Ultimate 90s Number One: Livin' the ABBA Dream

Here is a new edition of everyone's 4,980,337th favourite blog series, Ultimate 1990s Number One. I am trawling through every UK number one single of the 1990s and deciding which is the bleepiest banger, the king of the beats, the bossest of the boss drums.

Here are 11 more hopefuls.

The contenders

Baddiel, Skinner and The Lightning Seeds: Three Lions | Bombalurina: Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini | Boyz II Men: End of the Road | Erasure: Abba-esque (EP) | Gary Barlow: Forever Love | Jamiroquai: Deeper Underground | Lenny Kravitz: Fly Away | Livin' Joy: Dreamer | Partners in Kryme: Turtle Power | Westlife: Swear It Again | Wet Wet Wet: Goodnight Girl

Turtles versus Timmy

Who's better? The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Timmy Mallet? The Turtles are named after Italian renaissance painters, while Timmy is pretty nifty with a paintbrush. The Turtles love wielding nunchucks, while Timmy has a huge mallet. They all dress like an explosion in a Dulux factory.

The answer is neither. The heroic half-shelled Partners In Kryme and Mr Mallet's Bombalurina outfit both produced terrible songs, so they can be eliminated immediately. Incidentally, check out Timmy's cycling adventures online – they're lovely.

No, no, no

I have a whole bunch of songs I want to dismiss next. I shall try to be polite, even though the following songs make me want to rip my ears off.

I've checked the lyrics, and apparently Boyz II Men's End Of The Road isn't about roadworks. They're still going, apparently, doing reality television and performing the national anthem at sporty sport games. It's anyone's guess whether they ever completed their transition from boyz to men.

Cheshire's cheesiest pop cat Gary Barlow scored ten number one singles in the 1990s, either solo or as part of Take That. Despite his obvious songwriting prowess, I wouldn't recognise a single note of Forever Love even if you whispered it into my lughole while pantomime horsing together.

"I wish that I could fly," said Orville the du-- er, I mean, Lenny Kravitz on his 26th single Fly Away. Flying was a common theme for 1990s number one singles, with flying-themed chart toppers from R Kelly, Westlife and U2. Even Offspring reckoned they were pretty fly. Fly Away is perhaps the most asinine of the lot of them.

Here is a list of things I would rather do than listen to Westlife's Swear It Again. Chew razor blades. Snort spiders. Wear a cheese grater as underpants. Have a gong bath with Ann Widdecombe. Listen to Swear It Again twice.

Oh and Wet Wet Wet? No no no.

Eyeballs and guns  

I remember watching the Euro '96 match in which Gareth Southgate fudged a crucial penalty. I remember because, until a couple of years ago, it was the only football match I have watched all the way through. I'm not a footie lad. However, I do love The Lightning Seeds and standup comedy, so Three Lions was alright by me. The song is remarkable in that it has spent three weeks at number one in three totally separate weeks across 22 years.

I suppose, objectively speaking, Deeper Underground is a banger of a tune. However, on this blog in 2008, I wrote "There is no excuse for Jamiroquai: he makes me want to smash in my eyeballs with guns." Crikey, so much body horror on this blog. My ire has dissipated over the years, but his blend of furry-hatted squeaky cheese still misses the mark with me. Deeper Underground is from the Godzilla (1998) soundtrack, which has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 20%. Enough said.

Showing some love

Which leaves us with two electronic music contenders (pictured above). Will either of them get through to the final, or will I do my usual thing of being sniffy about both of them?

Dreamer was Paolo and Gianni Visnadi's attempt to emulate Robin S's Show Me Love. Fact: it was voiced by Snap!'s live vocalist Janice Robinson. Between Dreamer's first foray into the top 20 in 1994 and its eventual number one spot eight months later in 1995, the duo also had a smash hit as Alex Party (Don't Give Me Your Life). Livin' Joy are the real deal, and they go through to the next round.

While Erasure's tribute to Abba seemed frivolous, with the pair dragging up for the promo video, the Abba-esque EP is a chunky bit of electronic music. An unashamed analogue bleepfest. Their version of SOS is one of the best headphone listens of the 1990s. Novelty be damned, this easily goes through to the next round.

Thank goodness. A happy result.

See more Ultimate 90s number ones 

Come to snazzy: Wear Aphex Twin, scare your friends, regret nothing

If you've ever wanted to wear Aphex Twin all over your body, you could be in luck.

The New York clothing company Supreme has launched an Aphex clothing line. It includes GoreTex jackets, football jerseys, shorts and thermals, and something called a Mantis coin knife. Hey, an insect needs to defend itself.

The hoodie they showed off on Instagram is exquisitely ridiculous, with Aphex's grinning face glaring at you in 360 degrees of grin. It retails for over £500, which is one pound for every time someone is going to crap themselves when they see you wearing it.

There's a mohair sweatshirt with a low-res Aphex photo in grubby pink. There's a pair of thermal shorts, already sold out, dotted with his iconic logo. And there's a dayglo orange formal shirt with "Come To Daddy" written where your appendix scar is meant to be.

When I think of Aphex Twin's musical output, I don't really think of clothing. I suppose there's a track on Richard D. James Album called Fingerbib, which sounds a bit like a partial glove. And on his 2015 EP Computer Controlled Acoustic Instruments pt2, there are five tracks with the word "hat" in their titles. There are probably more, but halfway through researching this, I had to have a serious word with myself about how I spent my spare time.

The Supreme clothing line is a refreshing take on Aphex Twin merchandise which, in nightclubs up and down the country, has become as ubiquitous as beanie hats and Turkey teeth. I hope next season brings Leftfield loafers and Chemical Brothers cummerbunds.

Further Fats: Chosen Words: D is for Design (2010)

Further Fats: It's got a cow as a logo (2022)

Ultimate 90s number one: It's like that (and that's the way it wiggle wiggles)

Here is another episode of Ultimate 1990s Number One. In each edition of this long-running blog series, I pick a bunch of number one singles from the 1990s UK singles chart. I pit them against each other, guided by two unclear and slightly unhelpful criteria, namely:

1. Is this song a banger?

2. Is this song bleepy, i.e. an electronic music track.

Once have have gone through all of the 1990s number ones, there will be a grand final. Probably.

The contenders

Aqua: Doctor Jones | The Bluebells: Young at Heart | Fugees: Ready or Not | Hale and Pace and the Stonkers: The Stonk | The Outhere Brothers: Don't Stop (Wiggle Wiggle) | Queen: Innuendo | R. Kelly: I Believe I Can Fly | Robson & Jerome: I Believe / Up on the Roof | Robson & Jerome: What Becomes of the Brokenhearted / Saturday Night at the Movies / You'll Never Walk Alone | Run-DMC vs. Jason Nevins: It's Like That | Take That: How Deep Is Your Love

Let's not stonk

As with previous listings, I am more than happy to discard some contenders immediately.

Young At Heart by The Bluebells is a beige-dotted line painted down the middle of a road to nowhere. Its 1993 chart-topping rerelease was for a Volkswagen Golf advert, which is about right. A mid song for a mid car. Bananarama's Northern Soul-inspired original is way better.

"Let's stonk to the rhythm of the honky tonk," sang Hale & Pace. "Stick a red nose on your conk and let's stonk." No. I don't want to stick anything on my conk, or on my donk, or my badonkadonk. Thanks anyway Gareth and Bertrand, or whatever your names were.

I don't know if it's because I walked under a ladder or I saw 13 black cats pretending to be a magpie, but for some reason this latest random selection of hit singles has given me two Robson & Jerome singles. I reject your weedy krap-aoke.

I'm also discarding R Kelly into a pit of fire that is on a spaceship that is crashing into the heart of the sun while the universe explodes and all of time and space vortexes in on itself causing every shred of reality to cease to exist until all we are left with is an eternal silence unto infinity in which we can hear precisely zero R Kelly songs.

Doctor who?

The next few tunes are all bangers in their own right, but not bleepy enough to progress in this competition.

If I want medical drama, I'll watch Casualty or House. In fact, Aqua's Doctor Jones barely had any medical content. A bog standard love song, dressed up as a pretty decent pop tune. Very 90s, very bouncy, and the first clue we had that Aqua were going to be more than a plastic-coated one-hit wonder.

The BeeGees' version of How Deep Is Your Love failed to top the charts: it was eclipsed by the tartan juggernaut that was Mull Of Kintyre. Take That's somewhat supine version did achieve number one status, and it was their final swansong before their 90s split. It's what I would describe as a proper pop tune, like a Volvo is a proper car or cheddar is proper cheese.

 

Hi Freddie, can you please give us a single that is somewhere between Bohemian Rhapsody, Faith No More, prog rock and Spanish flamenco? Queen's final chart-topper before Mercury's death was a banger and then some. Although you wouldn't think it, the song contains a notable use of a Korg M1 synthesiser. What it's named after a motorway, I have no idea.

Pass the toilet paper

At this point in my Ultimate 90s write-ups, I'm left with a handful of bleepy tunes. Tracks with electronic music credentials. I'm not convinced that these final three tracks fit the bleepy bill. Let's see,

It sampled Enya. It made Lauren Hill cry. It was Barack Obama's favourite song. Ready Or Not is a classic that humanised hip hop music, and felt like a much deeper dive than the Fugees' other number one Killing Me Softly. Its chorus also makes the childhood game of hide and seek sound as sinister as heck. "Ready or not, here I come." "Aaaaaaargh!" 

In contrast, The Outhere Brothers' Don't Stop (Wiggle Wiggle) is silly. Super silly. As silly as a silly string portrait of Mr Silly on holiday in the Isle of Scilly. The two Outhere singles released before this are titled Pass The Toilet Paper and F*k U In The Ass. Grubby stuff.

And finally, we have those chain-dangling trilby-topped rappers Run-DMC. It's Like That is an old hit of theirs rereleased by house Jason Nevins for boomboxin' breakdancin' cool kids. It's perhaps most notable to stopping the Spice Girls' chart dominance by stopping Stop from clogging up the top spot.

In conclusion? Nothing from this track selection is bleepy / banging enough to go through to the next round of this competition. Yet again, an Ultimate 90s blog post has amounted to nothing. I would be disappointed, if I were you, reader. I'd demand your money back. What a swizz.

The series continues. Not long until the grand final! See more Ultimate 90s number ones 

Sleeve Notes: making a noise for Record Store Day

There's a new album called Sleeve Notes, and I'm happy and delighted and cloud-nined to say that I am on it.

Sleeve Notes is a collaborative album between writers and musicians. A bunch of writers have written short fictional fluffy things, and then a load of talented musicians have set it into music. The full list of participants is listed below.

It's a response to Record Store Day, the annual indie record shop celebration which sees collectable vinyl being released. It's often something unusual, like The Proclaimers duetting with Extreme Noise Terror, or Radiohead featuring the Go Compare man, or an album of ballads by Elon Musk with backing vocals by the Genghis Khan.

The theme of Sleeve Notes is, naturally, records and record collecting. Which is good because I've heard of records, and I've even played them. My story is about record shopping, and it's called 'Sophie's Faves'. My musical collab bloke is the super-talented Fritz von Runte, and you can see his remixes, projects and tram tunes here.

We're going to launch the album on Record Store Day itself, which is on Saturday 12th April. The gig is taking place at the Burgess Foundation in Manchester. It will almost certainly sell out very soon, so snaffle your tickets now.

Have a listen to Sleeve Notes. It's available on Bandcamp (embed below), and for the cool kids, it will also be released as a limited-edition cassette. Our track is snuggled between The March Violets and the Hartley brothers, which is a nice place to be.

The Sleeve Notes artists
Nicholas Royle x John Foxx (formerly of Ultravox)
Vik Shirley x Billy Fuller of Beak>
Joe Stretch x Joe Cross of the Courteeners
Adrian Slatcher x Distant Listening (Andy Hodson of Warm Digits)
Rosie Garland x March Violets
Fat Roland x Fritz von Runte
Lauren Sarah Anne McLean x Tombed Visions
David Hartley x Rickerly
Sarah-Clare Conlon x Jez Dolan
David Gaffney x Minimums

Ultimate 90s number one: Everybody's Free (To Read This Blog Post And Wear Sunscreen But Mainly The Blog Post Thing)

Welcome to another edition of Ultimate 1990s Number One. In this long, long series, I trawl through every UK number one single of the 1990s and decide which is the best. There are over 200 number one singles of that decade, so I'm taking about ten at a time and choosing (possibly) one to go through to a final.

My judging criteria? The single has to be a banger. And the single has to be bleepy, i.e. it has to tickle my electronic music tentacles. I'm a strict judge, and my hammer is ready.

Let's have a look at another bunch of randomly-picked '90s number ones.

The contenders

Baz Luhrmann: Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen) | Elton John: Candle in the Wind 1997 / Something About the Way You Look Tonight | Madonna: Vogue | Martine McCutcheon: Perfect Moment | Michael Jackson: Blood on the Dance Floor | Sinéad O'Connor: Nothing Compares 2 U | Various artists: Perfect Day | Vic Reeves and The Wonder Stuff: Dizzy | Wamdue Project: King of My Castle | Westlife: I Have a Dream / Seasons in the Sun

A load of old wind

When Elton John did away with Diana in 1997 in order to get to number one-- oh, wait, hold on, that's just a rumour I read on the internet. Let's start again. Elton's cathartic Princess Di tribute Candle In The Wind is the second bestselling single in history, behind Bing Crosby's equally morose Santa tribute White Christmas. It sold two-thirds of a million units in its first week of sales.

That is only impressive thing about Candle In The Wind '97. I see it as a sister track to Cliff Richard's Millennium Prayer or Wings' Mull Of Kintyre. A stately anthem with little artistic merit, with as much credibility as a retired Tory councillor taking part in a rap battle. Let's move on.

Of Michael Jackson's numerous number one singles, Blood On The Dance Floor is the one I remember least. Was it as Sophie Ellis-Bextor cover? Was it inspired by a night out at Jilly's Rockworld? It was a reject from his Dangerous from several years earlier, and sounds several degrees worse than any tracks from that album.

Not so perfect

I might have my figures slightly wrong. but Westlife had five billion number one singles. Their double a-side Have a Dream / Seasons in the Sun was a Christmas number one, and came while the band was at their at the peak of their powers. Their other powers were (a) being bland and (b) having no place in an Ultimate 90s series. Harrumph. 

What's better? Martine McCutcheon's Perfect Moment or Various Artists' Perfect Day? It's a tough question. Both songs claim to be perfect, but for varying lengths of time. 

Perfect Day is clearly the superior song. The Lou Reed version soundtracked the heroin antics of Danny Boyle's Trainspotting film. Duran Duran and Kirsty MacColl have done their own versions. The 1990s chart-topping version is probably the most iconic take on the song, starring Bono, Bowie, Boyzone and some people beginning with other letters.

Perfect Moment was by an Eastenders actress. McCutcheon's character Tiffany has been cheated on, has disowned her own mother, has been gaslit, has been betrayed by her friends, has planned blackmail, and has been splatted by a car. "This is my moment," sings Tiffany as another flaming meteorite lands on her head.

The truth is, I'm not bothered by either song, and the last couple of paragraphs have been a waste of time.

And now we come to some genuine bangers. Let's allow the fresh breeze of good songwriting waft into the guff of this blog series.

A haddock that looks like Norway

A traffic cone on top of submarine! A walrus wearing a cravat! Erm... A ghost made of toenails? Yes, I'm being surreal, just like Vic Reeves' classic comedy series Big Night Out. Aside from this groundbreaking and brilliant show, Reeves was a musician and artist, so his bid for pop success with The Wonderstuff with Dizzy was no surprise. And it's great.

The shape-throwing fashionista anthem Vogue knocked Snap!'s The Power off the number one spot, so I'm conflicted about Madonna. But it's undoubtedly a banger. "Greta Garbo and Monroe, Dietrich and Fat Roland." Such great lyrics. She was knocked off number one by Adamski, which feels like Snap! karma.

The brilliant and missed Sinéad O'Connor deserved more than one paltry top ten single. On Nothing Compares 2 U, she stares into the camera like you've done something wrong. The song is double-tracked, so she's actually singing it twice at the same time, which is twice the work.

Dizzy, Vogue and Nothing are all bangers. But they are not bleepy enough for this competition, so they can all bog off. Sorry.

Bazzin'

The 1990s became known for leftfield chart-toppers. The leftest of the leftfields came when an essay called 'Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young' became the basis of a number one single by film director Baz Luhrmann. Which reminds me, if Martin Scorsese wants to have an electronica hit with my essay 'How to squeeze the last bit out of a toothpaste tube', then get in touch.

You would think that King Of My Castle would be a more straightforward hit, but even this one was based on Freudian theory. Something to do with the ego or the id or that kind of gubbins. Incidentally, Wamdue Project's song was nominated for a 'Best British single' Brit award, but then was immediately dropped because Wamdue Project is, as it turns out, American.

The Wamdue jam is bouncy, and a real banger. But I'm going to allow Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen) through to the Ultimate 90s final. Congratulations, Bazzer, It's a perfect distillation of quirky 1990s electronic music. It's wistful, amusing, and I really like the part when he says "dance". Go on, listen to it. "Dance." There. I like that bit.

Is there more to come in this series? Oh yes. This never ends. It's a moebius strip but made of words.

See more Ultimate 90s number ones 

How I unlocked a withering memory of Wuthering Heights

There's an old phrase which goes like this: "The past is a something-or-other, they thingummy differently there." I can't quite remember the quote. Which is ironic considering the topic of this blog post.

I have grown up with a particular memory of watching something on television. Something that deeply impacted the child Fat Roland because of its stark, haunting style. I recall a shimmering ghost of a woman singing in darkness. Echoes of her image rippling around her like a hall of mirrors. I have never been able to pinpoint what the video was, but it stayed with me.

The title of this blog post is a spoiler. The video was a promo for the UK release of Kate Bush's 1978 single Wuthering Heights. In it, she dances like an apparition amid a haze of filters and fog. I was a wee bairn, and I would have been staring hypnotised at the moving images, with little concept of who Kate Bush was, nor indeed what pop music was. And since then, I think I've only seen a different promo video, produced for the US market, with Bush in a red dress fannying about in a field.

It was perhaps the first pop video I ever paid attention to, despite its details eluding me until now. For years, I had misremembered it as a video by Mary Wilson from the Supremes. I'm sure she sang in spangly costumes in dramatic stage lighting, a similar effect for a child's mind – but it never felt quite right.

It was 808 State's Graham Massey talking at a book launch that helped unlock the memory. He also was impacted by the song, and it was while he was describing the images that the memory of the video finally properly resurfaced. We won't be the only people awed by the video: it spent four weeks at number one, after all. The single was replaced at the top of the charts by Matchstalk Men And Matchstalk Cats And Dogs, a song which ruffles the same nascent memory feathers as Bush.

So there you go. This is a blog post about nothing much. I remembered something. Big deal. But it goes to show the power of the pop video, and there's a bigger thinkpiece to be written about the loss of that culture in a world of streaming. But no-one comes to this blog to do thinking. That would be silly.

Now if I could only recall where I put my house keys and/or remember to use WeTransfer links before they expire and/or call to mind my purpose in life, then I'd be sorted.

Further Fats: The 7 best moments in Ryan Wyer's video for Aphex Twin's CIRKLON3 [ Колхозная mix ] (2016)

Further Fats: Eight tracks that deserve a Running Up That Hill revival (2022)

Number 1 best electronic music album of 2024: µ-Ziq – Grush

 

µ-Ziq: Grush (Planet Mu Records)

Mike Paradinas's μ-Ziq outfit has been troubling our delicate china for over 30 years. His first album, Tango N' Vectif on Rephlex Records, was released in November 1993, when Meatloaf's I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That) was at the top of the pop charts. Aphex Twin had only released one album at that point.

A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then. Meatloaf has had 500 more number one singles. We've had 52 prime ministers. Everybody has flying cars. Probably. I haven't really been paying attention. He now brings us Grush, his 17th µ-Ziq album.

This is, he says, a "back-to-first-principles", an album to put the "dance" back into "intelligent dance music". This is indeed an adventure in rhythm, with all the delightful effect of having several entire drum kits thrown at your face for the best part of 56 minutes.

Hyper Daddy is spidery rave awash with sad chords, its viscous piano reminiscent of a early Aphex Twin. Over skipping drums, Magic Pony Ride (Pt.4) teases us with a simple music box melody. Windsor Safari Park is all anticipation, a tiny insectoid rave, that then melts into a Cosmic Baby-sized melodic hug. His ability to hold tension then transport a track into a new melodic direction keeps the album vying for our attention.

He nails the small stuff. The slurpy arpeggios of Imperial Crescent. The clonking woodblocks of Belvedere. The trip hop drum-play of Hastings. The vocals on Manscape, a spiritual successor to Belfast. A distant squeal. An opening gasp. All those little details, those tiny (g)rushes of delight.

As with Squarepusher's album, he invokes structure using quieter with a softer melodic palate, each connected by the word "Reticulum". Despite sounding like a medical instrument designed to go up your bum, these are welcome sorbets to lighten the meal.

Paradinas has had plenty of opportunities to top my annual best-album list in the past. I'm saying it like it's his fault. Challenge Me Foolish barely made the cut in 2018, same for his Secret Garden in 2021, his "sad cry emoji" collaboration with Mrs Jynx.

Chewed Corners came closest, with 8th place in 2013. Scurlage made the top ren in 2021, although I wasn't numbering specific positions that year. Hello registered 10th place in 2022 ("Paradinas being Paradinas at his most Paradinas").

So congratulations to the µ man. I guess. He has the best electronic music album of 2024 – official. I was convinced that Kelly Lee Owens or Squarepusher would claim the 2024 top spot, but I think there's a reason why Grush resonated with me harder, deeper, wider, longer, and oh crap I've run out of dimensions.

Last year's stroke changed things. I can no longer entirely trust my vision because of the damage to a bit of my brain. What I see on a day-to-day basis is a little less certain, so I make up for the sight loss through habits, technology and stubbornness. Full disclosure: I walked out in front of a car the other week because my knackered neurons made that car momentarily disappear. Life is a few percentage points more precarious than before.

µ-Ziq has been around for almost all of my adult life. I have known this music act longer than I knew my own parents. During my recovery, I wonder if there's a part of me that needed to connect to something that felt like certainty. To music that had soundtracked my life for a very long time. A second disclosure: Grush is the only album this year that made me tear up. That alone merits a number one position.

I bet the psychologists among you are loving this, you weirdos. I realise I'm posting this blog series the 'wrong' side of new year, but thanks for reading in 2024. We're gonna grush– er, I mean– crush 2025.

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

2nd best electronic music album of 2024: Kelly Lee Owens – Dreamstate

Kelly Lee Owens: Dreamstate (dh2)

For the second time, Kelly Lee Owens comes second in my annual albums list, the previous time being when Inner Song was pipped to the post by DJ Python in 2020. As the old saying goes: always the bridesmaid, never the teasmaid. At least I think that's right.

Dreamstate is her most accomplished album yet. Firstly there's the delicate happiness. Higher is caramel sweet stadium techno that stays at the edge of the dancefloor. Love You Got is a pulsating energy rush that never allows to escape her pillow-soft vocals. Air is spacey dub techno that ascends into ambient sunlight.

And then there's the hurt. It's an odd thing to focus on for a silly blog like this, but this is KLO's break-up album. A highlight is the aching Time To: her voice breaking over melancholic echoes; she pleads for us to "find a greater peace of mind".

Get a load of the title track. Dreamstate could be early Fluke, when they had six wheels on their wagon, and belly flops into a chunky acidic sprint, Lee Owens squealing the track title in increasing ecstasy. There's nothing else like it in my entire top 95 albums.

Side-note: Lee Owens is not alone. The album has producer-writer credits for Bicep (featured in best-album countdowns of 2017 and 2021), Tom from the Chemical Brothers (best-album countdowns of 2010, 2015 and 2019), and George from The 1975 (I would never feature them here: I'm not daft. Although to his credit he does run dh2 Records, so he's probably a good egg).

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

3rd best electronic music album of 2024: Squarepusher – Dostrotime

Squarepusher: Dostrotime (Warp Records)

More than one friend has told me that I cannot possibly object so strongly to jazz music when I appreciate the work of speed bassist and jazz fiend Tom 'Squarepusher' Jenkinson. And to those friends, I say... er.... eeerm..... [runs out of the room, drives off in car, gets on a plane]

The Square dancer's previous album Be Up A Hello was written through adversity, when an accident forced him into a new approach. I learn that in my 2019 interview with him. For this album, he swapped one battle with another, writing this sixteenth Squarepusher album during the long isolation of Covid lockdown.

The melodic Enbounce sounds like Mozart leading an army of bewigged robots. He lets the clouds part on the tense Stromcor only to loosen up into slappy bass noodles. The starched march of Wendorlan falls apart wildly: snare drums out of sync, drum machine on def con one.

Whereas Be Up A Hello lightened its mood with the simplicity of Detroit People Mover, this time Squarepusher adds in a series of numbered "Arkteon" pastoral interventions. Passing daydreams before we get back to the frenetic stuff. They're placed at the start, middle and end. The 'pusher comes across as chaotic, but he really knows about album structure.

And yes, there's a whole bunch of jazz bass. Slappy, flappy-fingered jazz bass. Look, let me address the jazz thing for one final time. A last word on the matter. My exact precise opinion about jazz music is-- oh look over there! [walks slowly backwards into hedge]

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

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 relaxed. 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).