Best electronic albums of 2020: perky special mentions and a P45

*ring ring*

Hello?

"It's Fat Roland here. There has been a terrible administration error."

Okay. How can I help fix it?

"Why have you left Four Tet out of the Top 25? Four Tet is meant to be in the Top 25."

It's not an error. It's just that there were so many good albums, and it got squeezed out.

"This is unacceptable. You cannot leave Four Tet out of the Top 25. You're sacked."

What? You can't...

"Clean out your desk. Gross dismissal. Never darken my doors again."

But I'm you. You're sacking yourself. You've just lost your own job working for you.

"Er... Forget I said that. Here, have a promotion. Excellent work, Fat Roland."

Thanks, Fat Roland.

I did feel bad for only including Four Tet's Sixteen Oceans (Text Records) in my special mentions section, but that's how my sorting hat sorted things when compiling my final list. I loved this album: so many zippy earworms and such glistening oomph. I've not had a chance to listen to the two (two!) albums he dropped over Christmas, Parallel (Text Records) and 871 (Text Records).

Here are even more special mentions, referred to as "perky" in my notebook. 

In Electronic Sound (yeah, I mention them a lot), I praised Moses Boyd for Dark Matter (Exodus Records) as he "pinballs around his ever-present drum kit like an oiled whippet". Kruder & Dorfmeister finally released their debut album 1995 (G-Stone Recordings), originally scheduled to be released in the year 1995 then, er, slightly delayed. The trip hop comeback you never knew you were waiting for.

You want the best? You want the pin-sharp house energy of Omar S's You Want (FXHE Records): sassy, straightforward, and superbly executed, despite that overused sample. Improvised in a cave, Capitol K's mini-album Birdtrapper (Faith And Industry) was a delightfully curious mix of driving organic rhythms and bamboo. Wajatta released second album Don't Let Get You Down (Brainfeeder), with the irrepressible Reggie Watts performing vocal acrobatics (and whistling) over John Tejada's fast and funky house.

Finally for this section, Black Nationalist Sonic Weaponry (Planet Mu), released under DeForrest Brown Jr's Speaker Music alias, sounded like the fierce heart of BlacKkKlansman pulsing to the rhythm of distended and shattered jazzy percussion experiments. An important album, but I've no idea why it's in this section: it's anything but "perky". Stupid notebook.

 

Browse the rest of the Best Electronic Albums of 2020

On my gramophone in February 2019: Pye Corner Audio, High Contrast, Seb Wildblood, Four Tet and, er...

Here are a few things I've been spinning on my gramophone in February 2019.

1. Pye Corner Audio

Pye Corner Audio's Hollow Earth, which purports to revive the “ghosts of ’90s house euphoria” but actually ties the corners of those ghosts to fashion them into a parachute designed to glide you into seriously smoky ambient valleys where you'll be lost forever. In a good way.



2. High Contrast

High Contrast's 2002 debut album True Colours, a great sister sound to Roni Size's Brown Paper Bag. In recent years, he was a music selector for the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony, and he had a track in T2 Trainspotting. Which is like going from the sublime to the ridiculous. In a good way.



3. Seb Wildblood

Seb Wildblood's Grab The Wheel, an EP from last year which is only just tugging on my musical heartstrings now. His deep house is simple, almost by-the-numbers in its structure - but boy, it's weedled up my pee-hole right into my guts. In a good way.



4. Four Tet

Kieran 'Four Tet' Hebden still refuses to tell anyone what he did with the first three Tets. While we wait for an answer, we'll have to make do with this cheery little album from 2017. I overlooked this at the time, but it's growing on me like a particularly persistent moss. In a good way.



5. Sweep

Experimental sound artist Sweep has often found himself under the shadow of the better known silent composer Sooty. But this symphony of squeaks, juxtaposed perfectly with floppy ears, really speaks to the zeitgeist of our times. It's like having your brain scooped out with kazoos. In a good way.

The episode where Sweep's extended family paid him a visit is simply glorious. pic.twitter.com/VLbe9daAXY

— Archivetvmusings (@archivetvmus71) January 29, 2019

This pastoral Four Tet track reminds me of a sad Plaid

Cor. It's not been a bloggy month. A lot more silence than words. A whole load of white space rather than brain-splurges on your screen.

I was doing so well writing regularly too. Don't worry, I've not been skiving. I've been running stuff at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, penning words for Electronic Sound and Manchester Wire, and working on that Lowry show I've been banging on about.

Am I too busy? You're probably right. I should take it easy. I should make a hammock, hammer it into the walls of my writing shack, and lose myself in Four Tet's pastoral new track Scientists.

The track is taken from his new chill-out album - yes, I said chill-out album - called New Energy. The album release follows a few equally meditative singles in recent months. I chose Scientists to preview here because it's beautiful and reminds me of a sad Plaid.

Right. Enough listening to this track. Let's write about it! *presses publish*



Picture: Gary Wolstenholme/Redferns/Getty Images

Four Tet's ten-minute beat challenge

If your laptop is loaded with Ableton or Garageband, the musician’s concept of being “in the studio” is a nonsense. The studio follows you around like a randy dog, constantly rubbing its icon in your face every time you log on.

Which is why Kieran Hebden, known better as Four Tet, seems to be in a corner of his living room in this ten-minute beat challenge (video below). I’m half expecting a hoover to appear screen-right at any moment.

In this challenge, he has to create a passable beat against the clock. He needles his way through fragments of Thriller on a record player he seems to have stolen off a child, then slices and filters the results to create Four Tet’s knife-sharp house music motif.

Here’s the video. I’ll spew out some thoughts beneath.

O

THOUGHTS ON FOUR TET'S BEAT CHALLENGE.

1. Although he finds some super sweet sounds, he’s right when he says that lead motif is too much. It’s still better than anything I could do. Obviously. Because he’s mother-flumping Four Tet.

2. I use Ableton too, and it’s good to see he uses similar techniques to me: finding the groove; letting things clash until something clicks; tweaking and tweaking and tweaking.

3. He has a mouse from the 1920s.

4. With such clipped samples, it’s a reminder to all music makers that less is more.

5. Spooling through vinyl like that is an honourable way to make music, as this brilliant documentary on the Amen break will show.

6. Why would you hoover a wooden floor? Stupid Fats.

Now go forth, laptop musicistas, and make beautiful music.

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)

Best electronica albums of 2012: numbers 10 to 8

It's time for my annual rake through the detritus of the last 12 months: my top ten list of the best electronic music albums of 2012.

I don't know if it's the seventeen recessions we've been through, but this year's list feels quite different from the previous ones. Instead of the summer-tinged likes of Mount Kimbie or the chirpiness of Plaid, these selections seem more dour. A bit miserable. So something to look forward to, then.

Still, this represents what I am convinced is the best of the best. Let's start with some runners that didn't quite make it to the final fence.

[Read other parts of the top ten here: numbers 7-5; numbers 4-2; number 1. Click here for the whole lot.]

Some also-rans

Four Tet sellotaped together some 12-inch singles to produce an album called Pink (Text), but it was too much like Mr Tet in workman mode for my liking. Despite the appearance of the godlike Jamie Lidell, and brilliant though it was, Simian Mobile Disco's Unpatterns (Witchita Recordings) didn't make it to the final list.

The psychedelic experimentalism of Juju & Jordash's Techno Primitivism (Dekmantel) was quite something to behold. Two acts turned my head this year but didn't produce albums. Still, it's worth checking out oOoOO's heroin-tinged beats on Our Loving Is Hurting Us (Tri Angle) and do grab the massively important collaboration of Hudson Mohawke and Lunice in the shape of the eponymous TNGHT (Warp x LuckyMe) EP.

The oldies were still at it. Underworld refreshed an old compilation to release the 1992-2012 Anthology (Underworldlive.com), which by default was full of brilliance, while less successful
was DJ Food's first album in over a decade: The Search Engine (Ninja Tune) was swamped with guest vocals and not much else.

10 - Ital - Hive Mind (Planet Mu)

Here we have a Thrill Jockey lad (watch Mi Ami’s Dolphins: yeah, that’s him in the gloves) who has left indie-crossover to inhabit a crystalline landscape of mid-paced house grooves and perfectly-pitched ambience that should, on first listen, pitch-bend its quirky way into your brainhole and stay there for some time.

Ignore the Whitney Houston sample – that’s entertaining enough – but instead listen in awe at Hive Mind (Planet Mu)'s Israel where warm washes shoot into curious new territory at the two-thirds mark, or the moody stomp of Floridian Void that gives in to heart-breaking synth washes, or the disorientating brokenness of Privacy Settings.

There are only five tracks – three of them are ten minutes long – so if you don’t want the opening phrase of Lady Gaga’s Born This Way over Footwork-ish wrong-key disco edited in some pretty basic software (Audacity, I believe), then maybe you should peruse the rest of this top ten instead. But for me, this was Planet Mu’s shining moment of 2012.

9 - Silent Servant - Negative Fascination (Hospital Productions)

“Stasis is death. See you on the other side.” These were the final words of industrial techno label Sandwell District at the start of this year. For one of their artists, the other side happened to include a mesmerising album called Negative Fascination (Hospital Productions), produced amid economic flux as Hospital found themselves closing their lovely blood-red record shop in Manhattan.

Silent Servant offers desolate dark techno with leanings towards post-punk minimalism. It could be just another Basic Channel-soundalike, but in this world there is enchanting magic: the beautiful persistence of Temptation & Desire, the deep suspended disco of Utopian Disaster (End) and the metallic clunk (no, it’s better than it sounds, honest) of Invocation Of Lust. This servant is lonely but alluring.

Even the unforgiving android barks of The Strange Attractor, which would leave most diving for cover, offer a strange allure that gives these gaunt, DIY rhythms the space and depth to let the imagination wander. Rarely in 2012 has an album given me so little on first listen then slowly hooked its rusty claws under my skin.

8 - Monolake - Ghosts (Imbalance)

If the rasping snares of the opening title track haven’t ripped off your leg before the two minute mark of Monolake’s seventh album Ghosts (Imbalance), and the whispering industrial voices haven't sucked your weak heart from your chest, then you’ll probably survive the rest of this cold, cold, cold album.

The creaks and drips of Taku feels like you’re tiptoeing through an underground cave only to realise you’re inside a stomach, while the clinking Unstable Matter is pure horror film soundtrack. The slamming urgency of Foreign Object, cloaked as the sound of a distant choir trying to pickaxe their way out of a landslide, is so full of industrial swag, it would be best to take up the foetal position until the memory subsides.

Monolake debuts in one of my top tens because this time there is more of a solid rhythmic structure, and although it’s all rather disembodied, it gives me more to hook onto than other ‘lake offerings. A good starter for new Monolake listeners, perhaps. Insert journalistic ‘I believe in Ghosts’ ending here.

[Read other parts of the top ten here: numbers 7-5; numbers 4-2; number 1. Click here for the whole lot.]

Further Fats: Best electronica albums of 2009.

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?

Psycho bunny, qu'est-ce que c'est?

Now to the small matter of a truly international Manchester record label: one leg in this city and the other leg in Dubai.

Borland and From The Kites Of San Quentin have released a split 12" full of giddy ambience and beats that are snappier than crocodiles playing card games. More about the music in a moment: allow me for a second to literally judge a record by its cover...

Gulf Records is a collaboration between local boy Rob Gregg out of prog bleepers Borland and Daniel Fogg, who was single-handedly responsible for getting me into Lorn.

Although an equal collaboration between the two, Fogg is currently living it large on the Arabian Peninsula, so Gregg is hot-footing it around record shops with trouser pockets full of vinyl.

Yes, vinyl. Their debut release comes on a beautiful slab of vinyl, its cover adorned with the psycho Donnie Darko rabbit (my mutilated version can be seen above). I went to the launch at Centro recently, and it was truly a pleasure to get something heavy and touchable slapped into my hand (stop it) rather than a piddling little CD or a URL to a streaming site.

Each cover is hand-daubed with red paint, with copies available at the Japanchester charity gig boasting Japanese-style red circles on the back. It's good to see Gulf Records 'getting' vinyl.

As for the music, what we have is Chet Beaverbrooke by From The Kites Of San Quentin, which is a 'ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space' ambient psych-out with Billie-Holiday-on-heroin vocals.

It settles itself somewhere near chill-out (splutter, wash my mouth out), but being of an older school, the trippy spoken word drops remind me of The Orb. The disgustingly dirty bass that lands at around the three and a half minute mark suggests this is a beast of a much darker pelt.

Clockmen by Borland spits a growling melodic progression onto the floor of witch house then slurps it up with a hefty dose of melancholy. That track is ripped into seven shards of bad boy on the b-side as each artist remixes the other. Borland's take on the Kites track is the closest the 12" gets to a head-nodder, with its flip-book snare adding crunch to a delicious overdose of shimmering effects.

Chet Beaverbrooke / Clockmen is a bold debut, is difficult to categorise despite other reviewers' unconvincing comparisons to Four Tet, and is lovely to slap in your hand. I suggest you buy yourself one now: what better treat for Easter weekend than a psycho bunny?

 

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.

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.

Not very good: a slight blog blip

Please be patient, my sweet readers, while I migrate this blog to something other than Blogger.

I have been with Blogger since 2004, but their new rules on FTP publishing (I have no idea what any of it means) doesn't seem to be supported by my domain name people, Freeparking. So I'm having to jump ship.

Which means instead of writing, I'm having to wrestle with technical stuff that I'm not very good at.

Please be patient, make yourself a cup of hot chocolate, and wait by my blog for further instructions.

In the meantime, you could listen to a preview of Superfast Jellyfish by Gorillaz, sift through an excellent new writing site called Profwriting, look at these utterly uncharismatic photos of Four Tet DJing in Chicago, or grap this Martyn podcast featuring the likes of Joy Orbison, J Dilla, Drexciya and, er, Prince.

Much love from Four Tet - but an icy silence from Monolake

Four Tet

Kieran 'Four Tet' Hebden ambled down some strange improvisational avenues for a while, but he's back on the main road behind the wheel of his perfectly programmed bus to bring us his first album for ages.

There Is Love In You will hit at the end of this month. It follows his massive tune Moth with Burial and the spinning, rolling nine-minute epic single Love Cry, a track which waited nearly six minutes to drop a driving techno bassline that would make Fluke puke with joy.

There is precious little audio rattling about the internet but judging by Love Cry and another album track, Much Love To The Plastic People, we should expect sharp, driving electronica that has that trademark Four Tet subtlety.

If you're not mad on Four Tet, you could do better than get the album for your budgie.

Monolake

That's not the only album worth stroking your speakers with this month. The other day, I posted some snow-themed electronica; it doesn't get much icier than Monolake's recent LP Silence (Monolake pictured).

With track titles like Avalanche and Infinite Snow, here's an album that will replace your spine with an icicle and stick your tootsies into a bucket of liquid hydrogen. The droning desolation (eg the screaming Shutdown) and barren voices (Null Pointer's autobot narrator) are saved from being utterly disconnected because of the warm, organic real-world samples.

Listen to Four Tet's Love Cry on Stereogum.  Listen to some Monolake Silence tracks on Boomkat.

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.

Stick it up your bum and it plays a little tune: what I think of AGF/Delay's new album

Breaking news. Electronic music fell foul of swine flu when Four Tet cancelled a gig.

Mexico City has been, if you weren't already aware, a ghost town. The Pasaje America venue was to play host to a Four Tet gig, but it has been closed like everywhere else.

If you spot any symptoms of the pig disease killing off electronica, please get in touch, In the meantime, please don't let your mp3s go near any other mp3s, and if your music makes you sweaty, consult a doctor.

Personally, I don't like the look of AGF/Delay's recent album Symptoms (pictured). In this case, the Symptoms include light-touch electronica, plodding minimalism and vocals that waver between ethereal and sultry

Although there's a track called Outbreak, there's no chance of sweats with this album; it barely steps beyond walking pace. The whole thing leaves me a little cold (and shivery). Vladislav Delay should stick to writing songs for the Scissor Sisters.

Enough meanderings. I'll let you quarantine your CD player. In the meantime, I'm off to stick a themometer up my bum.

Oh to be torn up by wolves and fed, bit by bit, through an old lawnmower

While I'm busy with radio things, there are a few gramophone releases you and I ought to catch up on.

AGF's fourth album Words Are Missing is a dizzying array of shattered sound and industrial ambience. The harmonies come from vocals torn up by wolves and fed through a lawnmower. The fragments that remain are alluring but ever-so-slightly unsettling.

Harmonic 313 is a side project from Mark Pritchard, better known as one half of Global Communication. His EP1 is a triumphal throwback to the early days of techno, when it was all about Detroit. So yes, it sounds all a bit Juan Atkins without the smoothness, but it works for me.

A whole manbag packed full of Thom Yorke remixes have been released in the last couple of months. Meddling with the lazy-eyed Oxford boy's music are Burial (unfairly labelled as a 2step Massive Attack), Four Tet, Christian Vogel and Newport Pagnell's DJ Surgeon.

The utterly ironic thing about electronica remixes of Radiohead's frontman is that, whatever you do, you just end up making it sound more like Radiohead. Which is a good thing, and you should sniff them down in record shops now.

Finally, Clark is breathing fire again on his new offering, Turning Dragon. He has put all niceties to one side, has walked into the Women's Institute (electronica sub-committee) meeting, and machine-gunned everyone to death with bad-tempered percussion and ADD-level techno.

Listening to his album is like trying to nail gun exploding fireworks inside the Crystal Maze dome. It's hyper, blunder-bus propeller-injected fun and is a real treat from start to finish. Have a listen to Volcan Veins from that very album.

DEEPER FRIED FAT: CLARK'S TED