Best electronic albums of 2018: off-grey paste

Here is yet another collection of brand-spanking new audio presents whose batteries ran out before reaching the much-coveted top 20 best electronic albums of 2018. I hope you kept your receipt.

JK Flesh took great delight in pneumatically drilling our brain to an off-grey paste on New Horizon (Electric Deluxe). “This is my extravagant entrance for my show” boldly announced the scuzzed club anthems of Peder Mannerfelt’s Daily Routine (Peder Mannerfelt), a claustrophobic journey into a self-styled temporary psychosis. Demdike Stare’s Passion (Modern Love) was a pulsating patchwork of noise and jungle and nasty breaks.

FORMA’s Semblance (Kranky) gave us some beautifully building arpeggios with a cosmic classical bent, while I held a candle or three for the slow-burning debut album from Bruce, Sonder Somatic (Hessle Audio). Rather less forgiving were the gorgeously grit-teethed beats of Chevel's Always Yours (Different Circles).

Lorn discovered sobriety to produce a wonderfully dark new album Remnant (Wednesday Sound). Objekt moved away from techno for Cocoon Crush (PAN) into a world that seemed equally organic and robotic – it has been compared to Future Sound of London’s Lifeforms, and I can see why. And the post-club fuzz of Anthony Naples’s Take Me With You (Good Morning Tapes) included a beautiful dubby smoker’s version of John Barrys Midnight Cowboy.





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

Best electronic albums of 2016: an introduction

Welcome to my end of year list. The only one that matters. That's right... it's time for the ugliest pandas of 2016.

No, wait.

It's time for my top best favouritest electronic albums of 2016. This is my annual countdown of the long-players that have lured my earlobes throughout this most lurid of years. And although I probably write with some authority on the subject having scrawled many words about this kind of gubbins, I guess I should give some disclaimers.

Firstly, this list is not definitive. I've expanded it to a top 20 this year, and there will be another 90-or-so albums that will get the slightest of mentions. That's a lot of mentions. But I looked in an encyclopedia which said there were 32 billion albums released every day in 2016, so I'm going to miss stuff.

Secondly, I'll get things wrong. Opinion is not a static state. I look back on my previous lists (2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010 and 2009) and curse the day Vengaboys didn't win every single one. I may even edit these blog posts in the days to come. Just drop in a jpeg of the Vengabus or something.

Thirdly, I've missed out compilations. Sorry, Objekt (Kern Vol 3), the immense #savefabric or Houndstooth's impressive Tessellations.

I'm also not bothered about things in the charts that much, even though I've actually bought real life actual concert tickets for Take That, Kylie and Clean Bandit in the past. But as far as this blog goes, I'm looking through a narrow funnel. Literally.

Disclaimers done. I will slowly unfurl the top 20 over the next few days. Follow me on Twitter, where I'll welcome your responses and mentions. If you like a blog post, stick a link on your timeline - that's why I do this: to get more people listening to good noises. The number one album of 2016, which brightened up my year no end, will be revealed at noon on New Year's Eve.

I lied, of course. Pandas aren't ugly. It's your mind that's ugly for even thinking I was serious. Psyche.

You'll see this link at the bottom of all the posts. It may come in useful: Scroll all of the best 2016 electronic albums by clicking here.

I love acid and the acid loves me

I'm pretty sure acid is the best kind of music.

I go through phases. Recently it's been ambient dub centred around the Beyond label of the mid-90s. I went through a big house phase a few weeks ago. And sometimes I just want noisy techno (Objekt's pretty good for this: I keep hearing sounds on the street that sound like this album).

Acid, though, is the music I'll always go back to whatever my mood. Because of its technological restraints (imagine having a genre of music that can only be made on the banjo), acid barely changes. One Josh Wink record aside, it has never commercialised, nor has it ever faded to nothing.

I Love Acid are parping out some great records at the moment. And imagine my delight when I discovered this Twitter account.

New favourite Twitter account: @303OClock. 1,505 acid tracks and counting. I'm going in. I may be some time.

— Fat Roland (@FatRoland) October 1, 2015

And nothing will beat Hardfloor's sledgehammer acid build-ups.

Maybe the best thing about acid, whether it's acid techno, acid house, acid gabba or acid trousers, is it's never going to be a topic of conversation at a family dinner table. There may be spilled gravy over Ed Sheeran's performance on X Factor, but no-one's going to get into a humus fight over the best era of Lords Of Acid. Acid is somehow secret clubber's knowledge, forever shaded from the glare of the mainstream. Maybe it's the drug connotations, I dunno.

Not that I've ever done the drug. No seriously, I haven't. My mind's weird enough as it is.

Acid is totally the best kind of music. Delve into those links above. Because when it's good, it's proper good. Even acid trousers, which is definitely a thing, honest. Ahem.

> Further Fats: Painting 2010 beige: Eno, Orb, Hardfloor and Seefeel

Best electronic albums of 2014: five

5 – Objekt – Flatland (PAN)

This appears to be a band name designed by committee. Still, the dark breaks and snarling techno of Objekt’s Flatland demonstrate a production control and singularity of vision I’ve not heard since Flying Lotus’ early work.

The menacing lope of Dogma, the busy electro of Ratchet, the retro techno disco of album highlight Strays: this is more than just atmospherics and delay. It’s control. It’s precision.

It’s Aphexian entertainment from the underbelly of electronic music that's certainly not for everyone, but with more musicality than you’d expect considering its bleakness, Flatland is everything a techno album should be in 2014.

[Click here for the full top ten]



Some also-rans

A very significant omission from this year's top ten is Flying Lotus because, despite the dizzying delight of You're Dead! (Warp), he's ploughing a jazz furrow I'm not inclined to walk down. No space here either for Perc's nice and nasty The Power And The Glory (Perc Trax). Mr Scruff had his first studio album for five years with Friendly Bacteria (Ninja Tune), but he was one of several Ninja Tune artists that didn't make the cut, all of whom produced output that didn't match their last offering: Machinedrum's Vapor City Archives (Ninja Tune), FaltyDL's In The Wild (Ninja Tune) and Martyn's The Air Between Words (Ninja Tune). Wow. That's some big names ticked off. Oh and cheese, cheese, spray-on cheese put me off two great artists: Todd Terje's It's Album Time (Olsen Records) and Shit Robot's otherwise fun We Got A Love (DFA).

[Click here for the full top ten]