Top 10 electronic music albums of 2022: Hudson Mohawke – Cry Sugar

My top 10 countdown of the best electronic music albums of 2022 continues. This isn't opinion, by the way. It's fact. Look up "Fat Roland's favourite albums" in the dictionary and you'll get a picture of this blog. Fact. 

See the full countdown here.

Hudson Mohawke: Cry Sugar (Warp)

Electronic Sound: “Smooth soul samples chopped and diced, nuclear bass drums, buttery trumpets, carpet bomb sequencing, and, on the strangulated banger ‘Behold’, giddy vocals flattened into a pancake… Utter mayhem in every good way. Expect to hear this everywhere.” 

Welcome back HudMo, or to give him his full name, Huddleston Morecambe Bay Discount Store. Cry Sugar is daft. The vocal samples are cut using blunt scissors, the bass drums land like a parachuting walrus, the EDM bursts like a glitter bomb. And it’s hugely entertaining. I get the sense that some of the beats are necessary because the soup of samples underneath are barely under control: the machines are having a block party of their life.

16 years into his record releasing career, no-one has a right to sound this energised, this frantic, this gloriously epic. You’ve done well, Hudson River Mountaineering Equipment.

Curious track: The Timbaland-style Dance Forever that morphs into The Prodigy and then an electric razor.

Album feels: Partying on and on until the break of dawn and/or until the sausage rolls run out.

Cover art: A marshmallow man getting his booty on. No really. 

From another website: Just succumb to its unique invention, curious shifts in tone and plethora of weird juxtapositions: something that’s easy enough to do. (The Guardian)

This is part of a series of the Best Electronic Music Albums of 2022. Read it all here.

Best electronic albums of 2020: ten

10 – Ital Tek – Outland (Planet Mu)

We start the top ten an act I called "ambimum" in my 2016 top ten and compared to Stockport in my 2018 top ten. With yet another top ten entry, Ital Tek has done it again – and may well have scored higher than previous years if there hadn't been such competition in 2020. Not that this is a competition. Ahem.

Outland starts quietly, like a boxing match with a baby tiger. "This is easy," you think, as the baby fur flies. Soon the snarling begins; the muscles flex, and before long you have a furious tiger and/or pulsing analogue synths sitting on your face.

This is his most accessible album despite some naaaasty bass moments. Such is the analogue perfection, it really does feel like you're being destroyed by something cute. The apocalypse has never sounded so graceful.

Outland has the grimy thump of Clark cushioned by the murky otherworld of Stranger Things; it has the crowd-hyping drops of Jon Hopkins or Hudson Mohawke almost completely flattened into a biophilic Bjorkian fuzz. So good.

No baby tigers were hurt in the writing of this blog post, apart from the one I fired out of a cannon, but that was just for fun.

 

Browse the rest of the Best Electronic Albums of 2020

Best electronic albums of 2020: welcome to my Special Mentions Block Party, whatever that is

Here are yet more special mentions, comprising albums I really liked but couldn't squeeze into my final top 25 despite purchasing several shoe horns.

This selection is themed along the lines of "albums I would play at a block party". 

I have no idea what a block party is. The only parties I've been to are children's, acid house, political and raiding. But let's imagine we're dropping some bangers and the people are going ham. Let's go.

People are arriving at the party: this DJ needs to press play on some tunes. Machinedrum's ninth album A View Of U (Ninja Tune) was one of his strongest, with slow jams and drum machine smashers galore. While the cloakroom cue is bopping to this, I've also popped on Hudson Mohawke's BBHE (Warp), a lively bag of unreleased works that serves as Machinedrum's wackier, dirtier cousin.

To add a unique party atmosphere, I'm now playing Arca's Kick i (XL Recordings), although in typical Arca fashion her work here is not so much bangers as scrapers and writhers and awkwardly diagonal wibblers. Maybe I can save the atmosphere with Tricky's Fall To Pieces (False Idols), his fourteenth album and a welcome return to form due in no small part to his brilliant vocalist Marta. Actually, probably a little dark for a party. Bad DJ choice, but good album.

The partiers are helping themselves to punch. Do they have punch at block parties? Anyway, I'm now spinning Two Fingers' Fight! Fight! Fight! (Nomark) with Amon Tobin in full corrugated-bass mode. Every track is a digitally-decayed dance-off: it's brilliant. Oh no. People are leaving. They want the new Steps album. How about Rian Treanor's second album File Under UK Metaplasm (Planet Mu), which sounds like a rave in the middle of Mike Teavee's fractal transfer in Charlie And The Chocolate Factory? No? Perhaps I can salvage things with upsammy's Zoom (Dekmantel) which takes a mirrorball to IDM and transforms it into an intricate alien sunrise.

No?

Sigh. Stupid imaginary block party.

 

Browse the rest of the Best Electronic Albums of 2020

Best electronic albums of 2019: thirteen

13 – Konx-om-Pax – Ways Of Seeing (Planet Mu)

Konx-om-Pax used to hang out with Hudson Mohawke on the tough streets of Glasgow. Recently he's been hanging out with Hudson Mohawke at HudMo's swanky LA residence. Somewhere inbetween comes this, his glorious third album.

The reviewers have waffled a lot about light when writing about Ways Of Seeing, and they're spot on. Its like Konx has opened all the windows and sun-bleached his murky sounds. The darkness is still there (the sudden declaration of "overdose!" on LA Melody), but these are shadows in daylight rather than shimmers in the night.

The album's also informed by Konx (his real name is Tom) moving to Berlin, and there's something notably European about the smooth flow of Nightwave collaboration I'm For Real. He also spent some time in Clark's studio, and I think some of the giddy looseness of the production could be testament to that.

This has proper cheered me up, sitting here in my Manchester living room with all this LA-inflected beatsmithery drumming into my ears. I'm off to put the big light on.



Scroll the full best-of-2019 list here.

The 5 best electronic music tracks of the decade so far

Someone had posted on Facebook asking about the best tracks of this decade so far. I always find these things impossible to answer, like choosing my favourite chocolate bar or torture instrument.

However, I plumped for five tracks. I'll probably change my mind next week, so take this with a pinch of salt. (Any brand of salt - I haven't got a favourite.) In fact, for all of these you could choose numerous other tracks. Although Brazil really is quite something.

What you're about to hear or see is:

> Luke Abbott's glorious Brazil from his 2010 album Holkham Drones. Every part of this track oozes warmth and melancholy and a kind of purple glue for which I don't know the name.

> Moderat's Bad Kingdom, a desperately melancholic 2013 single with a video that's likely to cause all kinds of seizures in parts of your body that haven't even been discovered by science.

> Clark's Winter Linn, a robust slab of techno that feels like shoving your head up a synthesiser's bum then not being able to pull it out again, despite a blind text to Uncle Kenneth who not only has experience in this kind of thing but also has an extra large plunger.

> Jon Hopkins' Collider. That breath sound. Oh my. I've seen this live a couple of times and I did everything the woman does in the video. Gyrating, snogging, being possessed by a demon, the works.

> Scud, from the Hudson Mohawke album Lantern from a couple of year back. This one feels like a little pop song, all lo-fi yet pompous. Which is good because the names of my first two children are going to be Lo-Fi and Pompous.

Chosen Words: L is for LuckyMe

a.k.a. World Cup Distraction Exercise: Fat Roland's A-Z guide to the most important words or phrases in electronica and their associated "facts"

LuckyMe is a Scottish collective producing an increasingly popular style of hip hop / electronic beats.

It includes laser-rockers American Men, and Mike Slott and Rustie. Although Rustie looks 12, his musical brain is more ancient and advanced than sound itself.

Hudson Mohawke, a former champion DJ, is the most well-known artist in LuckyMe. He signed to Warp Records where he released his debut album Butter. If his next couple of albums are called Bread and Wafer Thin Ham, he could one day have a sandwich.

This is the first Glaswegian music scene since the heady days of the Del Amitri Collective, whereupon men with sideburns whined about nothing much happening whilst simultaneously bleeding the joy out of all known music.

The LuckyMe sound fills the gap left by a distinctly unprolific Aphex Twin, although when the 'phex does produce another album, there would be ructions. It'd be the Cornish rebellion of 1497 all over again.

If Aphex Twin and the whole LuckyMe collective had a fight, Aphex Twin would win because he'd do what that creature did to the old lady in the Come To Daddy video.

Top five dullest artists or bands from Glasgow:

- Travis
- Mark Knopfler
- Paolo Nutini
- Darius
- That woman from Fairground Attraction
- Gun
- Snow Patrol
- Wet Wet Wet
- Texas
- This was meant to be a top five, right...?

For more Chosen Words, click the tag at the bottom of this post.

The Brainfeeder / Paul Weller connection

It's easy for me to parp on about Warp Records all the stupid time, but there's another record label that is becoming a keystone of modern electronica.

Brainfeeder is the, er, brainchild of Flying Lotus, a Los Angeles producer about whose great aunt Paul Weller once wrote a song.*

Mr Lotus, or FlyLo to his chums, started Brainfeeder as radio show back in 2008 on Dublab, a not-for-profit internet radio station set up by students. The 'feeder mission, "we are here to feed brains," was reassuringly simple, and like a lot of good radio programmes, it was an excuse for FlyLo and his mates to play their own music and the music they loved.

Already with a toe in the door at Warp Records thanks to the Reset EP (used by the Adult Swim cable TV network, which means bugger all in the UK but is a big thing in the States), Flying Lotus was about to step into much bigger things.

His 2008 album on Warp Records, called Los Angeles for blisteringly obvious reasons, had other music producers salivating over his complex, urban instrumentals. I even got drooled on by HMV staff when I bought it on CD (their dribble is like acid: it stings).

As FlyLo increased his knob-twiddling respect levels to 11**, Brainfeeder morphed into a record label. Bolstered by a distribution deal with the legendary imprint Ninja Tune, the 'feeder now boasts Ras G, Lorn, Matthewdavid, Daedelus and the Gaslamp Killer among its roster.

In fact, Daedelus's forthcoming Righteous Fists Of Harmony EP is the label's first put-out-the-bunting and stick-the-kettle-on release: it should propel them into the bleep-o-sphere.

Brainfeeder is exciting because the music is so fresh and so clean. Ain't nobody dope as them. And it's a great complement to the Glaswegian DIY electronica scene championed by Hudson Mohawke and the LuckyMe collective.

To wrap your ears around Brainfeeder goodness, this Red Bull Music Academy show is a good place to start. Or FlyLo and the Gaslamp Killer's Christmas present to everyone is also worth sticking on your iPod. Meanwhile, it's not at all long until Flying Lotus' droolworthy third album Cosmogramma is released on Warp Records.

But then, I'm not parping about Warp, am I? I thought we'd established that.

* Song For Alice (Dedicated to the Beautiful Legacy of Mrs. Coltrane) from Weller's 2008 album 22 Dreams (Mrs Coltrane being FlyLo's great aunt and wife of John Coltrane).

** This is not, as you would expect, a nod to the classic rock spoofudrama Spinal Tap, but instead it is an endearing tribute to the maximum volume level on the BBC iPlayer.

James from Hadouken! saved me from death by lawnmower

I have a habit of avoiding the Metro newspaper in the same way I have a habit of not smashing my face into the blades of a lawnmower before work every morning.

However, the stinky, freebie spawn of the Daily Mail got something right today. It recommended some good music. Or rather, James out of Hadouken! did in the newspaper's On My iPod feature.

The new-raver (oh come on, they are not in any way "grindie") implored Metro readers to pick up a copy of Hudson Mohawke's funk-infused Rising 5 and described it as "math-y, analogue space-funk with a sitar." I don't hear a sitar there, but I did discover this Boards Of Canada remix of the band sampled by HudMo for Rising 5.

Shuffling death track

James Hadouken! also recommended Flying Lotus' shuffling death track Time Vampires, reminding the dear Metro readers of a Lotus collaboration with the Gorillaz. Flying Lotus did drop a Gorillaz track on Gilles Peterson's radio show recently, and he's also been schmoozing with Thom Yorke - but no Gorillaz remix to report yet.

He went on to plug Inside Pikachu's Foo-Foo by Rustie, except you'd need to replace that euphamism for something a little stronger. It's a stupendous track - as is everything by Rustie at the moment. And he also bigged-up (I believe that is the modern parlance) Joker's Gully Brook Lane.

The Hadouken! chappie finished the Metro feature with Chase & Status' End Credits, a slab of drum and bass melancholia featuring the vocal talents of Plan B which worked brilliantly at the end of Harry Brown and provided Chase & Status with their UK chart breakthrough.

I sometimes get a bit evangelical about electronic music, so it's nice to see music I like amid the usual Metro bilge of kittens, health stories and knowing irony. For once, the lawnmower stayed safely in my garage: I just stapled my forehead instead.

Album reviews: Shlohmo's clunky knobs, Ambient News's sepia hue and Mark E spluttering all over your face

Right then, enough about Autechre's leakiness for now. Time for some slap-dash album reviews.

Ambient News

The recent self-titled album from Ambient News doesn't push the envelope so much as snuggle inside it to avoid disturbing the postman.

The busy little beat smothered in vocoders on Moon On My Forehead is as energetic as this album gets. It will appeal to those who like looking at their ambient music with sepia-hued retinas: think Tangerine Dream, 1990's Plaid in simmering mode, or particularly the Feed Your Head compilations.

Hiding behind the Ambient News moniker is Cylob, the man who brought us a superb subversion of rave culture in Rewind. This alternative guise gives him the chance to mess around with harmoniums and gamelan-style 'earth' ambience.

Ambient News sounds incomplete. If it was BBC Ambient News 24, at the top of every hour, it would have about 15 minutes of newsreaders filing their nails. It's almost as if Cylob had been gathering ideas together for a long time, but never quite realised his vision...

Mark E

...unlike Mark E. This hypnotic house music peddler has also been hoarding tracks, but his resulting Works 2005 - 2009 compilation is a much grander affair than Ambient News. I wouldn't normally delve into disco house on this website, but this album splutters quality all over your face, licks it off with a big lizard tongue, then spits all the quality back in your face again.

You see, for someone who's made his diminuitive name giving us his take on Janet Jackson and Diana Ross (now there's a duet I'd like to see), a lot of these tracks are a bit too slow, a bit too subtle and dangerously hypnotic. And that's a good thing.

As for individual cuts, I'm not mad on the funkiness of Sun Shadow, even though Mr Scruff has been pummeling away at that track like a Daily Mail reader who's just discovered a hammer for the first time. But Mark E's reworks of Slave 1 and Plastic People are house music at its most sexy and sublime.

Shlohmo

Finally, us IDM fans have been dropped a cracking album from Los Angeles beat scientist Shlohmo (pictured above, not to be confused with the beatboxer with a similar name).

Shlomoshun Deluxe is an album of brittle lo-fi beats in the Hudson Mohawke / J Dilla vein. And when I say lo-fi, I'm not kidding. He plugged a mic into his laptop, along with his dad's ancient Jupiter 6 (an old Roland synth with clunky knobs) and, somehow, expected to produce a good album.
.
He did: it's my favourite album this week. The emphasis is all on the groove, and it has a David Holmes wideness to it - which is a remarkable achievement considering he made the whole thing from sellotape, string, splittle and sausages. Well, maybe not the sausages.

Best electronica: some quick YouTube links

If you feel a bit out of the loop with all this electronic blip-blop, and if Chris Evans is simply refusing to play the latest Mike Slott, then you might appreciate this list.

Here are ten tracks that have turned my head in the past year or so. You should definitely listen to them all, then get digging on the internet for more of the same. Each artist is tagged at the bottom of this post, so click through to see what else I've written about them.

It won't surprise you to know that there are more than ten acts out there: these were just the first ten I thought of. I would love it if you suggested more in the comments section.

If you're wondering where to start with modern IDM / electronica, Fat Roland's essential yet insubstantial YouTube link guide has got it covered:

Play the whole frickin' lot as a YouTube playlist or click on the links below:

Hudson Mohawke - Fuse

The Tuss - Rushup I Bank 12

Mount Kimbie - Maybes

Joy Orbison - Hyph Mngo

Rustie - Bad Science

Joker - Digidesign

Mike Slott - Gardening

Flying Lotus - 1983

Max Tundra - Will Get Fooled Again

Wisp - The Fire Above

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. 

N-n-n-n-n-n-brand new LPs from the Slott and the Lone

Edit: Lone's album is mentioned in my top ten electronica albums of 2009. 

N-n-n-n-n-n-finally, Mike Slott has coughed up a debut mini-album. It's called Lucky 9teen and if I was going to mark it out of ten, I'd give it n-n-n-n-n-n-twenty six.

Opening with hymnal chords and excitable cheering, the record spins us through broken hip hip that digresses through muddy puddles of jazz and beguiling troughs of 80s synthorama.

He's produced more than a handful of tracks with Hudson Mohawke in the past, although if Mohawke's music is patchwork slacks reeking of doobie smoke, Slott's sound is a bit more suited and booted and sporting a sparkly bow tie.

Listen to Mike Slott's Lucky 9teen at Boomkat. Keep an eye on the Slott: he's not just making new electronica: with the likes of Dabrye and Rustie, he's busy inventing it. N-n-n-n-n-n-good work.

While I'm musing about broken beats (do people still say that these days?), let me point you towards Lone's Ecstacy And Friends. Lone is Nottingham's Matt Cutler and a label-mate of Lukid. He has ripped a few pages from Bibio's sun-bleached book and produced an album of such melodic heat, it will leave your skin cripsy and sizzling like an inattentive beach bather.

I'll warn you now though: the kick drum hits so hard, your crap computer speakers will wither wretchedly. Catch snippets of Lone's Ecstacy And Friends here.

Vanilla, Pistachio, Strawberry Swirl, Caramel Chew-Chew, BLOOD

I have neglected this poor old blog recently. It's been more like Attitude magazine and less like an uninformative, lazy swagger through the mucus-infested bowels of electronic music.

Let the staggering resume.

Hey! Look! It's a three-dimensional Squarepusher! As opposed to the two-dimensional one you saw at the Warehouse Project last year! Have a look at more 3D electronica photographs on the Bleep Blog here (all courtesy of Anti-Limited).

Hey! Look! Remember Butter by Hudson Mohawke, covered by this blog last month? You can win a spreadable version of the album: a double vinyl copy of Butter with a T-shirt and sticker in a customised butter tub. Just tell competitions [at] vinylfactory.co.uk which of the following is not a well-known hairstyle:

a) Mohawk
b) Crew Cut
c) Star Crackout

What the hell's a star crackout? OH. Sorry. That's the point. Don't read this paragraph; it may ruin the competition.

Hey! Look! Fat Roland blogging chum Dave Hartley (his pets pictured above) has been shortlisted for a Manchester Blog Award!

Yeah, that last one was nothing to do with electronica, but I'm just trying to throw a mate a fricking bone. WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT? BLOOD? SMOOTH, CREAMY ELECTRONICA-FLAVOURED BLOOD? Jeesh.

Suspended puppies: an absolutely genuine review of Warp20 Sheffield

What kind of skrunk-flapped piffoon would profess to run a blog on electronica then not bother to go to the most important electronica night in the history of the bleepiverse?

At the weekend, Warp Records celebrated its 20th anniversary with an absolute doozer of night. Warp20 Sheffield (logo pictured) featured smash-n-bassmaster Squarepusher and a hatful of classic Warp artists.

Because I couldn't go (and my diary clash really was unavoidable, like trying to walk past a pedestrian who's swallowed a house), I'm going to have to make up a fictitious review. Here goes...

Harmonic 313 came on before anyone had arrived; he was only playing to one man and an ill horse. To be honest, this took the pizzazz out of his set, and all he did was whip his keyboards with a wet towel. A disappointment all round.

Hudson Mohawke didn't begin his set because Kanye West stormed on stage and told everyone how he loved Beyonce. HudMo was later spotted crying in the corner sobbing his way through the lyrics of Single Ladies. Instead, Nightmares On Wax filled in with a unique set of tracks alternating between bland soundtrack chill-out and gabba nosebleed techno.

It is difficult to describe Squarepusher's set without using the following words:

- slap;
- krunk;
- Ogden Nash;
- visible beard growth;
- suspended puppies;
- Middle East peace process;
- Celine.

Then came Clark, who took his cue from old Top Of The Pops and performed all his song titles literally. So Totems Flare had him setting fire to things dressed as a Native American and he wore a bear suit for Ted. He went too far with that operation he did on an audience member during Empty The Bones Of You, but at least it was different.

After Andrew Weatherall's DJ set, which was mainly him shouting "does anyone remember me, I used to be important", it was time for Forgemasters.

Everyone who knows about the history of Warp Records will know about Forgemasters. They invented music back in the caves of 70,000 BC and if their music ever stops being played, the Earth will die.

So it was a delightful surprise when they closed Sheffield's Warp20 with a gushing rendition of Somewhere Over The Rainbow. Everyone simpered; it was lovely.

Shame it was spoilt by Clark who, now horrifically drunk, stumbled onto the stage as Tinman and crashed sideways into their keyboards. That really upset Hudson Mohawke, who forgot the lyrics to Independent Women. Bastard.

I can't believe it's finally Butter

Edit: This album is mentioned in my top ten electronica albums of 2009. 

I'm about to get back into my blogging rhythm after a couple of weeks lazing under a beetle-infested rock.

But in the meantimewhile, here's a message from Whitney Houston:



Turntablist destroying aqua crunk producer Hudson Mohawke's hugely anticipated debut album Butter is out in October. This, people, is going to be massiver than a horse explosion.

Fingers, fists and big squelchy buttons: new singles from Amon Tobin, Syntheme and HudMo

If I stuck two fingers in your face, you'd quite rightly twaz me round the chops with your broomstick.

But if I stuck Two Fingers in your face-- note the capitalization-- you'd quite rightly hold me and squeeze me and call me George.*

That's because Two Fingers is a collaborimification between smoke-hazed Ninja Tune sample king Amon Tobin (pictured) and electronic artist Doubleclick.

The first digital single of that partnership hit like a freight train this week.  What You Know has been hailed as Blade Runner played out in Tottenham.  If the streets of London are strewn with paper unicorns after this post publishes, you know why.  The single fuses hip hop and drum 'n' bass, as a twitchy nod to the early DJ Food era of Ninja Tune Records.  Mercury nominee MC Sway grimes things up good and proper with an angry rant on racial stereotypes, and it's entertaining to see Tobin make room for the vocals by stepping back from the wall-of-sound big fistedness he's known for.

The Two Fingers chaps will drop an album, which I believe will be titled eponymously, closer to Easter. 

Also out this week is Syntheme's daringly titled 12" Syntheme Vol 2.  The key word here is "squelch".  She gets a Roland TB-303 Bass Line synthesiser and pummels it until it's squelchy.  She recreates a banging acid rave in a basement by pressing a big red button labelled 'squelch'.  She squelches like no other: a fine 12" from Planet Mu Recordings.

Hudson Mohawke's new EP Polyfolk Dance is out today(ish).  He's been banging out tracks for ten years, and since he's only 22, that makes me sick.  In fact, I'm already fed up with him, so I'm not going to tell you about him justifying all the hype, about how your ears will find him outrageously addictive, and about how he's working on The Best Album Of 2009 Maybe (which will be fawned over extensively on this site - stay tuned).

*one of my favourite Looney Tunes quotes, from 1961's Abominable Snow Rabbit.

Why Lukid's Foma is the first essential electronica album of 2009

Edit: This album is mentioned in my top ten electronica albums of 2009. 

January's most overlooked piece of plastic also happens to be more essential than oxygen, water and Alan Partridge repeats on the inexplicably-acronymed telly station G.O.L.D.

Lukid (pictured above) released his Foma album in the last few weeks to barely a whisper of applause.  It is an SBD.  Silent But Delightful.

It's a big slugful of hip hop sensibility, salted down to a mere shrivel of its former self, with slight rhythms and paper-thin synths belying a depth akin to the likes of Autechre.

Foma, the follow-up to his debut album Onandon a couple of years ago, sounds like a house of cards falling down.  Slowly.  It's a football match played by ghosts.  It's Flying Lotus smoking a massive doobie.  It sounds a little... woozy.

When the beats are more substantial, such as on tracks Veto and Sky Fly (but even then, they gasp and trip), it could become the engine of a new scene of baggy-beats driven by Dabrye and powered into the future by Hudson Mohawke.

But when it is sensual and dreamlike, glitchy and inviting, it sits firmly in the vein of classic IDM electronica.

For both those reasons, Lukid's Foma LP is the first essential electronica album of 2009.  Listen to it then buy it at Boomkat.

Hot off the press: Warp Records are giving away free, without obligation, sans engagement, uden forpligtelse, the track Illegal Dustbin from Squarepusher's new Numbers Lucent EP.  It's the fiercest and best track on the EP.  All you have to do is give them your email address.

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: