End-of-the-year lists are, needless to say, only partly about music. Instead, they are declarations of skilful consumption, performances of connoisseurial discernment and taste, as well as competitive claims to being one of the first to discover a certain musician or her music (parodied so perfectly in LCD Soundsystem’s 2002 song, ‘Losing my Edge’). They also demonstrate a suspiciously clear-sighted memory of the previous twelve months (because who can really remember what music they listened to in February without accessing the prosthetic memory of Spotify and iTunes?).

But of course, this doesn’t make these sorts of lists any less interesting. 

Like a lot of people, the lockdown and working from home has meant I’ve listened to a lot of music this year, and it’s meant that music has been especially important. Some of it has provided a necessary, soothing backdrop to work during perhaps the most intense and draining period of work I’ve experienced, some of it has allowed me periodically to switch off from work entirely during a year in which it’s seemed as if work is never-ending, and some of it has acquired a real emotional intensity, bringing feelings of anxiety, regret, rage, and hope into focus. So, here are my records of the year. In one respect this is new music, but most of these recordings are by musicians I’ve been listening to for years, and this undoubtedly has a great deal to do with the pleasure and the meaning they hold for me.

Soccer 96 I was Gonna Fight Fascism. 

A scathing, and very funny 12” single on which the singer and skronking saxophonist, Alabaster dePlume, runs through the reasons why he was unable to fight fascism this year: ‘I was gonna fight fascism, but I just don’t think that the left/right political spectrum really applies in the modern age…’

Keith Jarrett Munich 2016

A marvellous live solo improvisation by the pianist who, it was recently announced, is unlikely to be able to perform again after suffering two strokes in 2018. I’d always hoped to see him live, but at least we have the recordings. The third section in particular is overwhelmingly stirring and the image of clouds on the LP sleeve captures effectively the sublime quality of the music on the record. 

Philip Glass Music in Eight Parts

A recently rediscovered score, recorded in lockdown by musicians in different locations, this is a driving fusion of rock and early minimalism.

Nine Inch Nails Ghosts vols. 5 (Together) and 6 (Locusts)

Released freely on the internet in the summer, these albums of delicate, contemplative instrumentals shift between moods of despair and anxiety, reflection and growing hope.

Jon Hassell Seeing through Sound (Pentimento, vol. 2)

A curious, busy record, full of sonic detail and uncertain, skittering electronic rhythms. It sounds like very little else apart from the trumpeter’s other records.

Sunn 0))) Life Metal Rehearsal 250518

Released online for just one day to raise money for food banks, this recording of rehearsal sessions from the band’s LP, Life Metal, is raw, intoxicating guitar noise. 

Boris No

Similarly powerful, this new album by Japanese metal band Boris was recorded under lockdown and perhaps partly because of this it eschews the more expansive, epic scale of some of their other records for compressed, mostly fast, hardcore songs.

The Bug Pressure Versions

Mostly instrumental versions of tracks from the 2003 album Pressure, this online release of very heavy dancehall music works surprisingly well given that the vocalists are such an important focus of the original album.  

Public Enemy What you Gonna do when the Grid Goes Down?

Far from breaking new ground, this album seems to be a matter of taking stock of their own history, and the two strongest tracks are re-recordings of a couple of their best-known songs, ‘Fight the Power’ and ‘Public Enemy Number One’.

Mark Leckey In this Lingering Twilight Sparkle

Made on one day by the British artist/film-maker during lockdown, this cassette is a fascinating, disorienting montage of voices and fragments of music, that reproduces the remix aesthetic of his video art.

Bruce Bennett Going out to Work

New to me, this 7” single from about 1971 by soulful reggae singer David Isaacs (who occasionally used the absurd stage name ‘Bruce Bennett’), is a delightfully simple, lilting song about travelling through the city on the way to work. It takes on a new significance in a moment in which many people have lost their jobs and their businesses and those of us who are fortunate enough to be able to carry on working are facing the various challenges of doing this from home. I bought a cheap second-hand copy online a couple of weeks ago and played the A-side and then the lovely dub version on the B-side once before I realised it was so scratched it had destroyed the stylus on my record-player. I’ve no idea what the first record I listened to in 2020 was, but, frustratingly, if appropriately, this is certainly the last.

• The Last Record: Bruce Bennett, ‘Going out to Work’