Best electronic albums of 2018: Bruno Brookes eat your heart out

It's a bit weird writing all these side-bars amid a top 20 countdown. It's a bit like Bruno Brookes wandering off to his knitting circle in the middle of Top Of The Pops.

Anyways, here is the final bunch of electronic noodlers that didn't quite make my final list.

A jazz pianist and a cellist might not be natural territory for techno behemoth R&S, but Djrum’s Portrait With Firewood (R&S Records) produced some bass music on an epic scale. Elysia Crampton found a clattering joy in the balance between found sound and world music on Elysia Crampton (Break World Records). Mark Pritchard’s The Four Worlds (Warp Records) was worth it for the likeable washboard shuffle of Circle Of Fear. And Marquis Hawkes raised the flipping roof on The Marquis Of Hawkes (Houndstooth).

DJ Koze created a deserved fuss with Knock Knock (Pampa), a collection of twitchy house music but not as you know it. I was perhaps less keen on its folky elements. Chris Carter, of Throbbing Gristle repute, managed to funnel several decades of electronic music into the excellent Chemistry Lessons Volume 1 (Mute). Astonishingly, Mr Fingers dropped his first album for 24 years in 2018: Cerebral Hemispheres (Alleviated Records) was as soulfully slick as you'd imagine. HVL’s Ostati (Organic Analogue Records) revived many memories of old raves and armchair techno listening.

German glitchmeister Alva Noto gets his own paragraph. He brought us a minimal masterpiece with Unieqav (Noton) earlier this year, but he didn't stop there. His rare Newcastle live recording Live 2002 (Noton) with Ryoji Ikeda and the late Mika Vainio seemed to have its audience hair-spun with static. Also worth looking into is the architecture-inspired Glass (Noton) with Ryuichi Sakamoto: the pairs last work was The Revenant soundtrack with Leonardo DiCaprio getting jiggy with a bear.

That was the tenth and final lot of also-rans for this 2018 countdown. I'll probably remember something I wanted to include, but forgot – I'll include it in this blank space here: _________________.





Scroll all of the best 2018 electronic albums by clicking here.

Also-rans: demons, Durban, WWWINGS and weapons

Mind if I dump this dark weird stuff here? Okay, thanks. Here are some strange, experimental albums that didn’t make the final cut.

For example, Elysia Crampton’s critically acclaimed Demon City (Break World Records), which was deeply unsettling in a pleasing, genre-bending way. Maybe it was all that demonic laughter she kept dropping in. No, really.

I think I called Antwood’s Virtuous.scr (Planet Mu) “throbbing innards” for Electronic Sound. But in a good way. There’s also the twisted grime of WWWINGS’s PHOENIXXX (Planet Mu). If you want sparse, try the angry Fatima Al Qadiri’s Brute (Hyperdub) or Lucy’s industrial Self Mythology (Stroboscopic Artefacts).

I’m not meant to be covering compilations, but the throbbing Durban breaks of Gqom Oh! (GQOM OH) scared the life out of me. As did the crumbling white noise of Ceramic TL’s Sign Of The Cross Every Mile To The Border (Halocline Trance). Finally, the legend that is Roly Porter was back with some classical noise on Third Law (Tri Angle), there was a mega triple bashment LP from (deep breath) Alix Perez, Chimpo, Fixate, Fracture, Om Unit, Sam Binga and Stray (phew) in the shape of Who Is Richie Brains (Exit Records).

Oh and I have to mention the debut album just out from Seattle’s Homemade Weapons. The precision-engineered Negative Space (Samurai Music) seemed to point towards something interesting and new for drum ‘n’ bass.





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