Jan 10, 2025

How I unlocked a withering memory of Wuthering Heights

There's an old phrase which goes like this: "The past is a something-or-other, they thingummy differently there." I can't quite remember the quote. Which is ironic considering the topic of this blog post.

I have grown up with a particular memory of watching something on television. Something that deeply impacted the child Fat Roland because of its stark, haunting style. I recall a shimmering ghost of a woman singing in darkness. Echoes of her image rippling around her like a hall of mirrors. I have never been able to pinpoint what the video was, but it stayed with me.

The title of this blog post is a spoiler. The video was a promo for the UK release of Kate Bush's 1978 single Wuthering Heights. In it, she dances like an apparition amid a haze of filters and fog. I was a wee bairn, and I would have been staring hypnotised at the moving images, with little concept of who Kate Bush was, nor indeed what pop music was. And since then, I think I've only seen a different promo video, produced for the US market, with Bush in a red dress fannying about in a field.

It was perhaps the first pop video I ever paid attention to, despite its details eluding me until now. For years, I had misremembered it as a video by Mary Wilson from the Supremes. I'm sure she sang in spangly costumes in dramatic stage lighting, a similar effect for a child's mind – but it never felt quite right.

It was 808 State's Graham Massey talking at a book launch that helped unlock the memory. He also was impacted by the song, and it was while he was describing the images that the memory of the video finally properly resurfaced. We won't be the only people awed by the video: it spent four weeks at number one, after all. The single was replaced at the top of the charts by Matchstalk Men And Matchstalk Cats And Dogs, a song which ruffles the same nascent memory feathers as Bush.

So there you go. This is a blog post about nothing much. I remembered something. Big deal. But it goes to show the power of the pop video, and there's a bigger thinkpiece to be written about the loss of that culture in a world of streaming. But no-one comes to this blog to do thinking. That would be silly.

Now if I could only recall where I put my house keys and/or remember to use WeTransfer links before they expire and/or call to mind my purpose in life, then I'd be sorted.

Further Fats: The 7 best moments in Ryan Wyer's video for Aphex Twin's CIRKLON3 [ Колхозная mix ] (2016)

Further Fats: Eight tracks that deserve a Running Up That Hill revival (2022)

Jan 5, 2025

Number 1 best electronic music album of 2024: µ-Ziq – Grush

 


µ-Ziq: Grush (Planet Mu Records)

Mike Paradinas's μ-Ziq outfit has been troubling our delicate china for over 30 years. His first album, Tango N' Vectif on Rephlex Records, was released in November 1993, when Meatloaf's I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That) was at the top of the pop charts. Aphex Twin had only released one album at that point.

A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then. Meatloaf has had 500 more number one singles. We've had 52 prime ministers. Everybody has flying cars. Probably. I haven't really been paying attention. He now brings us Grush, his 17th µ-Ziq album.

This is, he says, a "back-to-first-principles", an album to put the "dance" back into "intelligent dance music". This is indeed an adventure in rhythm, with all the delightful effect of having several entire drum kits thrown at your face for the best part of 56 minutes.

Hyper Daddy is spidery rave awash with sad chords, its viscous piano reminiscent of a early Aphex Twin. Over skipping drums, Magic Pony Ride (Pt.4) teases us with a simple music box melody. Windsor Safari Park is all anticipation, a tiny insectoid rave, that then melts into a Cosmic Baby-sized melodic hug. His ability to hold tension then transport a track into a new melodic direction keeps the album vying for our attention.

He nails the small stuff. The slurpy arpeggios of Imperial Crescent. The clonking woodblocks of Belvedere. The trip hop drum-play of Hastings. The vocals on Manscape, a spiritual successor to Belfast. A distant squeal. An opening gasp. All those little details, those tiny (g)rushes of delight.

As with Squarepusher's album, he invokes structure using quieter with a softer melodic palate, each connected by the word "Reticulum". Despite sounding like a medical instrument designed to go up your bum, these are welcome sorbets to lighten the meal.

Paradinas has had plenty of opportunities to top my annual best-album list in the past. I'm saying it like it's his fault. Challenge Me Foolish barely made the cut in 2018, same for his Secret Garden in 2021, his "sad cry emoji" collaboration with Mrs Jynx.

Chewed Corners came closest, with 8th place in 2013. Scurlage made the top ren in 2021, although I wasn't numbering specific positions that year. Hello registered 10th place in 2022 ("Paradinas being Paradinas at his most Paradinas").

So congratulations to the µ man. I guess. He has the best electronic music album of 2024 – official. I was convinced that Kelly Lee Owens or Squarepusher would claim the 2024 top spot, but I think there's a reason why Grush resonated with me harder, deeper, wider, longer, and oh crap I've run out of dimensions.

Last year's stroke changed things. I can no longer entirely trust my vision because of the damage to a bit of my brain. What I see on a day-to-day basis is a little less certain, so I make up for the sight loss through habits, technology and stubbornness. Full disclosure: I walked out in front of a car the other week because my knackered neurons made that car momentarily disappear. Life is a few percentage points more precarious than before.

µ-Ziq has been around for almost all of my adult life. I have known this music act longer than I knew my own parents. During my recovery, I wonder if there's a part of me that needed to connect to something that felt like certainty. To music that had soundtracked my life for a very long time. A second disclosure: Grush is the only album this year that made me tear up. That alone merits a number one position.

I bet the psychologists among you are loving this, you weirdos. I realise I'm posting this blog series the 'wrong' side of new year, but thanks for reading in 2024. We're gonna grush– er, I mean– crush 2025.

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far.

2nd best electronic music album of 2024: Kelly Lee Owens – Dreamstate



Kelly Lee Owens: Dreamstate (dh2)

For the second time, Kelly Lee Owens comes second in my annual albums list, the previous time being when Inner Song was pipped to the post by DJ Python in 2020. As the old saying goes: always the bridesmaid, never the teasmaid. At least I think that's right.

Dreamstate is her most accomplished album yet. Firstly there's the delicate happiness. Higher is caramel sweet stadium techno that stays at the edge of the dancefloor. Love You Got is a pulsating energy rush that never allows to escape her pillow-soft vocals. Air is spacey dub techno that ascends into ambient sunlight.

And then there's the hurt. It's an odd thing to focus on for a silly blog like this, but this is KLO's break-up album. A highlight is the aching Time To: her voice breaking over melancholic echoes; she pleads for us to "find a greater peace of mind".

Get a load of the title track. Dreamstate could be early Fluke, when they had six wheels on their wagon, and belly flops into a chunky acidic sprint, Lee Owens squealing the track title in increasing ecstasy. There's nothing else like it in my entire top 95 albums.

Side-note: Lee Owens is not alone. The album has producer-writer credits for Bicep (featured in best-album countdowns of 2017 and 2021), Tom from the Chemical Brothers (best-album countdowns of 2010, 2015 and 2019), and George from The 1975 (I would never feature them here: I'm not daft. Although to his credit he does run dh2 Records, so he's probably a good egg).


3rd best electronic music album of 2024: Squarepusher – Dostrotime



Squarepusher: Dostrotime (Warp Records)

More than one friend has told me that I cannot possibly object so strongly to jazz music when I appreciate the work of speed bassist and jazz fiend Tom 'Squarepusher' Jenkinson. And to those friends, I say... er.... eeerm..... [runs out of the room, drives off in car, gets on a plane]

The Square dancer's previous album Be Up A Hello was written through adversity, when an accident forced him into a new approach. I learn that in my 2019 interview with him. For this album, he swapped one battle with another, writing this sixteenth Squarepusher album during the long isolation of Covid lockdown.

The melodic Enbounce sounds like Mozart leading an army of bewigged robots. He lets the clouds part on the tense Stromcor only to loosen up into slappy bass noodles. The starched march of Wendorlan falls apart wildly: snare drums out of sync, drum machine on def con one.

Whereas Be Up A Hello lightened its mood with the simplicity of Detroit People Mover, this time Squarepusher adds in a series of numbered "Arkteon" pastoral interventions. Passing daydreams before we get back to the frenetic stuff. They're placed at the start, middle and end. The 'pusher comes across as chaotic, but he really knows about album structure.

And yes, there's a whole bunch of jazz bass. Slappy, flappy-fingered jazz bass. Look, let me address the jazz thing for one final time. A last word on the matter. My exact precise opinion about jazz music is-- oh look over there! [walks slowly backwards into hedge]

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far.

4th best electronic music album of 2024: Sakura Tsuruta – GEMZ


Sakura Tsuruta: GEMZ (all my thoughts)

I'm always blinged up. Diamonds on my fingers, amethyst on my toes, opals in my ear-holes. I never leave the house unless I'm jangling like a thousand windchimes in a hurricane. Which is good. Because the next album in my 2024 countdown is inspired by precious stones.

The blurb says Sakura Tsuruta's album cannels the "radiant light and vibrant colours" of precious metals. That promo waffle is indeed correct, for a change. The music's gleaming polygons of sound could only have been crafted through some mystic light-to-audio alchemy. It's enchanting.

Onyx coalesces into a complex techno roller with a kaleidoscope of light-touch percussion. The donking brashness of Push & Pull sounds like someone mining into a rock face with a tiny hammer. Violet Sun is dramatic and moody, with a thicker bass beat, and then Obsidian comes along with its clattering junglist rhythms and smashes everything to pieces.

Sakura Tsuruta's work is as smoothly animated as Detroit techno, as flowing as ambient dub, as geometric as early rave, and yet it is none of those things. A refreshing record that somehow has pinged towards the top of my annual list. Shiny.

I'm amazed I was able to type any of this, what with all the rubies on my fingers. Dozens of them, I've got. On each finger. I have very heavy hands.


5th best electronic music album of 2024: Donato Dozzy – Magda


Donato Dozzy: Magda (Spazio Disponibile)

He sounds like a muppet. "Donato Dozzy" is not a muppet. He sometimes has a furry face, and his glasses are very neat and round, and he did do an album named after the letter K, but, for the final time, Donato Dozzy is definitely not a muppet.

He is in fact a DJ with a long history of putting out tunes, and once made a super brief appearance in my Best Albums countdown back in 2015. And now, out of the blue, he suddenly drops into my top five with a selection of tracks full of electronic drama.

The first thing that stuck me about Magda was its sheer stubbornness. The first track Velluto finds its loop of a bleepy snore circled by ditzy electronics and, defiantly, stays there. Franca does a similar thing, soft pneumatics chugging to a gauze-thin ambience, gently waxing and waning.

The title piece Magda has more shape. Ripples of filtered-down see-saw synths are shadowed by a murmuration of botanical keyboard loops, and it gets more and more humid as it crescendos into.... nothing. He has the confidence to let it all drift away into a haze. 

More than its production, more than its themes of the Adriatic sea and family, there's something healing about Magda. Is there a healing muppet? I suppose The Count might be a doctor, and he knows numbers and stuff. I bet Big Bird knows first aid: he's the kind of smug yellow featherball that would brag about that kind of thing.


6th best electronic music album of 2024: Throwing Snow – Isthmus (Houndstooth)


Throwing Snow: Isthmus (Houndstooth) 

What is this? Like, Throwing Snow's fifth album or something? This is his first time at the sharp end of my annual album list. Jeez, he took his time. I've been waiting by the door for ages waiting for him to knock.

One reviewer likened this album to listening to a DJ. Its flow throughout is so smooth. And it is indeed engineered for the dancefloor. Unless you're listening to The Madness of The Bull, which sounds like a joust for a royal tournament set on a distant dusty dwarf planet. 

The start of the album suckers you in: a spinning hoover of a siren beckons in the glam analogue stomp of Apricity, complete with imperceptible vocals smothered in fuzzy filters. Whispers sounds so detuned, it threatens to drip out of the speakers. Meanwhile, Chimera brings out the jazz drummer, only it's a robot with its own marching tune of sinister scraping pads.

Closer Tides gets out those detuned circuits again, this time drowning everything in a wash of cross-chained static. As the noise abates, we get the saddest moment of the album as plaintive notes mourn the end of a superbly curated collation of techno.

At this point in my waffle words, I would delve into the meaning of "Isthmus". I can just look it up on the album blurb: it's all there ready to be written up and to be made fun out of. But I did a definition skit on my previous album review, so I'm not doing it again. You can get lost. Pfffrt.


7th best electronic music album of 2024: Xylitol – Anemones


Xylitol: Anemones (Planet Mu Records)

I've checked the dictionary. Xylitol is a real thing. It's a sugar alcohol that you get inside the fibres of fruit and veg. I'm not a scientist, but I think it means if you lick a plum for six months, you'll get slightly tipsy. With that in mind, I'm expecting this album to be sugary sweet, like bubble gum pop or something

Oh. Heck. The moment the first squashed breakbeat slices into your ears tells you this is no pop album. We're in the frenetic world of Venetian Snares, Squarepusher and Aphex Twin. Slav To The Rhythm show co-host Catherine Backhouse is bringing it hard with her Xylitol persona.

Rosi sounds like a Nintendo game that's been imported into Microsoft Paint. Moebius is jungle caught in a hallucinogenic haze. Jelena is a masterpiece: breathless breaks hardly hold it together as they eddy over an undercurrent of depressive synth washes.

If you're familiar with Planet Mu, and indeed anything inspired by jungle, then you're already familiar with this sound. But it's masterfully controlled by Backhouse. It's rare to hear an album so mechanical yet so charming.

Hat doff to Planet Mu for continuing to absolutely fricking nail it. A final thought: Apparently if you take too much Xylitol, you get webbed toes. You don't know that for a fact. I don't know that for a fact. But I've blogged that now, so it's definitely true.