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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Browse the rest of the Best Electronic Albums of 2020

New music: Squarepusher, Dan Deacon & Phase Fatale

The rotted wasteland of January surrounds us, and not even our finest waterproof knickers can insulate us from the cold sludge of a British winter.

What you need is some new music to bring some soft candlelight to your endless darkness. Here are three January 2020 releases worth your attention.

Squarepusher – Be Up A Hello (Warp Records)

In recent years, Squarepusher has,in the parlance of modern slang, "gone off on one". His Shobaleader One project turned him into a kind of bezerker Cylon. He jammed with Japanese robots and produced an ambient soundtrack with Olivia Colman, which sounds like the kind of nonsense I'd make up, but it's true.

This was all brilliant, but now ole Squiggleplops is back to more familiar territory with a studio album that follows up 2015's Damogen Furies. He's moved away from the extreme digitalism of his recent work, and has instead opted to use a bunch of old gear. I wonder how old. Maybe we're talking lutes and harpsichords and the jangle of jester bells.

Actually, I've had Be Up A Hello on repeat for a few weeks now. I would give you my opinion, but my lips are contractually sealed. For now.

Dan Deacon – Mystic Familiar (Domino Records) 

Speaking of following up 2015 albums, it's nice to see the return of Dan Deacon, eccentric knob-twiddler and Sigur Ros collaborator. A long time ago, I boldly - and prematurely - declared that Dan Deacon had the best album of the year. In that blog post, I bang on about his similarity to Animal Collective, and that's a comparison that I suspect will hold up on Mystic Familiar.

With this album, he seems to be obsessed with "familiars" which are magical creatures that follow you around. That could include rats or cats or badgers or five-legged elephants or hedgehogs made of toenails or a panda reading a Thomas Pynchon novel.

If Dan Deacon was a season, he'd be summer, or maybe a late spring that feels like a summer. Which leads me on to...

Phase Fatale – Scanning Backwards (Ostgut Ton)

Never mind all that summer nonsense. Scanning Backwards is beyond the four seasons: this is post-nuclear fallout when the skies shimmer with unearthly light. This second album of pumping Berghain techno from Berlin's Phase Fatale will please those of you that want aerobic techno shuddering with mantle-deep bass rhythms.

He's promised "brain-penetrating instrumentation", which means when you tear the cellophane off the vinyl, a bassoon leaps onto your face and jabs your forehead with a whisk.

Here are bits of two of the above albums. Happy listening.





Further Fats: Ultra-funkulent new band from Squarepusher (2010)

Top ten best electronica albums of 2009: part two of three

This is part two.   
For part one, click here. 
For part three, click here. 

5 - DâM-FunK - Toeachizown

80s boogie anyone? See if you can guess why I never featured this album on my blog before: he was a Warren G session musician, his album is full of smooth chord changes and all-out soul, and he runs nights in California called Funkmosphere (!).

So why number five? It's an electronic album that gets under your skin. The insistent boss drum, the spiralling synth themes, the genius tweaking of a filter here, the acid flare-up there. It's got a simple funk veneer, but scrape that away and you have an album of staggering inventiveness, bustling with analogue synths and vintage drum machines.

Quality *and* quantity... and it's a debut album. Listen to this YouTube sampler.  Buy the album from Bleep or Boomkat or Piccadilly.

4 - Hudson Mohawke - Butter

Turntablist-turned-aquacrunker Hudson Mohawke had one of the most anticipated releases of the year when Butter came out in October. But even though I said it would be "massive than a horse explosion", it seems the preceding Polyfolk Dance EP got more plaudits in 2009.

Butter was a dizzying mix of the low-fi and the futuristic, taking something as old fashioned as turntablism and making it sound synthetic, forced but accessible. Was it rave? Was it hip hop? Was that Prince?! No-one knows, but there was no doubt this was the defining sound of electronica in 2009.

Wrap your ears around ZOo00OOm. Buy the album from Bleep or Boomkat or Piccadilly.

3 - Dan Deacon - Bromst

Bromst was Dan Deacon's umpteenth album but only his second professionally released on Carpark Records. It's probably not bleepy enough for this blog, but it didn't stop me calling Bromst a cacophonous bliss in April.

I might have overstated the brilliance of the album back then, but hark ye at the frantic arpeggios of Red F, the stamping over Susumu Yokota's legacy with the woodwind backing in Paddling Ghost, and the hypnotic, shimmering Surprise Stefani. It's a perfect companion to that Animal Collective album you've no doubt got.

Simply glorious. Listen to Paddling Ghost. Buy it from Bleep or Boomkat or Piccadilly.

2 - Bibio - Ambivalence Avenue

Pull up a campfire and marvel at this stunning debut for Warp Records. Bibio's summery rustic guitars could have sat firmly in the folktronica camp, something I'm not a huge fan of, but instead it ran hurtling around the borders of techno and produced the mind-blowing Ambivalence Avenue.

If you don't buy this, you are stupid, You should know that, because I told you in June. The pop psychedelia of Jealous Of Roses or the delightfully catchy refrain of Haikuesque (When She Laughs) was enough for a great album, but then you get the Prefuse 73-friendly beats of Fire Ant or the kick drum of Sugarette punching holes in your record decks.

I cannot praise this album enough: it has been a very good friend to me since the summer. Listen to Fire Ant. Buy it from Bleep or Boomkat or Piccadilly.

Not quite in the top ten (part two)

Why I chose a top ten rather than a top 97, I don't know. But it does mean that some musickers didn't reach the dizzying heights of my top ten, despite deserving plaudits.

Moderat, the hugely impressive collaboration between Apparat and Modeselektor, didn't quite punch me in the face enough. Neither did Prodigy's Invaders Must Die, which blew the speakers but not my mind. And Jega's Variance, with all its Aphexisms, wasn't quite enough either. The spacey IDM of Nosaj Thing's Drift is definitely worth a look in too, despite being missed off.

This is only an album top ten, so the following artists missed out on a technicality: Floating Points produced some gorgeous EPs, while Bullion's Young Heartache EP took Hudson Mohawke's cut-up style to a new level - and what a shame not to include the eminently loveable track Until There is No End by Lorn.

This is part two.   
For part one, click here.
For part three, click here. 

The best album of 2009 is Dan Deacon's Bromst. Here's why...

Edit, December 2009: The best album of 2009 is not Bromst. Yeah, I know, I'm contradicting myself, but hey, this here post was from April! Here is my full and final run-down of the best albums of 2009. And now back to the post you clicked on in the first place...

Welcome to the best album of 2009.

It's tempting to label Dan Deacon's Bromst as a coming-of-age masterpiece, using my best Wonder Years voice. But it's only his second UK album proper; he's barely in long trousers yet (see picture!).

I know it's only the beginning of April, but this is the best long player of the year. Here's why:

Bromst opens with Build Voice, which does what it says on the tin, and gives you the same swirling tingle you got in your loins at the start of Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavilion. I expected some toytown trickery and silliness, but this opener is reserved, considered, and, dare my pouting mouth whisper it, mature. Its melodic choir and hopscotch piano makes way for an extended fart: we're into the start of Red F and an energetic, almost frenetic speed pop track that loses none of the melody.

Are those chipmunks hidden in the chorus of Paddling Ghost? The playfulness is still here, raising a cub scout salute and making a goofy face, but like the wonderfully titled and beautifully epic Surprise Stefani, all the Timmy Mallett-ness is integrated into the songwriting.

So Deacon throws us wailing spirituals (Wet Wings), stuttering dog samples (Woof Woof), plus even more chipmunks only a lot, lot faster (Baltihorse), and we catch every single one of them because it all makes glorious sense.

If Flying Lotus hadn't already done it, Bromst has made me fall in love with electronica all over again. By the time we're at the xylophones and modem tones of closing Get Older, which in Max Tundra's hands would be endearingly comical, our heads are bursting with rhythm and colour and cacophonous bliss.

This is the sound of a musical genius having the absolute best time of his life. The streaming link I mentioned in this post a couple of weeks ago is no longer online, so try here instead.

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.

A mallet-pawing, arm-throating, wrestle-bashing preview of 2009 (part two)

I'd better get my 2009 preview finished before this whole New Year lark becomes unfashionable.

March.

Berlin adrenalin-techno kid (and former classical violinist, 'pparently) Tim Exile will plant his Listening Tree album.

The Future Sound Of London, whose artwork make gatefold vinyl a pleasure to ogle at, will play their first live date for over a decade at the Bloc weekender. It is unlikely to be as frenetic as Dan Deacon's live performanced.  Deacon counts a mallet among his percussion instruments, and has been taking to the stage with a synth-heavy 14-piece ensemble at recent gigs.  For that reason alone, seek out his new long-player Bromst.

Oh and former members of Plone and Broadcast have formed Seeland, who I reckon are a hot tip for 2009. When you clap ears on their debut album, you'll spot whispers of Stereolab and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

The rest of 2009.

One of Paul Simon's favourite bands, Grizzly Bear should give Warp Records a new album in May, or thereabouts.  Speaking of Mr Simon, I still haven't forgiven the garfunkled-one for Graceland.  And while we're at it, I'm still boycotting Sly Stallone films for the travesty that is his 1996 movie Daylight.

If I kept my CDs on shelves, with my favourite artists on the higher shelves, and my least favourite artists on the lower shelves, Plaid would have their very own shelf about fourteen miles above my house. They are putting the finishing touches to their album Scintilli, and it will be released on Warp some time in the middle of the year.

In August, Orbital will morph together for their first live performance since John Peel's Maida Vale sessions, this time at the Big Chill. As I said in this post back in November, they have promised it won't be "an exercise in nostalgia". Of course, we all know it will.

Portishead ended 2009 without a record contract, so expect some In Rainbows-style tomfoolery with their fourth album. It should be out around September.

On a more commercial tip, ex-Pop Idol contestant (spit!) and new darling of the press Little Boots will claim 2009 as her own. She's worth watching because she uses a Tenori-on, which is a pretty Japanese music making box that lights up. The same people who rave about 'Boots enthuse about La Roux.

Finally, you may need to strap me down because I am insanely excited about one particular artist.  The Glaswegian Hudson Mohawke refers to everything as "shite" on his Myspace page.  He's not being negative: he's just being, well, Scottish.

Mohawke is a new signing to Warp Records, and he flips between electronica, hip hop, electro and soul in ways that really shouldn't be possible.

Someone somewhere labelled his music as "emotronic" (probably H-Mo himself).  He's working on an album which should sound a little like this:

Speed-freak pilots, equine storm joy and Lord Dan of Deacon's new video mayhem

My trousers are bursting with good music.

There's Portishead's first new album since the stone ages, for a start. You may still have time to listen to it online if you're as speedy as a Concorde-piloting amphetamine addict who's just realised he left the oven on.

Electronica's answer to Wilf the inventor, Tom Bugs, made me happier than a horse in a hay storm with this little demo of frequency freneticism. The clip will only mean something to you if you too have spent hours in Sound Control twiddling to your screaming ears' desire.

Incidentally, Tom Bugs is working on something called a Bug Crusher. Ants are trying to invade my kitchen at the moment, although I suspect the machine is a sound modulator and not an insect murderer.

And thirdly, self-professed "absurdist composer" Dan Deacon (pictured) is back. He is the lust child of Har Mar Superstar, Deee-lite and Timmy Mallett. I advise you to remove your retinas before watching this kalaidoscopic video delight.

DEEPER FRIED FAT: NOW WASH