Top 50 electronic music albums of 2022: Clark, SCALPING, Kelly Lee Owens

       

Thanks for reading this countdown so far. Plenty more to come. This is my last blog bleeeugh before I move into the Top 20. Every album featured in this list is worth a listen, so don't be put off if it's "just" Top 50. Oh and remember, if the write-up is in speech marks, the text is taken from my Electronic Sound review of that album. Right. More words, please, Fats...

See the full countdown here.

Clark: 05-10 (Warp)

A gathering of unreleased music and rarities wouldn’t usually trouble this end-of-year countdown, but we all worship the gospel according to Clark. Fans will recognise the Body Riddle sound, and its skittering, scowling beats will pleaser purists that prefer his dirtier work over his soundtrack work. Including me. Even the quieter recent stuff sounds magnificently disgusting. 

SCALPING: Void (Houndstooth)

I’ve not yet seen SCALPING live. With their Satanic metal beats, skull-shredding guitar work, and kitten-boiling acid, they’ll probably have me hiding in the toilets until it was over. Who am I kidding. Lay all your grunge on me, SCALPING. The blurb places them somewhere between Black Sabbath and The Bug. I probably couldn’t put it much better.

Kelly Lee Owens: LP.8 (Smalltown Supersound)

“Recorded in a frozen Oslo amid the ongoing disruption of Covid… LP.8 starts with pressure cooker hisses, joined by insistent basement banging and Owens’ breathless repeats of ‘release, release, release’. It sounds like either a command or an increasingly desperate request. Basically, we have a kidnap situation... The grubby and the grand give glorious musical contrasts in her work.”

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