Best electronic albums of 2020: eleven

11 – Lorenzo Senni – Scacco Matto (Warp)

There's a wonderful moment in The Queen's Gambit where Beth Harmon is chatting to Jolene in the orphanage, and suddenly Beth sees something on the ceiling. In the space above them, an apparition appears of a moustachioed Italian grinding the gears of a battered synthesiser while shouting "I'M DECONSTRUCTING RAVE!"

I may be getting my 2020 chess entertainments mixed up because, yes, this is an album themed on chess. Scacco Matto is 'checkmate' in Italian. Lorenzo Senni launched the album with a virtual chess meet-up. And it's as loud and as brilliantly garish as the wallpaper designs in The Queen's Gambit.

Senni eschews percussion, often reducing his tools to one single instrument. He's a man that loves a JP-8000, the synth I'm named after. However, that doesn't stop everything feeling maxed out. The cleaved EDM of Discipline of Enthusiasm punches hard. The single-finger melody of THINK BIG is as power pop as it gets.

As with chess, it's an acquired taste. But if you like your music "full of melodramatic bombast filtered through the smallest Gameboy in the world" (as I wrote in 2017), then make a move on Scacco Matto. As long as that move is two forwards and one across.

 

Browse the rest of the Best Electronic Albums of 2020