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.

Best electronic albums of 2018: turn-offs and slow-baked smokers

Pah! Why hang out with the cool kids who made the final top 20 album list, when you could be here in the kitchen with all the losers that didn't make it?

Here is another clutch of almost-rans, headed by an album with highly processed r ‘n’ b vocals, usually a big turn-off for me. Has to be said, though: they worked amazingly on the slow-burning pseudo-grime sounds of Okzharp & Manthe Ribane’s Closer Apart (Hyperdub). On a similar vocal-led tip, I liked Silvia Kastel’s thoughtful “poetry of nothing” on Air Lows (Blackest Ever Black) and I was beguiled by the alienating mechanics and spooooky voices of Lucrecia Dalt unnerving Anticlines (Rvng Intl).

Now, I don't touch drugs these days: although I'm partial to the occasional acid house night, my raving days are long behind me. However, I strongly suspect that if I stepped within 50 feet of Thundercat’s Drank (Brainfeeder), I'd pass out on its slow-baked smokiness. I also lit a nostalgic glow-stick in tribute to the rave vocal samples (“you belong to meee”) and staccato-snared battle cries of RP Boo's I'll Tell You What! (Planet Mu) – he was on brilliantly creative form.

Love poems, YouTube videos and Danish graffiti inspired the wide complexity of Varg’s Nordic Flora Pt. 5: Crush (Posh Isolation). And, if you think about it, failure inspired Soulwax's latest album, because instead of coming up with an Essential Mix for Radio 1, they produced Essential (Deewee) instead. It was rough around the edges, but fun nonetheless. And finally, if sounds were colours, Lotic’s Power (Tri Angle) would be an endless tangle of rainbows as seen through a thousand Insta filters. Wonderful.





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