Dec 30, 2022

Top 50 electronic music albums of 2022: Whatever The Weather, Biosphere, Maxime Denuc

     Fat Roland's best electronic music albums of 2022 

This is the [mumble]th of ten blog posts laying out numbers 50 to 21 in my end-of-year countdown of the best electronic music albums of 2022. I dunno. I've lost count. I'm typing furiously to stay ahead of my blog schedule, smashed on peanuts, Smarties, Diet Pepsi and Windowlene. Anyway, let's continue. Here are three more albums to pad out this never-ending Top 50.

See the full countdown here.

Whatever The Weather: Whatever The Weather (Ghostly International) + 

This was the outing of the new ambient alias from the critically acclaimed London producer Loraine James. The track titles are temperatures, ranging from the scorching 36°C to an exactly freezing 0°C. Which suits the album, because even when she’s dropping beats into the foggy atmosphere, it’s either snowflake crystalline or devilishly scorching. Phew. Also worth checking out is her other 2022 album, the Julius Eastman interpretation Building Something Beautiful For Me (Phantom Limb) – this is also hot / chill stuff.

Biosphere: Shortwave Memories (Biophon)

Let’s stay with ambience. Apparently Geir Jenssen took inspiration from post-punk for this latest album. You can’t hear much of that in the rich chords, the long structures and that ever-so-90s bass. Instead, thanks to the reintroduction into his sound of vintage analogue synthersisers, we have an evocation of classic Biosphere. Moody and moving ambience.

Maxime Denuc: Nachthorn (Vlek)

I’ll fess up. I used to help organise a rave in a church. It was called TAS:TE, although I can’t for the life of me remember what that stood for. As if treading in my footsteps (ahem), Denuc plays rave music on a church organ. Indeed, it’s all there: the thudding rhythms, the choppy chords, the banging melodies. Except it’s all on a pipe organ. This Album Soars: Totally Ecstatic.

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

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