Commended electronic music albums of 2022: part two

 

Here are more commended albums that didn't quite make my top 50. Each one is a peach, or a pair, or a pineapple. You pick the fruit, I'm not fussy.

This is the second of five Commended blog posts. See the full countdown here.

Caterina Barbieri: Spirit Exit (light-years)

This is the third album from the acclaimed synth experimentalist, and this time it’s inspired by female mystics. Despite being produced during the introspection of lockdown, Barbieri is typically light of touch. Elegiac, worshipful and drifting, and wonderfully listenable.

Rat Heart Ensemble: A Blues (Shotta Tapes)

Mr Heart abandons the dancefloor for a long, post-disco sleep. Boomkat gave this Mancunian’s Tascam driftings their Album of the Year accolade. Dark ambient pieces drifting from littered side alleys, echoing drones reverberating from smoking manholes. 

Waves: Low Altitude (self-released)

“This is a coastal collection of cockle-shelled ambience, barnacled synth meditations and sea-bound drones as wide-reaching as far-flung fish. There are lapping shorelines, seagulls, even a humming lighthouse… Manchester finally has its beach.”

Romance & Dean Hurley: In Every Dream Home A Heartache (Ecstatic)

Speaking of ambient. David Lynch collaborator Dean Hurley produces an album of hazy, filmic ambience. Each set of wandering loops will run a movie reel in your head: abandoned beaches, sun-dappled forests, buffalo doing a tango. Okay, maybe not that last one.

Ulla: Foam (3XL)

This has been a really woozy set of recommendations, and this product of the US Midwestern ambient scene is no less heady. Imagine setting off a synth arpeggio, but then feeding the audio through a mincer, then making a lovely lemon mousse with the remains. That.

This is part of a series of the Best Electronic Music Albums of 2022. Read it all here.