Jez-Clackers and Groovy Andy are unlikely farm friends

You know that Jeremy Clarkson guy? The punchy old car bore man? Apparently he's got a television show about being on a farm, which is called Clarkson's Farm because he's called Clarkson and he's got a farm.

I wouldn't normally post about Jeremy Clarkson's farm. I have a negative-level of interest in learning about that Top Gear twerp muck-spreading or cow-bothering or whatever it is people do on farms.

But on series three of the programme, I notice that Clarkson has got a new friend. He's called Andy Cato, and he's an expert in sustainable farming. Something to do with regenerative planting, biodiversity, carbon storage, elephant taming, and similar green goals. Wait. Not the elephant taming: ignore that.

Andy Cato is better known as a member of Groove Armada, the electronic dance popsters famous for hits like Superstylin' and I See You Baby, at least one of which is about unnatural movements of human bottoms. They were dubby and fun and not quite as good as Basement Jaxx but we liked them anyway.

This is, of course, really annoying. Because this gives Jeremy Clarkson credibility in the electronic music community. We must now take J-Clark seriously, as if he was the third member of Erasure or the fifth member of Kraftwerk or the 493rd Aphex Twin (he gets secretly replaced twice a month, ssshhh don't tell anyone).

When Johnny Rotten started advertising butter, some people scoffed, but I took it very seriously. I ate only Country Life for six months. I bathed in the stuff. It was endorsed by a music legend, so it must've been good for you.

I suppose I'd better get into farming. Adopt a sheep; move into a one-bedroom combine harvester; brandish pitchforks at passers-by. I don't want to do it, but I want to be friends with Jez-Clackers and Groovy Andy, as they will be known from now on.

Goodness knows what'll happen next. Boards Of Canada opening up a tea shop? Fila Brazillia flogging tractors? Mint Royale running a countryside B&B where the residents go mysteriously missing but no-one complains because he sells special "meat" out of the back door when the police aren't looking? Honestly, any of this could happen.

Now excuse me while I write 20,000 words on how Jeremy Clarkson is the next Delia Derbyshire. [jumps balls-first into a thresher]

Picture: Wildfarmed / BBC News

Further Fats: Meet the Yamaha GX-1, the tractor's natural nemesis (2019)

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

Electronic Sound issue 73: for the last time, please do NOT look at the ostrich

I didn't want to have to do this, but for issue 73 of Electronic Sound magazine, I go on strike. And there's my illustration of a confused ostrich. With a piece of paper on its back for some reason. Ignore the ostrich. THIS IS NOT ABOUT THE OSTRICH.

In my column, I rail against the readers and demand that they write this month's article themselves. It's been a long time coming. Stupid readers with their stupid money that pays our stupid wage. Oh. Wait. Dammit.

I'm not really on strike, of course. It's a fiction maintained for comedic effect. In the same way I spent a week after new year dressed as Mr Snuffleupagus from Sesame Street using only crepe paper and taramasalata. I wasn't the real Mr Snuffleupagus. I was maintaining a fiction.

In the same edition, you will find my reviews of the latest albums by Haroon Mirza and Jack Jelfs (something botanical about the croaking synths"), Emeka Ogboh ("bursts with life") and veteran ambient producer Tim Story ("oodles of acoustic space").

There is also stuff in issue 73 not written by me, if you can believe such a thing. Elsewhere there's an interview with Porcupine Tree's Steven Wilson, a short story by John Foxx of Ultravox fame, and a piece about Langham Research Centre and their tape manipulation exploits.

There's also a great section dedicated to limited edition record releases, including Aphex Twin's ultra-rare Analogue Bubblebath 5, a bizarrely truncated Boards Of Canada tune for Record Store Day 2013, and that one-off Wu-Tang Clan album that was bought by pill-pushing fraudster Martin Shkreli.

The design of the magazine is another triumph. Plain black text on a plain white background, like the mind control signs from They Live, only classier. Sunglasses on, folks. OBEY. CONSUME. BUY ISSUE 73 OF ELECTRONIC SOUND.

I must go. Blogger spell check is not recognising the word "Snuffleupagus" nor the word "taramasalata". I'm off to write a strongly-worded letter to Ms B Logger, who owns Blogger, about a lax attitude to Greek meze and feathered mammoths.

Further Fats: 

Best electronic albums of 2020: twenty

20 – Khotin – Finds You Well (Ghostly International)

Do the Boards of Canada androids dream of electronic music? And when they do, does it sound like this Edmonton producer's super-hazy take on detuned downbeat? Or do they just have nightmares where they're in school assembly without their pants? 

Probably the latter.

Khotin's Finds You Well is possibly the most likeable album on my list. If it popped round for dinner, I'd let it beat me on the Playstation then let it into the garden to jump on my trampoline. It's a huggable nostalgic treat, and very much the opposite to a terrible 2020.

In once sense, you've heard this before: my opening reference was quite deliberate. Plaintive head-nodders meet pining analogue synths and scratchy vocal samples, all with a healthy element of fuzz. But it's incredibly well done.

During one moment of dying ambience, Khotin's kid sister appears, sing-songing "the world is wonderful".  I can't help feeling that Finds You Well doesn't sound like an album we want right now: it sounds like the album we need.

 

Browse the rest of the Best Electronic Albums of 2020

Ten slices of shallow-fried Twitter whimsy

Twitter is a platform in which everyone can communicate with everyone else all of the time without any downsides whatsoever.

What follows are ten slices of shallow-fried whimsy lovingly copied-and-pasted from my Twitter account. Some if it reads as a useful self-help guide along the lines of The Power Of Now, How To Win Friends And Influence People or the Roland SH-101 Owner's Manual. Some of it reads like poetry along the lines of, er, poems and stuff.

I have given each tweet a header so you can perhaps make an index from it, like they do with proper books.

1. The food puns
Butter Living Through Chemistry. Meusli Has The Right To Children. Thymeless. Dubnobasswithmyheadman (where bass is a fish). Adventures Beyond The Ultrawurst. Endtrojuicing. Not sure where I'm going with this.

2. A question about 1996
Did the boy ever see his mom that weekend to tell her Satan Satan Satan Satan Satan Satan Satan Satan?

3. Thoughts post-Brexit
Don't worry, everyone, we don't need Europe. Just stay in your towns, don't go anywhere, don't meet new people and don't buy anything. We didn't have the EU around the time of the Great Plague and everything was just fine.

4. Morning reflection 1
A grey morning in Manchester. Cold raindrops fall on puddled streets like polar bears in spandex, if polar bears were tiny and made of water, also forget the spandex, that's just a distraction tbh

5. A motivation
How to have a positive day:
- smile more
- do one kind thing
- pay a compliment
- open up the portal of d'ath krondor
- eat healthy
- live in the moment
- the tentacles, the tentacles, they burn
- be a good listener
- the void shall become all, ye wastrels of earth

6. A concern
I'm slightly worried that Antifa is short for Anti Fat Roland.

7. A dream for the future
It's splitting hairs, but I'd like to hear New Order's Mr Disco covered by Electronic.

8. Morning reflection 2
It is morning. The sun comes alive in the eastern sky and says its happy greetings. Hello trees. Hello fields. Hello squirrels. Hello sun! they call and wave. In the western sky, the moon dies a horrible death. Everyone laughs.

9. A simple wish
I wish Squarepusher was called Squidpusher and all of his promo shots were of him in back alleys selling squid.

10. The bird incident
Twitter, I forgot to tell you. A low-flying goose honked at me pretty aggressively the other day, so that's pretty much 2020 written off. How's YOUR week been?

Further Fats: Squarepusher's psychedelic number - could it send him (robert) miles off course? (2009)

Further Fats: Top ten ways to write a top ten music list (2012)

Best electronic albums of 2019: fourteen

14 – Mikron – Severance (CPU) 

In my review for Electronic Sound, I said that Mikron "take us to a beautiful place out in the country" on their second album. The knowing nod to a certain 2000 Warp Records EP is quite deliberate: Severance is Boards of Canada on uppers.

The melodic leanings towards Drexciya, Detroit and the aforementioned Dayvan Cowboys seem simplistic on the first couple of listens, but this is an album I returned to again and again throughout 2019. It's addictive, like crack or caffeine or Windolene.

With those past references in mind, I was a bit worried about including this in my top 20 because there is so much 1990s nostalgia on this website. But then there's the bounciness of Ghost Node, the boldness of NynIV, the (literal) breathiness of Lyre. This is a fine-sounding piece of work.

I must apologise, by the way, for the constant comparisons to Boards Of Canada when covering this album. It's not fair. People often compare me to Johnny Vegas. You play the cards you're dealt, I guess. Monkey.



Scroll the full best-of-2019 list here.

It is my duty to inform you of this Selected Ambient Works anagram

It is my duty to inform you that Selected Ambient Works is an anagram of "Welcome Break dentists".

Less impressively, Squarepusher's 1998 album Music Is Rotted One Note is an anagram of "emits erotic note sound" while his debut from a couple of years earlier Feed Me Weird Things can be rearranged to say "eight friends mewed".

Boards Of Canada's seminal album Music Has The Right To Children is an anagram of "hi, third nuclear ghost chemist", while their later work The Campfire Headphase works out with an Iranian twist: "imperfect shah had a pee".

Venetian Snares is more of a challenge. The best I could get out of Rossz Csillag Alatt Született was "let tzars lust at laziest clogs", which they should be allowed to do. Winnipeg Is a Frozen Shithole becomes the horsey scandal "fool whinnies at neigh prizes". I'm not even going to attempt Cavalcade of Glee and Dadaist Happy Hardcore Pom Poms.

μ-Ziq's archive release Challenge Me Foolish can be rearranged to make "nice flesh homage, lol" which is all very creepy but none of this as good as the Aphex Twin Selected Ambient Works anagram. Welcome Break dentists. Yeesh. Service stations are usually quite uncomfortable experiences, and this just opens up a whole new world of roadside pain.

Further Fats: Ardently foul, wet flies: do my angry anagrams, you fart-hole (2010)

Further Fats: Fat Roland's February pop anagrams - number 4 is a doozy (2019)

Is my Boards Of Canada mash-up art? Don't answer that

I mushed together Boards Of Canada's album covers so you can appreciate them all at once.

My visual mash-up has all the delicate tones of a bruised frog, or perhaps of a gas explosion in Piers Morgan's trousers.

I think if you played all Boards of Canada tracks at once, that would be too many Boardses of Canada. The detuned synthesisers would multiply into a cascading dischordance and, like the effect of the proverbial butterfly wings, somewhere else in the universe Brian Eno will misplace his glasses case.

What else should I blend in Photoshop? I'd love to hear your suggestions. Actually, I've no intention of blending anything else: this turned out a bit rubbish. Please don't send me your suggestions. This is all a colossal waste of time.

Life is a half-hearted faff on Photoshop and then you die.

Oh. Erm...

Jeez. I have been listening to WAY too much Boards Of Canada.

Further Fats: Merzbow makes crap an art form (that's meant to be a compliment, by the way) (2008)

Happy 30th anniversary, Warp Records

Warp Records has been celebrating its 30th birthday - it's the same age as Taylor Swift, Daniel Radcliffe and the twins who played Carl Gallagher in Shameless.

The first Warp track I heard was LFO's LFO, quickly followed by Tricky Disco's Tricky Disco. Both were UK top 40 hits - I know that because I taped the charts religiously every week: both songs would have degraded gloriously as I tape-to-tape copied them onto successive home compilations. Aside from loving the electronic simplicity of the records, having eponymous songs seemed weirdly rebellious.

Then came the Artificial Intelligence compilations, my musical fulcrum from which everything spewed, which featured Polygon Window, The Black Dog, Beaumont Hannant and B12. Warp also gave us some incredibly beautiful artist albums, most notably from - of course - Aphex Twin, Boards Of Canada, Autechre and Richard H Kirk. You already know this.

I remember Warp's tectonic plates shifting when they moved to London. A bit like when Boddingtons shut down their Manchester brewery. They widened their electronic remit (Warp, that is, not Boddies), bringing in acts like Anti Pop Consortium who sounded wonky and wild. And now they rule the world with artists like Flying Lotus, Plaid, Bibio, Kelela and Oneohtrix Point Never. You can catch a stack of the label's 30th anniversary broadcasts here.

Happy birthday, Warp. I'm glad you're still going strong, and I'm glad you're still putting out music by the likes of Lorenzo Senni, which has all the vital energy as your early stuff. I'll be forever grateful to the label being a beacon of quality techno, and the basis for a lot of further record browsing across a zillion other labels.

If I had one criticism, it would be that there doesn't seem to be much eponymous song titling these days. Just saying. If you want to release Fat Roland's Fat Roland, you know who to call.

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!

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)

A bite-size look at Bleep's best electronic music tracks of 2016

Every year, the online retailer Bleep sells a package of 100 bestest tracks of the year. It's usually a great big steaming pile of brilliance. Here is a brief peep into that Bleep heap.

Belfast duo Bicep remixed 808 State's top ten classic In Yer Face. Bicep also co-run a record label. Do you know what it's called? Feel My Bicep. Good job Willie Nelson never set up a similar label, eh? Arf.



Ben Lukas Boysen turned out a blissful opus called Nocturne 4. It's mixed by labelmate Nils Frahm, the bloke from nonkeen who's worked with Ólafur Arnalds from Kiasmos. In other words, we're in heart-breaking classical territory here.



House DJ Midland recently won Pete Tong's Essential Mix of the Year, so he's got an embarrassment of riches right now. Makes sense then this track, debuted at Boiler Room, is called Blush. Nice fat synths.



And finally, the one and only Boards of Canada remixed Sisters by cLOUDDEAD's Odd Nosdam. BoC are usually chilled, but this is a different flavour of chilled: more heavenly and glisten-like thanks to the original's choir vibes.



'Feel My Willie.' It was a dong joke. Oh never mind. Enjoyed these four tracks? Loads more where that came from. Grab yourself Bleep's excellent top 100 tracks of 2016 here.

Further Fats: Ten plaudits Bleeping (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.

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.

Eight people I would definitely or definitely not torture

It is October. This blog has been dormant since July. It looks like Fat Roland on Electronica has ground to a pathetic halt. I could vomit excuses at you, but I won't. All I can say is I want to blog more. And will.

Instead of excuses, here is a list of musicians I would definitely and/or would definitely NOT torture if given the chance.

Justin Bieber

Would chuck him into a swimming pool filled with used tighty whities and the tears of his adoring fans.

Drake

Would take Drake (pictured) to the flattest part of earth where everything is painted magnolia, then have Robert Peston describe Last of the Summer Wine plots at him until he dies of boredom.

Jon Hopkins

Would not torture him. Would make him a little crown in the shape of a Korg Kaoss pad.

Miley Cyrus

Would show her Madonna’s Justify My Love, Rihanna’s X Factor nudity, Erykah Badu’s illegal Dallas disrobing and Amanda Palmer’s Daily Mail song strip, then have all of Miley’s fans shout “SO?” at her for the rest of eternity.

Four Tet

Would not torture him. Instead, would spend a romantic evening with him because of his beautiful music. We would eat ice cream, feed each other biscuits with our feet, then spoon while watching less successful episodes of Friends. I know how to have a good time.

Robin Thicke

Would tell him he was to be tortured on peak-time TV then have him turn up to an empty room with the word DISAPPOINTMENT scrawled on the wall.

Bjork

Would not torture her. Would make her queen of the universe, then have the whole universe destroyed while she laughed maniacally to the rhythm of Windowlicker. She’d like that.

Boards of Canada

Would definitely torture them. It’d be dark: leeches, probes, tweezers, strange hats. I've nothing against them: I'd just be interested in what they'd sound like if they were even more melancholic and desolate.

Further Fats: The devil has all the best IDM: Jon Hopkins (2010)

In an annoying place out in the nether regions

"They are definitely working on new material, but there is nothing in the cards at the moment in terms of a scheduled release."

Not quite as pithy as "yes" but that was a statement Warp Records gave to Pitchfork yesterday about the huge speculation over a new Boards of Canada album.

Damn you Warp Records and your clear sense of facts and logic!

Boards may have "mis-spoken". We are now in what I call an "Aphexian scenario", which is a nether region of speculation between the bum of the last album and the genitals of the next one.

My campaign to popularise the phrase "BOCtastic" is officially on hold. I didn't tell you about that, did I? WELL, NOW YOU'LL NEVER KNOW.

(See my post from yesterday: Geo-giddy: Boards of Canada's one word Facebook publicity explosion."

Futher Fats:  2paW0r: The Warp Records anagram challenge

Geo-giddy: Boards of Canada's one word Facebook publicity explosion

Comedians don't normally break massive news stories about electronic music, but it was Peter Serafinowicz that mentioned a possible new album from Boards Of Canada.

The rubber-voiced comic has a long history of Boards love, and once took the band to the next level, Dr Dre style. But was he right about his claim on a BBC radio show that the duo may well have a double album coming out soon?

Yes.

Or rather:

"Yes."

That was the single-word response from Boards Of Canada on Monday when questioned about a new album on their Facebook page.

Fan: "Rumours of a new BOC album are rife ? , any truth in this ?

BoC: "Yes."

As simple and as quick as that. Hundreds of 'likes' later, and Boards have achieved the briefest and most effective marketing campaign ever. It will be their first new album since The Campfire Headphase a million years ago. You'll know that album because you would have seen that awesomeballs skydiving video for Dayvan Cowboy. (Edit: See this update on the new album here.)

It's a shame the conversation didn't continue. We would have learned bucketloads...

"Will you embed in the music a complex spectral analysis map of your favourite toothpaste brands?"

"Yes."

"Will Jesus, the actual Jesus, guest star on the album on the bongos / trumpet / tubular bells?"

"Yes."

"As a result of this album's success, will you become judges on X Factor?"

"Yes."

"Will you become judges on X Factor with the specific purpose of bludgeoning everyone on that programme with a blunt stoat and unleashing a computer virus so eye-wateringly harsh, all digital, physical and anecdotal evidence that X Factor ever existed will be annihilated until the end of time?"

"Yes."

"Will that affect the text in this blog post?"

"Yes."

"What's your favourite prog rock band?"

"Aphrodite's Child."

Got to love Boards Of Canada.

(Edit: See this update on the new album here.)

Further Fats: Six, a musical review of 2006 featuring Boards Of Canada.

Luke Abbott's Drones: not so atonal now

Norfolk is a place that is only famous for producing slightly more than its fair share of formula one drivers. It also produced Luke Abbott (pictured), who recently popped us a debut album called Holkham Drones.

I've sort of ignored Abbott since 2006, when I praised his "manic atonal silliness", but this debut for the Border Community label has regained my fuzzy attention span like a happy slap, a Tango kiss and brain haemorrhage all rolled into one.

The album takes krautrock as its base (compare Abbott's Brazil with Neu's Hallogallo) and then weaves its repetitive curcuit-pumping machinery into a technoid tapestry of emotive, heartfelt electronica. Trans Forest Alignment is detuned pop melancholia, title track Holkham Drones is the very definition of sad disco, and the static beatbox of Hello Tazelaar dances a beautiful dance with melted synths that positively drip from the speakers. Stick that confused metaphor into your badger and smoke it.

It may be too reminiscent of Boards Of Canada in places (2nd 5th Heavy), and it may try too hard to be Clark (Baalnk), but this disc hooks the heart and the head more than most dance albums released in 2010.

Oh and in case you were wondering: Martin Brundle, Ralph Firman and that's about it. I did say "slightly".

Student's guide to new music

You're settling in to your halls or your crumbling shared house, but you haven't quite burned all your music from dad's computer yet. What music do you listen to if you want to be cool at university?

Obviously, you'll be bombarded with chances to hear thrilling bands if you're in a decent city. Manchester Academy, for example, is due to host amazing shows from Bowling For Soup, Peter Frampton and Napalm Death.

But this is an electronic music blog, so no doubt you've come to me for a few special recommendations to set you a few paces ahead from your clone mosher friends.

The first and only rule of Fat Roland's guide to new music for students is: if you listen to any music at all, I'll smash your face off with that gatepost.

Seriously. If you go within a thousand miles of anything resembling a rhythm or some kind of assemblance of melody, I'll kick you in the liver.

Biology lesson. A remarkable thing happens to the human body between the ages of 18 and 20. Before then, your synapses are made from phlegm and tears; they lack the connectivity to enable you to appreciate anything good. So you'll foxtrot to Keane, fandango to Kesha, fast-step to Kanye.

From about 19 or 20, you become a complete human being for the first time in your life. Your ears start talking to your feet and your heart, and what develops is a perfectly passable music taste that lives on for a decade or two. Your mp3s become file names like Cripple Bastards, Shitmat and Burt Bacharach (but only ironically).

The danger is, though, and I want you to read this as though it's one of those ominous adverts for AIDS in the 1980s, a residual echo from your pre-18 days lingers in your brain, terminally damaging many of your cells and then hiding until it chooses to ambush you later. Imagine Simply Red hiding in your fridge all night, waiting to pounce when you get milk in the morning.

And so, when you hit 32, all those old musical numbers you jived to in your teens pop back into your memory, and you utter the incantation that has destroyed many a cool person: "D'you know, that stuff wasn't so bad after all. At least it had a melody..."

There is only one way to stop this happening. Your musical taste must be sliced off the moment you hit university. For at least one year, you must be sonically castrated and taught that all music is evil. You have to go through a reverse-Clockwork Orange, and watch Akira Kurosawa or Jean-Luc Goddard films while subjecting your pinned-open earholes to Will I Am, Tiao Cruz or The Saturdays.

You should probably be locked in your room and bubblewrap be glued to every surface, including yourself. Your computer shall have an auto-tune filter, so anything melodic will sound like kittens being slowly diced with an apple corer.

Save yourself from yourself, new students. Listen to nothing. Not even your lectures, for fear of catching accidental intonations or a dull recitation of a textbook unintentionally forming a pleasing pentameter that could easily be set to music.

And all you will be left with is the cleansing wash of a lonely silence except in the dark of the night when the only noise is the dull thud of your heartbeat. Except, of course, a heartbeat is a recognised rhythm, so unless you've surgically wrapped that in jiffybags, that'll have to go too.

I'll ween you when you're ready. We'll start with Boards Of Canada, then go deeper. Meanwhile, let the silence begi--

James from Hadouken! saved me from death by lawnmower

I have a habit of avoiding the Metro newspaper in the same way I have a habit of not smashing my face into the blades of a lawnmower before work every morning.

However, the stinky, freebie spawn of the Daily Mail got something right today. It recommended some good music. Or rather, James out of Hadouken! did in the newspaper's On My iPod feature.

The new-raver (oh come on, they are not in any way "grindie") implored Metro readers to pick up a copy of Hudson Mohawke's funk-infused Rising 5 and described it as "math-y, analogue space-funk with a sitar." I don't hear a sitar there, but I did discover this Boards Of Canada remix of the band sampled by HudMo for Rising 5.

Shuffling death track

James Hadouken! also recommended Flying Lotus' shuffling death track Time Vampires, reminding the dear Metro readers of a Lotus collaboration with the Gorillaz. Flying Lotus did drop a Gorillaz track on Gilles Peterson's radio show recently, and he's also been schmoozing with Thom Yorke - but no Gorillaz remix to report yet.

He went on to plug Inside Pikachu's Foo-Foo by Rustie, except you'd need to replace that euphamism for something a little stronger. It's a stupendous track - as is everything by Rustie at the moment. And he also bigged-up (I believe that is the modern parlance) Joker's Gully Brook Lane.

The Hadouken! chappie finished the Metro feature with Chase & Status' End Credits, a slab of drum and bass melancholia featuring the vocal talents of Plan B which worked brilliantly at the end of Harry Brown and provided Chase & Status with their UK chart breakthrough.

I sometimes get a bit evangelical about electronic music, so it's nice to see music I like amid the usual Metro bilge of kittens, health stories and knowing irony. For once, the lawnmower stayed safely in my garage: I just stapled my forehead instead.

My greatest idea once more crumbles to dust like a great big crumbly bit of dust

Once in a mauve moon, I come up with an idea so eyeball-shatteringly amazing, I literally spend 24 hours patting myself on the back like some goggle-armed freak.

I include some of my radio ideas in that (such as inventing the name Fryer Tuck Shop and conniving with my radio co-presenter Lee to come up with a game based on it). I also include the Formula One Losers League in that (which I hope to resurrect next year).

So I was quite excited about my idea for a music comparison site that went beyond the pathetic attempts by Amazon and iTunes to hopelessly recommend Cascada to Aphex Twin fans*.

Music comparisons. How hard can they be? This is like falling off a blog. Dead easy. Like pissing on a duck. Let's test my big new idea with a basic comparison question:

If you like Orbital, what else do you buy?

Here is my list of bands that sound like Orbital, or at least, music you may want to listen to if you haven't the foggiest about electronic music but you happen to have bought an Orbital album or two. The list includes suggestions from other people given to me when I first started researching this 361 frickin' days ago.

Remember. This is the start of my Big New Idea. I am a genius, so this cannot possibly go wrong.

If you like Orbital, try...

- µ-Ziq. He has that melodic thing going on along with a crunchiness of rhythm that Orbital fans like.

- Boards of Canada and Bola. Both artists ooze with Orbital-style melancholy and are both fairly accessible.

- The Black Dog and Plaid. Experimentalism meats warm analogue techno goodness.

- Kruder and Dorfmeister. Maybe, although I'm not quite sure.

- Photek. Feel the darkness. The complexity in the rhythmic structure. No? Next!

- Crystal Castles, but only their track Untrust Us.

- Long Range. This is the guy from Orbital. This list is useless.

- Lemon Jelly. Oh now come on, that's taking the Michaelangelo.

- Mannheim Steamroller? Trans Siberian Orchestra? Nah. Pentatonik! Closer with that last one, although it's the old techno band not the more recent rock band.

- The theme tune to the Equalizer. Well, actually, now you come to think about it...

- Lowfish. And the second track from Wahn's Alt.binaries. Hello? Is anyone still reading?

Well, that was a pile of hairballs. It's my worst list since I listed Orbital's albums by colour.

Scrap that idea. I'm off to draw up blueprints for my next brilliant scheme, which will involve (in no particular order) the chair George Clooney made in Burn After Reading, the complete works of Dan Brown, a blowtorch and sixty-two gallons of bathtub gin.

*Actually, they're a lot better these days, but iTunes used to be shiiieeeeet.