81. Yann Tiersen - Kerber
82. Squirrel Flower - Planet (i)
83. Spencer Cullum - Spencer Cullum's Coin Collection
84. Hannah Peel - Fir Wave
85. Berwyn - DEMOTAPE/VEGA
86. Skee Mask - Pool
87. slowthai - TYRON
88. Kojaque - Town’s Dead
89. Pearl Charles - Magic Mirror
90. Stephen Fretwell - Busy Guy
91.Steve Earle - J.T.
92. Flock of Dimes - Head of Roses
93. Geese - Projector
94. Nation of Language - A Way Forward
95. Rostam - Changephobia
96. Villagers - Fever Dreams
97. Gruff Rhys - Seeking New Gods
98. Sleater-Kinney - Path of Wellness
99. Chubby and The Gang - The Mutt's Nuts
100. serpentwithfeet - DEACON
...
Gorilla vs Bear’s Top 50 Albums of 2021
1. Magdalena Bay - Mercurial World
2. Tirzah - Colourgrade
3. HTRK - Rhinestones
4. Grouper - Shade
5. Mach-Hommy - Pray For Haiti
6. Dean Blunt - Dean Blunt
7. Space Afrika - Honest Labour
8. Wet - Letter Blue
9. Dorothea Paas - Anything Can't Happen
10. Karima Walker - Waking the Dreaming Body
11. Enumclaw - Jimbo Demo
12. Doss - 4 New Hit Songs
13. Jessy Lanza - DJ-Kicks
14. Mr Twin Sister - Al Mundo Azul
15. Armand Hammer & The Alchemist - Haram
16. Erika de Casier - Sensational
17. Men I Trust - Untourable Album
18. Wednesday - Twin Plagues
19. Loraine James - Reflection
20. Small Black - Cheap Dreams
21. Hildegard - Hildegard
22. Ada Lea - one hand on the steering wheel the other sewing a garden
23. Sun June - Somewhere
24. Nana Yamato - Before Sunrise
25. Rosie Lowe & Duval Timothy - Son
26. DJ Sabrina The Teenage DJ - The Makin' Magick II Album
27. Madlib - Sound Ancestors
28. Buzzy Lee - Spoiled Love
29. Tyler, The Creator - Call Me If You Get Lost
30. Sangre Nueva - Goteo
31. Indigo Sparke - echo
32. harvey_dug - Nu Grip
33. Snail Mail - Valentine
34. Cassandra Jenkins - An Overview on Phenomenal Nature
35. Nite Jewel - No Sun
36. Skee Mask - Pool
37. Renée Reed - Renée Reed / J’ai rêvé
38. Cleo Sol - Mother
39. Low - Hey What
40. JPEGMAFIA - LP! (OFFLINE)
41. Lana Del Rey - Blue Banisters
42. Hand Habits - Fun House
43. Holy Other - Lieve
44. Sloppy Jane - Madison
45. VA - I can't complain but sometimes I still do
46. Navy Blue - Navy’s Reprise
47. Arooj Aftab - Vulture Prince
48. Equiknoxx - Basic Tools
49. You’ll Never Get to Heaven - Wave Your Moonlight Hat for the Snowfall Train
50. Wau Wau Collectif - Yaral Sa Doom
...
Mojo's 75 Best Albums of 2021
1. Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & The London Symphony Orchestra - Promises
2. St Vincent - Daddy's Home
3. Lana Del Rey - Chemtrails Over the Country Club
4. Low - Hey What
5. Nick Cave & Warren Ellis - CARNAGE
6. Paul Weller - Fat Pop (Volume 1)
7. The Coral - Coral Island
8. Sons of Kemet - Black To The Future
9. Robert Plant and Alison Krauss - Raise The Roof
10. Villagers - Fever Dreams
11. John Grant - Boy from Michigan
12. The Weather Station - Ignorance
13. Sleaford Mods - Spare Ribs
14. Black Country, New Road - For the first time
15. Dry Cleaning - New Long Leg
16. Manic Street Preachers - The Ultra Vivid Lament
17. The War on Drugs - I Don't Live Here Anymore
18. Idles - CRAWLER
19. David Crosby - For Free
20. Mdou Moctar - Afrique Victime
21. The Bug - Fire
22. Amyl & The Sniffers - Comfort to Me
23. Teenage Fanclub - Endless Arcade
24. SAULT - Nine
25. The Black Keys - Delta Kream
26. Mogwai - As the Love Continues
27. Lindsey Buckingham - Lindsey Buckingham
28. Little Simz - Sometimes I Might Be Introvert
29. Field Music - Flat White Moon
30. Yola - Stand for Myself
31. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard - L.W.
32. Paul McCartney - McCartney III
33. Endless Boogie - Admonitions
34. Greentea Peng - MAN MADE
35. The Stranglers - Dark Matters
36. Wolf Alice - Blue Weekend
37. Sturgill Simpson - Cuttin' Grass - Vol. 2 (Cowboy Arms Sessions)
38. Saint Etienne - I've Been Trying To Tell You
39. Jane Weaver - Flock
40. Chrissie Hynde - Standing in the Doorway: Chrissie Hynde Sings Dylan
41. Nala Sinephro - Space 1.8
42. Durand Jones & The Indications - Private Space
43. Damon Albarn - The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows
44. Arab Strap - As Days Get Dark
45. Jungle - Loving In Stereo
46. Faye Webster - I Know I'm Funny haha
47. Tyler, the Creator - CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST
48. Squid - Bright Green Field
49. Public Service Broadcasting - Bright Magic
50. Bonnie 'Prince' Billy & Matt Sweeney - Superwolves
51. Dean Blunt - Black Metal 2
52. Nathan Salsburg - Psalms
53. Angel Bat Dawid & Tha Brothahood - LIVE
54. Tony Joe White - Smoke from the Chimney
55. BADBADNOTGOOD - Talk Memory
56. Lorde - Solar Power
57. Reigning Sound - A Little More Time with Reigning Sound
58. Ryley Walker - Course In Fable
59. Billy F Gibbons - Hardware
60. Cedric Burnside - I Be Trying
61. Steve Gunn - Other You
62. Parquet Courts - Sympathy for Life
63. Howlin' Rain - The Dharma Wheel
64. Tony Allen - There Is No End
65. Godspeed You! Black Emperor - G_d's Pee AT STATE'S END!
66. Lucy Dacus - Home Video
67. AC/DC - Power Up
68. Loretta Lynn - Still Woman Enough
69. Dinosaur Jr. - Sweep It Into Space
70. black midi - Cavalcade
71. Emma-Jean Thackray - Yellow
72. Hiss Golden Messenger - Quietly Blowing It
73. Stephen Fretwell - Busy Guy
74. Gruff Rhys - Seeking New Gods
75. BLK JKS - Abantu/Before Humans
...
Rolling Stone's 50 Best Albums of 2021
1. Olivia Rodrigo - SOUR
2. Adele - 30
3. Rauw Alejandro - VICE VERSA
4. Tyler, the Creator - CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST
5. Lucy Dacus - Home Video
6. Lil Nas X - MONTERO
7. Jazmine Sullivan - Heaux Tales
8. Turnstile - GLOW ON
9. C. Tangana - El Madrileño
10. Japanese Breakfast - Jubilee
11. Playboi Carti - Whole Lotta Red
12. He has never been more enigmatic
13. PinkPantheress - to hell with it
14. Morgan Wade - Reckless
15. Polo G - Hall Of Fame
16. Billie Eilish - Happier Than Ever
17. Low - Hey What
18. Tems - If Orange Was A Place
19. Halsey - If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power
20. Arlo Parks - Collapsed In Sunbeams
21. Leon Bridges - Gold-Diggers Sound
22. Doja Cat - Planet Her
23. Dawn Richard - Second Line
24. Cimafunk - El Alimento
25. Dry Cleaning - New Long Leg
26. Carly Pearce - 29
27. Mdou Moctar - Afrique Victime
28. This is how free rock & roll should sound
29. The Weather Station - Ignorance
30. Mabiland - Niñxs Rotxs
31. Young Thug - Punk
32. Mustafa - When Smoke Rises
33. Madlib - Sound Ancestors
34. Snail Mail - Valentine
35. Summer Walker - STILL OVER IT
36. Adult Mom - Driver
37. Silk Sonic - An Evening with Silk Sonic
38. Little Simz - Sometimes I Might Be Introvert
39. Pooh Shiesty - Shiesty Season
40. Yola - Stand for Myself
41. Topaz Jones - Don't Go Tellin' Your Momma
42. Foo Fighters - Medicine at Midnight
43. Mickey Guyton - Remember Her Name
44. illuminati hotties - Let Me Do One More
45. Myke Towers - LYKE MIKE
46. Iron Maiden - Senjutsu
47. Boldy James & The Alchemist - Bo Jackson
48. TOMORROW X TOGETHER - The Chaos Chapter: FIGHT OR ESCAPE
49. Jhay Cortez - Timelezz
50. Drake - Certified Lover Boy
...
Louder Than War Albums of the Year 2021
1. Amyl & The Sniffers - Comfort to Me
2. JOHN - Nocturnal Manoeuvres
3. Little Simz - Sometimes I Might Be Introvert
4. The Courettes - Back in Mono
5. Mogwai - As the Love Continues
6. The Stranglers - Dark Matters
7. Sleaford Mods - Spare Ribs
8. Self Esteem - Prioritise Pleasure
9. Cold Water Swimmers - Holiday At The Secret Lake
10. Squid - Bright Green Field
11. Dry Cleaning - New Long Leg
12. Gazelle Twin & NYX - Deep England
13. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard - L.W.
14. Sons of Kemet - Black To The Future
15. Carol Hodge - The Crippling Space Between
16. Hello Cosmos - Golden Dirt
17. Nick Cave & Warren Ellis - CARNAGE
18. Idles - CRAWLER
19. CHIHUAHUA - Violent Architecture
20. Greentea Peng - MAN MADE
21. Rats On Rafts - Excerpts From Chapter 3: The Mind Runs A Net Of Rabbit Paths
22. The Mudd Club - Bottle Blonde
23. Arab Strap - As Days Get Dark
24.St. Vincent - Daddy's Home
25. black midi - Cavalcade
26. Matt Berry - The Blue Elephant
27. Mad Daddy - Mad Daddy
28. Private Function - Whose Line Is It Anyway?
29. Stephen Fretwell - Busy Guy
30. Pink Suits - Political Child
31. Blue Orchids - Speed The Day
32. Jane Weaver - Flock
33. Wolf Alice - Blue Weekend
34. ZoZo Ginzburg - Blue Mountains
35. Steve Conte - Bronx Cheer
36. James - All the Colours of You
37. 24/7 Diva Heaven - Stress
38. Deathretro - Deathretro
39. The William Loveday Intention - Will There Ever Be A Day That You’re Hung Like A Thief?
40. Damon Albarn - The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows
41. Marissa Nadler - The Path of the Clouds
42. Lola In Slacks - Moon Moth
43. Neighborhood Brats - Confines of Life
44. The Catenary Wires - Birling Gap
45. Sam Fender - Seventeen Going Under
46. Turner - Daydreams & Stars
47. LUMP - Animal
48. Reigning Sound - A Little More Time with Reigning Sound
49. Slow Down, Molasses - Minor Deaths
50. The Stan Laurels - There is No Light Without the Dark
51. Low - Hey What
52. La Luz - La Luz
53. Gojira - Fortitude
54. Viagra Boys - Welfare Jazz
55. Kiwi Jr
56. Manic Street Preachers - The Ultra Vivid Lament
57. Dark Mark & Skeleton Joe - Dark Mark Vs Skeleton Joe
58. The Bug - Fire
59. The Shadracks - From Human Like Forms
60. Amigo the Devil - Born Against
61. shame - Drunk Tank Pink
62. LoneLady - Former Things
63. Night Beats - Outlaw R&B
64. Fightmilk - Contender
65. Johnny Mafia - Sentimental
66. Jim Bob - Who Do We Hate Today
67. The Coral - Coral Island
68. Field Music - Flat White Moon
69. Jim McCulloch - When I Mean What I Say
70. Alan Vega - Mutator
71. Kiss Me, Killer - 2020 Vision
72. John Grant - Boy from Michigan
73. Lou Barlow - Reason To Live
74. Parquet Courts - Sympathy for Life
75. Snapped Ankles - Forest of Your Problems
76. Sonny Vincent - Snake Pit Therapy
77. The Chills - Scatterbrain
78. Sister John - I Am By Day
79. Du Blonde - Homecoming
80. Hooveriii - Water for the Frogs
81. Erica Nockalls - Dark Music From a Warm Place
82. Piroshka - Love Drips And Gathers
83. Amy MacDonald - The Human Demands
84. Francis Lung - Miracle
85. Cult Figures - Deritend
86. ANTHRAX - Serfs Out
87. VEX - Average Minds Think Alike
88. Freya Beer - Beast
89. Digital Resistance - Alternative Facts
90. Divide And Dissolve - Gas Lit
91. Mush - Lines Redacted
92. Filthydirty - The Rise And Fall Of Blasphemouth
93. Gary Numan - Intruder
94. Godspeed You! Black Emperor - G_d's Pee AT STATE'S END!
95. Rutger Hoedemaekers - The Age of Oddities
96. The Bevis Frond - Little Eden
97. Blowers - Blowers
98. The Brothers Steve - Dose
99. Delilah Bon - Delilah Bon
100. Primitive Knot - A New Ontology of Evil
101. TV Priest - Uppers
...
Stereogum's 50 Best Albums of 2021
1. The War on Drugs - I Don't Live Here Anymore
2. Snail Mail - Valentine
3. Turnstile - GLOW ON
4. Low - Hey What
5. Japanese Breakfast - Jubilee
6. serpentwithfeet - DEACON
7. Bonnie 'Prince' Billy & Matt Sweeney - Superwolves
8. The Weather Station - Ignorance
9. Polo G - Hall Of Fame
10. Cassandra Jenkins - An Overview On Phenomenal Nature
11. Wednesday - Twin Plagues
12. Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & The London Symphony Orchestra - Promises
13. Olivia Rodrigo - SOUR
14. Lucy Dacus - Home Video
15. Nick Cave & Warren Ellis - CARNAGE
16. Tyler, the Creator - CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST
17. Arab Strap - As Days Get Dark
18. Tirzah - Colourgrade
19. Clairo - Sling
20. Fiddlehead - Between The Richness
21. Water From Your Eyes - Structure
22. KA - A Martyr's Reward
23. Julien Baker - Little Oblivions
24. The Armed - Ultrapop
25. Nation of Language - A Way Forward
26. Halsey - If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power
27. SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE - ENTERTAINMENT, DEATH
28. Kacey Musgraves - star-crossed
29. Squid - Bright Green Field
30. 파란노을 [Parannoul] - To See the Next Part of the Dream
31. Boldy James & The Alchemist - Bo Jackson
32. One Step Closer - This Place You Know
33. Xenia Rubinos - Una Rosa
34. Madlib - Sound Ancestors
35. Sons of Kemet - Black To The Future
36. Men I Trust - Untourable Album
37. Armand Hammer & The Alchemist - HARAM
38. Summer Walker - STILL OVER IT
39. Home Is Where - I Became Birds
40. Erika De Casier - Sensational
41. Ada Lea - one hand on the steering wheel the other sewing a garden
42. Portrayal of Guilt - We Are Always Alone
43. Loraine James - Reflection
44. Chris Corsano & Bill Orcutt - Made Out Of Sound
45. Iceage - Seek Shelter
46. CHVRCHES - Screen Violence
47. Mach-Hommy - Pray For Haiti
48. Flock of Dimes - Head of Roses
49. Brandi Carlile - In These Silent Days
50. Closer - Within One Stem
...
Billboard's 50 Best Albums of 2021
1. Olivia Rodrigo - SOUR
2. Tyler, the Creator - CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST
3. Lil Nas X - MONTERO
4. Adele - 30
5. Doja Cat - Planet Her
6. Halsey - If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power
7. Silk Sonic - An Evening with Silk Sonic
8. Billie Eilish - Happier Than Ever
9. Jazmine Sullivan - Heaux Tales
10. C. Tangana - El Madrileño
11. Baby Keem - The Melodic Blue
12. Bo Burnham - Inside (The Songs)
13. Kacey Musgraves - star-crossed
14. PinkPantheress - to hell with it
15. Arlo Parks - Collapsed In Sunbeams
16. Japanese Breakfast - Jubilee
17. Summer Walker - STILL OVER IT
18. Drake - Certified Lover Boy
19. Little Simz - Sometimes I Might Be Introvert
20. Snail Mail - Valentine
21. Isaiah Rashad - The House Is Burning
22. Giveon - When It's All Said And Done
23. Brandi Carlile - In These Silent Days
24. Karol G - KG0516
25. Taylor Swift - Red (Taylor's Version)
26. girl in red - if i could make it go quiet
27. Turnstile - GLOW ON
28. Lucky Daye - Table For Two
29. Elton John - The Lockdown Sessions
30. Porter Robinson - Nurture
31. Carín León - Inédito
32.J. Cole - The Off-Season
33. Mon Laferte - SEIS
34. Vince Staples - Vince Staples
35. Carly Pearce - 29: Written In Stone
36. Justin Bieber - Justice
37. Rauw Alejandro - VICE VERSA
38. Joy Oladokun - In Defense of My Own Happiness
39. Kanye West - Donda
40. The War on Drugs - I Don't Live Here Anymore
41. Willow - lately i feel EVERYTHING
42. Tems - If Orange Was A Place
43. Don Toliver - Life of a DON
44. Fred Again
45. Myke Towers - LYKE MIKE
46. Julien Baker - Little Oblivions
47. SG Lewis - times
48. Young Dolph & Key Glock - Dum and Dummer 2
49. Jack Ingram, Miranda Lambert & Jon Randall - The Marfa Tapes
50. Clairo - Sling
...
AllMusic's Best of 2021 (alphabetic)
Adele - 30
Aimee Mann - Queens Of The Summer Hotel
Allison Russell - Outside Child
Amyl & The Sniffers - Comfort to Me
BADBADNOTGOOD - Talk Memory
Ben LaMar Gay - Open Arms to Open Us
Billie Eilish - Happier Than Ever
Billy F Gibbons - Hardware
Bo Burnham - Inside (The Songs)
Bomba Estéreo - Deja
Brandi Carlile - In These Silent Days
C. Tangana - El Madrileño
Cadence Weapon - Parallel World
Cassandra Jenkins - An Overview On Phenomenal Nature
Chelsea Carmichael - The River Doesn’t Like Strangers
CHVRCHES - Screen Violence
Clark - Playground in a Lake
Cleo Sol - Mother
Cola Boyy - Prosthetic Boombox
Colleen - The Tunnel and the Clearing
Converge & Chelsea Wolfe - Bloodmoon: I
Curtis Harding - If Words Were Flowers
Damon Albarn - The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows
Dry Cleaning - New Long Leg
Ed Dowie - The Obvious I
Eivind Aarset - Phantasmagoria or a Different Kind of Journey
Eric Bibb - Dear America
Field Music - Flat White Moon
Foo Fighters - Medicine at Midnight
Geoffrey O'Connor - For As Long As I Can Remember
Grouper - Shade
Halsey - If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power
Helado Negro - Far In
Helsinki Chamber Choir / Nils Schweckendiek - Pärt: Passio
Hiatus Kaiyote - Mood Valiant
Jack Ingram, Miranda Lambert & Jon Randall - The Marfa Tapes
James McMurtry - The Horses and the Hounds
Japanese Breakfast - Jubilee
Jazzmeia Horn And Her Noble Force - Dear Love
Jean-Efflam Bavouzet - Haydn: Piano Sonatas, Vol. 9
Jerry Cantrell - Brighten
John Carroll Kirby - Septet
Jon Batiste - WE ARE
Jorge Elbrecht - Presentable Corpse 002
Karol G - KG0516
Kenneth Whalum - Broken Land 2
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard - Butterfly 3000
Klenke Quartett, Nicola Jürgensen & Stephan Katte - Mozart: Clarinet Quintet; Horn Quintet
L'Rain - Fatigue
Laura Mvula - Pink Noise
Lil Nas X - MONTERO
Lindsey Buckingham - Lindsey Buckingham
Little Simz - Sometimes I Might Be Introvert
Liz Phair - Soberish
LoneLady - Former Things
Los Lobos - Native Sons
Makthaverskan - För Allting
Manfred Honeck & Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra - Beethoven: Symphony No. 9
Marisa Monte - Portas
Marissa Nadler - The Path of the Clouds
Mastodon - Hushed and Grim
Matthias Goerne / Seong-Jin Cho - Im Abendrot: Wagner, Pfitzner, Strauss
Mdou Moctar - Afrique Victime
Mocky - Overtones for the Omniverse
Mogwai - As the Love Continues
Mouse on Mars - AAI
Nala Sinephro - Space 1.8
Olivia Rodrigo - SOUR
Olivier Latry - Liszt: Inspirations
PinkPantheress - to hell with it
Playboi Carti - Whole Lotta Red
Polo & Pan - Cyclorama
René Jacobs - Beethoven: Missa Solemnis
Robert Finley - Sharecropper's Son
Robert Plant and Alison Krauss - Raise The Roof
Rochelle Jordan - Play with the Changes
Roxana Amed - Ontology
Saint Etienne - I've Been Trying To Tell You
Smile Machine - Bye For Now
Sons of Kemet - Black To The Future
Squid - Bright Green Field
Steve Gunn - Other You
TEKE::TEKE - Shirushi
Terrace Martin - DRONES
The Armed - Ultrapop
The Coral - Coral Island
The Hold Steady - Open Door Policy
The Mountain Goats - Dark in Here
The Reds, Pinks & Purples - Uncommon Weather
...
Consequence of Sound's Top 50 Albums of 2021
1. Tyler, the Creator - CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST
2. Japanese Breakfast - Jubilee
3. Arlo Parks - Collapsed In Sunbeams
4. Turnstile - GLOW ON
5. Little Simz - Sometimes I Might Be Introvert
6. Lucy Dacus - Home Video
7. CHVRCHES - Screen Violence
8. Lil Nas X - MONTERO
9. Armand Hammer & The Alchemist - HARAM
10. illuminati hotties - Let Me Do One More
11. serpentwithfeet - DEACON
12. Snail Mail - Valentine
13. Doja Cat - Planet Her
14. Manchester Orchestra - The Million Masks Of God
15. Julien Baker - Little Oblivions
16. Idles - CRAWLER
17. Dry Cleaning - New Long Leg
18. Boldy James & The Alchemist - Bo Jackson
19. Geese - Projector
20. Adele - 30
21. Pom Pom Squad - Death of a Cheerleader
22. Olivia Rodrigo - SOUR
23. McKinley Dixon - For My Mama and Anyone Who Look Like Her
24. Nick Cave & Warren Ellis - CARNAGE
25. Hovvdy - True Love
26. Billie Eilish - Happier Than Ever
27. SAULT - Nine
28. Indigo De Souza - Any Shape You Take
29. Remi Wolf - Juno
30. Bo Burnham - Inside (The Songs)
31. Taylor Swift - Red (Taylor's Version)
32. The War on Drugs - I Don't Live Here Anymore
33. Isaiah Rashad - The House Is Burning
34. Jon Batiste - WE ARE
35. Mdou Moctar - Afrique Victime
36. Mach-Hommy - Pray For Haiti
37. Black Country, New Road - For the first time
38. The Armed - Ultrapop
39. Amigo the Devil - Born Against
40. Halsey - If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power
41. Injury Reserve - By the Time I Get to Phoenix
42. The Weather Station - Ignorance
43. Squid - Bright Green Field
44. Haviah Mighty - Stock Exchange
45. Courtney Barnett - Things Take Time, Take Time
46. BROCKHAMPTON - ROADRUNNER: NEW LIGHT, NEW MACHINE
47. Yola - Stand for Myself
48. Amyl & The Sniffers - Comfort to Me
49. Katy Kirby - Cool Dry Place
50. St. Vincent - Daddy's Home
...
Pitchfork's 50 Best Albums of 2021
1. Jazmine Sullivan - Heaux Tales
2. L'Rain - Fatigue
3. Tyler, the Creator - CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST
4. Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & The London Symphony Orchestra - Promises
5. Low - Hey What
6. Turnstile - GLOW ON
7. The Weather Station - Ignorance
8. Mdou Moctar - Afrique Victime
9. Playboi Carti - Whole Lotta Red
10. Dry Cleaning - New Long Leg
11. Faye Webster - I Know I'm Funny haha
12. Arooj Aftab - Vulture Prince
13. Tirzah - Colourgrade
14. Japanese Breakfast - Jubilee
15. Snail Mail - Valentine
16. MIKE - Disco!
17. Cassandra Jenkins - An Overview On Phenomenal Nature
18. Grouper - Shade
19. Dean Blunt - Black Metal 2
20. Mach-Hommy - Pray For Haiti
21. Olivia Rodrigo - SOUR
22. Dawn Richard - Second Line
23. black midi - Cavalcade
24. Nala Sinephro - Space 1.8
25. Indigo De Souza - Any Shape You Take
26. Armand Hammer & The Alchemist - HARAM
27. Moor Mother - Black Encyclopedia of the Air
28. Spirit Of The Beehive - Entertainment, Death
29. Little Simz - Sometimes I Might Be Introvert
30. Claire Rousay - A Softer Focus
31. Wiki - Half God
32. Adele - 30
33. Xenia Rubinos - Una Rosa
34. The War on Drugs - I Don't Live Here Anymore
35. illuminati hotties - Let Me Do One More
36. Lost Girls - Menneskekollektivet
37. RP Boo - Established!
38. Navy Blue - Navy's Reprise / Song of Sage: Post Panic!
39. Loraine James - Reflection
40. Erika De Casier - Sensational
41. Lingua Ignota - Sinner Get Ready
42. Vijay Iyer, Linda May Han Oh & Tyshawn Sorey - Uneasy
43. Hand Habits - Fun House
44. Sofia Kourtesis - Fresia Magdalena
45. aya - im hole
46. Helado Negro - Far In
47. dltzk - Frailty
48. KA - A Martyr's Reward
49. Magdalena Bay - Mercurial World
50. Yasmin Williams - Urban Driftwood
...
NME's 50 Best Albums of 2021
1. Sam Fender - Seventeen Going Under
2. Little Simz - Sometimes I Might Be Introvert
3. Wolf Alice - Blue Weekend
4. Self Esteem - Prioritise Pleasure
5. Tyler, the Creator - CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST
6. Nick Cave & Warren Ellis - CARNAGE
7. Arlo Parks - Collapsed In Sunbeams
8. Halsey - If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power
9. Turnstile - GLOW ON
10. Olivia Rodrigo - SOUR
11. For Those I Love - For Those I Love
12. The War on Drugs - I Don't Live Here Anymore
13. Ghetts - Conflict Of Interest
14. Clairo - Sling
15. Billie Eilish - Happier Than Ever
16. Sleaford Mods - Spare Ribs
17. Lana Del Rey - Blue Banisters
18. Dave - We're All Alone In This Together
19. Lorde - Solar Power
20. Lil Nas X - MONTERO
21. London Grammar - Californian Soil
22. Silk Sonic - An Evening with Silk Sonic
23. Bicep - Isles
24. Snail Mail - Valentine
25. Royal Blood - Typhoons
26. CHVRCHES - Screen Violence
27. Summer Walker - STILL OVER IT
28. Idles - CRAWLER
29. Genesis Owusu - Smiling With No Teeth
30. The Killers - Pressure Machine
31. slowthai - TYRON
32. Laura Mvula - Pink Noise
33. AJ Tracey - Flu Game
34. Remi Wolf - Juno
35. Big Red Machine - How Long Do You Think It's Gonna Last?
36. girl in red - if i could make it go quiet
37. Ray BLK - Access Denied
38. TOMORROW X TOGETHER - The Chaos Chapter: FREEZE
39. Easy Life - Life's a Beach
40. Black Country, New Road - For the first time
41. Joy Crookes - Skin
42. Vince Staples - Vince Staples
43. Dry Cleaning - New Long Leg
44. Bleachers - Take The Sadness Out of Saturday Night
45. Young Thug - Punk
46. Nao - And Then Life Was Beautiful
47. SAULT - Nine
48. Kacey Musgraves - star-crossed
49. Inhaler - It Won't Always Be Like This
50. Doja Cat - Planet Her
...
Slant Magazine's 50 Best Albums of 2021
1. Japanese Breakfast - Jubilee
2. St. Vincent - Daddy's Home
3. Lana Del Rey - Blue Banisters
4. Lana Del Rey - Chemtrails Over the Country Club
5. Low - Hey What
6. Billie Eilish - Happier Than Ever
7. Nick Cave & Warren Ellis - CARNAGE
8. serpentwithfeet - DEACON
9. PinkPantheress - to hell with it
10. Courtney Barnett - Things Take Time, Take Time
11. Suzanne Santo - Yard Sale
12. Taylor Swift - Red (Taylor's Version)
13. Lucy Dacus - Home Video
14. Tyler, the Creator - CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST
15. Cassandra Jenkins - An Overview On Phenomenal Nature
16. Lost Girls - Menneskekollektivet
17. TORRES - Thirstier
18. Erika De Casier - Sensational
19. Spellling - The Turning Wheel
20. Halsey - If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power
21. Loraine James - Reflection
22. Mdou Moctar - Afrique Victime
23. Little Simz - Sometimes I Might Be Introvert
24. Snail Mail - Valentine
25. The Killers - Pressure Machine
26. Sufjan Stevens & Angelo De Augustine - A Beginner’s Mind
27. James McMurtry - The Horses and the Hounds
28. Hiatus Kaiyote - Mood Valiant
29. Doja Cat - Planet Her
30. Porter Robinson - Nurture
31. Kanye West - Donda
32. The War on Drugs - I Don't Live Here Anymore
33. DJ Seinfeld - Mirrors
34. Helado Negro - Far In
35. Tinashe - 333
36. LSDXOXO - Dedicated 2 Disrespect
37. For Those I Love - For Those I Love
38. Dry Cleaning - New Long Leg
39. Lingua Ignota - Sinner Get Ready
40. Valerie June - The Moon And Stars: Prescriptions For Dreamers
41. Julien Baker - Little Oblivions
42. Olivia Rodrigo - SOUR
43. Squid - Bright Green Field
44. Young Stoner Life, Young Thug & Gunna - Slime Language 2 (Deluxe)
45. Vince Staples - Vince Staples
46. Lightning Bug - A Color of the Sky
47. Armand Hammer & The Alchemist - HARAM
48. Black Country, New Road - For the first time
49. Jazmine Sullivan - Heaux Tales
50. MARINA - Ancient Dreams In A Modern Land
...
NPR Music's 50 Best Albums of 2021
1. Jazmine Sullivan - Heaux Tales
2. Little Simz - Sometimes I Might Be Introvert
3. Lucy Dacus - Home Video
4. Allison Russell - Outside Child
5. C. Tangana - El Madrileño
6. Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & The London Symphony Orchestra - Promises
7. Arooj Aftab - Vulture Prince
8. Arlo Parks - Collapsed In Sunbeams
9. Vince Staples - Vince Staples
10. Wild Up & Christopher Rountree - Julius Eastman, Vol. 1: Femenine
11. Japanese Breakfast - Jubilee
12. Helado Negro - Far In
13. Tyler, the Creator - CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST
14. Adele - 30
15. Tems - If Orange Was A Place
16. Baby Keem - The Melodic Blue
17. Willow - lately i feel EVERYTHING
18. Mach-Hommy - Pray For Haiti
19. illuminati hotties - Let Me Do One More
20. Injury Reserve - By the Time I Get to Phoenix
21. Low - Hey What
22. PinkPantheress - to hell with it
23. Mickey Guyton - Remember Her Name
24. Turnstile - GLOW ON
25. Eris Drew - Quivering in Time
26. Cleo Sol - Mother
27. Toumani Diabaté & The London Symphony Orchestra - Kôrôlén
28. Summer Walker - STILL OVER IT
29. Lukah - When The Black Hand Touches You
30. Lil Nas X - MONTERO
31. Doja Cat - Planet Her
32. Hiatus Kaiyote - Mood Valiant
33. James Brandon Lewis - Jesup Wagon
34. Emily D'Angelo - enargeia
35. Moor Mother - Black Encyclopedia of the Air
36. Spellling - The Turning Wheel
37. Amythyst Kiah - Wary + Strange
38. Mon Laferte - SEIS
39. MIKE - Disco!
40. Yasmin Williams - Urban Driftwood
41. Susana Baca - Palabras Urgentes
42. Kenny Garrett - Sounds from the Ancestors
43. Yebba - Dawn
44. Adia Victoria - A Southern Gothic
45. Rodrigo Amarante - Drama
46. Vadim Repin, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig & Andris Nelsons - Sofia Gubaidulina: Dialog: Ich und Du; The Wrath of God; The Light of the End
47. Artifacts - ...and then there's this
48. Pink Siifu - GUMBO'!
49. Circuit Des Yeux - -io
50. Silk Sonic - An Evening with Silk Sonic
...
PopMatters' 75 Best Albums of 2021
1. Little Simz - Sometimes I Might Be Introvert
2. Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & The London Symphony Orchestra - Promises
3. Sam Fender - Seventeen Going Under
4. Arlo Parks - Collapsed In Sunbeams
5. Dawn Richard - Second Line
6. Sleaford Mods - Spare Ribs
7. Kacey Musgraves - star-crossed
8. Dave - We're All Alone In This Together
9. Lil Nas X - MONTERO
10. Rochelle Jordan - Play with the Changes
11. Injury Reserve - By the Time I Get to Phoenix
12. Deafheaven - Infinite Granite
13. Mdou Moctar - Afrique Victime
14. Black Country, New Road - For the first time
15. Olivia Rodrigo - SOUR
16. St. Vincent - Daddy's Home
17.Pepe Deluxé - Phantom Cabinet, Vol. 1
18. Brandi Carlile - In These Silent Days
19. The Bug - Fire
20. Magdalena Bay - Mercurial World
21. Loraine James - Reflection
22. Wolf Alice - Blue Weekend
23. Lingua Ignota - Sinner Get Ready
24. Damon Albarn - The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows
25. Public Service Broadcasting - Bright Magic
26. Snail Mail - Valentine
27. Valerie June - The Moon And Stars: Prescriptions For Dreamers
28. The Weather Station - Ignorance
29. Genesis Owusu - Smiling With No Teeth
30. Japanese Breakfast - Jubilee
31. Elbow - Flying Dream 1
32. Moor Mother - Black Encyclopedia of the Air
33. Headie One - Too Loyal for My Own Good
34. Lana Del Rey - Chemtrails Over the Country Club
35. Yasmin Williams - Urban Driftwood
36. Rhiannon Giddens With Francesco Turrisi - They're Calling Me Home
37. Amythyst Kiah - Wary + Strange
38. Julien Baker - Little Oblivions
39. Helado Negro - Far In
40. Sierra Ferrell - Long Time Coming
41. Backxwash - I Lie Here Buried With My Rings and My Dresses
42. Lucy Dacus - Home Video
43. Self Esteem - Prioritise Pleasure
44. Yola - Stand for Myself
45. Billie Eilish - Happier Than Ever
46. The War on Drugs - I Don't Live Here Anymore
47. Maisie Peters - You Signed Up For This
48. Cassandra Jenkins - An Overview On Phenomenal Nature
49. Godspeed You! Black Emperor - G_d's Pee AT STATE'S END!
50. CHVRCHES - Screen Violence
51. Goat Girl - On All Fours
52. Hayes Carll - You Get It All
53. Vince Staples - Vince Staples
54. Hiatus Kaiyote - Mood Valiant
55. Jungle - Loving In Stereo
56. Turnstile - GLOW ON
57. Jane Weaver - Flock
58. Between the Buried and Me - Colors II
59. John Grant - Boy from Michigan
60. Courtney Barnett - Things Take Time, Take Time
61. Anz - All Hours
62. Mastodon - Hushed and Grim
63. Alessia Cara - In The Meantime
64. Bremer/McCoy - Natten
65. King Woman - Celestial Blues
66. John Hiatt With The Jerry Douglas Band - Leftover Feelings
67. Jon Hopkins - Music for Psychedelic Therapy
68. Low Cut Connie - Tough Cookies: Best of the Quarantine Broadcasts
69. Aaron Lee Tasjan - Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan!
70. Iron Maiden - Senjutsu
71. Halsey - If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power
72. Portico Quartet - Terrain
73. black midi - Cavalcade
74. Altın Gün - Yol
75. Mogwai - As the Love Continues
...
Gigwise's 51 Best Albums of 2021
1. Self Esteem - Prioritise Pleasure
2. Sleaford Mods - Spare Ribs
3. Amyl & The Sniffers - Comfort to Me
4. Sons of Kemet - Black To The Future
5. PinkPantheress - to hell with it
6. McKinley Dixon - For My Mama and Anyone Who Look Like Her
7. For Those I Love - For Those I Love
8. Little Simz - Sometimes I Might Be Introvert
9. Arab Strap - As Days Get Dark
10. Du Blonde - Homecoming
11. Sam Fender - Seventeen Going Under
12. Emma-Jean Thackray - Yellow
13. Charli Adams - Bullseye
14. Billie Eilish - Happier Than Ever
15. Olivia Rodrigo - SOUR
16. Silk Sonic - An Evening with Silk Sonic
17. Mogwai - As the Love Continues
18. Jazmine Sullivan - Heaux Tales
19. Idles - CRAWLER
20. Surfbort - Keep On Truckin'
21. Dry Cleaning - New Long Leg
22. Drug Store Romeos - The world within our bedrooms
23. Mdou Moctar - Afrique Victime
24. Lil Nas X - MONTERO
25. Wolf Alice - Blue Weekend
26. Tyler, the Creator - CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST
27. Tommy Genesis - goldilocks x
28. The Vaccines - Back In Love City
29. Summer Walker - STILL OVER IT
30. Indigo De Souza - Any Shape You Take
31. Arlo Parks - Collapsed In Sunbeams
32. Clairo - Sling
33. The War on Drugs - I Don't Live Here Anymore
34. Nick Cave & Warren Ellis - CARNAGE
35. JPEGMAFIA - LP!
36. St. Vincent - Daddy's Home
37. Laura Mvula - Pink Noise
38. Bicep - Isles
39. CHAI - WINK
40. Paris Texas - BOY ANONYMOUS
41. Low Hummer - Modern Tricks For Living
42. Nation of Language - A Way Forward
43. Parquet Courts - Sympathy for Life
44. James Blake - Friends That Break Your Heart
45. Doja Cat - Planet Her
46. Joe & The Shitboys - The Reson for Hardcore Vibes Again
47. Iceage - Seek Shelter
48. Royal Blood - Typhoons
49. Bull - Discover Effortless Living
50. Ashnikko - DEMIDEVIL
51. Remi Wolf - Juno
...
The Guardian's 50 Best Albums of 2021
1. Self Esteem - Prioritise Pleasure
2. Wolf Alice - Blue Weekend
3. Little Simz - Sometimes I Might Be Introvert
4. The Weather Station - Ignorance
5. Tyler, the Creator - CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST
6. SAULT - Nine
7. Dry Cleaning - New Long Leg
8. Olivia Rodrigo - SOUR
9. Arlo Parks - Collapsed In Sunbeams
10. Mdou Moctar - Afrique Victime
11. Sam Fender - Seventeen Going Under
12. Jazmine Sullivan - Heaux Tales
13. Japanese Breakfast - Jubilee
14. Lil Nas X - MONTERO
15. Nick Cave & Warren Ellis - CARNAGE
16. Deafheaven - Infinite Granite
17. Tirzah - Colourgrade
18. Turnstile - GLOW ON
19. Dave - We're All Alone In This Together
20. Arooj Aftab - Vulture Prince
21. The Coral - Coral Island
22. Laura Mvula - Pink Noise
23. Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & The London Symphony Orchestra - Promises
24. Billie Eilish - Happier Than Ever
25. Madlib - Sound Ancestors
26. Mogwai - As the Love Continues
27. St. Vincent - Daddy's Home
28. Kacey Musgraves - star-crossed
29. Clairo - Sling
30. Greentea Peng - MAN MADE
31. Low - Hey What
32. Cassandra Jenkins - An Overview On Phenomenal Nature
33. PinkPantheress - to hell with it
34. The War on Drugs - I Don't Live Here Anymore
35. Aly & AJ - a touch of the beat gets you up on your feet...
36. aya - im hole
37. Erika De Casier - Sensational
38. Goat Girl - On All Fours
39. Hayley Williams - FLOWERS for VASES / descansos
40. Lana Del Rey - Chemtrails Over the Country Club
41. Eris Drew - Quivering in Time
42. Gojira - Fortitude
43. Chris Corsano & Bill Orcutt - Made Out Of Sound
44. Black Country, New Road - For the first time
45. For Those I Love - For Those I Love
46. Stephen Fretwell - Busy Guy
47. CHAI - WINK
48. Lucy Dacus - Home Video
49. Møl - Diorama
50. Agnes - Magic Still Exists
...
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