Another year gone. If it were not for the exercise of having to condense the past twelve months into a list of highlights i'd simply refuse to believe we're about to reach the end of 2021. In my head, where i'm always and forever 24, it's still the start of this new century and i've more hair on my head than on my face, but that's another story/problem for another time.
 
2021 is what we'll call The Short Year, starting somewhere around early April when we were eventually allowed to open our doors again to the public. In October we celebrated our third birthday, just under a month before it was actually the case. We released three records via our inhouse label and made plans for more still in 2022. And 2023. People spoke consistently - monotonously - of vinyl shortages and lockdown albums, under stress and duress. Amidst all of that, in spite of it and because of it, music didn't slow down and we didn't stop. Time-dilates, but that was our constant.
 
We calculated we've written something like 200k words about records we like this year on social media and in mail outs like this one. That's a more than fair amount of not shutting up, i'll admit. It's from that work we've compiled a list of our favourite music of this year. Because that's a lot to navigate, there's a top ten, in alphabetical order, which you can find below. There's a much more comprehensive list available on our website HERE, also in alphabetical order, which includes reissues, retrospectives and such like. We realise that some of these records are currently out of print, but it would be dishonest to only select records we're able to sell right now - that doesn't reflect our year.

As in 2020, we've partnered with Matthew Walkerdine to produce a magazine which collects all the records and our thoughts into one sprawling, possibly incoherent mass. You can obtain a copy with purchases made instore or online. A while-stocks-last affair, of course.
 
Thanks. Enjoy. Can't stop, wont stop, forwards and backwards evermore.  

- N&S, WOE