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.