Full-mast hysteria: waving the flag for electronic music

 

Everyone's getting their cummerbunds in a twist over flags. Racists brandish St George crosses, idiots vandalise mini-roundabouts, and union jack underpant sales have gone through the roof. Probably.

In an effort to reclaim the national debate, I have designed six flags dedicated to electronic music. Shall we plaster pubs in these emblems instead? Replace the UK national anthem with Ageispolis by Aphex Twin? Yes. Let's do that. If you're reading this, please make that happen, the King. 

The first flag I designed is a red-white-blue rendering of the Aphex Twin logo (see above). This feels very flaggy indeed, and could be a distant cousin of the flag of Laos or maybe North Korea.

However, there's a problem or two. There's too much flag about this flag. Electronic music should be more creative than this. And the existing Aphex logo is black and white, which are the flag colours of his native Cornwall. No, we can do better.

This is my flag design based on Leftfield's Leftism. The shark jaw is pretty intact, and the embedded camera is represented by a series of circles. You do get animals on real-world flags – Wales has a dragon and Bhutan has a, er, dragon – but bits of bones are less common. Should flags have teeth? Vexillum dentata?

A simple T. Or is it? This one breaks a cardinal rule of flags: no fades. However, the speaker design feels geometrically pleasing. The KLF were notorious for their flag-flying, banner-raising live performances, so this redesign of their 1991 album The White Room seems apropos. The flag of Mu Mu Land.

Here is a flag version of Autechre's Oversteps album.  I did consider the designs for their numerous NTS releases, which were plastered with brilliantly blocky Designers Republic fonts. But I couldn't resist this more basic artwork, which is, essentially, the Japan flag with all of its colour and joy removed. Very much like an Autechre live performance, in a good way.

It was either this or the brown album. One thing I've noticed about actual national flags is that the colours are often bold. Look at Bangladesh's contrasting eye-popper or Seychelles' vivid fan of fun. Eyes will certainly be popped with this flag, based on Orbital's green album (Orbital 1). This flag feels lickable, which is something I always look for when hoisting a banner. 

I was drawn to Man-Machine by Kraftwerk because of its colours, and the geometry of the album text in its upper corner. But how to represent the band itself? Four simple polygons. And what are flags other than an arrangement of polygons. The main down side of this one is that once you think it looks like Hitler, that's something you can't get out of your head. Dammit, that's ruined it. Shouldn't have said anything. Sorry.

Flags are not bad things. They're fun, and we all want to cling on to identity and community. But let's keep them fun: everyone loves a bit of bunting. However – and this is just a suggestion – maybe let's not use flags to cause division and intimidate the vulnerable. If you're using a flag as a weapon, you are the weapon.

Further Fats: Blowin' in the wings – why protest songs should return to centre stage (2009)

Further Fats: I'm too techno to be Brexit (2017)

Plaything posters: Black Mirror goes full Designers Republic

The Plaything episode of Black Mirror is a love/hate letter to video games and artificial intelligence. It is also a tribute to the graphic genius of The Designers Republic.

In the episode, future national treasure Will Poulter plays visionary game designer Colin Ritman. At one point in the episode, we visit Ritman's office. His shelves are cluttered with framed posters featuring the work of the TDR graphic design studio, which is beloved of techno heads and console gamers.

While he talks to Lewis Gribben's games journalist character Cameron Walker, you can spot the following works:

○ An Aphex Twin poster
○ the cover of Polygon Window's Quoth
○ a rare poster for The Orb's Blue Room
○ the cover of Autechre's debut album Incunabula
○ a circle thing which I haven't identified yet
○ a "laugh vote die" poster referencing a previous Black Mirror episode
○ and, hidden behind Cameron, the cover of Warp's first volume of Artificial Intelligence.

In another shot, you can spot Autechre's album Amber.

There are The Designers Republic works elsewhere in this office. Notice the one with the pigtails? That's from a TDR takeover of Emigre magazine – issue 29, to be exact. The pigtailed mascot featured here is called Sissy. The poster further left with a similar colour scheme is a collage for the same publication and contains stream-of-consciousness gibberish such as "design or die!", "g7oba7 7anguag3 for th3 mazz3z" and a Sheffield '94 football ident.

On the same shelf, there's an impenetrable sheet of black and white logo designs. This is their Visual Symbolism Vol. 94 (1990-1994) collection of "new and used" logos which contains Pop Will Eat Itself icons, Sun Electric's typeface, and a tonne of visual blaps saying things like "have a nice day" and "e by gum" and "I love my DR".

There is more, of course, but if I delve further into this, I'll fall into some kind of Black Mirror plot matrix and I'll grown USB sticks for fingers or something. Anyway, it's smashing to see such an iconic design outfit represented on the telly.

Further Fats: The Designers Republic vs B12 Records – are the 1990s dead? (2009)

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

Cover me bad: Eggshell by Autechre

Nope. Not doing it.

Ah, go on.

I can't keep ruining my blog like this. The previous days' posts have just been embarrassing.

It's what your public want.

No it's not. I've seen the visitor stats. The whole website's tanking. I've lost 20 followers on Twitter.

Just a little one. Go on. Do it.

Absolutely not.

Artist: Autechre
Track: Eggshell
Year: 1993
Reviews: "Muestra el lado más minimalista y bailable del trabajo." 4.5-star Rate Your Music review 

Look, you can insert that text, but I am absolutely not doing one of my parody cover version blog posts.

But it's Autechre. You love Autechre.

Yes, and that's one of their best early tracks. Weirdly euphoric despite being all wibbly and downbeat. That's why I don't want to do a cover version.

Is it because you're not good at doing cover versions?

Shut up. I'm brilliant at cover versions, me. That's why I'm setting up a cover version band-- wait, no. You nearly got me. I am NOT doing this.

How would you make the main tingly keyboard line?

Nope. Not going there.

The smoky IDM chords? Maybe get some smoke?

Stop it. I'm not playing along.

The crunchy percussion? Perhaps get something crunchy, like crisps, autumn leaves or fried chicken.

That's done it. I'm switching you off.

What? You can't switch a blog off. It's not possible.

Yes it is. Stay still. There's a switch here somewhere. Is it round the back?

GET OFF MY BUM.

Do you promise to behave? Stop all this 'Cover me bad' nonsense? It was a vague idea that turned out confusing and bad.

Okay. I'll stop.

Promise?

Pinky promise.

Good.

...

Artist:Aqua
Track: Barbie Girl
Year: 1997 
Reviews: "Garbage!" 1-star Amazon review

AAAAAAARGH! 

Best electronic albums of 2020: nine

9 – Autechre – Sign (Warp)

It was a shame to see Autechre throw away their credibility with an album comprising entirely of cover versions of Ace Of Bass's 1993 hit single The Sign. We forgave them their Nickelback phase, but this was too far.

See what I did there? I did a joke. I'll pause for a moment to leave you time to laugh... Right. Let's get on with it.

Autechre's 14th album Sign saw the duo on a lower burn than usual, their abstractions suspended in a lovely fuzz of ambience or, at the very least, confusing and scary reverberations. For me, playing this at home felt like casting a magical protection spell against the loneliness of autumn lockdowns.

It was certainly evocative. si00 sounded like Actress trapped in a hamster ball. Metaz form8 sounded like a church service populated entirely by bees. By the way, post-Covid, I am going to make both of these things happen.

Next up, I want to hear covers of Dr Alban's 1992 single It's My Life. No wait, this is Autechre, that's too on the nose. Next up, I want to hear covers of Dr Alban's 1991 Finnish hit single (Sing Shi-Wo-Wo) Stop the Pollution.

 

Browse the rest of the Best Electronic Albums of 2020

Best electronic music albums of 1995: Autechre versus Bjork

When I started this contest to find the best album of 1995 (see the series so far here), I planned to have a new contest daily. But I haven't had the time, so here we are dragging it kicking and screaming through March as if we've got nothing better to do. See the 16 albums I started off with here.

As ever, I use a random number generator to pick each head-to-head. Remember, only one can survive through to the quarter-finals. This time, we have:

Tri Repetae by Autechre
Post by Bjork

Oh this is going to be horrible. Hey children! Which puppy do we throw into the mincer?

Criteria one: which album would make a better biscuit?

This is the album that signalled Autechre's descent into more complicated, awkward, spiky electronic music, so if it was a biscuit it would be the oaty kind that leaves bits in your teeth. With its filmic anthems and bold ballads, Bjork's second album is more showy: perhaps it would be a jaffa cake or one of those flavoured Penguins, but not something we'd traditionally think of as a biscuit.
Winner: Tri Repetae

Criteria two: which album has more bangin' choons?

I want to take Autechre's Clipper and tattoo the sound all over my naked body. I want to knit Clipper's rhythms into a scarf and strangle myself senseless with it. I want to shove Clipper up my bum and bounce on a space hopper until my intestines ping out of my eyes. That said, nothing says "banging tune" more than Army Of Me, Hyperballad, and, well, half the tracks on Post.
Winner: Post

Criteria three: which album's track titles better remind me of cute animals?

I'm not sure the imaginary animals on Autechre's album are that cute. Clipper sounds like an angry dolphin, Stud is an amorous stallion trying to hump everything but the fence post, and Leterel is a sneaky eel that's just signed you up to a timeshare con without you noticing. Bjork's Isobel tells the story of a girl born in a forest, but to the uninitiated, the title sounds like something you'd call a warthog if you were trying to convince people it was cute. In a way, it's the antithesis of cute. Strangely, Autechre wins.
Winner: Tri Repetae

Criteria four: which of the two would Jesus listen to?

I have consulted the runes and they tell me both Bjork and Autechre have Godlike status. Both come from faraway lands (Iceland and Manchester), attracting fanatical followers as they spread their gospel of musical purity. But since Tri Repartae sounds like a sinister Catholic order that flays choirboys for fun, this one has so go to Autechre.
Winner: Tri Repetae

Criteria five: which is the better album to sing songs about eggs to?

As I sat on the bus improvising egg songs over these albums, one artist clearly won through. With Bjork, I managed to loudly sing "it's oh so quail… you fall in l'oeuf…" and "my name's scrambled egg, married to my shell" and "if you complain once more, you'll meet an army of quiche". I tried so hard to match egg words to Autechre, and as my fellow passengers wrestled me to the floor, I had to admit defeat. There's nothing eggy about Autechre.

Winner: Post

Criteria six: which album has the better cover design?

Two drastically different covers. The Designer's Republic deliberately stripped the graphics for Tri Repetae's muddy monotone. The Post cover puts Bjork front and centre, contrasted against her hyper-coloured surroundings. Both covers are great. However, on the Post album, Bjork is dressed as an envelope. Never noticed that before? Have a look. Post. Envelope. Post. Envelope. Absolute genius.

Winner: Post

Criteria seven: miscellaneous and worryingly random

This set of criteria is led by the random article page on Wikipedia, so strap in. Which album is the gayest? Queen Bjork, obviously. Which album would lead a navy? Bjork is feistier than Napoleon: she would lay waste to her enemies. Which album would succeed as a member of a Chinese rowing team? Autechre because there are two of them. Which album is the most legally disputed? Bjork because of Possibly, Maybe. Which album was born in an African tribe 3,000 years ago? Autechre because it sounds like it emanates from the very beginning of time.

Winner: Post

Overall winner and going through to the quarter-finals: This was a tough match, but it's Bjork that moves into the quarter-finals. I'll expect angry letters from Autechre fans. To be honest, though, would the Autechre chaps dress up as envelopes? I wouldn't have thought so.

When I get time, two further albums will face off against each other in an attempt to become the best electronic music album of 1995 as decided by me. See all the riders and runners here.

Further Fats: See the whole Best Albums Of 1995 series here.

Best electronic albums of 2019: three

3 – Loraine James – For You And I (Hyperdub)

For You And I is the sound of London bustle, of coming out of basement clubs, of tube stations shuttering their doors, of a queer life in a contemporary capital. Apparently. I don't live in London. In Manchester, we don't go on tubes, we just swagger with our maracas.

This freewheeling collage of broken bass music gets more compelling with every listen. The drum sounds are as loose as a bag of nuts: cheese-grated cymbals and strangled toms collide with precarious snares that rattle the walls of the album.

It's like being parachuted into a leftfield techno metropolis without a map, but that's not to say there aren't familiar touchpoints as we hear Loraine's story. Scraping My Feet has some serious Aphexian melancholy. There's something Autechresque about the scrunched rhythms of So Scared. And London Ting is pure grime bravado – "look at my skin!" – told through a tough techno lens.

All this on a debut album. Remarkable. As broad as London itself, it's one moment brutal, the next moment tender, all of it uneasy, all of it compelling. A boundary-breaking statement that's queer by nature and queer by noise. *shakes maracas*



Scroll the full best-of-2019 list here.

Best electronic albums of 2019: special mentions

Soon, we'll get our teeth into the top 20 best electronic music albums of 2019, like a narwhal savaging an unsuspecting squid. But first let's get some special mentions out of the way.

When I compile my list, I have a set of fuzzy rules in my head. To be included, an album must be in the vein of modern, post-Aphex electronic music, but that leaves things pretty wide open. Nothing too poppy, although the list has pop elements. Don't genre-jump into hip hop, although the list will certainly have elements of this too.

I also try not to include compilations, although watch me break this rule almost immediately with the album I've placed at number 20. This does mean there's no space for Burial's Tunes 2011 to 2019 (Hyperdub) nor for Autechre's Warp Tapes 89-93.

I've also been strict about the definition of an album, so I'm sadly not including the return of Andy Stott on the EP It Should Be Us (Modern Love) nor, controversially, am I including Underworld's spectacular and impressive Drift project because there's so much of it, it would have ground this process to a halt.

And finally, I have a new rule: if I don't like it, I won't mention it. In previous years, I thought it was important to be comprehensive and I included in my longlist albums that I wasn't interested in but were important enough to mention. As if I this site was some kind of electronic music almanac rather than just a daft writer in his underpants mashing a keyboard with his fists. Why recommend something I'm not bothered about?

So from now on, if I'm not keen on it, it doesn't get a mention. Sorry, Tycho. Sorry, DJ Shadow.

Scroll the full best-of-2019 list here (as and when it appears).

Best electronic albums of 2018: two

2 – Autechre – NTS Sessions 1-4 (Warp Records)

In the same way Aphex Twin turned on the tap and flooded us with music, Autechre have been gushing their pipes everywhere. Exai was two hours long, elseq 1–5 was four hours, and here are the NTS Sessions weighing in at eight hours.

There’s Autechre on the ceiling. There’s Autechre on the toaster. There’s Autechre on the cat. There’s Autechre in those hard-to-reach places that you can only really clear with a toothbrush taped to a coat hanger.

This is a month-long radio residency captured in multi-album form. I described this in Electronic Sound a few months ago as “an Ibiza beach bash hosted by daddy longlegs” while noting at how melodic it turned out to be.

More importantly, it’s hella long but remains engaging, each individual idea held within its parameters with masterful knob-twiddling. It's hardly a three-minute pop song, but they've achieved something amazing here. Gush into my ears, Autechre, I’m yours.

No embedded content for this one, I'm afraid. You'll just have to buy the whole lot and hope for the best.

Scroll all of the best 2018 electronic albums by clicking here.

Remember when Boards of Canada remixed Colonel Abrams?

Before they released their amazing Music Has The Right To Children debut album, Boards of Canada produced some odd remixes.

Firstly, here's BoC taking on Colonel Abrams' 1985 hit Trapped. I'm a big fan of the Boards, but this is kinda horrible.



Secondly, here's an alternative take on Trapped. The original song is almost incidental as Boards get all Autechre on us. In fact, it's so Autechre-y, it doesn't sound much like BoC at all.



On this third remix, they get it right. This time they're taking on Midnight Star's 1986 song The Midas Touch, a minor hit in the States but a top ten hit over here in the UK. The BoC beats are upfront and centre, as is the original track. The dour electronic workout juxtaposes nicely with the glittery video.



I can forgive all this not quite working: they were unofficial remixes under the alias Hell Interface.

Incidentally, the Hell Interface alias appeared again on a 1997 Christmas compilation called Whine And Missingtoe, with a spooky track called Soylent Night. If BoC were the Whine, then V/vm Records' James Kirkby was the Missingtoe: for the album, he produced a terrifying Chipmunk version of Hark The Herald Angels Sing and a truly Satanic version of Jingle Bells called A Sprig Of Holly On The Electric Turbine. Ho ho ho!

Five great tracks from the Artificial Intelligence album

Hacienda-era ravers eventually had to take it easy - and that happened in 1992.

Warp Records' Artificial Intelligence was a series of post-rave albums designed for "long journeys, quiet nights and club drowsy dawns". The series began in 1992 and furthered the nascent work of Plaid, The Orb, Aphex Twin, The Black Dog and Richie Hawtin.

Perhaps most significantly. its seventh release was Incunabula, the debut album by Autechre.

The first Artificial Intelligence album, cleverly called Artificial Intelligence (released in the US the following year on Wax Trax!), is one of most influential compilation albums in any genre. Here are my five favourite tracks in no particular order. Enjoy.

Musicology - Telefone 529

Otherwise known as the massively important IDM duo B12. They later scooped up a whole bunch of their limited coloured-vinyl 12-inches for the Electro-Soma Artificial Intelligence album.



Autechre - Crystel

One of the Rochdale band's earliest tracks.



The Dice Man - Polygon Window

No doubt named after the Luke Rhinehart book, The Dice Man would later become Polygon Window, which is the name of this track. Confused? Polygon Window would release Surfing On Sine Waves as part of the Artificial Intelligence series. What became of this particular artist, I have no idea.



UP! - Spiritual High

An early appearance by Richie Hawtin, aka Plastikman - someone who would go on to conquer the DJing world. A touch of Detroit via Canada.



Dr. Alex Paterson - Loving You Live

The Orb kingpin was already top of the ambient world and didn't really need the Artificial Intelligence exposure. Indeed, this live version of Loving You was just a segment of A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre Of The Ultraworld, its original Millie Riperton sample long since exorcised. Still... flipping great track, right?

Insert clever Bola pun here

Oh my pants, Bola's back.

Bola's debut album Soup came out around the same time as Boards Of Canada's Music Has The Right To Children, and I would spin from one to the other like some kind of techno mother trying to choose her favourite child.

Darrell 'Bola' Fitton also had a hand in Autechre's Incunabula and the Gescom project. About a decade ago, after releasing a properly decent fourth album called Kroungrine, Bola disappeared. Piff paff poof, in a burst of smoke, he vanished.

By the way, it took me about two years to realise his debut album was a pun. And it's taken me until now to realise his follow-up albums were also puns. Look:

> Soup (1998) - as in, Bola Soup = bowl o' soup;
> Fyuti (2001) - as in Fyuti Bola = footballer;
> Gnayse (2004) - as in Bola Gnayse = bolognaise - well done, you're catching on now;
> Kroungrine (2007) - as in Kroungrine Bola = crown green bowler;
> D.E.G. (2017) - as in Bola D.E.G. = boiled egg.

Yeah, it got a bit tenuous there.

On first hearing, there's plenty of chunky techno warmth on new album D.E.G.., with all the signature digital growls and spun-out ambience. The slow motion electro loops of Avantual are already nestled under my skin. Have a listen yourself on Boomkat. Or just hit play below to hear the first part of a triptych dominating the second half of the album.

I'm going to enjoy this one. A great Manchester musician making a welcome return. Eee, Bola.



Further Fats: My greatest idea once more crumbles to dust like a great big crumbly bit of dust (2010)

Further Fats: There goes the hear: Manchester has enough gigs (2011)

Instrumental electronic floof for your creative ears

Here are some old instrumental albums I've been using as a writing soundtrack recently.

They're all pretty much of an era and style, and they're scuzzy YouTube rips, but if you need something for your (un)conscious mind to surfboard on, dive in.

There's one that's not featured below, and that's B12's Electro Soma (band pictured above). It's non-embeddable, but you can click through to it here.

Go listen. Then buy the albums because they're right cracking, they are.









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Pitchfork's 50 best IDM albums - the Fat Roland edit

Pitchfork's top 50 IDM albums of all time is not too bad a list. I know this because Warp Records said so.

Not too bad a list 😉 https://t.co/2acEPnAM6V

— Warp Records (@WarpRecords) January 24, 2017

Instead of picking apart the list, bemoaning the lack of Future Sound Of London or Orbital, I shall accept the list as fact. This is now the top 50 forever. Anything else is fake news.

Taking only the albums chosen in that top 50, here is my reordered top ten. I've tried to avoid duplicating artists, although I've given Aphex Twin (pictured) a free pass on Polygon Window.

Pitchfork's 50 best IDM albums boiled down into a Fat Roland top ten...

1 - Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works 85-92. Because this is the don. Because it crept into my speakers and never quite oozed clear again. Because of Willy Wonka.

2 - Jon Hopkins - Immunity. Because it's 'played with precision and paced to perfection'.

3 - The Black Dog - Spanners. Because its diagonal beats dislodged something in my brain and I liked it. Because without these guys, much of this list won't exist.

4 - Polygon Window - Surfing on Sine Waves. Because Aphex went organic and shimmery. And then super techno. Because of If It Really Is Me.

5 - Autechre - Amber. Because I didn't think they could better Incunabula and they did: what a pair of albums.

6 - Flying Lotus - Los Angeles. Because oh-my-crap-what-is-this-noise and oh-help-my-ears-are-robots-now.

7 - Boards of Canada - Music Has the Right to Children. Because it's one of the greatest debut albums of all time. Because it changed music. And it sounded sad.

8 - Various Artists - Artificial Intelligence. Because there isn't enough Warp in this list already. Jeez, Warp, if I like you so much, why don't you marry me?!

9 - Plaid - Not for Threes. Because of Kortisin. Because of their rhythm section. Because Plaid have appeared in my best albums of the year lists three times.

10 - µ-Ziq - Lunatic Harness. Just because.

Further Fats: Chosen Words: W is for Warp (Obviously) (2010)

Further Fats: Chosen Words: E is for Ecstacy (2010)

Best electronic albums of 2016: eleven

11 – Autechre – elseq 1-5 (Warp Records)

The godfathers of difficult techno Autechre could not be outdone by Aphex Twin, who’s been vomming out tracks like a cat in the hairball Olympics. So here we are: a mega five-album release to top Autechre’s 129-minute Exai from 2013. Quantity is now king.

Even when they sounded nice, Autechre were awkward: for example, track seven on their 1994 album Amber is called Nine. So while this is unlikely to return X Factor to its long-lost Christmas number one dominance (PLEASE enter X Factor, Autechre), once you hook into Ae's advanced noise, so much makes sense.

elseq is quite quaffable. c16 deep tread is hip hop covered in floor fluff. The slow-paced pendulu casual is Massive Attack caught in the middle of a sneeze. The resonating harmonics of the 24-minute mesh cinereaL are Mariah Carey in a faulty tumble dryer. Difficult? No. A development. And a Rochdale duo at the top of their game.

Stream the album here.

Scroll all of the best 2016 electronic albums by clicking here.

Autechre's new album Elseq 1-5 has already split the forums

Autechre have banged out more than four hours of new material. Elseq 1-5 is the duo's 12th album, and I have already seen comments on forums saying both "one of my favourite albums ever" and "that track goes on ten minutes too long".

The "1-5" bit of the title refers to the five sections of this somewhat lengthy opus. But I tell you something, it could actually be their best work for a while.

I already love the tightly-wound hell funk of c16 deep tread, the fat farty stomp of c7b2, and if I wanted a 1989 rave to happen inside a bucket of thick grease, I'd listen to 7th slip.

And joy, acdwn2 has the kind of spacy snares they used back in the early days. Cracking.

Autechre recently popped up on KSUA Radio in Alaska playing some of their new stuff. I hope Sarah Palin tuned in. (Sorry, Alaska.)

The album artwork is pictured above, and you can buy on the Autechre webstore alongside a whole bunch of new live gubbins too.

What about you, forum commenters? "The prices are quite high for my taste." "Oh my, this is GOOD." "Savage full moon." Ah, bless your socks.

Further Fats: Ten bloody brilliant Autechre tracks (2010)

Letting music decide the 2015 UK general election, obviously

This year's UK general election has left me wavering like never before. I don't have television, so the leaders' debates were lost on me. We have a couple of days before the polls open, and I am truly undecided.

So I decided to ask music. If I was to judge the party leaders, it would be through the filter of a gramophone, my head jammed into its horn while they dribbled on about immigrants and deficits and tax credits.

In reality, it's down to the red and the green. But let's take all five main parties into account...

Tory

David Cameron is firm and unwavering. A bit plain, as if he's just come out of the packaging. He is minimal techno. He is Robert Hood. If you like Robert Hood, vote Conservative.



Labour

Ed Miliband is inaccessible and awkward. Spend enough time with him and you may begin to understand him.  He is Autechre. If you like Autechre, vote Labour.



Liberal Democrat

Nick Clegg is someone you drifted from a long time ago. You wonder how you were ever into him because he seems so, meh. He is Zero 7. If you like Zero 7, vote Liberal Democrat.



Green

Natalie Bennett is different from the others. In some way this is good. In some ways this is bad. Listening to her is not always the most pleasant experience. She is the hardcore gabba band Neophyte. If you like Neophyte, vote Green.



The other one

Nigel Farage is awful, like something on the bottom of your shoe that could be a slug or someone's excrement, you're not sure. And yet, he's so listenable. Catchy, even. He is LMFAO (pictured). If you like LMFAO and think women should "shut the f*** up" (Redfoo, 2014), vote Ukip.



I don't have a Plaid Cymru or an SNP near me, but obviously they'd be Boards of Canada and Scooter respectively.

That's decided it then. I think.

Did Emily Davison throw herself under those hooves just so I could ooze this kind of nonsense all over my blog? Has Simon Cowell bought the copyright on the X we have to place in the box on Thursday? Am I going to have that LMFAO track in my head for much longer?

All will be decided in the 2015 UK general election. Whoever wins, we're going to have to listen to them for five years.

Five engrossing techno tracks

Here are five utterly engrossing techno tracks. Dive into them. Let them wash over you. Some of them have the texture of treacle or gloopy fairy tears, while others will feel like you're drowning in a pool of hot tar. But in a good way. Some of them just feel you're being humped by the YouTube Lossy Dog. Down boy.

Vatican Shadow's Cairo Is A Haunted City

Prurient's Through The Window

Morph's Morphine

Synkro & Indigo's Guidance

Pearson Sound's Untitled

Oh and an extra one for being so well behaved...
The Autechre remix of Surgeon's Whose Bad Hands Are These?


Further Fats: Oh to be torn up by wolves and fed, bit by bit, through an old lawnmower (2008)

Best electronica albums of 2013: live blog

Welcome

Welcome to my live posting of what I reckon is the best electronic music of 2013.

How this works

There will be about nine or ten updates of this one blog post during New Year's Eve 2013. We start now and I'll slowly reveal my top ten albums until we hit the number one some time in the afternoon. Keep checking back here or follow the progress on Twitter.

As with previous lists, there is no way my list is comprehensive. I may even miss some big albums because I am forgetful and slightly high on Windowlene. But any punk will tell you, daft or otherwise, that this has been a massive year for electronic music and I believe this list represents the most memorable, the most moving, the most affecting long-playing electronica of the year.


Apologies in advance if the amount of text is more paltry than in previous years. I usually write all this well in advance, but 2013 hasn't afforded me that luxury. The panic-buy Windowlene queues took weeks out of my life. Instead, I have my list and I am writing this 'live'.

Previous winners of my best album award have been Clark, Mount Kimbie (although it should have been Luke Abbott), Rustie, Andy Stott and Lone. Who will be this year's number one? Who cares? Where am I? What's that on my shoe? Who knows.

Edit: See also the best electronic music of January 2014.

10 - Factory Floor - Factory Floor (DFA)

Journalists practically milked themselved shrivelsome over the tense industrial swagger of Factory Floor. Its post-punk sensibilities, drenched as it is in analogue synthesisers, percussive stabs and detuned vocals, encourage you to wiggle your shoulder pads in robotic-style on the dancefloor.

The album probably reflects DFA Records maxim of "too old to be new, too new to be classic". It's written through with history and yet it's measured: it never lets its acid tweakery or drum foolery drown the memorable melodies throughout. LCD Soundsystem fans take note.

9 - Chvrches - Bones Of What You Believe (Virgin)

Such glorious, spangly 80s pop. You see, I never got on with Erasure. Too cold. But the moment I heard Lies for the first time, I understood that Chvrches was an electronic pop band that melded synthetic immediacy with emotion.

This Caledonian trio probably wooed the indie set more than the EDM kids, but the electronics spark from the speakers because, in the construction of the rhythms that punch and snap, Chvrches understood what to leave out. 'Do a Miley' and lick off the saccharine sugar to find something mesmerising. In fact, forget Miley: this is the pop sound of 2013.

Some also-rans (part one of four)

Sometimes in a litter, a puppy has to die. Here are several puppies, all neatly snuggled inside a bin bag. Let's take a trip to the incinerator. (Sorry. What? The RSPCA have been on the line. They would like a donation every time you gasp at a brilliant album included in these top ten rejects.)

I couldn't hook onto Oneohtrix Point Never’s Warp Records debut R Plus Seven enough (pictured) even though it's probably their most, er, immediate album yet. Maybe I wanted it to be more visceral, like Roly Porter’s brilliantly epic Life Cycle Of A Massive Star or intense and spiralling like Holden’s The Inheritors. None of these found space in my top ten.

Jamie Lidell's Jamie Lidell just left me wanting Frank Ocean. There was much to be said for Tim Hecker’s harmonic and ambient Virgins, and the clanks and clicks of Logos' Cold Mission, while The Haxan Cloak's Excavation was slooooow and daaaaark. Finally, two genuine contenders that fell at the last hurdle were Forest Swords’ outdoorsy Engravings and fun drum 'n' bass chart botherers Rudimental with Home.

8 - µ-Ziq – Chewed Corners (Planet Mu)

Perhaps it's a blindness. Perhaps I don't want to hear the mixed reviews. Perhaps I'm distracted by track titles like Twangle Melkas, Tickly Flanks and Mountain Island Boner. But I'm having µ-Ziq's first album for six years in my top ten, dammit, because it sounds like the entire history of IDM ozzing from the pulsing heart of Planet Mu.

It's a soft album in many ways, eschewing (sorry) hard-nosed posturing for warm textures and delicate yearning. Perhaps these are studio offcuts - chewed corners, indeed - but I like the taste because it's familiar. One for the IDM aficionado.

7 - Autechre - Exai

I wish I knew why they released this download on Valentine's Day. It would only be suited to a romantic dinner if the candles were made of, um, angles and that. And the napkins were made of, er, awkward complications.

Autechre's 11th album is hefty, with some long track times that allow for rhythmic and melodic developments missing from some of their other work. Dirty bass, nasty percussion and an over-arching feeling of being in another world; positively head-noddy in places. It's a kind of funk, but only if the funk is made of, er, um, napkins and candles. Wait. I've lost the metaphor. What?

Some also-rans (part two of four)

Here are some other albums that didn't make the top ten. M.I.A. was reliably electrotastic with Matangi (pictured), while Fuck Buttons' Slow Focus was suitably scuzzy. The bass music of Akkord's debut Akkord was in my top ten for most of the year, which is more than can be said for Raffertie's Sleep Of Reason, which was a little too hazy to grasp.

Also missing out is the countryside psychedelia of Darkstar's News From Nowhere, Gold Panda’s pleasant house album Half of Where You Live and Mount Kimbie's warm Cold Spring Fault Less Youth. Crikes, they're dropping like flies.

Also spat out from the final top ten is Pantha Du Prince & The Bell Laboratory's Elements of Light, which had far too many bells, Four Tet's Beautiful Rewind, which was enjoyable despite a lack of bells, and Omar Souleyman’s truly excellent, Four Tet-produced festival favourite Wenu Wenu. Sorry, Omar.

6 - Boards of Canada - Tomorrow's Harvest (Warp)

Boards of Canada achieved two things in 2013. With their first studio album for many years, they avoided the pastoral bleaching-out that may come with age. I'd suggest that if this had been their debut album, it would have had enough crawling melancholia to mark it out as classic as Music Has The Right To Children.

And secondly, in the track Reach For The Dead, they provided me *the* spine-chilling musical moment of the year. This album reduced me to crumbs. That's not a sunrise on the cover. It's not a sunset. It's their music suffocating the world. If this is the sound of the post-apocalypse, the sound of tomorrow, then I welcome it with quivering arms.

5 - James Blake - Overgrown (Atlas)
This was the year in which James Blake shaved his head, got arrested for drugs and walked shirtless through airpor-- wait, no, I may be thinking of other people. Blake is in fact sensible. And he focuses on the music.

Which may be why he confounded my expectations with a stupendously catchy and memorable follow-up to his ever-so-slightly disappointing 2011 debut.

He has walked a fine line between singer-songwriter (yawn) and electronic innovator (yes). For Overgrown, he's drawn his own line by producing an inventive soul album that somehow puts the song and the electronics first. By jove, the Mercury judges got it right.

Some also-rans (part three of four)

Thundercat failed to rock my world with his Brainfeeder album Apocalypse (pictured). Heterotic's Love And Devotion had some amazing highlights but missed out on the final cut (but in all fairness, Paradinas was recording two albums at once - see number 8 in this list).

It's a shame not to include two of my favourites, but they're albums worth checking out anyway: Machinedrum's Vapor City, with Gunshotta being a blistering highlight of 2013, and FaltyDL's lush Hardcourage. Apparat's theatre project Krieg und Frieden was interesting, and DJ Rashad's Double Cup was a footwork banger and no mistake.

Karen Gwyer’s debut Needs Continuum was glistening, trippy experimentalism. And Samaris’s track Góða Tungl should turn the head of any James Blake fan, as should their beautiful album Samaris.

4 - RP Boo - Legacy (Planet Mu)

After all that cynical chin-scratching I did at my computer screen when Planet Mu threw their considerable weight behind footwork. What an idiot. In no way did I anticipate a footwork album that would entertain me from toe to toupee.

RP Boo's debut album (it stands for Record Player, before you ask) is unlike anything else in this top ten. Typical of the genre, you get minimal percussion, all those little trills, cut-and-paste, cut-and-paste and yet there is something extra. The way he works the vocals makes this quite addictive, and it spins from comical to clinical with deft precision. As Record will tell you himself, this is red, red hot.

3 - SCNTST - Self-Therapy (Boysnoize)

A compelling, complete techno masterpiece and SCNTST is only twenty years old. When I reviewed this for Electronic Sound magazine, I called it a "stupendously listenable debut" with "blistering control of the most basic of ideas". I was wrong. The number of times I have returned to this album since means it is something better than that.

Each track has its own character, whether its pulsing or thundering or skipping along cheerfully. It's techno to the core, and it's never far from a 4/4 beat, but Self-Therapy takes in jazz, hip-hop and ambience in a way that rarely wavers.

The sampled mechanics of Percee Scan makes it sound like a hymn to photocopiers, while the operatic drama of Murder delights. He does a decent Plaid on Loqui. Even low-key house numbers like Throwback claw under your skin as the themes filter in and out, buzz and pulse, heave and ho. A self-assured, self-therapeutic debut that, if it doesn't hit you at first, will grow and grow and grow.

Some also-rans (part four of four)

The final selection of complete losers too pathetic to grace my top ten are as follows. Disclosure tried hard to revive the 90s but Settle (pictured) settled for a place outside the list. I enjoyed Pet Shop Boys' mostly-successful Electric return to form, which is more than I can say for Karl Bartos' indulgent Off The Record.

Ikonika’s happy Aerotropolis was almost disco. Which brings me to, yes, disco. Oh boy. None of it made my top ten. Letherette's ace Letherette was as if Justice got good again while a lot of you loved Starcadian’s Sunset Blood (really?!) and Kavinsky’s Outrun. Which brings us to my biggest omission, 2013's king of disco...

...Random Access Memories. No, no, no, no, no. I suggested in May that Daft Punk's new-found success would come at a cost. I believe I was right. Shame. Let's move on.

2 - Special Request - Soul Music (Houndstooth)

Italian house. Brutal junglism. Drexciyan IDM. Rave breaks. Sirens. Techno. Grime. Buckets of dystopia and misery. Get all of that and stick it in your washing machine. No, I don't care if it's pants-wash day. Fast-cycle it. Now tip the result onto the kitchen lino. Have you made a mess? Good. Best get it cleared up before your New Year's party.

Bad bwoy samples and jungle breaks blend and break on Special Request's astonishing debut album. Vintage gear and pirate radio underpins this brutal assault of musical memories and tributes. Baselines fart, breakbeats disappear into the upper register, vinyl fuzz cracks warm into the album's veneer.

A breaks album that is interesting, innovative and exciting; both listenable and uncompromising. There are so many albums like this: the jungle truly is massive. But the Houndstooth label, brought to us by the Fabric nightclub and Rob Booth of Electronic Explorations, have the magic touch and this is possibly the strongest debut album of 2013 - and in a year as strong as 2013, that's saying something.

1 - Jon Hopkins - Immunity (Domino)

The best electronic album of 2013 comes from a classical pianist who played with Coldplay and was nominated for the Mercury Prize. I might as well award it to Michael Bublé.

Jon Hopkins set his sights on the dancefloor for this release and yet the rhythms seem constructed from the static between the beats. He grabs wafer-thin sounds and ideas and polishes them up so brightly, it dazzles from start to finish. That breath near the start of Collider. It floored you, didn't it? The production is mind-blowing.

And so emotive. The analogue yearning that made Luke Abbott's Holkham Drones so essential, or indeed Orbital's more ethereal moments, soars to new levels on Immunity. I know it's calculated and I suspect Hopkins has graphed this out to perfection, but energy and sadness and hope swell from every programmed moment of this album, from the thudding first half to the fragile second half. Played with precision. Paced to perfection.

This has been the strongest year for electronic music for a while, and yet Jon Hopkins still ended up leagues ahead with Immunity. It's one of the best electronica albums for years. Just let's not talk about the Coldplay thing, yeah? What Coldplay thing? That's right. That's exactly right.

Thank you for reading Fat Roland on Electronica. 

Edit: See also the best electronic music of January 2014.

Bleep Years day seventeen: Autechre's Arch Carrier (1998)

1998: Autechre's Arch Carrier

An untitled album released by Autechre brings us the next song in our Bleep Years saga. The album, since labelled as LP5, was meant to be a stop-gap between Chiastic Slide and the game-changing Confeld.

But with tracks like Under BOAC, the hidden track Drane2 and the one I've chosen for Bleep Years, Arch Carrier, they produced an all-consuming Autechre classic. It was also their last album before they basically went evil (listen to the wonderful crunching madness of Pen Expers to hear evil in action).

1998 was the year I "became" Fat Roland. I fell down a hole and was afforded telekinetic powers of beat-matching, lasting through long sets and playing anywhere from living rooms to big clubby places. My first public gig was in the middle of 1998 in the now-mothballed Phoenix pub yards from where I work now. I remember playing this track for the first time on my brand new Technics. It is one of my most played tracks, if not *the* most played.

I would like Arch Carrier to be my theme. I will walk in time to the steady beat. When the moody minor chords kick in, I shall glower at passersby. I shall hunch my shoulders and allow my tongue to loll menacingly. I will be The Arch Carrier. They will call me The Gawping Idiot, but I shall know my real name.

Guest post: Crimes against crimes against keyboards

I asked you for your nominations for the worst crimes committed against dance music, from which I picked a random winner. Jon Mann gets a bunch of mp3s and this guest post on Fat Roland On Electronica...

I would like to nominate The Black Eyed Peas –….I don’t actually know the name of the track although I should probably find out what it’s called before I start. You probably know the one I’m on about already, something about a good day. It’s probably called ‘a good day’.

It’s called ‘I got a feeling’ and it’s good night not day.

O.K so I can’t say that I’ve ever sat down to listen to it but I don’t need to, it was so popular when it was released that it became part of the wallpaper that belonged to time and place. That time and place, that thankfully is now behind us.

The production is actually not that offensive, it’s a poppy, upbeat, forgettable dance track. The most compelling evidence against it is in its lyrics. I might as well have not written anything here other than the lyrics.

Here is a sample which I will now cut and paste from somewhere on interwebs.

“go out and smash it
let go o' my guard
Jump off that sofa
Let’s get get up”

I’m suddenly impressed at just how throwaway and thoughtless these lyrics really are.

“I feel stressed out
I wanna let it go
Lets go way out spaced out
and losing all control”

That’s enough of that. To counteract any harmful side effects here are a few lines from Etchogon-S by Autechre

“…//.-*

/,.’];--

/’;[;[;

===*”

Better?

My point, if there is one, is that despite the song’s protagonist repeatedly claiming to have ‘the feeling’ the song itself is devoid of ‘the feeling’. Its only purpose is to fill a bit of space somewhere for a few minutes. Actually listening to this sort of stuff is a bit like going on a diet where you eat nothing but tile grout. 

Will.i.am is very keen on his band having the right image, I read an interview with him in the Metro and he said so himself. This, I imagine is what prompted him to stop making vaguely listenable hip hop and get a sexy female singer that can piss herself at will while on stage. [Citation needed]

Dance music, electronic music are famously places where the anonymous artist can thrive, knocking out bass odysseys from a sweaty bedsit in Hackney, only emerging at night for skins and cigs from the all night garage. This is where the real shit is at. I’m not against artists having big personalities at all but for everyone’s sake please try to keep the music real and please keep the drums raw.

I suppose ‘I got a feeling’ wasn’t really designed for me. You could say ‘but it’s ok for the feeble minded to shake their limbs at’. Well yes, but we all have to suffer though don’t we? Something really needs to be done about this.

Basically we just need to play more Aphex.

Everyone, now.

This guest post was written by Jon Mann.