Best electronic albums of 2019: nineteen

19 – Move D – Building Bridges (Aus Music)

You know when you bump into someone outside the post office and you can't immediately place the face because it's Geoff from skydiving club and you've never seen Geoff without his flying cap never mind with a first-class envelope in his hand?

I had a similar experience with Move D. Building Bridges, a nifty collection of light-touch house music, reminded me that perhaps I'd come across ole D before. And as it turns out, I had. Move D had a track on the seminal 1990s compilation series Trance Europe Express. Of course. I remember now.

This all makes sense, because this album, recorded in Heidelberg over the past 20 years, shows all the skills of a veteran producer. The machines don't just run, they dance: the patterns they create will slowly seep under your skin. It's house music for techno fans.

And despite the breezy pace on display, there's something melancholic left in the spaces. Just listen to those echoes on Dots. Or the pause for reflection on Transit. Check out the album's continuous mix if you can, because that's going to be some journey. All the way to the post office and beyond.



Scroll the full best-of-2019 list here.

Best electronic albums of 2018: if I'm into it, I'm not into it enough for the top 20

In compiling my top 20, there are lots of albums I have to screw up and throw into the bin. That doesn't mean I don't value them. It's a nice bin, with little frills around the edge.

This count-down will be peppered with little summaries of the dozens of albums that didn't make the final list. That includes compilations and rereleases, which I have excluded for simplicity.

So before we kick off the top 20 proper, here are some also-rans.

There's no space for hardcore getting dirty on the reissued broken breakcore of Christoph De Babalon’s overlooked 1997 album If You're Into It, I'm Out Of It (Cross Fade Enter Tainment) or the experimental South American drumism of Suba’s early-90s work Wayang (Offen Music). Nor did I include Time To Tell (Conspiracy International), a reissue from Throbbing Gristle’s Cosey Fanni Tutti which was a more interesting album than suggested its inspiration suggests – namely, a lecture at Leeds Polytechnic.

I also didn't include Takecha’s ear-tickling skeletal house retrospective Deep Soundscapes (Love Potion) was a real ear-tickler, the wonderfully familiar IDMisms on the unearthed Challenge Me Foolish (Planet Mu) by µ-Ziq, the messy joy of the superb compilation Don't Mess With Cupid, 'Cause Cupid Ain't Stupid (трип) or the expanded box-set reissue of Move D’s 1995 techno album Kunststoff –  if the name rings a bell, he was on Volume Four of the Trance Europe Express series.

I also tried to keep my list as techno / IDM as possible, because that's what rings my electronic bell. So not much room for hip hop or jazz, with a couple of notable exceptions. And, to my shame, I excluded two classical behemoths. Firstly, Nils Frahm’s All Melody (Warp Records), which was delicate, like a unicorn made of snowflakes, if it was armed with a piano in each hoof. And Jóhann Jóhannsson’s Englabörn & Variations (Deutsche Grammophon), which was overflowing with melancholic elegance like bins wot ain't getting collected until some time after the new year.





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