Best electronic albums of 2018: I still want to smell these, even from far away

It's time for some more also-rans, and there are some big names here. I'm like David with his pea-shooter, and a couple of these are like Goliaths or the Good Samaritan or something, I dunno. Let's get on with it.

Almost making it into the final list was Marie Davidson, whose acclaimed fourth album Working Class Woman (Ninja Tune) had some of the best house tunes of the year –  ‘So Right’ and ‘Work It’ are so sparky (“I want to smell you, even from far away”). felicita’s hej (PC Music) mixed gentle piano with frequency-destroying digitalism: a curious mixture. Gender inequality and the refugee crisis informed the uneasiness on the ethereal club vibes of Deena Abdelwahed’s Khonnar (InFine Music).

Jlin’s Autobiography (Planet Mu), written as a soundtrack to a ballet, sounded more introspective than usual, complete with piano ballad. The twisted electronics of Amnesia Scanner’s Another Life (PAN) put the ‘anger’ into ‘bangerz’. See what I did there? I am such a clever writer. Spiritflesh’s Spiritflesh (No Corner) was an industrial street-fight of gloomy mechanics.

With track titles like Tunnel Stalker and Final Mercy, DJ Richard’s Dies Iræ X erox (Dial Records) was hardly going to be a bundle of laughs, but the lurking EMB-driven beats held their own dark optimism. The weaponised techno of Ancient Methods’ The Jericho Records (Ancient Methods) sounded like it had buried its way out of the earth’s core like some kind of mixing desk-tweaking mole, assuming you could get hardware that could work while encased in soil, which I don't think you can, got to be realistic about these things. *Such* a clever writer.





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

Jlin's Black Origami: drums and drums and more drums

Have you ever crawled inside a drum? Actually stripped down to your undercrunkies, split the skin of a snare and climbed inside?

I have. It's flipping amazing.

Oh no wait, I'm not inside a drum. I'm just listening to Jlin's second album Black Origami. SEE WHAT I DID THERE? I thank you.

She takes the basis of footwork, that stuttering dancing music so in fashion a few years ago, and maps that into something quite new. Her percussive world is so overwhelming that it's easy to go a long time before you realise you've not heard a chord for twenty minutes. Or a synth line. Just drums and drums and vocal snippets and more drums.

Have a listen to Nandi, three and a half minutes of machine-drilled opera,



Further Fats: Chosen Words - B Is For Boss Drum (2010)

Best electronic albums of 2015: six

6 – Jlin – Dark Energy (Planet Mu) 

Jlin's Dark Energy is a strange beast. So is most modern footwork. Expect staccato drum sequences and plenty of drilling repetition and

brief

stop-starts

like this like this like this like this like this.

Fellow footworker RP Boo often goes for sonic power with his vocal iterations, but there’s something different at work here. Listen to the brooding scrapes of Ra, the alarmed intensity of Expand or the brilliant and almost adolescent refrain on Guantanamo of “you don’t wanna hurt anyone... but I do, and I’m sorry”. This would be an exercise in clinical cut-and-paste, but Jlin manages to make footwork sound human, albeit in a way that is brusque and as moody as hell.

“Who do you think you’re talking to?” shouts Abnormal Restriction, the final track on Jlin’s debut for Planet Mu.  Somewhere amid the Eastern woodpecker calls on Unknown Tongues or the micro squeak refrain on Black Diamond that would normally have you sending off your Nintendo for repair, a realisation dawns: this is the most appropriately-titled album in this year's top ten. And what energy.

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