Best electronic albums of 2018: Bruno Brookes eat your heart out

It's a bit weird writing all these side-bars amid a top 20 countdown. It's a bit like Bruno Brookes wandering off to his knitting circle in the middle of Top Of The Pops.

Anyways, here is the final bunch of electronic noodlers that didn't quite make my final list.

A jazz pianist and a cellist might not be natural territory for techno behemoth R&S, but Djrum’s Portrait With Firewood (R&S Records) produced some bass music on an epic scale. Elysia Crampton found a clattering joy in the balance between found sound and world music on Elysia Crampton (Break World Records). Mark Pritchard’s The Four Worlds (Warp Records) was worth it for the likeable washboard shuffle of Circle Of Fear. And Marquis Hawkes raised the flipping roof on The Marquis Of Hawkes (Houndstooth).

DJ Koze created a deserved fuss with Knock Knock (Pampa), a collection of twitchy house music but not as you know it. I was perhaps less keen on its folky elements. Chris Carter, of Throbbing Gristle repute, managed to funnel several decades of electronic music into the excellent Chemistry Lessons Volume 1 (Mute). Astonishingly, Mr Fingers dropped his first album for 24 years in 2018: Cerebral Hemispheres (Alleviated Records) was as soulfully slick as you'd imagine. HVL’s Ostati (Organic Analogue Records) revived many memories of old raves and armchair techno listening.

German glitchmeister Alva Noto gets his own paragraph. He brought us a minimal masterpiece with Unieqav (Noton) earlier this year, but he didn't stop there. His rare Newcastle live recording Live 2002 (Noton) with Ryoji Ikeda and the late Mika Vainio seemed to have its audience hair-spun with static. Also worth looking into is the architecture-inspired Glass (Noton) with Ryuichi Sakamoto: the pairs last work was The Revenant soundtrack with Leonardo DiCaprio getting jiggy with a bear.

That was the tenth and final lot of also-rans for this 2018 countdown. I'll probably remember something I wanted to include, but forgot – I'll include it in this blank space here: _________________.





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

Listenable new video gunk from Warp Records

No explanation needed, really. These are all from the past couple of months, and each chosen because they'll ooze melody right down your lug-tunnels.

Giving Link's Arcadian its due

Have I raved about Link's Arcadian recently? Probably not. It's well overdue a raving.

Arcadian first appeared on an EP back in 1992. I discovered it on Warp Record's brain-meltingly brilliant Artificial Intelligence compilations a couple of years later. Everyone was producing instrumental ambient techno: I should know - that scene was my world back then. This Link track stood out: it was gentle yet hard as nails, much of its power coming from that rattling snare hit.

Of course it stood out. Link was Mark Pritchard, of Under The Sun and Global Communication fame. He's seventeen shades of genius; a musical Midas. Mark Pritchard could jam his head into a wood-chipper and still produce the most beautiful sounds. "Aaaargh my face," screams Pritchard. "Ten out of ten!" declares Pitchfork.

It's not a friendly track, not like his other ambient stuff. It's metronomic and a little pinched. But that's why it's cool: it would have been tempting to take a gloopier, more leisurely path like, for example, another stand-out from that time, Spooky's Orange Coloured Liquid.

Take ten minutes out of trolling Theresa May on Twitter and listen to Arcadian here.



Further Fats: My Warp top ten: it's not all Warp and there aren't ten of them (2009)

Further Fats: New York, London, Paris, Munich, everybody talk about complicated electronica with difficult time signatures and a limited listening demographic (2009)

Listen: Mark Pritchard's Under The Sun and what lurks underneath

I've not mentioned Mark Pritchard or Global Communication or Link or Harmonic 313 or Africa Hitech for ages on this website.

Mark Pritchard is all of those people and I really should mention him more. His influence echoes throughout modern ambient and electronic music like a clanging gong that has been sampled, reversed, elongated, looped and drenched in reverb.

Listen above to the arresting title track from his new album Under The Sun, a mesmerising album which is bound to end up in plenty of end-of-year lists.

And come to know that, as ever with Pritchard, it's not the vocals you're following: it's that bassline lurking underneath, and the rhythms that sit at the edge of the melody. Beautiful.

Further Fats: Suspended puppies: an absolutely genuine review of Warp20 Sheffield - includes Harmonic 313's "wet towel"... (2009)

Monthly mop-up: simmering Super Furries, dribbling confusion and net-loafing twazmuppets

Play with this cute flash synthesiser. Go on, have a play. Finished? Right then, stop faffing about and read my monthly mop-up for March.

What did I miss in March?

Probably quite a lot.  I should have mentioned Seeland, who are the blessed offspring of Broadcast (website graphic pictured) and Plone, and were tipped for great things in the second part of my 2009 preview back in January. Their music is bright, simple and gently experimental, like a simmering Super Furry Animals. Their debut album Tomorrow Today sounds like the 60s, the 70s and the 80s all at once.

I also ignored the Mark Pritchard single ? / The Hologram. It's his first release on brand spanking fresh Ho Hum label, and it's had some backing from Mary Ann Hobbs. ? is a dark drone that seems to momentarily peer at you from around the corner. The Hologram is a stolid slice of trip-hop that doesn't quite catch the spirituality of ?.

I also need to give you the latest goss on Luke Vibert.  The playground rave mentalist has stopped bathing in acid, and instead has lit up a massive doobie with some hip-hop inspired tracks - but that's for another post.

Can you recommend me some video action?

Yes. The massive, garguantuan, behemoth video superstar of March 2009 lived up to the hype. We've had mash-up vids before, but none has been as nose-breakingly effective as a collection of songs called Thru-You

Jerusalem-born Kutiman grabbed entirely unrelated snatches of other people's YouTube videos, cut them up, stretched them, sliced them, diced them and made love to them. The result is a collection of brilliant tracks that are so unlike their original source material, it renders all copyright arguments into a dribbling confusion. Watch the videos here.

And there was me thinking Radiohead on Mario Paint Composer would be the bestest video I saw this month.

Can I have an animal-themed link, please Mr Roland?

Grizzly Bear's impassioned plea, mentioned in my blog piece from a couple of weeks ago, reminded me of an interview the band did with Pitchfork last month in which Ed explained a shock Animal Collective leak and offered his thoughts on the death of the record buyer.  Read the short interview here. Album Veckatimest is out in two months.

What is a twazmuppet?

Tim Footman is a twazmuppet. Comment Is Free writer and Radiohead biographer Mr Footman had asked his Twitter friends to remind him to get on with some work and stop dabbling with social networking. It seemed like a sensible thing to do. So a few hours later, I messaged him:

"Get some shitting work done, you net-loafing twazmuppet."

'Twazmuppet' was a word I invented in my head months ago, but never had chance to use. So I yelled it at a poor defenceless author. Read Tim's reaction on his excellent blog here.

Tim Footman is anything but a twazmuppet. At least, I think he isn't. Can someone ring the OED to see if they've decided on a definition yet?

What's your favourite Warp track?

This is a question Warp Records are asking you, the general public. Go to their Warp 20 voting site and help celebrate the 20th birthday of the best record label of all time.

Oh to be torn up by wolves and fed, bit by bit, through an old lawnmower

While I'm busy with radio things, there are a few gramophone releases you and I ought to catch up on.

AGF's fourth album Words Are Missing is a dizzying array of shattered sound and industrial ambience. The harmonies come from vocals torn up by wolves and fed through a lawnmower. The fragments that remain are alluring but ever-so-slightly unsettling.

Harmonic 313 is a side project from Mark Pritchard, better known as one half of Global Communication. His EP1 is a triumphal throwback to the early days of techno, when it was all about Detroit. So yes, it sounds all a bit Juan Atkins without the smoothness, but it works for me.

A whole manbag packed full of Thom Yorke remixes have been released in the last couple of months. Meddling with the lazy-eyed Oxford boy's music are Burial (unfairly labelled as a 2step Massive Attack), Four Tet, Christian Vogel and Newport Pagnell's DJ Surgeon.

The utterly ironic thing about electronica remixes of Radiohead's frontman is that, whatever you do, you just end up making it sound more like Radiohead. Which is a good thing, and you should sniff them down in record shops now.

Finally, Clark is breathing fire again on his new offering, Turning Dragon. He has put all niceties to one side, has walked into the Women's Institute (electronica sub-committee) meeting, and machine-gunned everyone to death with bad-tempered percussion and ADD-level techno.

Listening to his album is like trying to nail gun exploding fireworks inside the Crystal Maze dome. It's hyper, blunder-bus propeller-injected fun and is a real treat from start to finish. Have a listen to Volcan Veins from that very album.

DEEPER FRIED FAT: CLARK'S TED

Reviews: Massonix, Paul Hartnoll & Reload

Artist: Massonix
Title: Subtracks (album)
Label: Skam
[site] [listen]
Suitably for a new year post, have a fattening dollop of nostalgia. 808 State's Graham Massey has splurged out a full album of his aquatic-themed side project and it sounds like, um, 808 State. It boasts the same analogue complexity and rolling, melodic scrumptiousness - not a million miles from Two Lone Swordsmen. It's like being back in the 1990s except without James Bond films and Teletubbies.


Artist: Paul Hartnoll
Title: Patchwork Guilt (single)
Label: Kids
[site] [listen]
This may be on a minor label, but this is one half of collosal uber techno monster Orbital taking his baby solo steps. Minimal and slightly absurd, this is confident melodic electro that sounds like, um, Orbital. It's reminiscent of In Sides, but not as smashing. Maybe we need a full album before Hartnoll can un-doff his Orbital hat. This is like being back in the 1990s, but without Friends and dial-up internets.

Artist: Reload
Title: Various titles (EPs)
Label: Evolution
[site]
Before music was invented, Tom Middleton and Mark Pritchard helped birth modern electronica with their Evolution label. These re-releases remind us how radical, raw and revolutionary the Middleton / Pritchard partnership was. This is simple, unpretentious old-fashioned techno. It's just like living back in the 1990s, except without the corporate takeover of raves and the bloody Star Wars revival.