4th best electronic music album of 2024: Sakura Tsuruta – GEMZ

Sakura Tsuruta: GEMZ (all my thoughts)

I'm always blinged up. Diamonds on my fingers, amethyst on my toes, opals in my ear-holes. I never leave the house unless I'm jangling like a thousand windchimes in a hurricane. Which is good. Because the next album in my 2024 countdown is inspired by precious stones.

The blurb says Sakura Tsuruta's album cannels the "radiant light and vibrant colours" of precious metals. That promo waffle is indeed correct, for a change. The music's gleaming polygons of sound could only have been crafted through some mystic light-to-audio alchemy. It's enchanting.

Onyx coalesces into a complex techno roller with a kaleidoscope of light-touch percussion. The donking brashness of Push & Pull sounds like someone mining into a rock face with a tiny hammer. Violet Sun is dramatic and moody, with a thicker bass beat, and then Obsidian comes along with its clattering junglist rhythms and smashes everything to pieces.

Sakura Tsuruta's work is as smoothly animated as Detroit techno, as flowing as ambient dub, as geometric as early rave, and yet it is none of those things. A refreshing record that somehow has pinged towards the top of my annual list. Shiny.

I'm amazed I was able to type any of this, what with all the rubies on my fingers. Dozens of them, I've got. On each finger. I have very heavy hands.

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far.

5th best electronic music album of 2024: Donato Dozzy – Magda

Donato Dozzy: Magda (Spazio Disponibile)

He sounds like a muppet. "Donato Dozzy" is not a muppet. He sometimes has a furry face, and his glasses are very neat and round, and he did do an album named after the letter K, but, for the final time, Donato Dozzy is definitely not a muppet.

He is in fact a DJ with a long history of putting out tunes, and once made a super brief appearance in my Best Albums countdown back in 2015. And now, out of the blue, he suddenly drops into my top five with a selection of tracks full of electronic drama.

The first thing that stuck me about Magda was its sheer stubbornness. The first track Velluto finds its loop of a bleepy snore circled by ditzy electronics and, defiantly, stays there. Franca does a similar thing, soft pneumatics chugging to a gauze-thin ambience, gently waxing and waning.

The title piece Magda has more shape. Ripples of filtered-down see-saw synths are shadowed by a murmuration of botanical keyboard loops, and it gets more and more humid as it crescendos into.... nothing. He has the confidence to let it all drift away into a haze. 

More than its production, more than its themes of the Adriatic sea and family, there's something healing about Magda. Is there a healing muppet? I suppose The Count might be a doctor, and he knows numbers and stuff. I bet Big Bird knows first aid: he's the kind of smug yellow featherball that would brag about that kind of thing.

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far.

6th best electronic music album of 2024: Throwing Snow – Isthmus (Houndstooth)

Throwing Snow: Isthmus (Houndstooth) 

What is this? Like, Throwing Snow's fifth album or something? This is his first time at the sharp end of my annual album list. Jeez, he took his time. I've been waiting by the door for ages waiting for him to knock.

One reviewer likened this album to listening to a DJ. Its flow throughout is so smooth. And it is indeed engineered for the dancefloor. Unless you're listening to The Madness of The Bull, which sounds like a joust for a royal tournament set on a distant dusty dwarf planet. 

The start of the album suckers you in: a spinning hoover of a siren beckons in the glam analogue stomp of Apricity, complete with imperceptible vocals smothered in fuzzy filters. Whispers sounds so detuned, it threatens to drip out of the speakers. Meanwhile, Chimera brings out the jazz drummer, only it's a robot with its own marching tune of sinister scraping pads.

Closer Tides gets out those detuned circuits again, this time drowning everything in a wash of cross-chained static. As the noise abates, we get the saddest moment of the album as plaintive notes mourn the end of a superbly curated collation of techno.

At this point in my waffle words, I would delve into the meaning of "Isthmus". I can just look it up on the album blurb: it's all there ready to be written up and to be made fun out of. But I did a definition skit on my previous album review, so I'm not doing it again. You can get lost. Pfffrt.

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far.

7th best electronic music album of 2024: Xylitol – Anemones

Xylitol: Anemones (Planet Mu Records)

I've checked the dictionary. Xylitol is a real thing. It's a sugar alcohol that you get inside the fibres of fruit and veg. I'm not a scientist, but I think it means if you lick a plum for six months, you'll get slightly tipsy. With that in mind, I'm expecting this album to be sugary sweet, like bubble gum pop or something

Oh. Heck. The moment the first squashed breakbeat slices into your ears tells you this is no pop album. We're in the frenetic world of Venetian Snares, Squarepusher and Aphex Twin. Slav To The Rhythm show co-host Catherine Backhouse is bringing it hard with her Xylitol persona.

Rosi sounds like a Nintendo game that's been imported into Microsoft Paint. Moebius is jungle caught in a hallucinogenic haze. Jelena is a masterpiece: breathless breaks hardly hold it together as they eddy over an undercurrent of depressive synth washes.

If you're familiar with Planet Mu, and indeed anything inspired by jungle, then you're already familiar with this sound. But it's masterfully controlled by Backhouse. It's rare to hear an album so mechanical yet so charming.

Hat doff to Planet Mu for continuing to absolutely fricking nail it. A final thought: Apparently if you take too much Xylitol, you get webbed toes. You don't know that for a fact. I don't know that for a fact. But I've blogged that now, so it's definitely true.

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far.

8th best electronic music album of 2024: Nicolas Barnes – DWXD005

Nicolas Barnes: DWXD005 (Dubwax)

The artwork and publicity calls this album Fide, but the Bandcamp page calls it after its catalogue number. So catalogue number it is. I name this album DWXD005, a distant relative to R2-D2, THX 1138 and MDMA.

Barnes hails from Riga, the capital and cultural hub of Latvia. He has built a reputation there as a DJ, producer and label owner. I don't think he is the same as the British thriller writer Nicholas Barnes with an h. It would be convenient if he was. I have more information about him.

So all we have is the music. And my giddy uncle, what music. The most involving and hypnotising dub techno I have heard in a while. Washes of warm electronic fog. Sharp icicles of hissing hi-hats. A constant feeling of twilight overcome by more twilight.

Every track takes its time. The aerated jabs of Gridform were the first sounds to get under my skin. Title(?) track Fide is so persuasive, pulsing away as a grey wash takes over the frequencies. As as with Shinichi Atobe tracks, those rusty cymbals on the funky Feratum are a winner.

I'm sorry I can't help you more with the biography of this artist. Maybe he's a famous figure skater. Perhaps he invented the uni-brow. Maybe he was the first person to pogo-stick to the moon. With work as strong as this, I expect to hear a lot more about Nicolas Barnes in the future, or, as I am now calling him, N1C0745 B4RN35.

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far.

9th best electronic music album of 2024 – Underworld: Strawberry Hotel

Underworld: Strawberry Hotel (Smith Hyde Productions)

Here are the opening lyrics of Strawberry Jam Girl taken from Underworld's 11th studio album Strawberry Hotel.

  Sleeping girl, kiss the animal
  Telephone the animal
  Tomorrow the animal will take me to the moon

It's like a short story. Baby shoes never worn. Except we shouldn't take their lyrics too seriously. Karl Hyde once said his lyrics come from pretty much nowhere. The words for Pearl's Girl ("red yellow, red yellow black") are simply him looking at the colours of cars passing a window he was looking out of. I bet he gets through a hundred notebooks a year.

Strawberry Hotel is one of Underworld's strongest albums. Up their with the old stuff. It's a real ride as  Denver Luna's epic kinetic rumble careens into the contemplative disco of Techno Shinkansen which then leads into the starched stomp of And The Colour Red. "Please don't shuffle," say the album notes, justly.

The second half is less coherent. The lyrics get more childish, it keeps drifting into ambient interludes, and, unusually for Underworld, fok singer Nina Nastasia turns up for a guest spot. It feels like the band trying out ideas for a twelfth studio album.

Still, it's here in my top ten because, in the words of Strawberry Jam Girl:

  Wrapped around him pierced

  Hissing piston in the tube hole spreadin'

  Claw of the animal

  Eating pizza

Okay, that wasn't helpful. Let's move on.

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far.

10th best electronic music album of 2024 – The Black Dog: Other, Like Me

The Black Dog: Other, Like Me (Dust Science)

The moment I arrived at Sheffield's No Bounds Festival a few months ago, I made a beeline for one particular gig. The Black Dog, who were playing above a pub on the high street. I needed their wibbly wobbly frequencies in my ears.

In recent years, the 'Dog have embraced architecture and brutalism. That show in Sheffield had breath-taking graphics of mottled concrete buildings. You could smell the mortar dust. On this album, they apply the blueprint to the person, and this suddenly makes it seem so much more personal.

Other, Like Me is about identity. It has track titles like With You I Still Feel Alone (scuffed micro-sized half-step), Just Pretend To Be Someone Else (sinister, creeping and buzzy atmospherics) and I Am An Artist (pensive trance made of gasping ambience).

There are contrasts. The optimistic Closed Eyes could be Global Communication opening their curtains to a golden sunrise. While the broad-shouldered Mark Up broods with a tribal bass drum, static snarling with menace.

I reckon if you rocked up in Sheffield and this sound was permeating the streets, it go one of two ways. You'd either hot foot it back onto the train and make a beeline back through the Pennine's. Or they would draw you in, like a siren, or a big concrete magnet. Allow yourself to be the latter.

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far.

11th best electronic music album of 2024: Jamie xx – In Waves

Jamie xx: In Waves (Young)

The chromosomed one returns with a long-awaited follow-up to his debut In Colour. That album was my second favourite of 2015 ("almost everything could be a hit single"), coming in just behind Blanck Mass's bombastic Dumb Flesh.

In Waves has collaborations galore. I'm going to list his fellow musicians. Are you ready? There's Romy and Oliver Sim, which we'd expect. There's as Honey Dijon, cellist Kelsey Lu, rapper John Glacier, Panda Bear, queen of alt pop Robyn, The Avalanches, and dancer Oona Doherty. Apparently Erykah Badu appears on the deluxe vinyl version. Jamie's address book must have a broken spine.

The album is flipping ace. The stadium-friendly EDM of Treat Each Other Right is lifted by its playful and slightly silly samples. His Robyn collab Life feels like a surprise 1990s number one single, so sassy and joyful. Like the first album, this is all aimed for the radio waves, but in no bad way.

The piano-led disco of Baddy On The Floor is surprisingly immediate considering it was created via lockdown video calls with Honey Dijon. I can just imagine them boogying at each other over computer screens, backgrounds augmented with disco light filters. Bless.

I've also figured out Jamie's secret. In Colour? In Waves? These are hairdressing-themed albums. I suppose the next one will be In Blue Rinse or In Bowl Cut.

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far.

12th best electronic music album of 2024: Bolis Pupul – Letter To Yu

Bolis Pupul: Letter To Yu (Because Music / DEEWEE)

It's that time, dear reader, when I point you towards my interview with Bolis Pupul for Electronic Sound magazine. (The link requires a subscription.) Here are some lazily-lifted bits from that feature...

"On the dual-identity single Completely Half, you can hear the 'doo dit-de doo-dee' sound of his Octopus card being scanned on the Hong Kong subway. The whimsical Goodnight Mr Yi is coloured by the tribal singing of the Dong people of China’s Guizhou Province.

"And in a curious turn of events, Doctor Says features the voice of a man who collared Bolis while he was wandering through Shenzhen." It's like a Michael Palin travel diary, only with more synthesisers, and with support from the guys from Soulwax.

As you can infer from ES waffle, this electronic pop album is very place-centred. The quirky beats and catchy synth lines take us down some imaginative avenues. On Spicy Crab, dedicated to his favourite food, arpeggios sparkle with gleefully optimism. And the frowning Kowloon has the kind of unease that could well get from a famously walled city.

This is also an album about family, in quite a lovely way. But you can read more about that in my Electronic Sound interview. Ever the salesman, me.

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far.

13th best electronic music album of 2024: Floating Points – Cascade

Floating Points: Cascade (Ninja Tune)

I don't know why my fellow Mancunian music fans get their bloomers in so much of a twist of Oasis. Or get their bucket hats in a knot over the Stone Roses. Yes, they are landmark Manchester bands, but what about Floating Points? Floating flipping Points, one of Manchester's best musical exports.

Flo-Po's new album Cascade is, as we say around these parts, a delightfully spiffing listen. He's in a dancefloor mood, skipping along those 4/4 bars like a clubber possessed. It's the most immediate I've heard him for some time: drum fills and synth squirls come fast. Banger after banger.

Key103, named after a Manchester radio station, sounds like Luke Abbott on his fourth Starbucks of the day. Afflecks Palace, named after a Manchester shopping arcade, is a right tetchy acid workout. Fast Forward, named after nothing in particular, crescendos so dang hard.

Despite the Manc leanings, Floating Points says this album was inspired by a mind-opening time spent in the Californian desert. The final track Ablaze perhaps evokes this best, its ever-quietening ambience sounding like heat haze on a dusty and cactussed horizon.

My only disappointment is that the album contains no references to that place just off the Northern Quarter that does rice and three curries for cheap. Now that would be a Manchester reference worth making music about. Now I'm hungry. Serves me right for writing this before lunch.

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far.

14th best electronic music album of 2024: L.B. Dub Corp – Saturn to Home

L.B. Dub Corp: Saturn to Home (Dekmantel)

I have no evidence to support the theory that the "L.B." in L.B. Dub Corp stands for Limp Bizkit. Or LeVar Burton who played Geordi in Star Trek. Or the common abbreviation for pound weights. Personally, I like to think it stands for "lovely blog".

Luke Slater is here to frost our ventricles and arson our arteries with a selection of techno tunes that run equally cold and hot. Cold because of the motorik machines pumping out the rhythms, and hot because of the soul that runs throughout.

Your Love is a highlight, a speeding discoball of urgent synths. The sharp house pacing of You Got Me adds drama to its tense strings. The latter features Robert Owens, the Fingers Inc star keen to sing about his "overdose of luuurve". You should see a doctor, mate. I'm sure there are pills for that.

Indeed, on this English tribute to American house music, the vocalists are the stars. Owens features alongside Paul St Hilaire and Miss Kittin. "Forget everything you've been told," says a sampled voice on the title track, and yes we're listening intently, but Slater's confident production demands to be remembered.

I've got it! L.B. stands for Lattice Boltzmann, a method in computational fluid dynamics for simulating fluids. Yeah. That totally sounds like Luke Slater's thing. Glad we got that sorted out.

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far.

15th best electronic music album of 2024: Aphex Twin – Music From The Merch Desk (2016 - 2023)

Aphex Twin: Music From The Merch Desk (2016 - 2023) (Warp Records)

You thought you could get away with it, didn't you. Sneaking this album out a week before Christmas while I'm busy wrapping all the wet beef mince I'd bought for friends. Well, I spotted you. No album can escape the clutches of Fat Roland.

I try not to include compilation or archive albums in my end-of-year lists. But by that count, this would disqualify Selected Ambient Works 85-92. So here it is. Music From The Merch Desk, a compilation of compositions that were literally available at the mech desks of his live shows.

This album is brilliant. Relieved of the pressures of producing a studio album, this is Aphex Twin at his most relaced. He's loosened his shoulders and he's having a ball, with throbbing fuzz, detuned house blaps, tweeting ambient interludes and a bunch of fun with breaks.

We get classic Twin in the hissy hi-hats and roomy reverb of T16.5 MADMA with nastya [London 03.06.17]. Meanwhile, pretend analog extmix 2b,e2,ru [Manchester 20.09.2019] takes a poppier direction, with its squelchy electro and bouncy beat. MT1T2 olpedroom [London 03.06.17] has a serene chord sequence that's punched through by a dumb face-plant of a synth line. It's a lot of fun.

It's nice to see his September 2019 show at Manchester's Warehouse Project represented here. I was at that gig, with my boogie trousers on, and my disco pants, and my macarena salopettes. 

Side note: One of the best tracks on this album is Spiral Staircase. Interesting story. This was a track that Aphex Twin submitted to a 2004 remix competition held by Luke Vibert (under his alias as Wagon Christ). Aphex won the competition with this track, which was a complete stitch-up but was also totes hilarious. He donated the prize to the runner-up.

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far.

16th best electronic music album of 2024: Skee Mask – Resort

Skee Mask: Resort (Ilian Tape)

Mr Mask, as I like to call him, has done pretty well out of my annual albums lists. His highly-praised 2018 Compro was my fifth favourite album of that year, while he fared even better under his previous guise as SCNTST when Self-Therapy came third in 2013.

His fourth Skee Mask album for Ilian Tape feels like a submarine dive into the deepest bits of his brain. Amid slow globules of ambient gloop, electronic crackles form a kind of cartilage that I would describe further if I knew anything about anatomy. 

He is no rush to lay out his vision. It's ten minutes until we get a substantial beat, on Reminiscrmx. Even then, it's a rolling break that's so ungrounded, it wafts in and out of consciousness. On Waldmeister, he ramps up the BPMs yet sounds quieter than ever as the bass drum barely registers.

The sound design is mixing knob-perfect, every layer precisely configured in 92 different dimensions, but its the shimmer and the wooze that will stay with us the most. Event with more straighforward electro like the gently giddy Daytime Gamer, it's all about the ooze. The ooze and the wooze.

At its fastest? Imagine Autechre doing Balaeric house classics. At its slowest? Imagine Boards of Canada's synthesisers melting like Salvador Dali's clocks. And in the middle? Er... um... somewhere in the middle of that, I suppose.

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far.

17th best electronic music album of 2024: Tim Reaper & Kloke – In Full Effect

Tim Reaper & Kloke: In Full Effect (Hyperdub)

The Hyperdub label has been home to Burial, Loraine James and DJ Rashad. In Full Effect is Hyperdub's first jungle album. No pressure, gang, but if you mess this up, I'm never listening to music ever again.

Tim Reaper and Kloke's album is, in a phrase I usually use when judging vegetable competitions, an absolute whopper. This is proper jungle. And unlike Calvin Harris doing acid house, there isn't a shred of pretence to any of it.

Opener Continuities rings wildly as its breaks feed into themselves, washing Metalheadz chords giving occasional respite amid the mayhem. Juice drops a brilliantly rave saw bass, and Wildstyle shows a darker side as it shows some nu-breaks chops.

Jungle and drum 'n' bass was at its best when the claustrophobic rhythms circled round to have the opposite effect. When the music became so heady, there was a rolling feeling of pressure-drops even while the sonic layers continued to build. Like the music is breathing. This album nails that perfectly.

Something this good – and yes, I'm already regretting not having this higher on my list – can only come from people attuned to mid-1990s dance music culture. I had flashbacks to seeing LTJ Bukem at Tribal Gathering, or indeed listening to static-fuzzed jungle tracks on FM radio. You can't get much more of a fuller effect than that.

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far.

18th best electronic music album of 2024: Caribou – Honey

Caribou: Honey (City Slang)

Everyone's favourite electronic reindeer is no stranger to the pages of this blog. Suddenly appeared in my list of best albums of 2020. I pronounced Swim as the 8th best album of 2010. And indeed, that album's highlight Sun provided a drunken soundtrack to a significant moment of my life 14-ish years ago.

Honey is Caribou's sixth album, or the 11th under Dan Snaith's various names. When asked about the production on this new album, Snaith said that, despite having more gear at his disposal, it was "essentially it’s the same as ever".

And he's right. This is the same reliable Caribou as ever. Broke My Heart does chipmunk-voiced wub garage. Do Without You does glistening metallic house. Come Find Me does echoing, insistent loops to soundtrack boozy nights out. Title track Honey does heavily-filtered rave chords. This Caribou is soooo Caribou.

I'm okay with that. I don't want some things to change. Caribou needs to sound sunny and snappy and a little bit cheeky: I couldn't handle it if he suddenly went emo or country. If Pot Noodle changed the flavour of their Bombay Bad Boy, I would be punching holes through concrete walls. Same with this. 

While writing the "emo or country" line in that last paragraph, I almost added "or brass". But then I realised a brass band version of a Caribou album would be the best thing ever to happen to recorded sound. Make it happen, Dan.

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far.

19th best electronic music album of 2024: Loidis – One Day

Loidis: One Day (Incienso)

Fat Roland, mate, what are you doing?! Why are you including a corner shop in your top twenty albums of 2024? Are you being sponsored by discounted multipacks of nearly out-of-date Monster Munch? No, reader, you're thinking of Londis. This is about Huerco S.'s deep house alter-ego Loidis.

The bass drum does much of the heavy lifting on One Day. Ever present, ever pulsing. As important to the snappy, brisk house sounds is its synth production. This is shiny stuff, with very liquid chord sounding super oiled.

The more you listen, the more it becomes about the details. On the uniquely-named Sugar Snot, there's a shimmy to the rhythm that adds deep soul. Wait And See's hurried patter has an undergrowth of fuzz that might have you hallucinating. And Love's Lineaments slowly evolves from a misty hiss to a slightly foggier hiss.

Huerco S. is no stranger to low-level meditations, as attested to by his 2016 ambient album Those Of You Who Have Never (And Also Those Who Have). But it's nice to hear him bringing that vibe into a new work without once losing the need for an upfront boss drum.

And yes, I too am now craving a pack of pickled onion Monster Munch. Or flaming hot. Yes, I think flaming hot rather than pickled onion. What's the other one? Horseradish or washing up liquid or something? Sorry. What were we talking about?

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far.

20th best electronic music album of 2024: Sophie – Sophie

SOPHIE: SOPHIE (Transgressive)

Sophie effortlessly changing music forever with her debut album proper Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides in 2018. I was slow to pick up on it despite Faceshopping being a banger. I'm slow to pick up on a lot of things: I haven't started watching series three of The Traitors yet.

Her brother leads the charge on this posthumous album. You'd kind of think that her legacy wasn't worth meddling with, although (a) a lot of the album was already finished, and (b) Sophie's reputation has bloomed in recent years, with Google dedicating a Doodle to her and Charli XCX dedicating an album to her.

Sophie surprisingly engrossing. Sparkle pop provides the sweetness, like mainlining a sherbet dib-dab. But there are frenetic beats in the classic vein of IDM / EDM. There's farty electro, dirty techno, smothered rave and liquid r'n'b. Even a speckling of spoken word starring Nina Kraviz.

Critics will point to the preponderance of guest stars as evidence that there isn't much Sophie on Sophie. And 18 guest spots on 16 tracks does indeed make for a very crowded buffet table at the party. But it's fun. Big Sister does spoilt clowning on Do You Wanna Be Alive. Juliana Huxtable is a sassy tannoy announcer on Plunging Asymptote. And Sophie's partner Evita Manji does a, er, sassy German tannoy announcer on Berlin Nightmare.

I'm glad this made my top twenty, despite it breaching my vague rule of not including anything too poppy. Please send My Forever to the top of the charts immediately.

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far.

Best electronic music albums of 2024: from Slowfoam to Wrecked Lightship via Tycho

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far (the series will resume on Saturday 4 January).

Slowfoam: Transcorporeal Portal (Somewhere Press)
Madelyn Byrd's adventurous ambience on this, their first album proper, feels like being lost in the heady haze of a poppy field. The quiet, studied loops lilt with echoing polyrhythms, and the field recordings seemingly infect the circuits of its studio machines. Find yourself a remote field and pop this on your headphones.

SOTE: Ministry of Tall Tales (SVBKVLT)
A singular sound from Tehran. This album uses xenharmonic chimes, which makes as much sense to me as saying this album uses jangulous yoob-pappers. Its polyrhythms make for a wall of sound in which everything sounds like Lorenzo Senni possessed by a demon.

T.Williams: Raves Of Future Past (Purple City Souffle)
The T stands for Tesfa, but it could stand for: Tightly-wound loops, tense reverb, tweaked vocal samples, tough drum 'n' bass workouts, the dirtiest bass you could possibly imagine. It can also stand for teapot, but that's entirely irrelevant here.

Tristan Arp: a pool, a portal (Wisdom Teeth)
A third album from Human Pitch label co-founder Arp. It's very lovely, like a flower arrangement or a china poodle, Its purls of playful melodies chitter-chatter in a most pleasing and wistful way. The vocal bits on Life After Humans will tingle your spinebones.

Tycho: Infinite Health (Ninja Tune)
He's named after an astronaut, y'know. Makes sense. This seventh studio album is spacey and full of awe. Tycho's easy instrumentals may not challenge, but it's all so solid. As reliable as a planetary orbit and as comforting as a, er, space suit. I ran out of space metaphors. (Artwork pictured above.)

Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan: Your Community Hub (Castles in Space)
A nod of respect to Gordon Chapman-Fox for his commitment to his town planning theme. On the agenda here are glimmering cycles of ambience, with huggable melodies designed to slow your day right down. Pleasantly uplifting throughout. All in favour say aye. (Artwork pictured above.)

Will Long, DJ Sprinkles: acid trax (Comatonse Recordings)
At the hands of other producers, a double-album of acid house might be a lot, like popping too much chilli powder onto your cornflakes in the morning. But Long & Sprinkles slow things right down, and their scratchy acid cuts breathe in a delicious reverb fog.

Wrecked Lightship: Antiposition (Peak Oil)
This album earned comparisons to Squarepusher, Roni Size and Aphex Twin, as well as early UK armchair techno. While intimidating at first, its dense electronic spatter focusses more with each play, every fractal revealing more personality. Lightships ahoy.

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far (the series will resume on Saturday 4 January).

Best electronic music albums of 2024: from RamonPang to Shinichi Atobe via Ryuichi Sakamoto

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far.

RamonPang: Life Cycle Waves (Self-released)
Nature is awful. Have you ever read The Day Of The Triffids?! There's an outdoorsy natural feel to Redditor RamonPang's third album, with pastoral ambience washing at the edges of this hugely enjoyable collection of speckled, characterful IDM. Like being in a sunlit field full of robot flowers.

Rian Treanor with Rotherham Sight & Sound: Action Potential (Electronic Music Club)
The star of 2024's No Bounds festival gets some visually-impaired Yorkshire pensioners to play metallic Autechre-style techno. I'm not making that up: here they are rehearsing. The result is a right old boogie: it sounds like everything including the kitchen sink twerking like crazy on the dancefloor. Genius.

Roc: Makina Trax 2013-2023 (Reel Torque)
From is opening squirples to its hardcore trap denouement, this sprawling collection of offcuts will have you reeling. Is it rave? Is it "computer music for hooligans" (Discogs description of his Evol outfit)? Is it a defencless arpeggiator being poked by a thousand 303 bassline machines? A glorious digital mess.

R.Rebeiro: Unrendered Language (Downwards)
When lost in the gloom, your attention is drawn to the shadows, not the objects you can see. Rohan Rebeiro recorded these low-key acoustic experiments in a vast Melbourne hall, and around the taps and clonks and rhythmic stutters, we're really listening to the reverb and the spaces inbetween. Nice.

Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus (Milan)
A slow piano masterpiece that is worth your time and investment. From my Electronic Sound review: "Sakamoto’s final performance was the concert film ‘Opus’, directed by his son Neo Sora... by the time we get to the spacious Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, it’s almost too much to bear. Almost. What a legacy."

Scanner: Alchemeia (Alltagsmusik)
This album launched a new record label, Alltagsmusik or "everyday music", dedicated to the music of ambient master Scanner. Ever the detail geek, Scanner recorded Alchemeia using limited 1960s library music techniques. Its forced simplicity makes for a surprisingly complex and haunting listen. 

Seefeel: Everything Squared (Warp Records)
Vogue magazine called this album "sadcore", which is hilarious. The melodies are rather melancholic on this long-awaited return of these post-rock ambienteers. The music is unrushed and soothing, contemplative and gaunting, and wavers between shimmering fuzzes and gasping, grasping ambience

Shinichi Atobe: Discipline (DDS)
Why are you not listening RIGHT NOW to Atobe's latest collection of addictive dubby house goodness? Just listen to those signature hi-hats rasp, and those head-noddy loops that chug endlessly for your pleasure. Put this blog down immediately, and wrap your ears around Discipline. It'll make your life better.

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far.

Best electronic music albums of 2024: from Multiples to Pye Corner Audio via Omar Souleyman

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far.

Multiples (Speedy J & Surgeon): Two Hours Or Something (STOOR)
From my Electronic Sound review: "An album of grubby jams recorded in Speedy’s hometown of Rotterdam... You can feel the existential coffee slurps of studio sessions stretching into the early hours." I think I also mentioned "beefy concrete blaps". This is nocturnal stuff, like the moon or an owl or a burglar. 

Nídia & Valentina: Estradas (Latency)
On their first collaboration, what Nidia does with Valentina Magaletti’s drumming is quite something. Old meets new in these restless rhythmic experiments. Marimba cuts through drum machine loops in a studio tug-of-war. Imagine papping Ableton with a rolling pin. Basically that, but good.

NikNak: Ireti (Accidental)
"If there was a Black Blade Runner, this would be the soundtrack." This was NikNak's starting point for her new album, which is a (very) free-wheeling ride through soundtrack experimentalism, electronic jazz and spacious jungle. I've heard things you people wouldn't believe.

Omar Souleyman: Erbil (Mad Decent)
After escaping civil war, Souleyman found himself in the Erbil, the capital of Kurdistan. Hence the title of this album. And what a delight it is, with his usual celebratory mash-up of Levantine instrumentalism and four-to-the-floor dance beats. He turns 60 in a couple of years – I bet the party's going to be immense. (Artwork pictured above.)

Patrick Holland: Infra (Verdicchio Music Publishing)
Shout out to Vancouver. He's a talented fellow, this Patrick Holland. He has turned his hand to pleasant indie pop as well as ekeing out a living as a DJ. Infra puts him right back in the middle of the dancefloor. Smooth house and electronica, with a nose for a nifty bassline.

Peachlyfe: Permission to Roam (UMAY)
This pleasing prance through club-adjacent dance sounds comes with a narrative. Something to do with a cis man and a a trans woman on an existential non-binary journey. Quite frankly, I'm hear for it. An ear-tickler from start to finish, and at its most fun when the BPMs are given a prod.

Perc: The Cut Off (Perc Trax)
Perc returns for Perc Trax' 100th release. After a noisy opening vignette, he's proving himself much more caffeinated that 2017's Bitter Music. Thudding bass bulldozing, pneumatic electronics and rave shredders dominate. Imperial Leather could easily beat The Prodigy in a fist fight despite being named after soap. (Artwork pictured above.)

Priori: This but More (NAFF)
An album that could have been in my final top 20 if it not for minor factors such as the wind blowing the wrong way or me getting out of the wrong side of my hammock. Exquisite and mottled ruminations for this Montreal artist's third album, when deep house is reduced to the pitter patter of production perfection.

Pye Corner Audio: The Endless Echo (Ghost Box)
Thank goodness for Mr Audio and his expansive electronica. His return to Ghost Box means more neon 80s nostalgia, drenched with detuned chords and analogue scrumptiousness. It's all so SOLID, with everything in the right place, and I hope these tracks get used in every TV soundtrack from here to high heaven. 

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far.

Best electronic music albums of 2024: from Maelstrom to Mr Mitch via Meemo Comma

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far.

Maelstrom: The FM Tapes (Central Processing Unit)
Sheffield's Central Processing Unit is one of those record labels I'll always trust, like the NHS, teachers and Magic 8-Balls. The FM Tapes comprises ten very electronic electro tracks plus one squiggly interlude. As robotic as this gets, there'll always be tracks like Res 06 full of melodic humanity.

Martyn: Through Lines (3024)
The brilliant Martyn has found a load of tracks from 2005 to 2015 at the back of a drawer. This collection plays like a love-letter to the UK rave scene, with breezy beats and attitude aplenty. Listen to Yet as it oozes into ambience or the liquid breaks of Cloud Convention. These offcuts are very on indeed.

Meat Beat Manifesto & Merzbow: Extinct (Cold Spring Records)
Jack Dangers' porky production outfit teams up with Japanese noise merchant Masami Akita for this remarkable and rambunctious collaboration. Lead track ¡FLAKKA! is the sound of a breakbeat shoved face-first through a shredder and coming out the other end twenty minutes later almost intact. Brutal and brilliant.

Meemo Comma: Decimation Of I (Planet Mu Records)
A filmic ambient meditation based on a 1972 Soviet sci-fi novel? Oh go on then. Lara Rix-Martin has gone proper moody with her latest Meemo music. Close your eyes and be transported by the sweeping chords, the folky melancholy, the windswept decay of it all. I feel suitable decimated.

Midland: Fragments of Us (Graded)
Has it really taken Midland this long to come up with a debut album? Finally. Despite moments highlighting queer struggle over the years, and quite rightly so, his pixel-perfect production makes for a gloriously optimistic and warm electronic music experience. A great guest line-up too, including Arthur Russell.

Minotaur Shock: It All Levels Out (Bytes)
This Bristol producer's tenth album pulls on the heart strings. He calls it a "hopeful meditation" and he's not wrong. Something about the yearning chords, the analogue electronics, the spaces between. The title track's lilting guitar and piano play might just have you gasping for breath.

Monolake: Studio (imbalance computer music)
A producer naming their album Studio is a bit like an author calling their novel Desk. This is indeed a tribute to Monolake's dusty old studio kit. And what kit. In the brooding ambience, you can hear every patter of static, every growl of bass, every ominous wash. My next blog post will be called Blog.

Mr. Mitch: The Lost Boy (Gobstopper Records)
South London's finest continues to push grime into wild directions: soul, house, spoken word, techno, self-reflective meditations and beyond. There could be comparisons to Joy Orbison, Dam Funk, HudMo, plenty more. he says it was inspired by listening to Portishead while on a trip to Nigeria.

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far.

Best electronic music albums of 2024: from Kim Gordon to Machinedrum via Kokoko!

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far.

Kim Gordon: The Collective (Matador)
The guitar one from Sonic Youth? Oh yes indeed. The electronics on this album are dirrrty. That's dirty with several Rs. Way more industrial and grime than you might expect. The sweaty stomp of single Bye Bye will have you scrubbing yourself clean. I love how corporate and wrong the record cover feels in contrast to Kim's wonderful noise.

KMRU & Kevin Richard Martin: Disconnect (Phantom Limb)
Ambient musician KMRU becomes vocalist on this most unusual collaboration with the fella also known as The Bug. It has all the filthy underside we know from The Bug, but beats are cast aside in favour of droning ambience and hazy repetition. A slow, slow album full of dark, dark melody.

Egg: Egg (Egg)
This isn't actually an album. I was just checking if you had fallen asleep. If you thought "why is Fat Roland suddenly yabbering about eggs?", then at least you were giving me some modicum of attention. Thank you, I appreciate that. Carry on.

Kokoko!: BUTU (Transgressive)
Here comes the second studio album from a Congolese collective not known for being shy. I love the rave shapes of Donne Moi and the Detroit stylings of Elingi Biso Te, all fired up with their irresistible Central African sass. They make great promo videos too. I bet they absolutely tear the roof off performing live. 

Lao: Chapultepec (Naafi)
An ear-popping tribute to the vegetation that gives oxygen to Mexico City – "Chapultepec" means “grasshopper hill”. Never mind grasshoppers. This music is great lumping hippos tearing through our ear canals with dizzying breakbeats and multicolour hardcore. As spawling and as high as the City itself.

Leonce: System of Objects (Morph Tracks)
Club Morph's Leonce rattles off house bangers as if we're listening to Kiss FM back in the olden days. This is yer beans-on-toast house music. None of that modern slop like, um, AI-generated aubergine or whatever the kids eat these days. Think Todd Terry or Van Helden, albeit with a slightly tougher techno exterior.    

Lolina: Unrecognisable (Relaxin Records)
I'd just watched a clip of Children Of Men before listening to this narrative concept album. It seems apt. The principle of Unrecognisable is too involved to describe here, but imagine Maxinquaye-era Tricky producing a sci-fi war film while smoking twice as many blunts as usual. All made on late-1980s sampling gear.

Low End Activist: Airdrop (Peak Oil)
Hardcore? Bristol's Low End Activist knows the score. This is old-skool rave music torn apart by one of those Metalhead dogs in Black Mirror. Breakbeats rise to the surface, rave chops appear gasping for air, then it all disappear into an echoing void. And so it goes on like a fever dream. A most unusual but addictive drug.

Machinedrum: 3FOR82 (Ninja Tune)
Travis Stewart went to Joshua Tree National Park to find himself, then came up with this album. Unfortunately, there are no tracks about withered cactuses or moth-bitten coyotes. As you'd expect with an Md LP, there are smooth jams, banging beats, and tonnes of guest vocals. All very nice.

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far.

Best electronic music albums of 2024: from I.JORDAN to Kiasmos via Jon Hopkins

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far.

I. JORDAN: I AM JORDAN (Ninja Tune)
What's your name again? Oh yeah. Jordan. Hello, Jordan. This debut album has had all sorts of accolades, and rightly so. Colossal tunes abound, BPM turned up for the heavy club bits, and moodier instrumental when he wants to go introspective. Well done, er, thingy, whatever your name is.

Iglooghost: Tidal Memory Exo (LuckyMe)
This is the fourth album, I think, from Mr Ghost. It's powerful energetic stuff, like a steam train or me doing my boxercise. There's the big beats we'd expect from a LuckyMe release, but then there's his moody vocals which equally add humanity and frighten the pants of us. It's a real mood, this one. 

Jeff Mills: The Trip – Enter The Black Hole (Axis)
The Detroit techno wizard's "space opera". From my Electronic Sound review: "This is black hole noir, with clouds of ambience, a nebulae of woody xylophones, discordant free jazz, even a foxy organ here and there. If it’s not an opera, it’s a zero-gravity ballet: spaceman Jeff is clearly having fun." 

Jill Fraser: Earthly Pleasures (Drag City)
Modular synth genius Fraser mines her many years of composing for this collection of tunes created using her custom-built Serge modular system. Its twinkling frequencies are hymn-like in their elegance. Another excuse to plug an Electronic Sound interview? Of course. I have to get my earthly pleasures where I can.

Jlin: Akoma (Planet Mu Records)
Bjork turns up on the opening track on the third album from queen of footwork Jlin. So I'm won over. The job is done. Pop Bjork on the first track and I'm yours. Philip Glass appears too – best dinner party ever. It has been seven years since Black Origami, and Jlin is as jittery and as restless as ever.

Jon Hopkins: Ritual (Domino Recording Co)
This was originally written for an installation on an ice rink. The music is quiet and weightless, buzzy and airy, and designed to be heard in one sitting. Unlike actual ice skating, which is ankle-hurty and has me crying on the sidelines within five minutes. Worth a listen, but only while we wearing proper normal shoes. (Artwork pictured above.)

Julia-Sophie: forgive too slow (Ba Da Bing!)
Let's get this out of the way – here's my Electronic Sound interview with Julia-Sophie. I hope they're paying me for the clicks. There was much to love about Julia-Sophie's album. Poppy and dreamy in equal parts, and disarmingly personal. The dramatic disco of Numb is one of the tunes of the year.

Justice: Hyperdrama (Ed Banger Records)
I fell out of love with Justice. They got way too prog rock. This latest offering is much more likeable, with all the right beats in all the right places. It doesn't break any new ground, but there are tunes aplenty. One reviewer on Bandcamp sums it up: "If this album was a person I wouldn't marry it, but it would be a close friend."

Kiasmos: II (Erased Tapes)
In 2014, I said Kiasmos' first album was the third best album of the year. I was wrong. It was the best. This long-awaited follow-up couldn't shine a candle to the first, but it still has all the splendour and emotion that make this Arnalds–Rasmussen collaboration so special. Oh my giddy heart, I love Kiasmos. (Artwork pictured above.)

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far.

Best electronic music albums of 2024: from Frank & Tony to Howard Thomas via Glok & Timothy Clerkin

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far.

Frank & Tony: Ethos (Scissor & Thread)
I'm pretty sure Frank and Tony are the guys who laid my patio last year. This is the pair's second full-length album. It's an odyssey into the deepest of deep house. At one point, an acid line drops into a pool of warm ambience, and it feels like the album is floating outside of itself. Smooth, like well-laid paving tones.

Gavsborg: Presents : Select (Edwin)
This is a smattering of unreleased studio work by Gavsborg from Jamaica's Equiknoxx Collective. He's clearly had fun compiling this expertly-produced selection of electronic noodling and dub reggae moments. Worth a listen. It appears to have been released by a company that sells denim jeans.

Ghost Dubs: Damaged (Pressure)
We're staying on a dubby theme with this album, although this time the territory is sparser. It's dub techno, but such are its moment of deep statis, it's a few short furlongs from being a drone album. Volume up, slow down, immerse yourself.  It's out on The Bug's Pressure label.

Glok / Timothy Clerkin: Alliance (Bytes)
The chap from Ride teams up with a banger clubby bloke to produce a pleasing musical meander. For fans of Andrew Weatherall and Death In Vegas. In my interview with Glok and Clerkin ahead of this album's release, I warmed to their "distressingly detuned foghorn". I don't think it was an actual foghorn.

Hainbach: Breve (Seil Records)
One for synth geeks. Among his ancient gear used on this album, Hainbach employed a Ondioline, an old analogue synth first invented in 1939, and lent to him my synthesiser restorer Forgotten Futures. The album is slow, lilting, ambient, elegant, and wonderfully healing if you're looking for that sort of thing. 

Heavee: Unleash (Hyperdub)
It's like Chicago's Heavee is on a dance mat, skipping from one lit-up genre square to another. There's restless footwork, soulful r'n'b, giddy rave, wonky experimentalism, and rich synth jams. Yeah perhaps it needs more focus, but we're going dancing with Heavee and he ain't letting go of your hand any time soon.

Hesaitix: Noctian Airgap (PAN)
There's a moment in James Whipple's new album, about halfway through Geflatnet in fact, where you might yearn for the 'smoker's beats' era of trip hop. Yeah, daddio, I was down with the kids once. It's a blunty concoction of pristine sound design, and it missed out on my final top twenty by the tiniest sliver of Rizla.

Howard Thomas: Skin Breaker (Sound Signature)
Theo Parrish's Sound Signature's label presents their 100th release. Howard 'H-Fusion' Thomas deals in no-nonsense Detroit techno. It's inspired by the science fiction he grew up with: a pretty neat mood note for an album that is so robotic and so pleasingly alien. All very Detroit: hardware with heart.

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far.

Best electronic music albums of 2024: from Dean Spunt to Four Tet via DJ Fitness

 

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far.

Dean Spunt: Basic Editions (Drag City)
Dean what-now? Using an old E-M synth module he picked up for fifty dollars, Mr Spunt has produced an album of sonic explorations and process experiments. It sounds like we've fallen into a matrix, or at the very least, a second-hand dot-matrix printer. Very wonky, but there's warmth in the circuits.

DJ Fitness: The DJ Fitness Program (Domesticated)
I am not a gym type of guy. Those places are too sweaty. Miami's Pablo Arrangoiz has many aliases, and this is his most fun. Expect warm, funky acid cuts, delicious 808 electro beats, and leftfield bossanova. Its cover design, a pastiche of an old-school two-tone flyer, is a stroke of genius. (Artwork pictured above.)

DJ Lycox: Guetto Star (Principe)rt
Lisbon's kuduro music scene is probably not known to most, and I hope this album changes that. DJ Lycox's album is a mix of folky rhythms and twitchy drum works, led throughout by Afro-Portuguese song. Where else could you have a track called Mortal Kombat featuring a clarinet putting a donk on it?

DJ Nigga Fox: Chá Preto (Príncipe)
More kuduro music, and another one from Portugal. On this album, Rogério Brandão has earned comparisons to Ricardo Villalobos and Autechre. It's a real mish-mass of styles, with slow jams meeting skittering techno. Difficult to pin down, but an interesting enough curiosity to include here.

eL-Hortobāgyi Hortator: Thessalien Stoa Paradosi (Elhellel)
Here we have a collaboration between veteran Hungarian composer László Hortobãgyi and someone called Hadjilaskaris. And it is almost impossible to describe. Egyptian ambient dub? A Megadog gig in a desert? Psy-Sphynx? I dunno, but you should let these guys be your loop gurus because it's thoroughly compelling.

Fergus Jones: Ephemera (Numbers)
The artist formerly known as Perko releases his first slab of vinyl as plain old Fergus Jones. The album is sultry and spacious, and his numerous collaborators include Huerco S, James K and spacey beatmaster Koreless. A likeable (dare I say it) coffee table album, and at its best when embracing the dub.

FJAAK: FJAAK The System (FJAAK)
I need to admit something. I hate this album title. It's a rubbish pun. That aside, these two self-professed "hardware heads" from Berlin are bringing the party hard. Roof-raising drum and bass, screeching acid techno, and stadium-sized rave smashers abound. A big sound needs big names: Modeselektor and Skee Mask feature.

Four Tet: Three + (Text Records)
Mr Tet's twelfth album needs little introduction. You know his M.O.: Infectious grooves dappled with optimism, although he's on a pretty mellow tip on this album too. Closing track Three Drums is perhaps the most epic I've heard Four Tet. Amid the airy euphoria, on this he becomes Thousand Tet. Just lovely. (Artwork pictured above.)

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far.

Best electronic music albums of 2024: from 1127 to De Schuurman via British Murder Boys

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far.

1127: ض (Nashazphone)
Arising from the Cairo underground, 1127 produces a second album of dirty industrial techno and caustic rave. It's tough stuff, perhaps lightened by its occasional influences of early twentieth-century Egyptian music. 1127 in centimetres is about the same height as a telegraph pole, a fact which is no help to anyone whatsoever.

33EMYBW: Holes of Sinian (SVBKVLT)
You can abbreviate 33EMYBW's name to 33, pronounced "San San". She calls her music "limb dance", and this fourth album of footwork-adjacent, scratchy, experimental robotics will certainly encourage bodily convulsions. Collaborations include Marina Herlop, Batu, Forrest Gander and oxi peng.

AceMo: Save The World (Self-released)
This prolific Brooklyn DJ gives us a welcome blast of energy on this relentlessly positive album. Thundering house music, kinetic techno and dramatic electro. "Music made with the intent to make a positive impact on this Earth," says Mr Mo. He spent his youth in a marching band: I can see why. This just missed out on my top 20 of 2024.

Actress: Statik (Smalltown Supersound)
Actress composed his tenth album under an "extensive flow state", which I think might mean diahorrea or something. His rhythms are still squeaky, still cheeky, but perhaps softer and more accessible than previous work. Some of it sounds like early Aphex Twin – just listen to that paddy bass drum on Six. (Artwork pictured above.)

Anetha: Mothearth (Mama told ya)
Parts of Anetha's first album are so bouncy, you might start chanting "badger badger badger". This Parisian artist is a trained architect, and the beats are appropriately architectural: squared-off trance, perfectly symmetrical donks. A lot of euphoric fun. Mushroom mushroom!

Basile3: 43°C (InFiné)
A Bandcamp review of this album, recorded between Paris and Brussels, says: "43 is my favourite prime number for synaesthete reasons." Ah, looks like we have some friendly geeks in the house. Excellent. This album is a playful mish-mash of ambient techno, hyped-up club music and Insta-pop. A scrappy but fun debut.

British Murder Boys: Active Agents and House Boys (Downwards)
In my Electronic Sound interview with these guys, I mentioned this album's "excoriated acid lines", its "all-consuming reverberations" and it sounding like "a stack of modular hardware escaping from a torture chamber". All in a good way of course. Really great stuff from Surgeon and Regis. (Artwork pictured above.)

Christian AB: The Nu Life LP (Faith Beat)
No-nonsense pumping techno. Three of the tracks are called Locked Groove, which is pretty self-explanatory. The tracks here were tested on clubbers during Faith Beat founder Ryan Elliott's DJ gigs, then realised in vinyl form by Christian Browne. Listen if you like your beats minimalist and absolutely pumping.

De Schuurman: Bubbling Forever (Nyege Nyege Tapes)
"You think this is some gangsta sh*t" says a sample halfway through this album. If this music for gangsters, the mobsters are wearing clown noses, multi-coloured spats and silly-string machine guns. These party bangers are restless and raucous, with air horns, 8-bit beats and a tonne of Caribbean flavour. 

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far.

Best electronic music albums of 2024: an introduction

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far.

Welcome to my annual countdown of the best electronic music albums of 2024. I am about to write about a bonanza of bleepy bangers that are arbitrarily linked to one particular orbit around the Sun. Why group albums by year? It makes no sense.

Except my annual countdown is no longer annual. I had blogged my Best Albums every year since 2009, but last year, I didn't do a list. I had good reasons. My brain was recovering from a stroke, and so was, as the result of the stroke, the rest of my body. It's a good reason to miss a year. Consider this as a surprise return from a long absence, like Oasis or the Labour government or that bloke who turned up in the shower in that episode of Dallas one time.

I should start by giving my usual mealy-mouthed caveats:

• This list is not comprehensive. I usually miss something obvious – no, let's correct that. I always, without fail, miss something obvious.

• This list was written on a whim, without much forethought, care or attention. It's totally first-drafty and the list might have ended up entirely different if written on a different day, or if I woke up without drinking my usual bottle of morning Toilet Duck. In short: don't take it too seriously.

I try to avoid more obvious and popular electronic music, so this will be a different list to other compilers. Don't expect any Pet Shop Boys or Charlie XCX, despite their albums having more merit than a merit factory that has accidentally over-producing merits on its merit conveyor belt so everything's going to explode in what will be known as the Great Merit Factory Disaster of 2024. Having said that, there is one pop album, at number 20. You'll have to wait to find out.

I have 95 albums on my best-of-2024 list.

• 75 of these albums will be dealt with very quickly in nine summary blog posts, bish bash bosh, blink and you'll miss them. These posts will be published on Friday 3 January 2025.

• For the top 20, I will write something a bit more detailed. Probably. I don't know – I haven't written any of it yet. But those posts will publish throughout the weekend of 4 and 5 January 2025.

This will cumulate in my grand announcement of the number one top dog Best Electronic Music Album of 2024. This will happen some time later on Sunday, although I am popping out to see Nosferatu so you might have to wait while I get down with the vampires. When I do finally reveal my number one, feel free to celebrate with party poppers, fireworks, palm fronds and ritual sacrifices.

So sit back, pop your feet on a pouffe, and crack open a bottle of fizzy cola. It's time to bleep the best of the year. Further blog posts incoming.

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far.