Best electronic albums of 2019: lovely earworm soup

For the last time in this best albums countdown, let's park the rollercoaster for a moment and smell the candyfloss. Here's a longlist of music heavyweights who failed to make the final cut: they're totally good and brilliant, but I kicked them to the kerb like a sassy Simon Cowell.

First up in this best-of-the-rest is Kornél Kovács and the thoroughly likeable Stockholm Marathon (Studio Barnhus). What starts as sugar-sweet vocal pop becomes a sun-glazed soup of instrumental  earworm after instrumentalearworm. Not that I'd drink a soup filled with worm ears. It sounds disgusting.

Jacques Greene got his epic on for Dawn Chorus (LuckyMe), which balanced the bright boldness of Jamie Xx and the scuzzed darkness of Clark. Jenny Hval dived into some sparkly electronics on The Practice Of Love (Sacred Bones Records), a seventh studio album fired off while writing a novel – hashtag multitasking. And Signals Into Space (Les Disques du Crépuscule) was the soft-focus return of Ultramarine, techno's answer to Channel 4's Watercolour Challenge.

The ever-filmic Amon Tobin was in an ambient mood on the intricate Fear In A Handful of Dust (Nomark). Flying Lotus was as generous and as overwhelming as ever on Flamagra (Warp Records), a work pepped up with a strange appearance by David Lynch. And although I thought Modeselektor's Who Else (Monkeytown Records) was a mixed affair, there was enough fried gold to make this longlist.

And finally here are some giants of electronic music who I've consumed in small portions in 2019, but haven't absorbed enough to include in my final list. Because I can't knowingly give full recommendations, I shall describe each album with a meaningless simile. James Blake's Assume Form (Universal Music) was like a hot toaster on a day trip to a dog-strewn beach. Hot Chip's A Bath Full of Ecstasy (Domino) was like a hovercraft balancing atop the concept of green. And finally, Metronomy's catchy Metronomy Forever (Because Music) was like a metronome catching the metro with a, er, gnome, um, er, jeez, this is worse than the fruit puns. *destroys computer with chainsaw*





Scroll the full best-of-2019 list here.

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.

Tyondai 'TyBo' Braxton retreats from Battles

Tyondai Braxton left Battles today. Now, the math rockers are like Radiohead without their Thom, like Hot Chip without their Alexis, like... shudder... Five without their Abs.

Of course, Braxton was already a known solo artist, laying out his stall with album Central Market a while ago. But Battles' expected follow-up to 2007's Mirrored was their Second Coming moment, and chez Roland has been awash with salivation for some time.

Braxton, or TyBo as his solo moniker will no doubt become, said in a statement:

"Our model has always had a controlled shapelessness to it and I know John, Ian and Dave are looking forward sculpting an even better way forward. I look forward to be able to continue my music and am very excited at the prospect of being able to dig deeper in my own work."

Amid that clash of archaeological and artistic metaphors lies a musician who is determined to paint a solo legacy that will leave fossils of sonic goodness that last longer than the huge dinosaur imprint made by Battles.

What will the future hold? Because Battles cited Braxton's unwillingness to tour as part of their mutual decision to split, I'm hoping Tyondai becomes a crazy, bearded recluse that makes Syd Barrett look like a jazz-handed pap-seeking celeb.

As for Battles, they may be better off without TyBo's vocals. It clearly wasn't working for them, and it seems that without their frontman, they will get the album wrapped up in advance of a tour next year.

A friend of mine dislikes Battles because THAT big hit sounded like Gary Glitter. Meanwhile, this eager blogger awaits TyBo's new material with tongue a-loll.

Who will be better? The original band or the newly-free TyBo?

And will it result in a massive conflict between them? You know - that type of conflict that's not a full-scale war, but not just a few skirmishes either. A conflict that's somewhere inbetween the two. There's a word for it... I forget....

What do you think of today's news? Is this the day that music died? Are you too busy listening to country and western to notice? Leave your comment below and we can have a bit of a Battle prattle between ourselves.

The Gospel According To Aphex Twin

> See a video of this talk here

Bright Club Manchester invited me to give a talk at their debut event at Nexus Art Cafe in Manchester. So I decided to set up a new religion and present it to the unsuspecting masses.

My brief from Bright Club was to talk about something I'm passionate about and to make it entertaining. My brief to myself was to make it sound convincing whilst making absolutely no sense whatsoever. It also had to be utterly un-fanboy, so there are no details. Just silliness.

You can stream the full audio for the Gospel According To Aphex Twin here. Meanwhile, here is the full text.

Gospel According To Aphex Twin

I'm here to present to you tonight a new religion based on modern electronic music, and by the end of this you will be converted. It's based on the holy trinity of the analogue drum pad, squelchy bass line and bearded geeks in bedroom studios. This is the gospel according to Aphex Twin.

To understand this gospel, you need to go back to the prophets. The BBC Radiophonic Workshop, who were working with George Martin before he became that bloke to do with the Beatles. Who knows what the BBC Radiophonic Workshop is most well known for? (Audience response: "Dr Who!") Doctor Who theme tune, absolutely right. Ron Grainger's notes to them contained annotations like 'swoops' and 'wind bubbles', it really was a fantastic new sound.

In the beginning also, there were hippy-haired men in sandals. Some of Pink Floyd's more experimental was as close to techno as you're ever going to get. I've not got time to go into this now, but the Beatles really do provide the missing link between skiffle and the Chemical Brothers (come and ask me afterwards!).

In the beginning, also, you had the puritans. Kraftwerk, who were clean and clinical, who stood there on their podiums giving sermons about wild ideas like pocket calculators and autobahns.

But I'm talking about modern electronic music. In the 80s, a lot of electronic music was about going out, getting dressed up and going dancing, so you had new wave, hip hop, rave. But this is about what happened after that. When the musical missionaries brought Detroit house music over to Europe, it became something different. We know it as electronica, intelligent dance music, armchair techno or, my favourite, braindance.

You had people like LFO who did this really ordered warehouse techno, which made Kraftwerk look like a free jazz band: they were cold and ordered  - and looming (you know when you get that feeling when the One Show's about to come on?). It brought techno kicking and screaming from the dance floor into the pizza-box strewn living room of the ravers.

This whole group of bands gave us the new scriptures to follow. The Artificial Intelligence series of CDs was brilliant stuff. Their record label described it as: "You could sit down and listen to it like you would a Kraftwerk or Pink Floyd album.” This was radical for that time, it really hadn't been done before. Although that manifesto was later used to excuse trip hop, which is wrong.

You had Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works 85 – 92, our bedraggled poster boy tonight. On that album - it's a beautiful album - there was a sample from the Charlie And The Chocolate Factory film, the one with Gene Wilder, “we are the music makers and we are the dreamers of dreams” – for me that was inspiration, it was like the Martin Luther King of electronic music.

And Orbital's brown album, so-called because it didn't have a title. It was their second album and it was so unifying and so uplifting that if you go to an Orbital gig now, it's like they're the early hymn writers and people are raising their arms in unity and in worship. The NME called Orbital's second album “as warm as plasma and as eerie as ectoplasm”. And incidentally,I wasn't sure how to fit this in: Orbital are named after the M25, and I wanted to do a section based on bands named after roadways. I've only got The Streets, Duran Duran’s Nick Rhodes and Muse...

So what are the beliefs of the Gospel According To Aphex Twin? Salvation can be found experimentation. We will encourage you to question and to challenge. So we've got Flying Lotus paying tribute to Alice Coltrane on his new album and Bjork has been working with techno pioneers for most of her career.

Salvation can be found in repetition, that Hot Chip refrain of "the joy of repetition is within you". Repetition in this religion is not essential, but it helps you reach a new, higher state of consciousness (something falls down at the back) or make people collapse. Repetition is a political thing also: a previous government tried to make repetitive beats illegal. Some of you might remember the Criminal Justice Bill was a big thing. Repetitive beats technically became illegal, but it became law. Fighting it was a bit like like banging your head against a brick wall continuously and ironically.

Salvation can also be found in staying underground. It's easier for me to fit through the eye of a needle than it is for electronica to get into the singles chart; it just doesn't happen. Autechre, who are the Mancunian purists of techno music, are wilfully obscure. I run a website on electronic music and for a while I ran a thing called Chartwatch where I would track the progress week-by-week of electronic acts in the singles chart. It wasn't very successful, and I've got a few of the entries here:

- No new electronica in the singles chart.
- Still no new electronica in the singles chart.
- Simply Red are in the top 40, I'm off for a cry.

So it didn't really work. Speaking of Simply Red, it brings me to the one unforgiveable sin, which all religions must have. The unforgiveable sin in this new religion is mediocracy. If you are, for example, The Orb and you record a 40-minute single Blue Room and it accidentally rockets up the charts and so you go on Top Of The Pops on prime-time TV and you're not sure what to do so you play chess, that is brilliant. If however, your album ends up on coffee tables, you start hanging out with celebrities and you've got lyrics like "there was snow, white snow", then you're Coldplay.

Extremism is encouraged in the Gospel According To Aphex Twin. Like all good religions, extremism is encouraged. So Venetian Snares, one of my favourite bands, he sounds very much like a barrell of nails being rolled down a cobbled hill. I'd particularly recommend the albums Cavalcade Of Glee And Dadaist Happy Hardcore Pom Poms, Filth and Winnipeg Is a Frozen Shithole.

I'm here to increase my religion, I'm here to grow my religion because I had to fit it into the theme of tonight. So will the Gospel According To Aphex Twin work? We will get organised, we will make Brian Eno pope. Electronica is dominated by a lot of the hallmarks of religion. So you'vbe got worshippers in communal ecstacy, you've got white middle-class, socially-inadequate men all over the place and also electronica's very good at looking down its nose at other people not quite doing it right.

I'd like to end with a bit of involvement, if you'd like. This is where you become part of the new religion. I'd like to end with a call-and-response, a piece of liturgy. This comes from when Lady Gaga and La Roux and Ladyhawke were first getting successful and the Guardian ran a piece about "chicks with synths", that was the new thing. So I wrote a letter to James Blunt suggesting that perhaps he get on the bandwagon and... you'll see.

If you can say the bits in bold, but please can you say it loudly and clearly and with conviction:

We join together in the Gospel According To Aphex Twin.

Aphex Twin is the daddy.

This is the First Letter To James Blunt, chapter one.  

Thanks be to Aphex.

Dear James Blunt. You should become a chick with a synth.

Amen to that.

You need to buy a nice shiny silver synthesiser and get it into every publicity shot you can.

Praise be the synthesiser.

You will, of course, need to alter your gender. I once cut the leg off a teddy bear with my dad's nosehair clippers... I'm sure changing your sex wouldn't be much different.

Get to the point.

I pledge my all to the Gospel According To Aphex Twin and his holiness, Brian Eno.

I will experiment.

Yes I will.  

I will embrace repetition.  

Yes I will.

I will embrace repetition.  

That’s not funny.

I will follow the holy order of the analogue drum pad

Thum!

and the squelchy bassline.

Pyow!

Lead us not into Maroon 5 for ever and ever.

Amen.

This was the Gospel According To Aphex Twin. Thank you very much.

You can stream the full audio for the Gospel According To Aphex Twin here.

Gang Gang Dance will not play Manchester this week

Gang Gang Dance, who gave us last year's tribal wonderfulness of Saint Dympha, are marooned in Amsterdam after a terrible fire destroyed all their gear.

I really feel for them.  It's like the Queen losing all her Corgis in a furnace.  Or Paris Hilton having her chihuahua explode.

Maybe I just have it in for dogs.  Let the band themselves describe the devastation:

"We didn't really know the scope of how bad the fire was until we arrived on the scene to find every piece of equipment we own scattered out in the parking lot...melted, charred, and still smoldering.

"Most of our gear is way beyond repair and the small amount of stuff that looks as if it wasn't physically destroyed by the fire itself has all been doused by the firehoses.

"So we have been left with synths that are melted, a charred guitar, cases full of wet pedals and cables, drums that are nothing but the metal rims, amps that look as if they've been doused in tar."

Ouch. Naturally, this week's appearance with Hot Chip's Alexis Taylor at the Manchester Roadhouse has been cancelled. Read the full statement here.

A throat-pawing, arm-wrestling, mallet-bashing preview of 2009 (part one)

The reverberating acid begins as a hum, the kind of hum that settles on your tummy, but it rises and rises with ferocity, up your chest, until a miffed guitar riff paws at your thoat.

And a robot voice announces: "WE ARE THE PRODIGY."

And so to 2009, and no prizes for guessing electronic music's most anticipated release of this year.

Three storming albums (Experience, Jilted Generation, Fat Of The Land). Then there was the Album-Five-Years-Ago-That-No-One-Really-Remembers-Coz-Everyone-Still-Blithers-On-About-Smack-My-Bitch-Up-Which-Is-12-Years-Old-Yes-I-Know-Get-Over-It. I don't think that was the exact title.

Anyhoo, watch out for the Prodigy's new LP, Invaders Must Die, in March.

Allow that, my sweet reader, to be an introduction to my preview of some other albums that will caress our earlobes in 2009.

My guide is in no way comprehensive, nor is it even accurate. I have probably missed a number of major titles, and quite frankly 99% of sales in '09 will be X-Factor related, so it's all an exercise in futility.

January.

The remnants of Add N To X have teamed up with space rockers Fuxa for a looping joy of a single Add N To Fu(x)a. I hope it's a taste of more to come from this pair.

Following his well-received album Just A Souvenir, Squarepusher will release an EP of "dancefloor psychedelia" called Numbers Lucent. If the Square one isn't nominated for the next Mercury Music Prize, I'll eat my slipmats.

The shoe-collecting Telefon Tel Aviv will flop out their first full-length offering for five years. When Immolate Yourself hits, it could be one of the best discs of the year.

February.

The Eft will waft its way from Samandtheplants, while Susumu Yokota - whose hypnotic The Boy And The Tree album was used liberally on Sunday's Top Gear Vietnam special - will explore a more vocal sound for his new Mother LP.

Not to be outdone by the Prodigy, Massive Attack will attempt a monumental return with the provisionally-titled Weather Underground. The double-album of "gothic soul" is pretty much shrouded in hushness, but it is rumoured by the rumour mill that Tom Waits will feature. That's even cooler than Hot Chip's single with Robert Wyatt a couple of months back.

If the Prodigy and Massive Attack had an arm wrestle, who would win? Please discuss.

Finally for February, there's Harmonic 313's When Machines Exceed Human Intelligence, but I've already covered this so I ought to hush my mouth.

Next?

In the second half of my preview, I will cover March, then skip the rest of the year really quickly as though I don't care. I do care, but you try getting accurate release information six months in advance.

I'll also reveal the artist I'm positively frothing at the mouth over for 2009. A clue? He's a genre-buster from Glasgow and he uses the word "shite" a lot.

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.