May 28, 2010

Top 20 electronica tracks of 2010 (kind of) so far (sorta)

YouTube playlist time, kids!

I'm currently doing time in comedy-prison for impersonating a Michael McIntyre fan, so I decided to use my spare time in the yard (full of people making inane observations) to see where we're up to in this ubiquitous block of time we call "2010".

Here are the 20 best tracks of 2010 so far. I've done this before, and again most of the choices are mine. I spiced it up this time by asking some of my musical chums and contemporaries to include their own favourite tracks.

If you want to play all the choons at once, I've fashioned together a YouTube playlist. Here are the Top 20 electronica tracks of 2010 (kind of) so far (sorta) in their entirety. If I was you, I'd jump straight there. (Edit: you can also see the list in MASSIVE CLICKABLE WORDS, thanks to a link sent to me by Cameron Reed. Ta!)

Here are the individual tracks with their youTube links. Let's go!

- Girl Unit: Shade On from the I.R.L EP.

- Instra:mental: No Future (Skream Remix)

- Africa HiTech: Blen, recommended by DJ / producer the 8Bitch. She also wanted to go for Ramadanman's Glut or a bit of Subeena or Brackles, but instead ended up plumping for the first single from the rather exciting Steve Spacek and Mark Pritchard collaboration.

- Flying Lotus: Do The Astral Plane from his latest album Cosmogramma.

- Gonjasufi: Ancestors, produced by Flying Lotus and taken from the Warp debut A Sufi And A Killer.

- Caribou: Jamelia, recommended by Cameron Reed, a.k.a. Babe Rainbow who wanted "something off the Caribou album". Glad to oblige.

- Pariah: Detroit Falls, recommended by Yer Mam. He also wanted to go for Brooklyn's Pursuit Grooves.

- Lorn: Cherry Moon (link updated), who is bringing the Brainfeeder sound to the UK with his essential album Nothing Else.

- Ikonika: Idiot from the Hyperdub album Contact, Want, Love, Have.

- Son Lux: Break. Isaac Ashe's Sound Advice threw several recommendations in my direction, so I chose a Son Lux track. But he'd also like you to listen to Bass Clef, Bonobo and Massive Attack. Actually, I feel guilty for not including Massive Attack on my final list.

- Starkey: OK Luv, the opening track from Ear Drums And Black Holes.

- Four Tet: Angel Echoes, recommended by Isaac Ashe's Sound Advice.

- Shlohmo: Spoons from the woefully overlooked Shlomoshun Deluxe album on the Friends Of Friends label.

- Babe Rainbow: Shaved. Speaking of Babe Rainbow, here comes another of his recommendations...

- James Blake: CMYK, recommended by Babe Rainbow and by Borland. Borland also like a bit of Gold Panda and are busy producing their own gubbins (see my post last weekend.

- Autechre - See On See from their first album of 2010, Oversteps.

- LV And Untold - Beacon (Mount Kimbie Remix)

- Pantha Du Prince: Stick To My Side from the hypnotic album Black Noise.

- Floating Points: People's Potential, recommended by Yer Mam.

- Kourosh Yaghmaei: Gol-e Yak, an older track recommended by a superbly exasperated Two Fingers, one of whom said he was too skint to be buying music all the time, but "on the plus side, I pretty much hate everybody. So I could pretend to like the shitty thrill-free dubstep etc that this generation farts out, but I'm not going to." That's rather refreshing, methinks. And he sounds like half my mates.

A massive thank you to everybody for collaborating on this piece. And again, here's the whole playlist in one playable list which enables you to play it as one big list of playness, entirely without listlessness.

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