When the end of the year rolls around most people give shine to their favorite albums. But EP's and shorter projects tend to get left holding a short straw. While albums do offer more substantial explorations of music as an art form, the line between EP's and LP's has become increasingly blurred in the age of digital media. This has opened the door for EP's to pack just as much substance as an album into their comparatively shorter runtimes. So in honor of the oft-overlooked format, here are our 20 favorite EP's of 2020.
20. Dreamcrusher - Panopticon
A 38-plus minute noise EP may sound exhausting, but as terrifying as that prospect may sound, Dreamcrusher makes it an absolute delight. Constantly playing with innovative sampling and feedback styles, Dreamcrusher turns Panopticon from a chore into a delight. Recorded using a wide range of instruments and recording methods, Panopticon mashes together metal, garage rock, power electronics, harsh noise, hardcore and about twelve-dozen other genres. It won't be the easiest listen of the year, but it might just be the most unique.
19. NNAMDÏ - Black Plight
Many have claimed that brevity is the soul of wit, but it is often so much more than that. A well-trimmed song can pack 100 pages worth of writing into a few minutes. NNAMDÏ more than accomplishes that on Black Plight. Released shortly after the murder of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis Police Department, the EP packs big ideas into a shockingly small package. But for all its brevity the EP's greatest strength comes from its reactive, vitriolic anger. "My Life" asks "My life, what's it worth to you?" and goes down a laundry list of things destroyed in protests and whether or not they're worth more than human life, with call and response lines like "Macy's or human life? Human life!" "Rage" straightforwardly asserts its title with memorable lines like "They kill us dead in the streets'' and is buoyed by an instrumental section straight out of a Rage Against the Machine song. The undeniable urgency of these tracks demands your attention. You’ll hand it over happily.
18. JPEGMAFIA - EP!
While EP! doesn’t reinvent JPEGMAFIA in any way, it does reinforce him as one of the most free flowing voices in hip-hop. Filled with killer one-liners, amazing flows and off-the-wall production, EP! packages everything that’s great about Peggy and pulls it into a single hyper-digestible package. If nothing else, enjoy the simple pleasure of a rapper reveling in how bad their hairline is. It comes up more than once.
17. Alustrium – Insurmountable
In a year of excellent tech-death Insurmountable was a highlight. Filled with memorable riffs, absurdly complex and fast instrumental patterns and a bevy of forceful vocal sections, this record grabs you by the collar and shakes you nearly to death. Every band member operates at peak efficiency to ensure that not a single second of weakness makes its way onto the record. It may not upend your perception of the genre, but it performs tech-death at its absolute best.
16. King Buffalo - Dead Star
Straddling the line between album and EP, Dead Star more than makes use of its significant average song length. Every sound you might imagine from the exceptionally cool album art occurs more powerfully than you ever could have dreamed. Along with its grandiose construction, the album makes sure to let listeners bask in a nigh unbeatable atmosphere. This album won't melt your face to a pile of fleshy goo like some other albums this year, but what it lacks in intensity it makes up for in atmosphere and scale. You'd be hard pressed to find an album that more thoroughly understands what it wants to be, and you certainly won't find an EP that packs planetary scale into such a small package.
15. Nechochwen & Panopticon - Split
Splits often get ignored by the wider public. These releases usually come along when two bands don't have quite enough material for a full EP or album, but still want to put out some new music to whet the appetites of fans. Nechochwen and Panopticon decided that they wouldn't let the low perception of this format hinder their creativity, and unleashed one of the most impressive musical pieces this year. Boasting monstrous riffs and gut-churning vocals, this high quality split deserves as much consideration as any album or EP from this year.
14. sadness - holding
EP's don't exist to fully explore musical ideas, but no one told that to sadness. Having spent much of 2020 on an absolute tear, releasing one full length, one collaboration, and an EP, sadness decided to close out the year with holding. It turned out to be his best EP yet. While holding only clocks in at 23 minutes, it expands the musical range of sadness far beyond what should be expected of its runtime. The screams cut you to the bone with a panicked sharpness, and the instrumentation is fuller and more thrilling than anything he's released to date. With his mastery of emotion already so finely honed, holding represents a brilliant step forward in execution and stands as a sign of greater things to come from sadness.
13. Little Simz - Drop 6
If you're unfamiliar with UK rap, grime or other hip-hop making its way out of Great Britain, it's time you started paying attention. What these genres lack in terms of life experience and intensity (compared to their American counterparts) they more than make up for in production and general ambition. Little Simz combines all of these elements with a skillful tongue and a razor sharp wit that places her at the top of the UK's ever growing pile of talented rappers.
12. knifedoutofexistence - Just Barely
At times this year has felt like the end of the world. The suffocating sense of unpredictability that every day brought did nothing good for the collective anxiety of a world that has teetered on the brink of chaos for my entire lifetime. Only one musical piece truly captured the ever-present adrenaline rush of chaos, “By A Thread,” the first track of Just Barely. Intentional or not, knifedoutofexistence pulls the voice of god from the sky. The depth and force of the reverberating drone at the opening of this track is apocalyptic. Regardless of timing and symbolism, it’s a sound that will steal the breath from your lungs, and rattle your bones until you see spectres lurking outside your window.
11. Bather - Phantom Guilt
Metal needs more innovators like Bather. On a surface listen, that statement may strike as odd, the group isn’t necessarily doing anything that leaps out of your speakers as “breaking new ground” but the way they approach tone and genre conventions is so fresh and intoxicating. Combining pieces of doom metal, death metal and black metal with occasional dashes of the tone used in metalcore breakdowns, Bather practically drowns their listeners in a pummeling sea of intensity. The experience is as exhilarating as it is refreshing.
10. Cecile Believe - Plucking a Cherry from the Void
Plucking a Cherry from the Void delivers surprisingly enjoyable melodies and instrumentals that beg you to get lost in them. Each song seems like it appeared out of a dream, or is, at the very least, made of goose down and the whispers of angels. But for as delightful as the record is, it operates at peak efficiency when it gets bold. "Bitch Bites Dog" just absolutely whips. I wish I could deliver a more nuanced explanation of the song, but listen to this, it just whips. Put this record on and watch as 25 minutes effortlessly disappear from your day.
9. Haru Nemuri - LOVETHEISM
Diving into LOVETHEISM I realized that I'm a huge sucker for unexpected genre crossovers. Haru Nemuri smashes together pop, orchestral, pop-punk and flairs from dozens of other genres to create an album surging with brilliance and urgency. While I'm unable to comment on the lyrics, the delivery of each syllable bursts and sparkles with clarity that most English-language albums struggle to communicate. It's an absolute thrill-ride where everyone is tall enough to strap in, so buckle up and take your seat.
8. illuminati hotties - FREE I.H: This is Not the One You’ve Been Waiting For
Joy didn’t make an appearance very often this year. But the most frequent source of joy this year was music that wasn’t afraid to be extremely weird. illuminati hotties tried a lot of things on this EP, which they allegedly released to spite their label, and a surprising amount of it worked. Employing the lyrical irony of groups like Fall Out Boy they knock down any walls that listeners may have put up, in this case, it’s worth letting your defenses crumble.
7. serpentwithfeet - Apparition
Everything that serpentwithfeet does is impressive. Even when technical issues plagued his performance at Coachella in 2019 he twisted the setlist into an acapella showcase that would make even the most accomplished musicians jealous. Apparition may not seem as urgent as blisters was, but even with four years of acquainting ourselves with serpentwithfeet, he's still capable of incredible surprises. Softer and sweeter than much of his previous work, and certainly less aching, Apparition shows that even when writing music meant for rejoicing, serpentwithfeet exists in a songwriting class all his own.
6. Christine and the Queens - La vita nuova
If you're unfamiliar with Christine and the Queens then you should catch up right here and now. This tremendously lauded EP, and its kickass music video have taken the world by storm. Thankfully the popularity of La vita nuova comes entirely from quality and not marketing. Band leader Chris again impresses with their phenomenal voice. The vocal arrangements and performances are only enhanced by the unique pronunciation Chris brings to their vocals as a native French speaker. That the EP is half-French, half-English only makes it more impressive. Regardless of what you do and don't understand from the lyrics, you'll be captivated for every second of this project, and for good reason.
5. Fraxiom - Feeling Cool and Normal
Experimental genres remain blessed by their array of diverse creators. While Trans and non-binary creators have worked in music, especially experimental music, for decades at least, their surge to the forefront has propelled music to eye-popping new locales. Fraxiom's project Feeling Cool and Normal finally lands on a way to make hyperpop exciting and not horribly obnoxious. Blown out bass and brutally pitched up vocals threaten to overwhelm everything on this hyper-ambitious project. Even without its host of internet references, such as, "Are ya winning son? / No dad I'm fucking Trans!" which Fraxiom hollers on "burnout" make the EP liable to collapse under its own weight. It never does. If you can hang with weird, then Fraxiom will always reward your patience, and Feeling Cool and Normal is no exception.
4. CHIKA - Industry Games
The opening track of Industry Games, "INTRO" makes a lot of promises. Many of them struck me as corny on my first run through of the EP. But at the very end it pulls together with the kind of line that sticks in your teeth as you chew on it, "If I don't accomplish nothing /hope this music makes you think." As the record moves forward, CHIKA fully comes through on that promise. The brief, almost corny sincerity never returns, replacing it is an 18 minute display of furious wordplay, flows and excellent production. This project has blown up the point that I'm not so much boosting it as echoing a popular sentiment, but keep an eye on CHIKA, this won't be the last time she blows you away.
3. Shygirl - ALIAS
British pop artists trounced American pop artists this year. There’s no reason to take this statement as an offense, but the open expressions of sexuality and sonic experimentation coming from artists like Shygirl and Charli XCX thrill and refresh in a way that modern pop rarely does. ALIAS is filthy and vulgar. A wild night in a club bathroom stall feels more akin to this EP than any musical comparison. Thankfully it excels in areas beyond its vulgarity, the production choices are genuinely exciting and the vocal performances hit with unexpected force. Put it on and throw your own dance party, clubs won't open for a minute anyway.
2. Endless Digital Birthdays - Becoming a Body
It’s not necessarily difficult to find a record that can make you laugh, but it is rare to stumble across one that does so while pushing sonic boundaries. Endless Digital Birthdays tinkers with a stunning array of sounds on Becoming a Body, but never takes their experimentation so seriously that the EP becomes dour. Given the post-punk influences on the record, there was certainly a chance that they could’ve found themselves in over their head. Lucky for us, they surged above the waves with one of the year’s most impressive and entertaining projects.
1. Zeal & Ardor - Wake of a Nation
One of the biggest issues with modern music criticism is the idea that a record has to be timely in order to be worth true consideration. It often leads to albums with great messages that do nothing to push the genre forward getting an outsized profile from major outlets. But every so often an album pulls together both ideas of what makes music great. It happened once before with To Pimp A Butterfly, and now, it’s happened with Wake of a Nation.
Written and recorded this year, Wake of a Nation is a searing indictment of the treatment of Black Americans by their own country. The scathing lyrics on “Tuskegee,” “Bad blood bestowed on me / By a tyranny / Left to rot and die / Hear my bloody cry / Tuskegee'' only scrape at the surface of this EP’s eternally descending depths. That Zeal & Ardor has couched this message in an innovative and crackling blend of metal and Black spirituals makes it all the more effective. In the same breath, it pushes metal into a wholly new space that wraps all the way back to the founding influences of the genre. There’s enough to unpack in this EP that it could serve as the engine of a master’s thesis, luckily, it's one hell of a listen.