![]() Yet returning to the recorded output of 2020 has been a reminder that for all the distractions around us, this has been an astonishingly strong and diverse year for music. The same has gone for albums – records have been loved for a moment, but then vanished into a forgetful black hole of anxiety. The sheer volume of this situation has meant that culture has become slippery – who hasn't read a page of a book and come to the end of it realising that they’ve not taken a word in, or sat in front of a film and had to constantly rewind to try and fill the gaps. Then the sheer mundanity of it, our horizons confined to, if we're lucky, local streets, or just the walls of our own minds. I doubt there is anyone reading this who hasn't had a major life opportunity disrupted or destroyed by this cursed virus. Then of course the horror of mounting deaths, loved ones lost or severely incapacitated by long COVID. There's been the surrealism of an unseen enemy causing national lockdowns, a pandemic dealt with in mind-boggling political ineptitude, even the visually bizarre sight of empty capital cities. Our situation over the past 12 months has been a combination of extreme emotions. I'm sure I'm not alone in finding that the grim, unrelenting slog of coronavirus has had a profound impact on my relationship with music. How does the thing you love most survive a crisis? How can music, that force that has got you through a lifetime of personal neurosis, self-doubts, depressions, and impossible situations still retain its power against a situation that not only feels, but is, entirely beyond your control? This is something I've been thinking about in the days running up to writing this introduction to The Quietus' favourite records of 2020. ![]()
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