90 best electronic music albums of 2021: Aleksi Perälä, Alva Noto, Amon Tobin, Anthony Naples & Arovane

Fat Roland's Best Electronic Music Albums of 2021 presents five more brilliant albums:

Aleksi Perälä – Spectrum Analysis (Repetitive Rhythm Research) 

I want to avoid reissues and repackages in my best albums list, but this triple vinyl compilation of Perälä's Spectrum Analysis minimal techno series was too much of a treat not to include. The mathematical simplicity of his micro-house loops are made to move your feet and soothe your brain. The Finnish Rephlex veteran is so prolific, this entire list could have just been him. You're only allowed one per end-of-year list, Alekksi. Reader, do yourself a favour, and spend some time dangling in the laser web of his music. It's quite something. 

Alva Noto – HYbr:ID (NOTON)

There will be a few albums in this list that were written for choreography. You don't want me writhing in my leotard, so you'll just have to imagine the dance moves that accompany this low-key electronic scree written for ballet bloke Richard Siegal. Synths hum, static leaks, ambience drones. It's ASMR in its attention to detail, its little landscapes of electronic experimentalism building into a sonic experience that seems to occupy every inch of the room. Its inspiration is astrophysics and cinema, but it sounds like the atoms between the two. 

Amon Tobin – How Do You Live (Nomark) 

25 years after his debut, Amon is still going. It's testament to his talent that he continues to be uncategorisable. Buzzing synth cycles meet swooping strings, end-of-the-pier organ lines spiral over hippy guitar noodlings, shimmering half-grooves follow breathy folk vocals. It's scratchy and sketchy, glitchy and groovy, always with a cinematic bent. Albeit a curious indie film than a sweeping blockbuster. A vision of Sergeant Pepper appearing in a cloud of spliff smoke. 

Anthony Naples – Chameleon (ANS)

This New York label owner created his latest album by jamming out the tracks on real instruments first rather than, say, start with the software or bashing kittens with a mallet. So where I'd normally expect driving house music, instead we have something much more organic and experimental. In these late-nite ambient instrumentals, blues-style drums meet chill lounge chords and unhurried melodic loops. Its lack of urgency belies the fact this is a producer at the top of his game. A soundtrack for sleepy parties.

Arovane – Reihen (12k)

Uwe Zahn is back, and this time he joins Taylor Deupree’s 12k label for a bunch of noise wafflings produced in early 2021 using a limited range of gear. The blurb mentions pointillism and etherealism, with Zahn citing "intermodulated oscillators, amplified and distorted". This is tiny sound writ large: cascading ambient mirages reflect playfully against the resonating harmonics of fuzzy analogue synth lines and hammer-dulled piano chords. It's almost church-like in its stillness.

This is part of a series of the Best Electronic Music Albums of 2021. Read it all here.