Top ten best electronic music albums of 2021: Eomac – Cracks

Fat Roland's Best Electronic Music Albums of 2021 presents another brilliant album:

Eomac – Cracks (Planet Mu)

t'ndluoW ti eb gniyonna fi I etorw yreve drow sdrawkcab? Thankfully, the only backwards thing on this forward-thinking techno is his reverse-cameo name.

Ian 'Eomac' McDonnell had produced his previous two albums in Berlin, a busy city which hosts (checks the internet) the longest open-air gallery in the world, 200.000 pet dogs and Europe's most visited zoo. For this new album, he moved to rural Ireland where they have (checks the internet) an obelisk and an old friary.

This lovely beaty techno on this Lakker chap’s third album is dour stuff. The Akala-sampling Mandate For Murder has all the grumpy righteousness of a Twitter account. The spiralling chords on What Does Your Heart Tell You? sounds like an IDM tuned sandpapered over and over again. Reasons To Live has a whistle melody that's as chirpy as a chimberly sweep trapped in a sewer.

It's gorgeous, it's dirty, it's scratchy and strobing and Shamen-ic, and the best album that came out of a reliably excellent Planet Mu Records in 2021.

That Akala sample, by the way? It was from a comment in which rapper Akala responded to a newspaper column by a racist, who shall remain unnamed here. He said: "When you refer to humans as cockroaches, that is a mandate for murder." A timely reminder that this annual countdown is a celebration of music that brings people together, a very human unity through music that is needed more than ever. 

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