Best electronic albums of 2020: a steady special mention, special mention, special mention

Throughout this countdown, I have herded many albums into a pen labelled "special mentions". Here is the final lot of special mentions for you to ogle longingly at. Oh and my notebook tells me the following selections are labelled "pop / chart".

I've always had a soft spot for Moby, and although it got mixed reviews, I enjoyed All Visible Objects (Mute), especially its nod to his younger rave days. Speaking of feeling young, there was a fresh energy to Disclosure's third album Energy (Island), all chart-friendly and chirpy and cheesy smiles. 

I've never fully got Sparks: the quirkiness is lost on me. That said, there was a lot to admire in A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip (BMG), with my Electronic Sound review praising their wryness, lyricism and "earworms with moustaches". Another duo I got to review in 2020 was Erasure. Their eighteenth (!) album The Neon (Mute) was a "glittery cannon of anthems", in which the "neon flickers with regret".

I always love a Pet Shop Boys album. Early in the year, they released Hotspot (x2), revisiting subtler melodies and giving us the prophetic stay-at-home anthem I Don't Wanna. Nice to see Years & Years making an appearance (the band not the television programme) (obviously) (duh).

Another bunch of old party-heads releasing an album in 2020 was The Orb. Abolition of the Royal Familia (Cooking Vinyl) was a likeable jumble of soulful pop and dubby ambience, and featured the usual gang (Eno! Youth! Hillage!) alongside tributes to Stephen Hawking and Jello from the Dead Kennedys. This was, by the way, only their seventeenth album. I can hear Erasure's mocking laughter.

Finally, pop-pickers, there's this wacky pairing. Eccentric knob-twiddler and Sigur Ros collaborator Dan Deacon gave us Mystic Familiar (Domino Recordings), his first album since 2015. It had DIY songwriting, crashing drums, wonky electronics, and an anthem or three. And eccentric sample-fiddlers The Avalanches were back with We Will Always Love You (Astralwerks), which they said was an “exploration of the vibrational relationship between light, sound and spirit” although was much more straight-laced than that.

I think that's it for my special mentions. I've probably missed something. Tom Vek did an album, didn't he? Too late. I need to publish this in about 60 seconds. I really am writing to deadline – cor blimey.

 

Browse the rest of the Best Electronic Albums of 2020

Also-rans: time to kill off some more giants (sorry, Avalanches)

We're not too far from number one, so let's kill off a few more giants.

I really didn't take to The Avalanches comeback album Wildflower (XL Recordings). Way too "kooky" mainstream. And I don't know what Tricky was up to on Skilled Mechanics (False Idols). Oh dear. Let's move on.

I have endless love for Paul Hartnoll but his collaboration with Vince Clark on 2Square (Very Records) was a bit dad-pop in places. Meanwhile, Romare tend to be a little too straight down the line for me, no more so than on Love Songs: Part Two (Ninja Tune). That's also the case with Tycho, whose Epoch (Ghostly International) is as robustly satisfying as Coldplay.

Sometimes albums are great but perhaps don't fit my narrow definition of electronic albums. That goes for the much-lauded and utterly fantastic Anohni's Hopelessness (Rough Trade) and for Jenny Hval's thoughful and engrossing Blood Bitch (Sacred Bones Records).

Finally, a couple of miscellaneous names that didn't make the final selection but are probably worth a nosey. Steve Hauschildt's new agey Strands (Kranky) and the whimsical electronic pop of Motion Graphics (Domino) by Motion Graphics. The latter has a track called Minecraft Mosaic.





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

Snurvive the snowpocalypse with snowtronica

Fat Roland would like to advise listeners of serious disruptions to music due to the severe weather conditions, which are likely to continue tomorrow. Electronica listeners are advised not to listen to or make tunes except for the most essential artists.

These are those essential artists:

- Anything by The Avalanches (via Stuart Durber)

- Anything by the Chemical Brrrs (geddit? via Isaac Ashe)

- Anything by Max Tundra (via Dirty Protest) 

- Biosphere: Polar Sequences (via Dial)

- Digitonal: Snowflake Vectors (via Dan Brearley)

- For delayed journeys, Faithless: Take The Long Way Home or Miss You Less See You More (via A Strangely Isolated Place)

- Herrmann and Kleine: Catch A Snowflake (via Dan Brearley)

- Joy Electric: Walking In A Winter Wonderland (via John Mark Cullen)

- Leftfield: Melt 

- Mike and Rich: Mr Frosty (via LUDD)

- Moby: Snowball (via Ben Edson) 

- Modeselektor: The White Flash (via Daniel Stirling)

- Monolake - Infinite Snow (see forthcoming album review, prob'lee on Saturday)

- The Orb: Little Fluffy Clouds (of snow. Via Stuart Durber)

- Trentemoller. (While The Cold Winter Waiting, I reckon. Via Isaac Ashe.)

- Various: Tribute To Antarctica (via Mrcopyandpaste)

- Wisp: Frozen Days (via Smucker)

Do add your own snow-themed electronica / IDM in the comments below. Or tweet it and tag it #snowtronica. Together, we can get through this if only we listen to the right music.

Wevie Stonder: all the people are fridges; all the food is made of October

For a decade, ridiculous joketronica band Wevie Stonder (photo: Fjords) have been churning out their own parody dance music, featuring (according to the New York Times) "singing and shouting" and "a portly German tuba player in sunglasses and costume antennas."

They are electronica's version of Weird Al Yankovic, except without the yawning realisation that you've heard the joke before.

You'd think they'd be stuck in a rut doing this kind of thing, like Goldie Lookin' Chain. Yet the boys still have one sweaty ear pressed up against music's pregnant underbelly. Their latest album The Bucket churns out dubstep and grime references like some kind of clown-show sausage machine without an off-button.

Hans Peach takes off Leftfield and T-Rex and is the sound of all the guitars and all the synths playing Twister after closing time in all of the UK's instrument shops. Small People (think Lemon Jelly on K) is a Carribean island, palm tree at its centre, spinning in giddy circles like a warped record.

The Amiga beeps beep. The funk bass funks. The 909 snares ensnare. The whole thing pleases. "It's going well Tuesday," spouts the Nathan Barley DJ on Glidstep.

I have no idea what any of The Bucket means. It's like being at a party where the people are fridges and all the food is made of October. Wevie Stonder leave the quirkiness of Lemon Jelly and Avalanches dead in the dodo juice.