Top 50 best electronic music albums of 2022: Bonobo, John Tejada, Zaliva-D

     

My countdown of my 50 most liked electronic music albums of 2022 continues. I'm splurging out a few albums at a time, so expect a lot of blog posts. It's all pretty much written on the hoof, such is my commitment to journalistic quality. That was sarcasm. Right, here are some more listenings for you.

See the full countdown here.

Bonobo: Fragments (Ninja Tune)

“Simon ‘Bonobo’ Green’s seventh album marks 20 years since he signed to Ninja Tune. That’s half the lifespan of an actual bonobo ape… Gentle clubbiness akin to a desaturated Bicep. What’s different here is the orchestration… This middle-aged ape has indeed orchestrated something glorious and listenable with strings and strings for miles.”

John Tejada: Sleepwalker (Palette Recordings) 

You know the drill. Breathless house music, precision engineered to produce exactly the right quantity of joyous ecstasy. I’ve enjoyed his lively Wajatta work with the ever-entertaining Reggie Watts, but it’s nice to be reminded of the slightly more serious synth functionalism of Tejada’s music. Like the city life that clearly inspired it, this album is busy, bustling and full of humanity.

Zaliva-D: Misbegotten Ballads (SVBKVLT)

This is a special one. This fourth album from Beijing beatmakers Zaliva-D includes: (a) ritualistic gonging rhythms, (b) industrial steel pan electro, (c) bouncing, warping drone work and (d) cartoonish vocals that sound like Cleveland from Family Guy. Didn’t expect that last one, did you? Misbegotten Ballads is a perfect title: if Chinese punks had a fever dream.

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

90 best electronic music albums of 2021: John Tejada, Loraine James, Lotic, Madlib & Meemo Comma

Fat Roland's Best Electronic Music Albums of 2021 presents five more brilliant albums:

John Tejada – Year Of The Living Dead (Kompakt) 

I've enjoyed Tejada's work with Reggie Watts: a real zippy approach to house music production. On this solo album, things are more simple. All bright and shiny. Sprightly bass drum pads skip hand-in-hand with spacey synthwork, while elsewhere the beats are slower and a little more broken, perhaps reflecting the introspective, lockdown theme of its title. In any case, it's a proper bag of loveliness, with a dubbier feel than usual. And I like it when the synths go pyow-pyow.

Loraine James – Reflection (Hyperdub)

For You and I was a cracker. I likened it to "being parachuted into a leftfield techno metropolis without a map" in my favourite albums of 2019. James's second album progresses her urban soundtrack of drill pop urbanistic futurism, or whatever it is. It's at once utterly r&b while slicing through that genre with a bass-busting chainsaw. It's complex and abstract, a gravity constantly pulling things down: Maxinquay on Xanax. Yet it's less bewildering than her previous work, now we're more attuned to its lackadaisical London vibes.

Lotic – Water (Houndstooth)

There are several things that come to mind with this second album of dreamy deconstructed electronica from this one-time Bjork producer. One: a choppy sea, sirens singing from beneath the waves. Two: ghosts singing your name from the clouds above you. Three: Kate Bush as supernova. Accompanying her gasping choral iterations are, as the title hints at, splashes of liquid synths and deep pools of electronic ambience. A deeply personal album that feels at once gentle and immensely powerful.

Madlib – Sound Ancestors (Madlib Invazion)

You know Madlib. Old Madders. L'il Lib. He's the hip hop guy turned jazzer who's been spitting soundpieces for over two decades. Sound Ancestors has all the feel of an old mixtape: the beats are smokin' and the whole thing has the warmth of well-needled vinyl records. Sorry for mixing my format metaphors there. The added element? This album was arranged by Four Tet, adding a sharpness to the blunted beats. As one review said, it's "jazzy, dirty, clean, and mean."

Meemo Comma – Neon Genesis: Soul Into Matter² (Planet Mu) 

Here's a bit of my review from Electronic Sound magazine. "A mystical mash-up of ancient Judaism and imaginary anime is the mood board for Lara Rix-Martin’s latest: Mononoke with a menorah... Grumbling incantations, hesitant slivers of rhythm and downright spooky calls to prayer. Even the fluid beats of Tif-eret is subsumed into haunting choral blessings: it’s audacious stuff. Not so much field recordings as demonic transmissions from an abandoned quarry." A deeply curious album. The Kabbalah's gonna get yah.

This is part of a series of the Best Electronic Music Albums of 2021. Read it all here.

New music: Caribou, Wajatta & Grimes

Sometimes people release albums. I can't stop them, no matter how hard I try. Seriously, I attempt to catch as many as I can before they reach the general public, oh, no, another album got through my homemade anti-album filter, dammit.

Anyhoo, here are some new and upcoming February releases that got through my sausage net. I really should stop making nets out of sausages.

Caribou – Suddenly (City Slang)

It's a good job Caribou is Canadian producer Dan Snaith and not an actual caribou. If you let a caribou into a studio full of recording equipment, it would crap everywhere and snap all the knobs with its hooves. We can only assume Snaith doesn't do this, although I've never been in a studio with him so your guess is as good as mine.

Caribou (not the animal) is back this month with another album of summery pop called Suddenly. Single You And I is really good: half melancholic grief song and half broken bass banger. Never Come Back has a similar shimmery vocal vibe to his classic Sun. It's all sounding very promising indeed.

Wajatta – Don't Let Get You Down (Brainfeeder)

Here comes the second album from loop-pedal peddler Reggie Watts and house master John Tejada. You'll know Reggie from his television appearances and pop-parodying beatboxing. Go on, have a delve on YouTube: you won't regret it.

"Wajatta" is, by the way, a combination of their names and the j is pronounced as an h. In the same way that if I teamed up with Justin Bieber, we would become Jat Rober. Or Fatin Biebland. And the e would be pronounced as a q. Words are fun.

Grimes – Miss Anthropocene (4AD) 

And that's what I think of the fifth album of bleepy tunes from the headline-grabbing popster Grimes.

What? There appears to be some text missing from the above paragraph? Ah, that's because I typed the letters at the speed of light, in tribute to Grimes calling herself c (the symbol for the speed of light). You have to read it at the speed of light otherwise you won't be able to read it. Sorry about that.







Further Fats: New music – Squarepusher, Dan Deacon & Phase Fatale (2020)