Some January 2022 electronic music releases: Bonobo, wintertime cities and generous wildebeest

What is the sound of January? Is it the noise of Christmas trees being fed into a woodchipper? Is it the noise your uneaten Christmas dinner being fed into a woodchipper? Is it the noise of a woodchipper being fed into a woodchipper because that's all you got for Christmas and you already had one?

No. It's none of the above. January actually sounds like these four interesting records, all due for release at some point this month.

Here are my January new electronic music recommendations.

Bonobo: Fragments (Ninja Tune)

Seventh album from the jazzy techno man (pictured), inspired by his forays into the California wilderness. It's dead orchestral, but is also one of his more dancier outings. The Otomo collaboration with O'Flynn revives the giddy breakbeat vibes of the likes of Way Out West. One for the clubbers, and a bunch of soulful vocal tracks for the mainstream crowd too. A sunny antidote to this virus-ridden winter.

Telefís: a hAon (Dimple Discs)

This is going to be ace. Irish producer Jacknife Lee and singer Cathal Coughlan combine to make an album of snappy electro pop celebrating and satirising Irish pop culture, all with a retro / library music feel. They've got Jah Wobble on remix duties AND a track called Archbishop Beardmouth At The ChemOlympics.

Burial: Antidawn EP (Hyperdub)

I've never seen Burial and Lorraine Kelly in the same room at the same time. Coincidence?! Everyone's favourite enigma goes ambient for this new EP, as he invites us into a "wintertime city". Imagine entering Narnia where a fawn offers you a big fat blunt and never tells you its name. Like that. But spookier.

Soichi Terada: Asakusa Light (Rush Hour)

Deep house producer Soichi Terada dug out a bunch of 1990s synths for this first album in 25 years. It's Bleep's Album of the Week and I can see why. Its bright metronomic beats sit somewhere between Shinichi Atobe and early Grid. Imagine being garrotted by a furious wildebeest because you didn't appreciate the woodchipper it bought you for Christmas. This album is the exact opposite of that, i.e. it's proper nice.

That's it. Have a listen to all of that, please. Now move along before I call the police.

Best electronic albums of 2019: fifteen

15 – Karenn – Grapefruit Regret (Voam)

There's a fruity feel to this debut album by Karenn, the techno pear – er, sorry, I mean pair comprising Pariah and Radiohead remixer Blawan. Track titles include Lemon Dribble, Strawbs and Kumquat: put this lot in a cake and you'll win Bake-Off for the next 52 years.

I'm not a big fruit person, myself. So will this man go (mango) for it? Will me long (melon) for it? Is it as good as Buri(Berry)al? Hey, stop judging me. I've got a lot to write for this top 20 and I really haven't got time to come up with fruit puns that work. Wind your neck in, ta (nectarine).

If Grapefruit Regret was indeed fruity, this would be the hard stone rather than soft flesh. It opens with metallic hydraulics leading into grubby speedway techno, all covered in industrial rust while the bass drum reigns supreme. No-nonsense pile-driving techno.

The highlight is the hyper-charged warehouse stomp of Crush The Mushrooms, but there is a lot to admire in all of these spiky bangers. No compromise: a couple of men daring (mandarin) to do their own thing kumquat (come what) may. I am so sorry.



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).

Digging Burial's Untrue

Burial's Untrue album turned ten last week.

The album is feted by critics. The BBC calls it "powerful". Drowned In Sound called it "unspeakably romantic". Pitchfork just banged on for ages and used the word "sophomore" six hundred times.

Burial's mystique helped. It took the press five years to discover Burial's identity. "I wanted to use the sound of the earth," said Alan Titchmarsh after being exposed by Homes & Gardens magazine. "If you listen closely, it's mostly trowels."

His production techniques have been much copied, although we seem to forget that, famously, Untrue was produced by ghosts. This posed difficult logistics for studio staff. "They couldn't use the water cooler," I remember one assistant saying in an interview, "because their hands kept going through the little cone cups."

The album is a beautiful listen. Here's a Resident Advisor tribute to the album, which is a pretty good primer for those yet to get into Burial. Long may Alan's (and his ghosts') excellent work continue.

Let Adam Curtis control your music taste

I'm catching up on the excellent Adam Buxton podcast, and I really enjoyed the episode with documentary mind-crusher and possible Illuminati-in-chief Adam Curtis.

Particularly when he was raving about Burial and his track Come Down To Us.

"He takes what is essentially industrial noise and songs," says Curtis, who is probably also the shopkeeper in Needful Things, "and fuses them together to create something which is epic and romantic."

"It's so emotional... it's just wonderful," wibbles Adam Curtis, who is definitely the love child of Sauron and the Child Catcher.

Adam and Adam both have a knack of making creativity intelligent, fun and sometimes truly profound. Nice work. Take it away, Burial.

What's Burial's Subtemple EP all about, then?

If you weren't convinced we were living in bleak times, have a listen to the sinister new sound of Burial's new Subtemple EP (below).

Throw away all that is good. Bin your belongings, tear your clothing to shreds and sell your children, Down in the Subtemple, with two tracks of extended dark ambience, there is no hope.

Subtemple itself is seven minutes of vocal shards scattered across a beatless wasteland, micro mechanics clicking at us amid the static. Meanwhile the breathy synths of the ten-minute Beachfires slow things down even further as we succumb to a kind of slow-motion armageddon.

Burial's recent work could be seen as a bit patchy: his breakbeat remix of Goldie's Inner City Life for Record Store Day saved all the best stuff to the last couple of minutes, while his ravey white label Temple Sleeper was a direct lift of Solar Quest's 1994 acid gabba track Into The Machine.

When he removes the drums, he sounds much better. The distant rhythms of November's Young Death / Nightmarket EP were gloriously sparse, and were a brilliant precursor to Subtemple - no apparent audio relation to Temple Sleeper - which really does cast us out into the neverending vacuum of space.

A beatless Burial shouldn't work. The joy of Will Bevan's work is the glitchiness of his loops because of his refusal to quantize his drums (i.e. he won't use the audio equivalent of spellcheck). But this is a sound of an artist developing something new. No drums? No problem.

It's approaching a decade since Burial's last studio album. Can you imagine if he dropped a long-player of static-scrubbed minimalist ambience; a devastated Eno for a new generation?

We would all instantly die as everything good crumbled around us, but at least we'd die happy.



Further Fats: Elbow nudge ahead for Mercury Music Prize win - my cat is disappointed (2008)

Further Fats: Listen: Zomby and Burial's Sweetz (2016)

Listen: Zomby and Burial's Sweetz

I've been listening to the sweary collaboration between Zomby and Burial, two names with so much weight in the electronic music world, they're practically creating a black hole of excellence.

It's a track which takes its time, almost living in its own vacuum. The rolling bass is so low, it's practically in another universe. The result is some seriously menacing drama.

Zomby's new album Ultra is out on Hyperdub this week and includes a Darkstar collaboration that's all clonky and whizzy. In a good way.

Have a listen to Sweetz: I've had trouble embedding so click through to Bleep or Juno to put Sweetz in your ears. And once you've heard that, go here to hear the Darkstar track, although I warn you now, the DJ does a reeewind. Stupid DJ.

Where did dubstep go?

Where did dubstep go?

Not so long ago, it wobbled up from the underground to the broadsheets via that bizarre Britney Spears middle eight on Britney's Hold It Against Me. We stopped calling Burial dubstep and bowed down to our low-end oscillating masters.

Where did it go? Skrillex hasn't had a hit for a year. All people make now is doom-laden ambient music, UK garage, drum ‘n’ bass and fey folk pop pap. Seriously. Physics says nothing disappears: dubstep’s atoms have to be somewhere.

Has it become Lionel Blair? Has it become the latent sexual energy in Chas & Dave’s performances?

If you know where dubstep has gone, please get in touch. Your information will be treated with confidence and given to the one extra Romanian that’s entered the UK. Send a postcard to Big Questions of 2014, Fat Roland Towers, Evil Lair, Lionel Blair Mews, Manchester, UK.

Further Fats: "There is little in the party manifestos about whether dubstep is dead..." (2010)

Bleep Years day twenty: Burial & Four Tet's Moth (2009)

Bleep Years is a series in which I take two decades, from 1992 to 2011, and come up with some sort of chronological soundtrack. One tune a year. Click here to see the whole lot of them. And let's not forget, it's all a celebration of a decade of fatroland.com because no bugger got me a cake.
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2009: Burial & Four Tet's Moth

The tyranny of the arbitrary time division has positives (birthday drinks!) and negatives (mid-life crisis!). Maybe Bleep Years has been my way of facing up to the fact that I am beginning to measure my life in decades rather than years. And maybe the insinuation there is that I will eventually measure my life in centuries then in millennia as I become Uber Lord Roland Of The Everythingverse (TM).

Having said that, we are, co-incindentally, ending this series with an artist called Burial. Yeah, fate, thanks for that reminder. Cheers for that. Yeah. Thanks.

Dear blog chums, life is for living and for loving and for playing massively loud tunes. If I looked back on the last couple of decades and I couldn't find music that moved, uplifted and even upset me, then I might as well be dead on a spike. Or be Cheryl Cole. I expect to find massively more exciting tunes over the next two decades too: just wait until I'm wazzing praise all over this blog about Clark's impending new album.

And so we end with 2009, in which I faced Christian prejudice and Orbital's return (not to be mixed up). Burial and Four Tet released one of the bestestest house collaborations ever (watch below). And it was the year in which I took my blogging seriously for a change, a brilliant 'second job' that has given back again and again. Which brings us beautifully to the end of February 2012, the most blogged month in the history of Fat Roland On Electronica.

Another 6,000-or-so words plopped into the burping mouth of the internet. NOW WHERE'S MY CAKE?

Top ten best electronica albums of 2010: part three of four

This is part three. Please do read the other parts of this blog post: part one, part two and part four
To read last year's top ten best electronica albums, click here.

4 - Four Tet – There Is Love In You

Kieren Hebdon's strongest album had 2010 skipping to the dancefloor while it was still in short trousers. It is probably the only album in my list that has nudged the top 40, a deserved success after he lit the Burial touchpaper with the Moth / Wolf Cub 12-inch last year. In the modern parlance of today's youth, this album is definitely double-rainbow.

I had been lazy writing off Four Tet as coffee table electronica for people too afraid of Venetian Snares. There Is Love In You is sardine-full of outstanding tracks (the fractured vocals of Angel Echoes, the soaring simplicity of Circling, the thundering energy of Plastic People), but it works best an emotional journey start to finish, especially when topped with heartbreaking Bibio-like finisher She Just Likes To Fight.

A ten-out-of-ten for Four Tet. Buy There Is Love In You from Bleep or Boomkat or Piccadilly.

3 - Luke Abbott – Holkham Drones

Is it really four years since Luke's stupendous 8-bit single b,b,b,b,b,b,b,b,b,b,b,b,b,b,b,b? Holkham Drones is Abbott's first album and appears to be named after a posh place in Norfolk. Even though it appears to be the Border Community label's only album release of 2010, it arrived on the electronica scene with less of a fanfare, more of an enthusiastic trumpet fart (check my own fartings here).

Holkham Drones needs to be rediscovered immediately. Taking its cue from basic frequency modulation, the cymbals hiss and the bass rings hollow and the whole thing appears as if it may fall over any second. But as the beat grabs you by the badgers, your mind is transported into a grey fluffy analogue world belonging to Boards Of Canada and Cluster (the band not the cereal). This meditation on ambience through repetitive beats is the greatest noise since early days of techno, or since I knocked on Timmy Mallett's door for a solid week because he owed me a fiver.

The best Abbott since, um, Diane Abbott. Buy Holkham Drones from Bleep or Boomkat.

2 - Gonjasufi – A Sufi And A Killer

A Sufi And A Killer sounds like Mark E Smith, Timothy Leary, Seasick Steve, George Clinton, Marc Bolan and Flying Lotus using their teeth, yellowed from chewing tobacco, to rip open time itself, then having a jolly good toke on apple tobacco in a shisha cafe. This is a debut album, don't forget. Despite its dizzying array of influences, this is as complete a sound as you're ever going to get.

"You came with weapons: I came with God," says Sumach, and you don't doubt him. The billion or so tracks on the album buzz with a shamanic intensity: the eastern impact of Kowboyz And Indians, the vintage jam of She Gone or the imposing beats underpinning his fragile vocals (an ancient Method Man?) on Ancestors. I don't know where he's coming from or where he's going to, but Sufi, so good. Sorry.

An incredible achievement for Warp and Gaslamp Killer and the rest. Buy Gonjasufi's Sufi And A Killer from Bleep or Boomkat or Piccadilly.

Not quite in the top ten (part three)

My top ten is chock full of artists who have embraced the 4/4 rhythm, something which I wouldn't have done a year ago. And so it's a shame to lose Lone, whose Emerald fantasy Tracks evoked the spirit of classic Detroit. Shame to lose Underworld's Barking too. Matthew Dear's Black City didn't dance its way into the top ten either.

The Chemical Brothers got back to techno basics on Further, but it wasn't enough, while One Life Stand from Hot Chip was quite good but, frankly, a bit annoying. iTAL tEK's detailed Midnight Colour was definitely in my top half of the long list, while Susumu Yokota's Kaleidoscope didn't see its way into the final reckoning.

Dan Le Sac, Teebs, The Orb and Kode 9 (he did a DJ Kicks) also didn't make the cut. I was disappointed with Skream's chart-baiting Outside The Box. He needs to start thinking outside the, um, yeah, anyway. Royksopp's Senior had early retirement in the reckoning for this list.

And finally, some artists were excluded because they were probably too guitar-y and not electronica enough,. They include Denis Jones' Red + Yellow = (you must see him live), the Klaxons' Surfing The Void (and yes it was a good album cover) and the electrifying Nerve Up from Lonelady.

This is part three. Please do read the other parts of this blog post: part one, part two and part four
To read last year's top ten best electronica albums, click here.

Chosen Words: F is for Folktronica

a.k.a. World Cup Distraction Exercise: Fat Roland's A-Z guide to the most important words or phrases in electronica and their associated "facts"

When electronic music becomes boring, it gets squished together like old soap.

Results have included folktronica, dubstep and Truesteppers Featuring Dane Bowers And Victoria Beckham. Music has to do this to survive.

Folktronica is an attempt by bearded hippies to make an ancient form of music bend to the winds of modern taste. Even now, they are replacing Stonehenge with giant pixels. Dubstep is a variation of 2-step which is a variation of a pair of step ladders Burial kept in the back of his shed.

All music is the bastard child of something else. House music rose from disco and techno. Jungle came from various forms of ragga and rave, and later incorporated ambient. Meanwhile, James Blunt is the son of a dead cat and another dead cat.

Country and western has retained its musical and racial purity. It has no friends, and that's why it sounds so sad.

Top five music genres:

- 8 bit
- Aciieeeeed
- EBM
- IDM / braindance
- Hey, macarena

For more Chosen Words, click the tag at the bottom of this post.

No Burial was harmed in the making of this blog post: new tracks from LV, Actress, Pantha Du Prince

Time to find out what noises people have been making and say to them OI YOU LOOK AT YOUR NOISE.

LV and Untold

LV and Untold's track Beacon is so minimal, I'm not sure it exists. It's a terrifying slab of stretched-out, bass-whomping clicks and pokes, but it seems to nestle in a cold ether that exists neither here nor there. It's reality drawn out: the sound of loose cartilage if Burial's bones were all broken.

I like this for the Mount Kimbie remix because it achieves a staggering feat. It smears a load of choppy rave chords over the dubbiness of the original track and manages to make it sound more desolate, more textured, and more like Burial not only with broken bones but with his mealeable body stretched out like uncooked dough.

Actress

If running Werk Discs (Lone, Lukid, Zomby) gave his twiddly-knob hands enough to do, it's not showing because futuristic funkster Actress is busy churning out some massive music on Nonplus Records.

Machine And Voice is his latest, all broken funk and manufractured(TM) staccato bleeps, and not for the first time on this blog, I've found the real gem by flipping over to the b-side. Loomin' does what it says on the tin
(Nonplus Records) and is the highlight here because of the ferocity of the whirring robotics.

Pantha Du Prince

I'm delighted Pantha Du Prince's stand-out track Stick To My Side has not only got a single release, it has also got its own video that seems to mix two filmic moments from last year: the enthusiastic nightime dancing in Where The Wild Things Are and the eerie visit of the dybbuk in A Serious Man.

It's a smashing track that mixes clubbiness with curious off-tunes and it comes on this single with a thumping remix from Efdemi, an all-too-busy workout from Four Tet, and, on the digital version, a heavenly choirs and bells retake from Walls. As I've said before on this blog, I'm discovering house music again.

Massive Attack got soul but Ceephax got swing(ing lampshades)

Hey, look, there is some albums what just come out!

Ceephax Acid Crew

I'm swinging from the bloody lightshade.

United Acid Emirates, the new album from Ceephax Acid Crew, has got me prancing around my mansion like a brain damaged pixie. It's so lurid and colourful, like being stuck in an 8 bit Meg And Mog cartoon.

The drooling, looping trippiness of the acid, splattered all over this album, is a constant, giddy joy. The opener Cedric's Sonnet is a sharp, spikey melodic number reminiscent of his brother Squarepusher in Welcome To Europe mode. Castilian is dragged kicking and screaming by a full-on, bullying bass drum, while the dated click rhythm of Life Funk reminds me of Felix-era house music.

This is, however, not a stupid album. It's a serious step forward for Ceephax, where he demonstrates his various skills at chugging 80s techno anthems (Topaz) or off-kilter chord arrangements (Commuter). And all this with plenty of squelching acid moistness. Highly recommended.

Massive Attack

Are you bothered about a new Massive Attack album?  Of course you are: I can't believe you asked me that, you idiot.

Heligoland has finally, um, landed. It's a full seven years after the band's previous studio album ("If a thing's worth doing, it's worth doing slowly," says their MySpace page) and nearly 20 years after their highly influential debut Blue Lines. And actually, it's that memory of Blue Lines that I can hear on Heligoland.

Yes, there are guest vocalists (which The Guardian had down as almost unique in the dance world, despite the Gorillaz, Fatboy Slim and Unkle doing that kind of thing for years). Yes, there is gloominess a-plenty. But what this has, which I think 100th Window missed, is... capital letters... SOUL.

It's an album that is destined for coffee tables, new year's parties and easy headlines about the vocal collaborators (hello, Guy Garvey), and therefore many serious music fans will brush it off their shrugged shoulders. Which is a shame.

What will really get me all excited are those Burial remixes the internet's been promising.

Pantha Du Prince

Also out this month is Pantha Du Prince's Black Noise. Oh, and look, he has vocal collaborations from the likes of Animal Collective, !!! and LCD Soundsystem people. Read this and weep, The Guardian.

Black Noise is awash with clouds. You know how some albums sound urban-y and some sound outdoors-y? This is Heidi the goat-herder's friend flatlining on heroin on the highest mountain in the world while buzzards perform a jagged dance of death around her.

With sharp techno, dizzying loops, spiralling bells and smoky, smoky atmospherics, this will appeal to Susumu Yokota fans looking to grab something a bit more substantial by the goat horns.

Here's the skinny (dip) on Warp's Babe Rainbow and Flying Lotus

And now, some news from the Warp label.

Two of these facts are absolute hogwash and were written whilst I was high on methane. Three of these facts are 100% genuine leather newsbites about Warp Records and their artists.

Babe Rainbow

Babe Rainbow (pictured) is the newest act to sign to the label. He is a Canadian experimentalist sitting somewhere amid Req, Burial and anything ending in 'step'. This has been covered a-plenty by other websites, so I'll post more when his debut Shaved EP hits in February. Listen to loads of Babe stuff on Tumblr.

Achy breaky heart

Last week, Warp Records founder Steve Beckett announced to an astonished media that he was, in fact, Miley Cyrus. Tongues began wagging on the set of the 3D kid's film Bolt, where "Miley" would spend hours listening to mp3 demos from wannabe Squarepushers. Billy Ray Cyrus' first dubstep EP will be out on Warp in the spring.

Flying Lotus

I mentioned the release of Flying Lotus' DJ kicks CD in my 2010 preview, but I can add to that the release of a fully-formed FlyLo studio album too. Cosmogramma will be out on April 20th on Warp. He is quickly becoming the godfather of modern beat production, and all ears will be tuned in. There's even a Massive Attack remix on the way, according to this interview in Pitchfork. I know this is exciting, because on my notes for this blog post, I have scrawled "OH YEAH".

Warp Records for Dummies

This Dummy Guide to Warp Records is wonderful, and a definite must-read for Warp noobs and vets alike. I wish I had written it: Rob Gordon throwing the phone is classic rock 'n' roll angst. It finishes with a list of essential Warp albums, so if you're looking to fill up your virtual music shelves, here's where to start.

Skinny dipping

Warp Records is relocating to the house next door to me. They've decided London didn't really work out, so they've bought a modern semi-detached bungalow complete with swimming pool. I am allowed to skinny dip any time I want, and they have promised to furnish my villa with all-new furniture made with off-cuts from vinyl records. I hope the grooves don't chafe.

Fat Roland's 2010 electronica preview, part one: or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Instead Develop A Festering Hatred For Anything On The Wrong Side Of Easy Listening

This is part one of two 2010 preview posts. Here is the link to part two.


Welcome to my ball-bursting, clown-punching, thigh-nuzzling preview of what to expect from electronic music in 2010.

I cannot claim this to be comprehensive, nor even accurate, and I am likely to veer off the rails to feature music I wouldn’t normally be too bothered with on this purist blog. But if it goes “bleep”, then it’s probably registered on my radar at some point, even if it didn’t make the final edit.

Where shall we start? I know...

January: "it sounds exactly like La Bloody Roux"

Beth Ditto will be shouting her massive gob all over the radio again, this time on Simian Mobile Disco’s Cruel Intentions. It will be massive? Why? Because it sounds exactly like La Bloody Roux. To counter that, why not bring things down with noise experimentalist Merzbow, who will complete his massive but quite unlistenable Japanese Birds series with the final two albums in January and February. (See my original, bird-filled post on that series here.)

Manchester glorious bleep poppers Delphic will channel the spirit of New Order when they drop their Acolyte album in mid-January.

See him mashing up the beats and then serving them with peas and a steaming pork joint? That's Bullion. Already known for filtering the sixties through his turntablism sensibilities, his Say Goodbye To What single is described as having a “magical Boards of Canada-visit-Studio 54 feel”.

Howse about a big name for 2010? Croydon mailboy Peter O’Grady will have a great time as Joy Orbison. He is also working on tracks on Four Tet’s fifth album - and their first for four years: There Is Love In You is out towards the end of the month.

Also look out for Miike Snow's Silvia: there's something I like about that guy, despite his unkept hair. Keep one eye out for the Super 8 Bit Brothers, if only to distract you from the energy-sapping truth that William Orbit is releasing a whole box set ('Odyssey') of his pleasing, populist electronica.

Oh and if there isn't enough brainless acid mentalism in January, Mike Dred's got new material out.

February: "an ill-fated 22-track concept album"

February is an absolutely massive month for dance music fans. And no, I'm not referring to Josh Wink's Airplane Electronique or Groove Armada's no-doubt snoozesome Black Light album. Nor do I mean The Streets' Computers And Blues, or indeed Fatboy Slim and David Byrne's ill-fated 22-track concept album about Imelda Marcos.

No, the 'massive' refers to the return of Massive Attack with what is only their fifth studio album in a billion years. Heligoland will be released exactly seven years after 100th Window, and promises treats in the shape of Guy Garvey, Martina Topley-Bird, the guitarist from Portishead AND a seriously exciting remix project from dubstep king Burial.

Speaking of Bristol musicians, production mad skills for 2010 will go to Joker - watch out for his various mixes sprinkling the record shelves throughout the year.

Oh and speaking of dubstep, this slightly jaded sub-genre could go go seriously mainstream in 2010. The main contender could be Benga and DJ Zinc when they collaborate with Ms Dynamite in February. Look out for La Roux remixer Skream too.

Or maybe the battle for the mainstream will be won by Philadelphia’s Diplo, who has teamed up with chart-topper Robyn (the Swedish Kate Bush, anyone?) – although following the pair’s studio sessions, Diplo admitted “I think we broke dubstep.” Silly Diplo.

Hot Chip will make a welcome return in February. Their new long-player One Life Stand will include 70s rock legend, This Heat drummer Charles Hayward. No, me neither.

The Album Leaf will present A Chorus Of Storytellers. mixed by a member of Sigur Ros which gives you an idea of the direction of the album, while Flying Lotus will appear on Muhsinah's single Always / Lose My Fuse. Also watch out for FlyLo's other projects this year: his work with Samiyam under the name FLYamSAM and an inevitably stupendous DJ Kicks album.

If there isn't enough brainless acid mentalism in February, Ceephax Acid Crew has got a new one out ('United Acid Emirates' - genius).

Members of !!! and LCD Soundsystem will guest on electro producer Pantha Du Prince's Black Noise album in February. LCD themselves will release an album in March, although with its rock and disco influences, don’t expect it to feature too heavily on this blog. Which brings us neatly to...

March: "hear it on a BBC ident near you"

Cartoon popstars the Gorillaz have signed up very real, uncartoony versions of Snoop Dogg, Lou Reed and, um, Barry Gibb for their third LP Plastic Beach. Expect it to arrive before Easter.

Electronic breaks / trance duo Hybrid have promised an orchestra on their new album Disappear Here in March or April. I don’t think it’ll be very interesting, but do expect to hear it in a BBC ident near you.

For the less commercially-minded, there's Gonja Sufi's essential new album A Sufi And A Killer. There is also Plaid's "experimental Ambisonic piece" Nord Rute based on recordings taken with reindeer herders. Expect a launch event with Luke Vibert in March.

Autechre will feature on the same bill as Salt N Pepa at Bloc 2010 (mentioned here in November). I cannot write that enough. Autechre will feature on the same bill as Salt N Pepa at Bloc 2010. If you think about it, what's the difference? Really?

Tim Simenon will revive his Bomb The Bass moniker with LP Back To Light, while Dan Le Sac and his quick-tongued chum Scroobius Pip will try to revive the good old days of 2007 - they will start March with a single called Get Better and follow it with album Logic Of Chance a couple of weeks later.

Does It Offend You, Yeah? have the most nauseating album title of the year. Don't Say We Didn't Warn You will complete their final metamorphosis into being a slightly synthier Muse.

Ooo, I nearly forgot Goldfrapp. Head First will be preceded by single Rocket. I have something scribbled here about Tyondai Braxton, but I'm not sure what it means. Hopefullly he will take time out from his fancy classical music commissions to produde a new Battles album.

Finally in March, To Rococo Rot (they of big beat fame) promise their new album Speculation will be "measured" and "restrained". If you want to be as adventurous as Keane, what's the point? And Starkey will follow his 2009 single OK Luv with some more bad boy bleeps on his album Ear Drums and Black Holes, due out at the end of the month.

Sadly, there isn't enough brainless acid mentalism in March.

This is part one of two 2010 preview posts. Here is the link to part two.

68 million light years into inky space: Hyperdub is five

If this decade leaves one solitary thing lingering in the world of dance music, it's the evocative urban hauntings of dubstep.

Somehow mashing the bassment ghostliness of slower Massive Attack and the simple languar of techno circa Trance Europe Express, dubstep has trodden a stubborn path.

It has nodded like a gentleman toward the grime-ridden streets of urban R 'n' B and even (via Burial) tipped its hat toward bassline diva vocals. But the genre has remained true to itself - and, some would argue, a little stuck in the groove of late.

Still, that hasn't stopped leading label Hyperdub releasing Hyperdub 5. As you have already deduced, it's a five year celebration of the label that kicked off with Sign of the Dub in 2004 by label boss Steve 'Kode 9' Goodman (pictured).

The compilation features some exclusive gems and old favourites (some of which are on CD for the first time), from the cardboard beat of Zomby's Tarantula, to the heroin-hazed Psycho stabs of Kode 9's Time Patrol, to the broken vocal swoops of Burial's Fostercare (think Maxinquaye flung 68 million light years into inky space).

It's the first time Burial's dug up anything new since Untrue in 2007, and for that alone, Hyperdub 5 is worth more than a few of your pennies.

Burial and Four Tet's Himalayan percussion party

You know when you see something in the corner of your eye? A dancing clown, an robed pensioner spreading curses, an orphan boy from 14th century Cornwall miming the world 'help!' over and over again?

Maybe it's just me and my freakish imagination. But sometimes, things skip your attention. They're there, but they flit from your attention and remain a glimpse, forever to be neglected by your fading memory.

Burial and Four Tet's joint 12" is one of those such things. I totally missed it when I should have been blogging about it.

The south London dubstepper slapped down two tracks with the inner London post rocker to likeable effect with double-A-side Moth / Wolf Cub.

Wolf Cub is a gamelan-mashing grower of a tune and sounds like a percussion party in a Himalayan village. It has the comforting sounds of Four Tet (picture by watchlooksee) and that woody deepness of Burial.

It's a little samey, so thank goodness Moth is an epic. A light step beat and a standard trance keyboard line gives way to a spacious ambient hymn set to a crisp trance backing and wispy vocals that flutter about your ear.

Dubstep heads may not like it, because the Tet-ness of it all lightens it up somewhat. But stick Moth onto your car stereo as you bound down the M1 to a summer festival, and you'll be totally in the zone. Just don't run over any eerie Cornish orphans.

I'm batting for Lashes (and baseball-batting Erasure)

Despite my recent nigglings at this year's Mercury Music Prize, I still feel the need to tip a winner.

Last year, my bet for Burial got given a hefty Elbow, although my Klaxons tip in 2007 came wonderfully true.

So here's who I'm putting a dime on this year. Bat For Lashes sounds like Suzanne Vega riding a pretty horse which has the face of Kate Bush. This alone is enough to win the Mercury.

BFL's music is indebted to the 80s, but not in as a denim-tearingly obvious way as La Bloody Roux. Who, incidentally, needs to give her keyboards back to Erasure so when I break into their studio, I have something to pummel them with.

Seriously. Vince and Andy should have given up existing 22 years ago, when they were still truly different and interesting.

La Bloody Roux, for that matter, should also have stopped existing 22 years ago. And she's only 21. When Mr La Roux and Mrs La Roux got jiggy in their south London bedsit in order to create a musically and mentally deranged Alison Moyet, someone should have thrown a great big bucket of cold water over them. Then recorded the startled screams. And sold that recording 22 years later on the basis of, yes, this still sounds better than anything that little dampened La Roux sperm would ever have created in its lifetime.

Where was I?...

I suspect Kasabian will be the favourite, although the Mercury's been quite blokey for the last few years and they probably need to tick the chick box in '09. Very cynical I know, but you don't come to this blog because it reads like Hello!, do you?

She deserves it more than the others, though. Who do you tip for the Mercury?

Bullion's trundling, Mount Kimbie's clonking, while Dan Deacon does the splits

I'm not one for sweeping statements, but...

The single is dead. Downloads beat it in the face with a hammer until it was reduced to a bloody, single-flavoured soup.

So let me pop you a few quick reviews of, er, two EPs and a 12-inch. They're definitely not singles. They are two EPs and a 12-inch.

The first EP can be filed under 'psych soul'. Bullion's Young Heartache EP grabs recognisable, commercial soul sounds and gently caresses them until they're a wobbling wreck of half-hip hop.  It's smooth house that's been put on rollers and trundled into a river. Disorienting currents, courtesy of some nifty compressor work in the studio, spin the music from one side of your brain to the other. It's almost too commercial for me, but it's somehow so addictive. Grab a copy from your local independent internet shop.

Secondly, the spacious Maybes EP is definitely by Mount Kimbie (picture above adapted from their MySpace page). Combining the darkness of Burial and the spaciness of Battles, this debut singl-- er-- EP is probably the smartest opening salvo I've heard for a while. Drones and drips and clonks and warm, luscious pads build into something that is quite ominous. Just please don't call it dubstep. Although I'd made a lazy note to write about Mount Kimbie some time ago, thanks to Anclove for properly turning me onto this duo.

Finally, the 12-inch. And it's the most beautiful 12-inch you have ever seen. (If you think 'day glo' is beautiful, that is.) Dan Deacon and Adventure took one side each of a garish yellow slab of vinyl and called it the Dan Deacon Adventure Split 12", Dan goes for speed drumming over a busy vocoder, while Adventure turns in a jaunty arcade game synth workout. It's all pretty ho hum, and not as exciting as Dan Deacon's album Bromst, which you can stream in its entirety here. (Edit: this link no longer has audio - get an up-to-date Dan Deacon link here.)

The single is dead, although with those sort of efforts from Mount Kimbie and Bullion, the corpse is looking pretty sexy.

What I watched, what I heard and what I thought in 2008

The best scene in a film.

Call it. I'm tempted to plump for Javier Bardem's baiting of a gas station owner in No Country For Old Men, or the moment we realised Indy was on a nuclear test site in that vivid scene with the dining table dummies in Indiana Jones And The Crystal Skull.

But it's neither of these, friendo. My favourite scene of the year taught me everything we need to know about the fragility of life. In Hellboy II: The Golden Army, our foul-mouthed protagonist fights an Elemental - kind of a vegetarian Godzilla - and the resulting death scene is astonishing, beautiful and the absolute opposite of the throwaway baddie deaths we often get with Hollywood.

Crappest purchase of 2008.

Gym membership. I should have seen the warning signs as soon as I walked in: "Gym? What's a gym? ... Oh! A gym!"

Back to films again - which was the best in 2008?

Strange beasties ruled 2008. Firstly, Wall-E was one of the best animations for years, and the most tender robot love affair since Bjork's All Is Full Of Love video. Cloverfield was a lost creature of a different kind, in a film which was simply a tour-de-force of suspense and large-scale horror.

Another pair of strange beasties brought us the best two films of the year. Heath Ledger gave us 2008's best performance in The Dark Knight, although he should have rescued his magic-trick pencil and crossed through a couple of over-long scenes. Instead, I raise a glass to the Oscar-winning monster Anton Chigurh and No Country For Old Men - the bestest film of 2008 following a couple of worrying Coen Brothers misfires.

Anti-Obama: the biggest political disappointment of 2008.

Brian Eno has completed his first year as Liberal Democrat youth advisor. I was a tad disheartened to see the modern-fangled youth of today haven't all shaved their head and dedicated their lives to Robert Fripp or Mixmaster Morris. It's still more thug life than My Squelchy Life. Come on, Brian, get it together.

My moment of puffed-chestness in 2008.

I was proud that I tried a stand-up comedy routine, which was scary but gosh I did it. There was some comedy in there, it was rather routine, but at least I was standing up. My challenge now is to do more in 2009.

My greatest personal achievement of the year was losing 50 lbs in a few short months. Yes, I know, I should mention these things on my blog so you can post messages of encouragement / bitter jealousy. The only thing I won't allow is "Thin Roland" jokes, because believe me it has been done to death by my wonderfully supportive if slightly unoriginal friends.

Top telly of 2008. Yes, this is getting a little sad now.

Watching The Wire on DVD doesn't count, because it came out in, like, 1526 or something. So then, two little words sum up my favouritest TV moment of this blessed 12 months.

Dead.

Set.

My worst moment of 2008.

There is only one. A couple of weeks ago, my cat Whiskey died after a brief illness. She had been my closest companion since I was 16, and I have felt aimless and listless since I lost her. I have 19 years of fond memories of a good-tempered, sleek, shy furball. She deserves a hundred blog posts, but what needs to be said can be said in just a few words: I'll miss her forever.

2008's best album. Probably.

A tough one this, as I don't think it has been a classic year for electronica. I think Metronomy and The Whip are a dish best served live. The Bug took one giant dubstep forward with London Zoo, while fellow dubstepper Burial wowed the Mercury Music Prize with his 2007 album Untrue. I seriously rated Bochum Welt's ROB (Robotic Operating Buddy) even though I didn't rave enough in this post from April .

Portishead's Third showed Tricky a thing or two about keeping fresh after years out of the fridge, and Leila's equally accomplished comeback was quiet but beautiful. Gang Gang Dance's primal Saint Dymphna was Warp Record's most tribal release, while Squarepusher held back on the drums for his jaaazz Just A Souvenier album. (Edit: I forgot to mention Autechre's Quaristice, which I attempted to play as background music in my bookshop but only succeeded in pissing people off. Consider it mentioned.)

And finally, top of the tree is a gathering of geeky keyboard wizardary called Hot Chip (pictured). Made In The Dark's mechano pop is a little to commercial for this snobbish blog, but oh what joy when it produces videos like this for One Pure Thought.

Skip to the end...

There. I called it. And it came up heads. I'm going to buy a bicycle before all the shops close down. Meanwhile, I'll cook up a little 2009 preview. While you're waiting for that, have a joyous new year.