Best electronic albums of 2020: you 'wooden' believe these special mentions

It's time for more special mentions: albums that didn't make it into my final 25, but definitely still deserve their own pool room with a dart board and one of those wheelie drinks trolleys that looks like a globe.

I don't know what's gone wrong, but in the grand shuffling of my final list, Caribou's Suddenly (City Slang) fell out of the Top 25. I suppose it's quite floaty at times, but that's the point. It's Animal Collective meets Four Tet with an inflated head like Mr Mackey.

Pantha du Prince did his twinkly organic thing on Conference of Trees (Modern Recordings): his best album for some time bolstered by his use of wooden instruments (poor trees!). I almost missed Lee Jones's Down Into Light (Mad As Hell), which would have been a shame because there's real emotional heft in his classical-infused minimalism. If Lee Jones is heaven, Luke Abbott is hell: Translate (Border Community), his first solo record for ages, had his trademark analogue smudges (even some laser zaps!) with his fat synths sounding like he was raising dark spirits. Lovely.

There was much to admire in the splattery electronics of Call Super's third album Every Mouth Teeth Missing (Incienso), its chirrupy found-sounds adding an aural kaleidoscope in places. Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith's The Mosaic of Transformation (Ghostly International) sat somewhere between soft shoegaze and gentle process music, and was released as a peon to electricity. Finally for this section, ambient composer Nicolas Jaar released two albums, Telas (Other People) and Cenizas (Other People). They were rich and atmospheric and grand. Also, Jaar will get a lengthier mention later in this blog series.

More special mentions on their way. I'm off to chop me some trees into instruments. Whack!

Browse the rest of the Best Electronic Albums of 2020

Best electronic albums of 2016: house music also-rans

Here’s a handful of house music artists that didn’t make the top 20.

I enjoyed the dialled-back mechanics of Factory Floor’s 25 25 (DFA Records), while in contrast there was soul aplenty amid the religious zeal of Floorplan’s Victorious (M-Plant). Surely, Floorplan’s Robert Hood was an influence on Bookworms’ warming Xenophobe (BANK Records NYC).

Pantha Du Prince made his comeback on The Triad (Rough Trade), with all the tinkling electronics you’d expect. The horrendously-named Convextion made techno feel spacey on 2845 (a.r.t.less). Meanwhile, the co-founder of Hessle Audio released the sparky In Drum Play under the name Pangaea on his own label – and did a good job of it.

 Top Japanese DJ Fumiya Tanaka appeared after a long album absence with You Find The Key (Perlon): he kept the jazzier elements under control, unlike Kornél Kovács’ The Bells (Studio Barnhus). Sorry, Korny, a little too corny. And there was an old-school feel to Omar S’s Detroitian The Best! (FXHE Records). Honestly, Mr S, you can’t call your album The Best and expect to be in the top 20. It didn't work for Tina Turner and it won't work for you.

More commendable house music also-rans later on in this top 20.





Scroll all of the best 2016 electronic albums by clicking here.

New releases: Houndstooth, Bullion and Pantha Du Prince

Here are three forthcoming releases that may be worthy of your ears.

To mark their third birthday and slow transition into long trousers, the Houndstooth label (logo pictured) will release a compilation this week called Tessellations.

Houndstooth is partly run by Rob Booth of Electronic Explorations, who's kind of a don round these parts. The album should be good, and features loads of their artists including the compelling Call Super and the incredible junglist Special Request.

On the same day, Bullion plopped out his debut album Loop The Loop. This electronic popster was first mentioned on this blog seven years ago and it's nice to see him release a long-player.  It seems his influences include Can, Devo and Thomas Dolby.

Not to be left out, the ridiculously influential Pantha Du Prince has just announced his first album for six years. His previous one, Black Noise, was my fifth favourite album of 2010, and all of its haunting tinkles have stayed with me ever since.

Listen below.





And an old one from Pantha Du Prince:

Top ten best electronica albums of 2010: part two of four

This is part two. Please do read the other parts of this blog post: part one, part three and part four
To read last year's top ten best electronica albums, click here.

7 - Flying Lotus – Cosmogramma

There's something about the great nephew of John and Alice Coltrane that enables him to kidnap heavyweight vocalists with Guru-like ease (Erykah Badu, Thom Yorke, Outkast, Laura Darlington) and yet still beguile the casual listener with the strangest cacophony of polymathic twiddling whilst provoking bemused reviewers into penning juxtapositional metaphors of space travel and smokey 1970s jazz clubs. That and his beats are well phat.

So, among the laidback hip hop of Zodiac Shit, the shuffling funk of Dance Of The Pseudo and the swirling headnodding of MmmHmm, we have a multitude of influences: jazz, garage, hip hop, techno, classical, folktronica and Enrique Iglesias. Despite all of this, I can't help feeling Cosmogramma is an album none of us can quite understand yet and perhaps it should be enjoyed more some time in the distant future, maybe in a smokey jazz club in space.

FlyLo isn't just a comedy airline created by Matt Lucas and David Walliams. Buy Cosmogramma at Bleep or Boomkat or Piccadilly.

6 - Autechre – Oversteps

The Wills and Kate of Manchester electronic music produced three records in 2010. 3 Telepathics Meh In-Sect Connection was a banana-themed collaboration by Sean from Autechre, Move Of Ten was technically an EP (although it's longer than the Flying Lotus album, above), while the release featured in my top ten, Oversteps, gave notoriety to Altered:Carbon who dressed their own LP as Autechre.

Listening to Oversteps is a bit like cuddling up to your favourite hedgehog: it's sharp and awkward, yet you're allured by the familiar scent. I don't get the detractors who write this off as difficult. known(1) has harpsichord, qplay is as delicate as my tummy after a night on the rohypnol, whilst see on see and Treale (oh NOW they use capital letters) are bonafide Autechre hits. Kind of. Warmer than Quaristice, this is music that spikes the bloodstream.

Buy Autechre's Oversteps at Bleep or Boomkat or Piccadilly.

5 - Pantha Du Prince - Black Noise

Arriving on Rough Trade Records like a supercharged Sosumu Yokota, Pantha Du Prince produced eleven minimal techno masterpieces that were so fluid, so organic, they could only have been harvested as they were literally dripping from the trees. Minimal techno often bores me, so why on earth is this several leagues above places six to ten on my list?

Maybe it's the snarling acid on Behind The Stars, the heavenly rave chords of Satellite Snyper, or the clanks and bells and feedback and heavenly choirs of synthdom that eddy and whirl around crisp beats that couldn't beat more crisply even if accompanied by a Walkers advert starring Gary Lineker being thumped to a pulp by sixteen heavily-armed packets of Seabrook. I'm not sure if Black Noise can be topped, but there are four albums on my list that have done just that. Stay tuned.

Bring the Noise: buy Pantha Du Prince's album from Bleep or Boomkat or Piccadilly.

Not quite in the top ten (part two)

I'm pleased with my top ten, although excluding any amazing album is a bit like shepherding your ten favourite sheep into the pen then shotgunning the rest into blasted pulps of smoking mutton. Here are more lambs that have been silenced.

Gold Panda's glitchy Lucky Shiner (pictured) probably got bumped because a couple of artists in my top ten are doing similar things. Massive Attack's Heligoland probably got bumped because, although the album was an improvement, it still sounded like veterans keeping the life support going. Also on a mainstream tip, I never quite connected with LCD Soundsystem's swansong This Is Happening.

A notable omission from my top ten is Squarepusher's Schobaleader One project, but I couldn't separate how he could make some tracks on d'Demonstrator sound like Royksopp and then not expect to be compared to Royksopp. He's excluded because he sounds like Royksopp. There, I said it. Squarepusher sounds like Royksopp. Royksopp's funnier the more you say it.

Actress' Splazsh is an essential album for 2010, and I feel pained to exclude it. Oneohtrix Point Never received major acclaim for Returnal and again was a close call. And Starkey's Ear Drums And Black Holes, bringing ballads and grime to Planet Mu Records, also just missed the cut.

This is part two. Please do read the other parts of this blog post: part one, part three and part four
To read last year's top ten best electronica albums, click here.

No Burial was harmed in the making of this blog post: new tracks from LV, Actress, Pantha Du Prince

Time to find out what noises people have been making and say to them OI YOU LOOK AT YOUR NOISE.

LV and Untold

LV and Untold's track Beacon is so minimal, I'm not sure it exists. It's a terrifying slab of stretched-out, bass-whomping clicks and pokes, but it seems to nestle in a cold ether that exists neither here nor there. It's reality drawn out: the sound of loose cartilage if Burial's bones were all broken.

I like this for the Mount Kimbie remix because it achieves a staggering feat. It smears a load of choppy rave chords over the dubbiness of the original track and manages to make it sound more desolate, more textured, and more like Burial not only with broken bones but with his mealeable body stretched out like uncooked dough.

Actress

If running Werk Discs (Lone, Lukid, Zomby) gave his twiddly-knob hands enough to do, it's not showing because futuristic funkster Actress is busy churning out some massive music on Nonplus Records.

Machine And Voice is his latest, all broken funk and manufractured(TM) staccato bleeps, and not for the first time on this blog, I've found the real gem by flipping over to the b-side. Loomin' does what it says on the tin
(Nonplus Records) and is the highlight here because of the ferocity of the whirring robotics.

Pantha Du Prince

I'm delighted Pantha Du Prince's stand-out track Stick To My Side has not only got a single release, it has also got its own video that seems to mix two filmic moments from last year: the enthusiastic nightime dancing in Where The Wild Things Are and the eerie visit of the dybbuk in A Serious Man.

It's a smashing track that mixes clubbiness with curious off-tunes and it comes on this single with a thumping remix from Efdemi, an all-too-busy workout from Four Tet, and, on the digital version, a heavenly choirs and bells retake from Walls. As I've said before on this blog, I'm discovering house music again.

House music and really big eskimo hoods: some recent singles

Pantha Du Prince's dreamlike house haze on his spanking new album Black Noise has got me in the mood for some four-to-the-floor action. Never mind all that cut-and-paste broken beat crap. This week, I want my beats fixed up and looking sharp. Here are some recent house singles.

Raffertie

Raffertie (pictured) is Planet Mu's top drawer dance guru, beloved of grungy club types as well as the glossy hacks of Mixmag magazine. Recently, he's been getting some big-time snogs from Huw Stephens, Rob Da Bank and Dame Mary Anne Hobbs. Which is nice.

7th Dimension is Raffertie's newest single, and while the title is not as classic as last year's Wobble Horror!, there is ample to restrain your thumbs from twiddling. It's a whooping high-energy flare of rave house, convulsing from snare stab attacks and swirling, persistent vocals.

The b-side, String Theory, sounds like a melancholic Way Out West experimenting with a wobble-board for a bassline. 7th Dimension is the better cut, and reminds me a little of Hospital Records' more zealous moments - without the junglism.

Floating Points

His bubbly 2-stepper J+W Beat enjoyed more than a play or three on my phone last year, so unfurl the bunting because electronic polymath* Floating Points has dropped a brand new track called People's Potential.

He's not just torn a leaf from Luke Vibert's book: he's photocopied way beyond the legal limit to produce a thumping, nagging acid work-out with wailing synths and both hush puppies planted solidly on the dance floor.

Track it down if you can, but I warn you, it's a limited edition one-sided white label. And they're harder to find than Lil Wayne's self-respect.

The XX

I've saved the best for last: a superb cacophony of remixes of one of the best indie bands of the past 12 months. There are several remixes of The XX track, Islands. And they're all fab.

Untold culled the coldness of The XX, secreted it in an igloo somewhere north of Alaska, hurled it into Heston Blumenthal's deep freezer, and fashioned a dubstep remix so startlingly chilly, your ears will ice over at the mere notion of listening to it. Pardon? Exactly. It's tribal, like Zulu, but in eskimo hoods, really big eskimo hoods.

The Blue Nile's version of Islands shimmers and ripples, simple piano and electric guitar adding a nagging theme to the sparse vocals, while Nosaj Thing interprets the track as astral ambience. Delorean flings us back to the warm world of 90s intelligent techno, and, finally, Falty DL makes it sound like Tricky's record player's broken.

Okay, I veered away from house music at the end, there, but I don't like my beats too neat: if it ain't unfixed, I'm gonna broke it. You can quote me on that. (Please don't.)

* I only call him this because he can play the piano too.

Massive Attack got soul but Ceephax got swing(ing lampshades)

Hey, look, there is some albums what just come out!

Ceephax Acid Crew

I'm swinging from the bloody lightshade.

United Acid Emirates, the new album from Ceephax Acid Crew, has got me prancing around my mansion like a brain damaged pixie. It's so lurid and colourful, like being stuck in an 8 bit Meg And Mog cartoon.

The drooling, looping trippiness of the acid, splattered all over this album, is a constant, giddy joy. The opener Cedric's Sonnet is a sharp, spikey melodic number reminiscent of his brother Squarepusher in Welcome To Europe mode. Castilian is dragged kicking and screaming by a full-on, bullying bass drum, while the dated click rhythm of Life Funk reminds me of Felix-era house music.

This is, however, not a stupid album. It's a serious step forward for Ceephax, where he demonstrates his various skills at chugging 80s techno anthems (Topaz) or off-kilter chord arrangements (Commuter). And all this with plenty of squelching acid moistness. Highly recommended.

Massive Attack

Are you bothered about a new Massive Attack album?  Of course you are: I can't believe you asked me that, you idiot.

Heligoland has finally, um, landed. It's a full seven years after the band's previous studio album ("If a thing's worth doing, it's worth doing slowly," says their MySpace page) and nearly 20 years after their highly influential debut Blue Lines. And actually, it's that memory of Blue Lines that I can hear on Heligoland.

Yes, there are guest vocalists (which The Guardian had down as almost unique in the dance world, despite the Gorillaz, Fatboy Slim and Unkle doing that kind of thing for years). Yes, there is gloominess a-plenty. But what this has, which I think 100th Window missed, is... capital letters... SOUL.

It's an album that is destined for coffee tables, new year's parties and easy headlines about the vocal collaborators (hello, Guy Garvey), and therefore many serious music fans will brush it off their shrugged shoulders. Which is a shame.

What will really get me all excited are those Burial remixes the internet's been promising.

Pantha Du Prince

Also out this month is Pantha Du Prince's Black Noise. Oh, and look, he has vocal collaborations from the likes of Animal Collective, !!! and LCD Soundsystem people. Read this and weep, The Guardian.

Black Noise is awash with clouds. You know how some albums sound urban-y and some sound outdoors-y? This is Heidi the goat-herder's friend flatlining on heroin on the highest mountain in the world while buzzards perform a jagged dance of death around her.

With sharp techno, dizzying loops, spiralling bells and smoky, smoky atmospherics, this will appeal to Susumu Yokota fans looking to grab something a bit more substantial by the goat horns.

Chick lit rules! New singles from Joy Orbison, Flying Lotus, House Shoes, Pantha Du Prince and (phew!) Martin Kemp

Joy Orbison

Joy Orbison has announced a new EP, The Shrew Would Have Cushioned The Blow, to be released on February 22nd.

The Croydon mailroom worker, who started DJing at the pimply age of 13, provided one of 2009's highlights with Hyph Mngo. In Shrew, he gives us more of the usual Joy: swelling dubstep set to grime up the dancefloor with washes of insistent synths.

The EP features a remix by Actress and is probably the best mouse-like electronica since Mouse On Mars and, um, Vole-netian Snares.

Flying Lotus / House Shoes

Flying Lotus, that hunk of manly beat production, appears this month on a cute-looking 10" courtesy of the Do-Over crew. On The Do-Over Volume 1, there's FlyLo's Sangria Spin Cycles and, on the flip side of the disc, you'll find Motownie beatster House Shoes with his crunchy soul stormer The Makings.

Both tracks are crisper than a starched collar fresh out of the drier, but the best thing is the artwork (pictured), which feels all rather Northern Quartery, cheerful and, well, a bit chick-lit. And yes, it now means I can call Flying Lotus a big flowery girl and not feel bad about it.

Keep an eye on the Do-Over for more, um, doings in the future.

Pantha Du Prince

Pantha Du Prince is ready to pounce with his new album and Rough Trade debut Black Noise (as promised in my 2010 electronica preview).

But first, a single. The shoegaze influence that once dripped through the sound of Pantha Du Prince has well and truly dried up for his recent 12" The Splendour.

Now, we have pin-sharp four-four minimal techno with a kitchen full of clanks and micro-samples. It is pristine: you can see your face in it. I prefer the dirtiness of his 2004 album Diamond Daze, and The Splendour is unlikely to stick in your head for too long, but it's no less beautiful for that.

Martin Kemp

Martin Kemp has taken time out from touring Sign O' The Times with Kajagoogoo (I get my 80s music mixed up sometimes) to bring us a snappy, dark slice of twenty-tens dubstep.

Okay, it's a different Martin Kemp and it's a crap joke. This one is brother of Brackles and his recent single After The Night is an uneasy, primative slab of multi-rhythmic 2-step and should ensure new imprint Blunted Robot's place on this year's calendar.

Listen to The Shrew Would Have Cushioned The Blow here. Cast your ears on Sangria Spin Cycles and The Makings on the Do-Over blog. Hark ye The Splendour on the Rough Trade website. And listen to After The Night at Boomkat.