Best electronic albums of 2020: twenty-three

23 – Hodge – Shadows In Blue (Houndstooth)

This won't be the last time I'll make a reference to this, but it's testament to such a strong selection of 2020 albums that Shadows In Blue was, at one point, my number one bestest favourite of the year. And here it is at number 23.

This was a long-awaited debut album of Bristol bass music from a very talented chap with a particular penchant for rattling your speakers to pieces. It's a party in a box: just unlock the lid and let it explode joyfully into your face.

Shadows In Blue has the rolling corrugated melodies of Clark, the aerobic machinery of Kraftwerk, the glistening synth experimentalism of his Houndstooth labelmates, and a technological precision that makes this truly his own. 

What was Hodge's inspiration? Was it the dark corners of nightclubs now gathering cobwebs? Was it the rise of the robots, the sound of armageddon through automaton? No. It was growing vegetables. "Gardening is something everyone can take part in," says Hodge in this interview about the album. Alas, it doesn't sound very Gardeners' Question Time-y.

 

Browse the rest of the Best Electronic Albums of 2020

New electronic music for January 2015: Ghost Culture, Floating Points and Hodge

I started something like this last year and it lasted merely days. Let's see, huh? Here are some fresh(ish) bleeps to pour into your ear-vats.


Their record label signed them because they sounded like a cross between The Strokes and Delia Derbyshire. I can also hear Factory Floor and that kind of pulsing LCD indie disco thing. Ghost Culture's slightly 80s vocals may prove divisive, but I like it spiralling into something quite different - their debut album may well be worth a look in.


Floating Points' Nuits Sonores was recorded on a plane. It has a Positive Education-energy about it (surely a sample?), perhaps Four Tet too, and its probably the most epic track you'll ever hear from a professional neuroscientist.


Every frequency is pushed until your ears become all crunchsome and gooey on Hodge's electrohouse banger You Better Lie Down, released in December on this EP here. The best thing to come out of Bristol since, um, (googles) Ribena and/or Tarmac.