Top 100 Tunes from Scotland in 2021 Part 2 (75-51): from Calvin Harris to The Snuts

It's a mix of the known, little known and the unknown, immediate pop anthems and challenging left-field projects.

The final list painstakingly compiled over the year was whittled down from a not very shortlist of over 200.

Here is Chapter 2.

Top 100 Tunes from Scotland in 2021 Part 1 (100-76)

Top 100 Tunes from Scotland in 2021 Part 3 (50-26)

Part 2- 75-51

75  Clair - A Witches Bedroom Chimes

The Glasgow-based artist and head honcho of the Hot Gem record label produced an unsettling avant garde debut album in Earth Mothers which will definitely not be everyone's cup of tea as it does not conform at all to form or structure and is more a delightful exploration of form, nature, distorting patterns and experimentation. 

This track, which closes the affair is the most disturbed track on this year's list, or in any list.   It playfully mixes the familiar in the form of a child's music box loop with disconcerting meandering hums, distressing feral noises that arrive and then disappear and a manic discordant what-sounds-like xylophone part to the fore. It comes over as a long lost part of the soundtrack to The Exorcist. 

There will be those who will dismiss this under arty farty guff, but it is a sin to ignore the level of widescreen creativity and invention that permeates an evocative and deliberately oblique album which really has to be heard as one big piece.  In terms of perverse innovation and a single-minded approach to being different it is number one. 

"I made Witches Chimes within a couple of days, it was the first piece of music I made, and at that point [two years ago] I didn’t really consider it something to share with the public as that particular track is very experimental, also I wasn’t doing so well mentally, so I left it for a while then I returned to making music at the start of pandemic," she says.

74  Conscious Route & True Note - Life In The Rain (Jamie Bostron Remix)

The Edinburgh-based emcee whose Brothers cut reached the top five of last year's list produced a remixed verson of the stunning Lost Routes album of last year, and this intelligently crafted reimagining with piano swirls and horn stabs is an exhilirating highlight.

73​  Magnus & Odblu - Nobody's Business

The 23-year-old Orkney-born producer and singer-songwriter got into music playing traditional and classical violin but things have gone in a different direction since picking up a computer and downloading FL Studio.   This funky collaboration with Odblu has the same surprise factor as hearing Rick Astley for the first time, in that it is not a black American soul kid.

=72 Haydn Hayes - Everybody's Having Fun Without You

Edinburgh-based producer formerly known as Forest Radio throws trap, EDM, emo, rock, hip-hop and pop-punk and the kitchen sink into this engaging paen to someone who clearly isn't very popular.

=72 The Magician and Wuh Oh - Life

Avant-pop Glasgow-producer Wuh Oh, aka Peter Ferguson teamed up with Belgian DJ & producer The Magician for this vibrant disco-tinged electronic classic that Daft Punk might have craved.

Wuh Oh says: "Life began as a chopped and screwed sample when I was improvising at the old family piano. With the addition of pumping drums, throbbing synths and an instant string melody that demands your full love and attention, Life became a triumphant and timeless-feeling nugget of pure house music gold."

71 Josephine Sillars - Enemy

Made with the support of Help Musicians' Do It Differently fund, the whimsical Highlands musician now based in Leeds produced a captivatingly ethereal 4m 39s from the Desperate Characters EP that is a heady, experimental collision of trip hop moods, Asian influences and indie. 

It tackles the day to day anxieties of existence, looking particularly at the universal fear of being forgotten. “I’ve often worried about, if I stop, everyone will forget who I am”, she admits.  “The track evolved from that feeling of fear into the realisation that a lot of the time, those thoughts and fears are self-inflicted and not a reflection of reality”

70 Love Regenerator & Solardo - Rollercoaster

Scots superstar DJ Calvin Harris teams up with Mancunian duo for a delirious acid-influenced single, built around a sample of '70s R&B/funk tune Love Rollercoaster by Ohio Players, which aimed to take the 37-year-old Dumfries producer back to his rave-focussed roots. And boy what an eyeopener. 

Harris announced the new alias in January 2020 where he said he’d be releasing rave-focused tracks catered more to fans of bass-heavy dance music, taking a step away from his usual pop and electorinic dance music sound.

“I wanted to rediscover the way I originally began producing music 22 years ago before I ever thought about how it might be perceived by outside forces,” Harris said.

69  The Snuts - Juan Belmonte

A pulsating, riff heavy cut with a Franz Ferdinand-stomp from the Scots indie rockers debut and named after the legendary Spanish bullfighter.   Following a tense chart battle with Demi Lovato, the band became the first Scottish band to achieve a UK Number 1 for 14 years with their debut album WL.

68  Bleed From Within - I Am Damnation

The Scots metalcore combo create some of the angriest, out-there rock around, and now signed to Nuclear Blast - with label mates including Lamb of God and Meshuggah - they have returned with this strident, assured riff-crushing statement of stadium intent from a forthcoming LP which even incorporates a bagpipe-sounding start and even strings.

"Lyrically, the message we’re putting across is this idea of not backing down in the face of adversity," says drummer Ali Richardson. "We’re very sure of ourselves now – we’re one of the busiest bands out there currently and this will be our third album in what, 3/4 years? It’s that first proper line in the song – ‘Back again, once more round the sun still breathing’. This drive is so deeply ingrained into who we are as people, so as a band we’ll do everything we can to preserve that and keep things going. It’s an anthem of confidence.”

67  Steve Beats and Kaddy Kay - Kappa Flow

This enigmatic Glasgow-based alterno hip hop duo fashion spitting rhymes to an ear-popping stop-start bleep and breathe hook and a sharp biographical tale.

66  comfort - Received Life 

Glasgow art-punk champions fashion 2m and 20s of angular industrial political electro-pop which laments the perils of inequality.

65  Rhona Macfarlane - Closing The Window 

An exquisitely crafted and emotional strings and piano emotional cracker from the Scots singer-songwriter who says it was written during the pandemic when family visits were allowed for the first time.

"It’s about the change from childhood into adulthood and the realisation that the majority of time you will ever spend with your parents has already passed and time back with them again in your childhood home may not ever be what it used to," she says. "It is about the struggle of letting go of that part of your life and trying to move on while still reassuring your parents that you will always need them and be there in some way."

64  Paque - Never Know 

The Congolese-born, Scottish rapper, songwriter and performer aka Peter Masambuku highlights the ongoing issue of mental health in men with this seductive track underpinned with a cute acoustic guitar riff.  It was written, in part, as a tribute to a late friend who took his own life in December of 2018.

"Real tears tear down to the floor...put my whole life in a flow...Put my whole trust in my bros; still, there’s things they’ll never know."

63  Bemz and Brandon - Know No Better

Cut-up soulful whispers take this more aggressive R&B jam from the Ayrshire rapper aka Jubemi Iyiku to new spheres.

62  Lizzie Reid - Cubicle

Receiving a shortlisted nomination for the 2021 Scottish Album of the Year Award even though Cubicle at 21m is an EP,  the Glasgow singer-songwriter's year was recently topped off by winning the Best Acoustic Award at the Scottish Alternative Music Awards.

Seamless from the EP made our top 100 last year, and the title track of the EP, which closes proceedings is an evocative, slow-burning and affecting tale about making peace with a relationship’s end.

"I don’t even know you anymore. There’s something kinda sweet about being strangers again," she breathes over crisp guitars and cello supplied by cousin Catriona. 

61  Glasvegas - My Body Is A Glasshouse (A Thousand Stones Ago)

Keep Me Space from the Glasgow cult heroes' first album of seven years made this list's top ten last year and remains my favourite.  

While Godspeed, released in April, has peaks and troughs, this is definitely the former and the band seem to make no apology for indulging the epic Phil Spector wall of sound dynamic that has served them so well while marrying that to a breast beating melody.

"That was about one night when I was walking home from the studio and there was a young girl that was walking towards me. There’s a certain park between the studio and my house and sometimes you see prostitutes there. This one girl was probably about 15 or something and I was walking past her and it kinda stuck in my head until I got home. I started to imagine a broken glass house and that’s when I wrote the song," says front man James Allan.

=60 Still House Plants - More More Faster

A definite acquired taste, this Glasgow School Of Art-formed trio are at their best when producing just enough structure and melody with their wilfuly discordant improvisations to avoid complete alienation. 

This starts with a minute and a half of what to some might feel like a guitar tuning exercise, before an explosion of deliberately off-kilter riffing gives way to a repetitive bluesy hook just about anchoring everything down. 

There is no convention here, and it is doubtful it will convert those already converted, but maximum kudos must be paid for the originality and ingenuity exposed here.   Crreeaase made the top 20 of this list last year.

=60  Lift - Stutter

This blissfully dissonent sonic creature blends industrial, jungle, breakbeat and general obscure electronica with a haunting choral sample and is what the Scots producer describes as the "oddball track" on his debut album There Is Beauty in Everything. "I can’t wait for people to hear it because it encompasses a lot of what I love about experimental music,” he says.

59   Chvrches - Asking for a Friend

The first track off their fourth LP, Screen Violence has the kind of soft-loud-soft-very loud dynamics and insatiable melody that made Tether from 2013's The Bones of What You Believe soar. A trick the Glasgow electropop kings and queens don't employ often enough.

58  The Ninth Wave - Piece and Pound Coins

Good friends die young', is the lyrical hook from the Glasgow band at their most beguiling. 

A chilling atmosphere, rolling piano lines weave their way through persistent percussion in a track exploring grief and loss.  

Singer Haydn Park-Patterson says: “I wrote this song about a friend who passed away a number of years ago. I’ve never really felt like I wanted to/could write about him for a number of reasons, but I guess the main one was because that for a long time, I wouldn’t have known what to write. Writing about death is a world away from writing about heartache/love/friendships because there’s nobody to listen to the song and wonder 'is that about me?'. It’s a strange feeling, to write a song about someone that you know can’t ever hear it."

57 Mogwai - To The Bin My Friend...

This simple piano hook builds into a apocalyptic guitar blast that only these guys know how.  Features a sample of Benjamin John Power, who produces experimental electronica under the alias of Blanck Mass, talking in his sleep.

56 Callum Easter - System

The title track from the second proper album from the renegade Edinburgh soul punk is a barking, stomping scuzzy gospel-tinged blast.

"I’d say it [the album] sounds familiar. I’d say it’s not for everyone but really it is," he says. "I’d say it sounds like a feeling you had, now a distant memory, maybe from childhood. Like when the world was full of wonder and the dark things around you had no context so you didn’t think anything of them." 

55 Mog - Some

From Govan and Penilee is one of Scotland's most underrated hip hop artists, always assured and always with an ear for a playful earworm backing track. This is an enticing in-your-face social commentary featuring a familiar guitar loop and and amusing cut-up of the Queen track 39 from A Night At The Opera.

54 Public Broth - My Stain

Mystical downtempo experimental drone-pop with a cutting 'you should never change and I won't ask you to' vocal hook from a promising new combo who describe themselves as "Glasgow based freaks".

53 Letters From Mouse - How Many Magpies 

The underground modular synth maestro from near Edinburgh produced An Garradh, an album of deepest leftfield electronica that he says is inspired by the goings on in his back garden. 

This, the most inviting of the eight tracks, veers close to the kind of anthems Boards of Canada were known for but more eccentrically loop heavy. It is a glowing, comfort blanket to make a bed tent out of in a room where ghosties might appear. 

“This album is meant to be listened to while staring out of your window…preferably with a mug of something tasty," he says.

52 Calum MacPhail - Seven Years

A gripping, emotional and personal song from the 24-year-old Culloden folk artist that tackles the subject of having a parent with an addiction. 

"I wrote 7 Years Old after reflecting on my life growing up in Fort William with my dad," he says. "My dad, John MacPhail, is a great man, known by many people, who unfortunately lost his way due to his addiction. I look up to him in so many ways. His talent and stories of touring the world as a folk musician is something I have always admired, and I have since followed in his footsteps."

51 Steg G ft CCTV - Scars

The big daddy of Scottish hip hop with an evocative, intelligently manufactured and eclectic sonic landscape, a neat string sample, a ripping rock riff and angry rap vocals which deal with the consequences of past  misdemeanours and the effects of them.  It is a standout from his straight talking and evocative 2021 album Live Today.

 

Top 100 Tunes from Scotland in 2021 Part 1 (100-76)

Top 100 Tunes from Scotland in 2021 Part 3 (50-26)