Top 10 electronic music albums of 2022: Plaid – Feorm Falorx

We're almost there. The countdown is nearly complete. Over 70 albums later, and we have a final two Top 10-ers then... drum roll.. the album of the year. You could cut the tension with a sausage. Next up is a band I saw recently at the White Hotel and they were flipping brilliant.

See the full countdown here.

Plaid: Feorm Falorx (Warp)

When I declared Plaid’s previous album Polymer as the best album of 2019, I wrote: “This is a Plaid album that feels angry”, pointing out their descent “into a valley of darkness”. I still think that’s their magnum opus, their chef-d'oeuvre. Feorm Falorx is quite the mood change, shining a light into the shadows. The concept is that we’re enjoying a Plaid gig at the Feorm festival on the planet of Falorx. Bear with me, now. The festival is infinite and Plaid are made of light beams. Before you dismiss this as fanciful nonsense, I’ve actually been there. It’s a lovely planet with: attractive hedgerows; thrumming baroque melodies; fluffy headnod rhythms; Plaid’s trademark seductive spiralling melodies multiplied by a thousand; a fully functioning network of motorways and b-roads; epic highs soaked with anxious ambience; characterful guitar work from Mason Bee; and a splendid visitor’s centre gift shop. Even better with the beautifully designed accompanying graphic novel by Emma Catnip.

Curious track: The pairing of C.A. and Cwtchr is one of the bestest ever Plaid moments.

Album feels: Light beams. Aliens. Basically like visiting Mars with your phone light on.

Cover art: That bit in Arrival where they're talking to aliens inside the floaty baked bean. 

From another website: If there’s anything to find comfort in these days, then it’s the fact that Plaid are still around, ready to provide another door to escape through – at least for a fleeting moment. (The Quietus)

This is part of a series of the Best Electronic Music Albums of 2022. Read it all here.

Best electronic albums of 2020: three

3 – Mason Bee – Play Flights (Pollen Kit)

The popular techno band Plaid built up a formidable reputation over the years, playing cool beats on their disco machines to Orbital and The Black Dog fans. "That chord sequence sounds a bit off," we'd yell over the music, and we'd love it.

What many of their fans don't know is that throughout their career, they've been accompanied by a bee. It was often hard to see, what with the mirrorballs and dry ice, but the techno band Plaid wouldn't be seen anywhere without their busy little bee.

There have been a few close calls at their live gigs. The Southbank Centre has a particularly aggressive air conditioning system, and they nearly had their bee sucked off. There was also a near miss once, backstage with DJ Food and a rolled-up newspaper. But generally, their bee— oh hold on—

Apparently, it's a person. Not a bee. Sorry. Should have checked, I suppose. Please ignore everything I have written so far.

Benet 'Mason Bee' Walsh has been a key part of Plaid forever, with so much of their sound defined by his plaintive guitars. Now he has stepped into the solo spotlight for this delightful instrumental album. It's folky, it's gentle, it's quite 70s. But this is the guy from Plaid, and THOSE chords and THAT signature bite is present. There's so much going on. I fell for this album in a big way.

I've banged on about Play Flights for Electronic Sound, saying he's "taken the harmony from Plaid and drizzled it in honey" before dropping the necessary cheesy line that this was "the bee's knees". For Picky B*stards, I said it "evokes pastoral fields, sunny afternoons in the ‘70s, and picnics in slightly-alien forests" before going on about poop too much.

What I haven't explained is the emotional tug this album has for me. When Covid hit, my world turned briefly upside-down. I didn't cope with the stress, and although I was lucky enough to be able to pivot my job in events, things got very wonky quickly. 

Yes, I know, boo-hoo me, let's all get out our tiny violins! I do realise I've had things easy.

However, just before that hit, I was caning this album, Like, proper Spotify Wrapped caning. And that's relevant. Because when I think back to the "normal times", this album is the soundtrack. When I listen to Play Flights, I feel a mixture of comfort and grief. For that reason, and because of the cracking noises Mason Bee makes, this album makes me wibble when I listen to it.

Yep. Crying at a bee. This is what I have become.

 

Browse the rest of the Best Electronic Albums of 2020

Best electronic albums of 2019: one

1 – Plaid – Polymer (Warp Records)

I've plopped on about Plaid on this website many times in the past. They're no stranger to this end-of-year listing, appearing at number three in 2011, at number six in 2014 and at number two in 2016. In 2019, they finally take the title of Best Electronic Music Album of the Year. Congratulations, boys, you did it. You can finally retire. Pipe and slippers.

Polymer is modern Plaid's masterpiece. In recent years, they've tended towards the pastoral, but now they've descended into a valley of darkness. They've scuffed their shiny bits, sandpapered their synths, creosoted their balls and given melody a good old duffing up. It's spiky enough to deter casual listeners, but if you don't mind a few scrapes during repeated listens, it's their most rewarding album for many years.

As the synthetic hairiness of their album artwork suggests, this work is a true polymer: part organic and part android. Los squeaks and snarls as if snapping at the bars of cage and yet it's bedded by the blinking lights of robotic synth patter. The disembodied vowels of Ops spill from some unknown belly but when the track soars, its chimes skitter with clockwork regularity. The detailed patter of the beautiful Dancers is both flesh and machine in extremis.

Each track has its 'thing', as each tangled motif stretches its shoulders. Drowned Sea gets so het up, at the three-quarter mark it collapses into sparkles. All To Get To Her quickly locks into a classic looping Plaid pattern. The shuffly Nurula revives The Bee's nifty guitar-work from The Digging Remedy. And Dust is their version of a lullaby despite ubiquitous synth blaps constantly threatening to bite off your hand.

So many times during Polymer, I find myself holding my breath as the band raise Hitchockian levels of tension, and they know exactly when to press the release valve. Only on the percussive attack of Recall does there seem to be no hope, but even that track melts into ambience after two minutes, which makes sense in the context of the album's softer second half. It all fits.

Best of all, this is a Plaid album that feels angry, raising their complicated post-IDM noodlings to the heights of justified emotion, and in turn adding even more heart to the more traditional Plaid melodics. I don't need to tell you the reasons to feel furious in 2019, but I'm glad this album was here for some psychosynthetic succour.





Thanks for reading this mega list, and for reading my blog in 2019. Fifteen years and counting! Scroll the full best-of-2019 list here.

Happy 30th anniversary, Warp Records

Warp Records has been celebrating its 30th birthday - it's the same age as Taylor Swift, Daniel Radcliffe and the twins who played Carl Gallagher in Shameless.

The first Warp track I heard was LFO's LFO, quickly followed by Tricky Disco's Tricky Disco. Both were UK top 40 hits - I know that because I taped the charts religiously every week: both songs would have degraded gloriously as I tape-to-tape copied them onto successive home compilations. Aside from loving the electronic simplicity of the records, having eponymous songs seemed weirdly rebellious.

Then came the Artificial Intelligence compilations, my musical fulcrum from which everything spewed, which featured Polygon Window, The Black Dog, Beaumont Hannant and B12. Warp also gave us some incredibly beautiful artist albums, most notably from - of course - Aphex Twin, Boards Of Canada, Autechre and Richard H Kirk. You already know this.

I remember Warp's tectonic plates shifting when they moved to London. A bit like when Boddingtons shut down their Manchester brewery. They widened their electronic remit (Warp, that is, not Boddies), bringing in acts like Anti Pop Consortium who sounded wonky and wild. And now they rule the world with artists like Flying Lotus, Plaid, Bibio, Kelela and Oneohtrix Point Never. You can catch a stack of the label's 30th anniversary broadcasts here.

Happy birthday, Warp. I'm glad you're still going strong, and I'm glad you're still putting out music by the likes of Lorenzo Senni, which has all the vital energy as your early stuff. I'll be forever grateful to the label being a beacon of quality techno, and the basis for a lot of further record browsing across a zillion other labels.

If I had one criticism, it would be that there doesn't seem to be much eponymous song titling these days. Just saying. If you want to release Fat Roland's Fat Roland, you know who to call.

Red for Satan: Orbital wobbling my follicles

Orbital had my follicles shaking last night. All of them. It's the loudest Orbital gig I've experienced for some time - then again, I was right on the front rail in the sonic firing line, so no wonder my hair was buzzing.

It was a particular treat to see Plaid support them, one of the few bands I would rate as highly as the Orbital brothers. Do Matter sounded particularly celebratory. There were a couple of guys near me that were new to Plaid, and I reckon they gained some converts, especially after me banging on about how much I rated them.

Here's a piccie I took of Orbital (above). I can't remember which track it was, but it was probably Satan / Beelzedub. The colour is the clue: red for Satan, orange for Belfast, blue for Halcyon. In fact, here is my earliest memory of Orbital using blue colour washes for Halcyon: I'm in this crowd somewhere.



Further Fats: Why use a long word when a diminutive one will do? (2006)

Further Fats: Some lists containing rhyming Autechre, Orbital in colour, and the entire history of dance music (2009)

Watch Plaid soundtracking a slow-motion Leonardo DiCaprio

Someone set Plaid's haunting track Host to this clip from Inception.

If you look too closely at this clip, you'll fall inside your screen and you'll be inside the video and everything will be half the speed or twice the speed or however the heck it worked in the film.

Anyway, despite the low YouTube resolution, I thought this was nice.

Pitchfork's 50 best IDM albums - the Fat Roland edit

Pitchfork's top 50 IDM albums of all time is not too bad a list. I know this because Warp Records said so.

Not too bad a list 😉 https://t.co/2acEPnAM6V

— Warp Records (@WarpRecords) January 24, 2017

Instead of picking apart the list, bemoaning the lack of Future Sound Of London or Orbital, I shall accept the list as fact. This is now the top 50 forever. Anything else is fake news.

Taking only the albums chosen in that top 50, here is my reordered top ten. I've tried to avoid duplicating artists, although I've given Aphex Twin (pictured) a free pass on Polygon Window.

Pitchfork's 50 best IDM albums boiled down into a Fat Roland top ten...

1 - Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works 85-92. Because this is the don. Because it crept into my speakers and never quite oozed clear again. Because of Willy Wonka.

2 - Jon Hopkins - Immunity. Because it's 'played with precision and paced to perfection'.

3 - The Black Dog - Spanners. Because its diagonal beats dislodged something in my brain and I liked it. Because without these guys, much of this list won't exist.

4 - Polygon Window - Surfing on Sine Waves. Because Aphex went organic and shimmery. And then super techno. Because of If It Really Is Me.

5 - Autechre - Amber. Because I didn't think they could better Incunabula and they did: what a pair of albums.

6 - Flying Lotus - Los Angeles. Because oh-my-crap-what-is-this-noise and oh-help-my-ears-are-robots-now.

7 - Boards of Canada - Music Has the Right to Children. Because it's one of the greatest debut albums of all time. Because it changed music. And it sounded sad.

8 - Various Artists - Artificial Intelligence. Because there isn't enough Warp in this list already. Jeez, Warp, if I like you so much, why don't you marry me?!

9 - Plaid - Not for Threes. Because of Kortisin. Because of their rhythm section. Because Plaid have appeared in my best albums of the year lists three times.

10 - µ-Ziq - Lunatic Harness. Just because.

Further Fats: Chosen Words: W is for Warp (Obviously) (2010)

Further Fats: Chosen Words: E is for Ecstacy (2010)

Best electronic albums of 2016: two

2 – Plaid – The Digging Remedy (Warp Records)

I was the first person to review the new Plaid album, right here on this very website. Well, sort of. It was more of a guarded comment so I didn't spoil my full review in issue 21 of Electronic Sound - in which I lauded the work having "more hooks than an angler’s tool box". Still, the Plaid chaps noticed.

@FatRoland Wow, thanks ! 😊 This is the first feedback we've had on the album as a whole other than from friends. Seen this @thebeedrones ?

— Plaid (@Plaid) May 30, 2016

Bless their, er, plaid socks. The Digging Remedy is more accessible than most of their previous 11 albums. The scratchiness is still there, as are their trademark chord sequences. You can recognise Plaid's sound a mile off. But it's smoothed out, all guitar-glistened and melodic. This is Plaid at their cheeriest, yet still, closer Wen made me well up.

To be truly understood, Plaid have to be seen live. At their Manchester gig earlier this year (pictured above), they became the absence of triangles in one of the cleverest visual set-ups I've seen for a while. As they were in the middle of their cute-as-a-button Melifer, the bloke next to me exclaimed "I didn't know they did songs like THIS."

"THIS" being an older Plaid, more thoughtful, but still willing to kick it out of the park with the towering Yu Mountain and the trippy confidence of CLOCK. This album was my companion throughout my short Edinburgh Fringe run. A proper friend. And their best album since their early days.

Stream Do Matter here.

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

Plaid finally drop Elevator

Plaid have plopped out a new EP called On Other Hands and it's quite the curveball. The lead track Elevator is a right stomper: they've been playing it live for some time, as you can see in the video above.

I love the snarly gnarly tech bite of second track Odica. The eardrum-banging freshness of On Other Hands is an impressive feat, following so soon after The Digging Remedy. That album, by the way, is reviewed in July's Electronic Sound, which you can pre-order now.

I've got a ticket to see Plaid and The Bee in Manchester - a city whose emblem is indeed the bee.

It's been a few years since I've seen them because, well, I'm rubbish.

Wait, am I missing Plaid tonight because I'm working? Bugger me sideways with a German flute, I didn't even know they were playing.

— Fat Roland (@FatRoland) October 4, 2011

This is the gig. Come join me.

NEW SHOW // Pioneering electronic duo @Plaid are playing on 22nd Sept! Get tickets NOW: https://t.co/wCUC1XWQr9 pic.twitter.com/7U3j9xPyaN

— The Deaf Institute (@DeafInstitute) July 1, 2016

Is Plaid's new album The Digging Remedy any good?

All weekend, I've been listening to the new Plaid album The Digging Remedy. Is it any good? I'm listening for an Electronic Sound review, so I'm keen to avoid spoilers here. Although I did tweet...

I KNOW IT'S NOT EVEN SIX IN THE MORNING, BUT THIS NEW @PLAID ALBUM IS 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥. #reviewing #sayingnomore

— Fat Roland (@FatRoland) May 27, 2016

...and I have played it a lot. An awful lot. Like, properly loads of times. If anyone any tries to speak to me, I stick a ghetto blaster in their face and blare the entire album at them until they either fall over or dance. I have Plaid pouring out of my mouth: I have replaced entire sentences with beatbox versions of Plaid's twitchy beats.

So yes, it's good. In fact, preorder it from Bleep now. How does it compare to previous albums? I'm saving that for the review, although if you follow me on Twitter, I may bang on about it a lot when the album comes out. In the meantime, watch the above Christopher Arcella-directed video for the moody album opener Do Matter.

Further Fats: Store Street blues: waddling with the scrotes, the clubbers and the tokers (includes an alarming incident at a Plaid gig) (2007)

Best electronic albums of 2014: six

6 – Plaid – Reachy Prints (Warp)

So far, this top ten has been dour. Not without soul, but certainly moody. Thank goodness for Plaid.

Their tenth album in 25 years has a light touch, perhaps their lightest and most listenable, and it arrives in the wake of orchestral collaborations that have perhaps encouraged a few theatrics. So we have jingling bells, swooping dynamics, and an Orbitalesque earworm in Matin Lunaire.

Reachy Prints grew on me slowly. It’s better when it’s toned down, where the pleasure is found in the subtleties and not the hooks. But I’ve found myself returning to it repeatedly. Such is their genius.

[Click here for the full top ten]



Some also-rans

There are a number of collaborative projects that didn't make my top ten this year. The Bug's comeback album Angels & Devils (Ninja Tune) received rave reviews, but I wasn't quite convinced by the vocalists on offer. Even less successful were the vocals on SBTRKT's disappointing Wonder Where We Land (Young Turks). Shame. Royksopp's probable swansong The Inevitable End (Dog Triumph/Wall Of Sound) was a little too coffee-table, although I love their partnership with Robyn. Two of my heroes, Eno / Hyde, gave us Someday World and High Life (Warp) which left me cold. Also-ran nods go to the heroin r’n’b of Matthewdavid's In My World (Brainfeeder), the Walls / Daphne Oram library reworking Sound Houses (Ecstatic), and Com Truise's so-so Wave 1 (Ghostly International) which was probably more an EP than an album.

[Click here for the full top ten]

Three things I've been listening to, and they all begin with P like pea, pineal gland and, er, Papa Roach

This is what I've been pouring into my ear tubes recently.

PLASTIKMAN: EX (MUTE)



Slow-ass acid techno, performed live in New York, that's as sharp as a million pins piercing your brain. There's so much space in Pastikman's first album for a decade, a simple cymbal shudders plaster from the walls. The growling bassline of EXtrude will knock you off your feet. Every moment is played for a live experience, and although progress is, on the surface, glacial, the themes submerge and rise with a beautiful and hypnotic dynamism. And Richie Hawtin certainly offers us the best production I've heard in 2014. Run for the hills, Jon Hopkins!

PLAID: REACHY PRINTS (WARP)



IDM's most listenable, most melodic moment of the year, and certainly Plaid's "easiest" album. Nafovanny's moody loping is nothing less than a five minute pop song with a stadium-techno refrain, albeit with that ethereal chiming to make things sounds like a steel drum band on Venus. Like their older tracks Eyen and Get What You Gave, most of this feels simple and familiar. Throughout, there's Kraftwerkian melodies, home-listening melancholia and, on Matin Lunaire, a close approximation of Wonky-era Orbital. The most Plaidian Plaid to date.

PATTEN - ESTOILE NAIANT (WARP)



And here's an album I started listening to a lot then gave up on. patten's complex and messy electronica sounds like Boards of Canada with broken legs. It has all the sounds of classic IDM, but it seems somehow distracted and entirely of the head rather than the heart. There's so much bustling on Key Embedded, while their most intriguing moment Drift kills itself with its own percussion. Still, I love the abstraction and the Autechre bit of me has an utter tentpole at the sound of it all.

Further Fats: Bleep Years day two: Plaid's Get What You Gave (2012)

Harder Better Faster Fats: a promise of a worthless wordbasher

For me, blogging is about nuzzling the stains on my favourite sofa: it's comfortable, it's familiar and it smells vaguely of chicken madras. It's fair to say that the character I represent here is a mixture of the real me and some fictional extreme version of me that sweats Windowlene in a basement.

Before I carry on, get this beautiful piece of electronica down your eartubes. It's a Plaid choooon from a soundtrack from a few years ago.

(Read previous instalments of Harder Better Faster Fats here.)

NUKE.

I've always loved fiction. I love storytelling and strange worlds; the hopes and horrors conjured from authors' minds. I'd always written stories, but it wasn't until the ego-boost of the 2010 Manchester Blog Awards (during which I threatened to nuke one of my rivals) that I took my creative writing seriously.

My arrival on the fiction scene began quietly with a story about tooth fairies for 330 Words, published 11 days after the blog awards and featuring a photo taken at the ceremony.

I followed that with a modest call to arms called The Beatoff Generation: Our Future Books Shall Bleed From Your Shelves Like A Hardback Elixir Reddened From An Embarrassment Of Grammatical Riches.

ASS.

I've since done 40 gigs in one year, put out a couple of books, been in a thing with Nik Kershaw in, experimented with online narrative and hauled my fat ass around some of the most bearded joints of Manchester.

But like the track above, as time goes on, I'm calming down. I'm focussing. Or at least, that's the theory.

VOM.

It's my aim in 2014 to produce enough stories for a collection. So that means fewer performances - or at least, fewer open mic slots - and a stinking pile of first draft wordvom each month. I call that a promise. I might even write it down to make it realerer.

Publishers will suggest I write a novel. More routes in. But I'm going to focus on what I enjoy, not because I like faffing around and don't like success, but because I have to what I want to do. It's the one thing to which I'm driven, above my scuba diving, barbershop quartetting and time travelling.

ELBOWS.

I need this like Justin Biebpipe needs notoriety. Like Prince needs a lawsuit. Like, er, Liam from One Direction needs elbows. I am a worthless word-basher. This year, I will write more and I will read more. Nothing else matters.

There are some obstacles in my way, and they're related to my reason to write. These will be the subject of the next Harder Better Faster Fats.

Yeah. How'd you like them cliffhanger apples? This is literally more exciting than a pop star's bendy-arm-middle.

(Pictured: Plaid)

Bleep Years day eleven: Plaid: Unbank (2011)

We're now in the second half of the Bleep Years series, in which I celebrate a decade of fatroland.com by shoving my hand into a top hat of years and pulling out some, er, floppy-eared rabbits. By which I mean tracks. Each randomly chosen year will feature a piece of music that somehow represents that period of my life. It's all rather self indulgent, but at least I'm only featuring each band once... oh wait...

2011: Plaid: Unbank

Well, that's annoying. My plan was to make sure no artists appeared twice in this series. Then you would think 'wow that Fat Roland has really varied and interesting taste, I want to be him, I want to marry him, I want to wear him as a stylish pair of loafers'.

Plaid were included in last Tuesday's post about 2003 in which I chugged on about whirrs and swirling and Beyonce and stuff. I also narfed on about today's track in my end-of-year round-up six weeks ago. So I'm not going to repeat myself any more than I need to.

2011 was a chuffing great year. I had my blog awards tucked neatly into my belt, and enjoyed all the free stuff you get as a result of that accolade (limousines, helicopters, one of the smaller Galápagos Islands). Actually, I think I spent my blog award money on part of a hoover. Anyhoo, I had great fun with my chums organising events, running competitions and generally crapping about the Manchester literary scene drinking gin out of boots we had stolen from poor people.

2011 was also a difficult year, with some relatively minor health gremlins limiting my mobility and, frankly, making everything slightly harder than it needed to be. How did I deal with that? Music library: Unbank: play. Music library: Unbank: play. Music library: Unbank: play. Over and over again. I hope to get healthy again, although I'm not (un)banking on it in the short term. See? Oh come on, people. You can win awards for this kind of crap. Wasted on you, this is, wasted on you. Algernon, pass me the boot.

Bleep Years day two: Plaid's Get What You Gave (2003)

Here is the second part of Bleep Years, in which I trawl through two decades of tunes that sum up, in an entirely and unfairly arbitrary fashion, whole years of my life. Today's randomly-chosen year is...

2003: Plaid's Get What You Gave

2003 was a big year for pop music. White Stripes enlisted their Seven Nation Army, Beyonce was Crazy In Love and Kelis had a line of dairy products that was proving popular with her male fans. Plaid. though, were calling back to a whole different era.

Having released records for over a decade, by 2003 Plaid were already an amazing band. Their insistent, spiralling tunes were a nod to their origins as members of The Black Dog, a leading pioneer of intelligent, brain-driven techno. Plaid's album this year, Spokes, was hailed as a return to those roots.

The debate continues as to whether Spokes is one of their better albums. One thing it did do was confirm their status as uber-ultra-lords of all electronica (official title). What I loved about the eighth track on the album, Get What You Gave, was the sheer simplicity: like steel drums on a Sunday drive along the rings of Saturn.

This track is still one of my most DJed. The track acts as a very simple study in repetitive melody, with all manner of spikes and whirrs peppering proceedings from start to finish. There was no other song from this year that got under mys skin more, that slowly and carefully spread its tuneful darkness. Get me tipsy on a few of Kelis' milkshakes and I may even start raving that this is the number one anthem from electronica's number one band.

Best electronica albums of 2011: numbers 4 to 2

We are approaching the Album Of The Year much in the same way an astronaut with an upside-down map is heading for the sun. By the time you finish reading this blog post, you should be in a position to try and guess the winner of this year’s top accolade.

Meanwhile, let’s check out the nearly gang in our penultimate collection of also-rans. Once that's done, we'll crank up the Top Of The Bleeps theme music with numbers 4 to 2.

[This is part three. Click here for part one. Click here for part two. Click here for part four.]

Some also-rans

I’m very sad to exclude Björk, especially after her triumphant performance of the Attenborough-tastic Biophilia (One Little Indian). She had a Tesla coil for crap’s sake. However, although she is on top of her game right now, it’s not really electronica of the Fat Roland On Electronica variety.

At the very bottom of their game is Paris’s own Justice, whose new album Audio, Video, Disco (Ed Banger) was such a mess, I wasn’t sure if Spinal Tap were having a seizure: at first amusing then just painful and sad. Imagine The Who teaming up with David Guetta. No, it wouldn’t be fantastic, you’re wrong. In 2011, Justice made me cross.

Mark Pritchard and Steve Spacek’s Africa HiTech project was a joy to the ears: 93 Million Miles (Warp) was bristling with bass and bad attitude – but not a top ten spot. Also not in the top ten is Biosphere, whose nuclear-themed concept album N-Plants (Touch) was gorgeous and just okay at the same time, while SBTRKT’s SBTRKT (Young Turks) was filed along with Nero in the grey bin next to my desk marked ‘pop’.

4 - Modeselektor - Monkeytown

In 1998, Thom Yorke threw a rabbit into the headlights and set the standard for guest vocalists on Unkle’s debut Psyence Fiction. It’s remarkable then that he should return all these years later and equal that achievement on Modeselektor’s third album Monkeytown (Monkeytown). It’s not the first time they have worked together, of course, but the tracks Shipwreck and This are hypnotic and beguiling.

Beyond the Yorkie bombs are other highlights: the hotstepping German Clap, the digital urgency of the loping Grillwalker, the emotive melody on the PVT-collaboration Green Light and the absurd hip hop of Pretentious Friends (“the pâté was fabulous!”).

We’re so spoilt with this Berlin duo’s dexterity, confidence and (whisper it) pop sensibilities, it almost seems a shame that the claustrophobic Shipwreck b-side Dull Hull isn’t on show too.

Unstoppable, bass-driven, ear-hugging digitalism: this is the rise of the town of the monkeys. Come on my ‘selektor.

3 - Plaid - Scintilli

Plaid are a duo that arose from godfathers of bleepery The Black Dog and became the techno musician’s techno musician, much in the same way that Stewart Lee is the comedian’s comedian and your great granddad is the racist’s racist.

Until now, Spokes was their best post-1990s album: it had amazing tunes but, unlike actual spokes, didn’t quite hang together as a whole. Scintilli (Warp) is the scintillating icing on the, um, spoke cake.

Opening with jingling guitars, which brings to mind 2001’s Eyen, we’re quickly smothered with choral sorrow and their trademark awkward chord progressions. Eye Robot brings in the fuzzy techno, Thank leads us into the cheery eeriness seen on many a Plaid album and by the fourth track, the anthemnic Dr Who work-out of Unbank, we’re ready for a tea break. The rest of the album careers from sunny dance numbers (African Woods) to sheer strangeness (Talk To Us), but it’s all perfectly Plaid.

This band has spent five years dabbling in other media, most notably for their audio-visual project Greedy Baby, but they have been in danger of seeing their traditional fans drift off. In that respect, Plaid have checked themselves and produced their best album for at least ten years.

2 - Martyn - Ghost People

The Brainfeeder label was the success story of 2010, with important releases from Lorn, Teebs and The Gaslamp Killer, and a crucial partnership with Ninja Tune. They were responsible for the return of Mr Ozio this year and they were even a headline feature in the Guardian a month or two ago.

All along, however, I felt that without a Brainfeeder-labelled album from their godlike founder Flying Lotus (he releases on Warp), they’d never quite crack it. They just needed something... something extra. I don’t know. Something indefinable. A ghost, maybe.

Ghost People (Brainfeeder) is a spectre to behold and should be the album that propels Brainfeeder into the premier league. I’m mixing metaphors again. Martyn has produced an aural dystopia in which shards of rave and techno have darkness cast upon them until they glisten molten musical antimatter.

Popgun could just be bouncy Joy Orbison dubstep with the occasional vocal grunt, but the atmospherics lift the sound into something greater than its parts. The driving Bauplan is so beautifully melodic, you either want to go for a run or a cry. And the choppy We Are You In The Future sounds like the theme music for every techno track ever recorded. Everyone is trying this sound, but Martyn does it best.

I wrestled over the decision whether to make Martyn’s Ghost People my album of the year or not. But no. There is another. A debut album so great, so absorbing, with such unique production, it ought to have every kid with a smidgen of soul mimicking his sound. Stay tuned, dear reader, for my Album Of The Year 2011.

[This is part three. Click here for part one. Click here for part two. Click here for part four.]

All Warp Records stock destroyed in Sony / PIAS fire

I had been chiselling out a blog post about the Sony DADC warehouse fire that claimed the stock of scores of independent record labels in the UK, including Warp Records.

Today, Warp issued a statement on how the fire, caused by the London riots, had affected them. It was not good news.

"All of Warp's UK stock appears to have been lost in the fire," say Warp.

Read that again. Horrible.

"The Sony DADC warehouse also acted as our international distribution hub and so this has affected our ability to supply our overseas partners."

They go on to state that forthcoming released by Grizzly Bear offshoot CANT (as obtuse a name as !!!), uber knob-twonk Rustie and techno veterans Plaid will go ahead, but that funtime high-cymballed beat combo Battles may have to cope with a digital-only version of their next single My Machines.

Label Love is a campaign to raise cash for the many labels affected by the blaze. There is one event already scheduled, and I hope Manchester can organise something similar. PIAS, who sub-contract the warehouse, have also teamed up with the Association of Independent Music to support those affected.

But the worry is not just financial.

"The biggest challenge for us," continues the statement, "is replacing Warp's extensive back catalogue spanning the last 21 years. We will replace as much of this as we can by creating new stock and replenishing where possible with stock from outside the UK. Unfortunately some releases may never be available physically again."

"We will be closely supporting PIAS in their efforts to get the independent music community up and running as quickly as they can."

There's not much else to say. My planned blog post, full of theoretical blatherings about the wider affect of the fire and the riots, has been thrown into the bin. All that remains is a deep sadness for Warp Records and the effect of this incident on the legacy that has fed this blog for years.

Not just Warp, either, of course. A full list of labels follows in small print.

All that, before we even get to the human tragedy of the stupid, stupid riots. What a sad few days.

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[PIAS] Recordings, [PIAS] Recordings Belgium, 4AD, A Camp, Absynthe Minded, Accidental, AEI Music, Air Recordings, ALC Music, Alsation, Ambush Reality, Ancient & Modern, Angular Recording Corporation, Arcady Records, Ark Recordings, Asthmatic Kitty Records, Atlantic Jaxx Recordings, Bad Magic, Balling The Jack, Banquet Records, Battered Ornaments Records, Beggars Banquet, Best Before, Big Brother, Big Dada, Bird Records, Blackmaps, Bloody Chamber, Blowout Music, Blue Chopsticks, Border Community, Borstal Beats, Boysnoize Records, BPM, Brainfeeder, Brassland, Bright Star Recordings, Brille, Broken Sound Music, Bronzerat, Brothers and Sisters, Brownswood Recordings, Buzzin’ Fly, Cache Cache, Cadenza Records, Celluloid Records, Chalkmark / IE, Chemikal Underground Records, Cocoon, Control Tower, Counter Records, Dance To The Radio, Dead Oceans, Deceptive, Defenders, Ent UK, DESOLAT, Dessous, Different, Dirtee Stank, Divine Comedy Records, Domino Records, Double Six Records, Drag City, Dreambrother, Drive Thru Records, Drowned In Sound, Dummy Records, Duophonic, Eat Sleep Records, Fabric Worldwide, Fake Diamonds, FantasyTrashcan, Fatcat Records, Fence, Feraltone, Finders Keepers Records, Flock Music, Flying Circus, Freerange Records, Friends Vs Records, Full Pupp, Full Time Hobby, Gang Of Four Recordings, Geographic, Ghost Ship, Glaze Recordings, Groenland Records, G-Unit, Hardly Art, Hassle Records, Helpless, Hem Hem Records, HFN Music, Immune, Independiente, Infant, Infectious, Jagjaguwar, Kartel, Kitchenware, Kitsune, KMS Records / Fabric, Laughing Stock, Lex Records, Lipservice, Little Sister Recordings, LO-MAX Records, Loose Music, Lovepump United, Low Life Records, Lucky Number Music, Lucky Seven Records, Mantra, Matador, Memphis Industries, Merok, Metric Music International, Metroline Limited, Model Citizen, Moikai, Motion Audio, MyMajorLabel Ltd, Nation, Ninja Tune, No Quarter, NovaMute, Nusic Sounds, One Four Seven Records Ltd, One Little Indian, Organs, Outcaste, OVNI, P.I.L., Peartree, Records, PeMa, People In The Sky, People Tree, Pirates Blend Records Inc, Planet Function, Play It Again Sam, Playlouder, Poker Flat, Polyvinyl, Records, Poseidon Records, Post Present, Pschent, Raw Canvas, Red Cord Records, REK’D, Rekids, Rekords Rekords, Renaissance, Reveal Records, Riverman Records, Rock Action Records, Roots Records, Rough Trade Records, Rubyworks, Sea Note, Search and Destroy, Secretly Canadian, Setanta, Shape, SideOneDummy Records, Silva Screen, Slam Dunk Records, Smekkleysa, Soma, Sonic Cathedral, Soul Jazz Records, South Paw, Southern Fried Records, Stereo Bang Media, Stolen Recordings, Stranger Records, Streamline, Sub Pop, Suicide Squeeze, Sunday Best, Thrill Jockey, Tirk, Too Pure, Torque Records, Touch & Go Records, Transmission Recordings, Tri Tone, Trouble Records, True Panther, Try Harder, Turnstile, Twisted Nerve Recordings, Universal Sound, Victory Records, Wagram, Wall of Sound, Warp, Watergate, We Love You, Wiiija, Willkommen Records Ltd, Wonderfulsound, XL, Xtra Mile Recordings, Yaala Yaala, Young Turks

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My greatest idea once more crumbles to dust like a great big crumbly bit of dust

Once in a mauve moon, I come up with an idea so eyeball-shatteringly amazing, I literally spend 24 hours patting myself on the back like some goggle-armed freak.

I include some of my radio ideas in that (such as inventing the name Fryer Tuck Shop and conniving with my radio co-presenter Lee to come up with a game based on it). I also include the Formula One Losers League in that (which I hope to resurrect next year).

So I was quite excited about my idea for a music comparison site that went beyond the pathetic attempts by Amazon and iTunes to hopelessly recommend Cascada to Aphex Twin fans*.

Music comparisons. How hard can they be? This is like falling off a blog. Dead easy. Like pissing on a duck. Let's test my big new idea with a basic comparison question:

If you like Orbital, what else do you buy?

Here is my list of bands that sound like Orbital, or at least, music you may want to listen to if you haven't the foggiest about electronic music but you happen to have bought an Orbital album or two. The list includes suggestions from other people given to me when I first started researching this 361 frickin' days ago.

Remember. This is the start of my Big New Idea. I am a genius, so this cannot possibly go wrong.

If you like Orbital, try...

- µ-Ziq. He has that melodic thing going on along with a crunchiness of rhythm that Orbital fans like.

- Boards of Canada and Bola. Both artists ooze with Orbital-style melancholy and are both fairly accessible.

- The Black Dog and Plaid. Experimentalism meats warm analogue techno goodness.

- Kruder and Dorfmeister. Maybe, although I'm not quite sure.

- Photek. Feel the darkness. The complexity in the rhythmic structure. No? Next!

- Crystal Castles, but only their track Untrust Us.

- Long Range. This is the guy from Orbital. This list is useless.

- Lemon Jelly. Oh now come on, that's taking the Michaelangelo.

- Mannheim Steamroller? Trans Siberian Orchestra? Nah. Pentatonik! Closer with that last one, although it's the old techno band not the more recent rock band.

- The theme tune to the Equalizer. Well, actually, now you come to think about it...

- Lowfish. And the second track from Wahn's Alt.binaries. Hello? Is anyone still reading?

Well, that was a pile of hairballs. It's my worst list since I listed Orbital's albums by colour.

Scrap that idea. I'm off to draw up blueprints for my next brilliant scheme, which will involve (in no particular order) the chair George Clooney made in Burn After Reading, the complete works of Dan Brown, a blowtorch and sixty-two gallons of bathtub gin.

*Actually, they're a lot better these days, but iTunes used to be shiiieeeeet.

Album reviews: Shlohmo's clunky knobs, Ambient News's sepia hue and Mark E spluttering all over your face

Right then, enough about Autechre's leakiness for now. Time for some slap-dash album reviews.

Ambient News

The recent self-titled album from Ambient News doesn't push the envelope so much as snuggle inside it to avoid disturbing the postman.

The busy little beat smothered in vocoders on Moon On My Forehead is as energetic as this album gets. It will appeal to those who like looking at their ambient music with sepia-hued retinas: think Tangerine Dream, 1990's Plaid in simmering mode, or particularly the Feed Your Head compilations.

Hiding behind the Ambient News moniker is Cylob, the man who brought us a superb subversion of rave culture in Rewind. This alternative guise gives him the chance to mess around with harmoniums and gamelan-style 'earth' ambience.

Ambient News sounds incomplete. If it was BBC Ambient News 24, at the top of every hour, it would have about 15 minutes of newsreaders filing their nails. It's almost as if Cylob had been gathering ideas together for a long time, but never quite realised his vision...

Mark E

...unlike Mark E. This hypnotic house music peddler has also been hoarding tracks, but his resulting Works 2005 - 2009 compilation is a much grander affair than Ambient News. I wouldn't normally delve into disco house on this website, but this album splutters quality all over your face, licks it off with a big lizard tongue, then spits all the quality back in your face again.

You see, for someone who's made his diminuitive name giving us his take on Janet Jackson and Diana Ross (now there's a duet I'd like to see), a lot of these tracks are a bit too slow, a bit too subtle and dangerously hypnotic. And that's a good thing.

As for individual cuts, I'm not mad on the funkiness of Sun Shadow, even though Mr Scruff has been pummeling away at that track like a Daily Mail reader who's just discovered a hammer for the first time. But Mark E's reworks of Slave 1 and Plastic People are house music at its most sexy and sublime.

Shlohmo

Finally, us IDM fans have been dropped a cracking album from Los Angeles beat scientist Shlohmo (pictured above, not to be confused with the beatboxer with a similar name).

Shlomoshun Deluxe is an album of brittle lo-fi beats in the Hudson Mohawke / J Dilla vein. And when I say lo-fi, I'm not kidding. He plugged a mic into his laptop, along with his dad's ancient Jupiter 6 (an old Roland synth with clunky knobs) and, somehow, expected to produce a good album.
.
He did: it's my favourite album this week. The emphasis is all on the groove, and it has a David Holmes wideness to it - which is a remarkable achievement considering he made the whole thing from sellotape, string, splittle and sausages. Well, maybe not the sausages.

Fat Roland's 2010 electronica preview, part one: or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Instead Develop A Festering Hatred For Anything On The Wrong Side Of Easy Listening

This is part one of two 2010 preview posts. Here is the link to part two.


Welcome to my ball-bursting, clown-punching, thigh-nuzzling preview of what to expect from electronic music in 2010.

I cannot claim this to be comprehensive, nor even accurate, and I am likely to veer off the rails to feature music I wouldn’t normally be too bothered with on this purist blog. But if it goes “bleep”, then it’s probably registered on my radar at some point, even if it didn’t make the final edit.

Where shall we start? I know...

January: "it sounds exactly like La Bloody Roux"

Beth Ditto will be shouting her massive gob all over the radio again, this time on Simian Mobile Disco’s Cruel Intentions. It will be massive? Why? Because it sounds exactly like La Bloody Roux. To counter that, why not bring things down with noise experimentalist Merzbow, who will complete his massive but quite unlistenable Japanese Birds series with the final two albums in January and February. (See my original, bird-filled post on that series here.)

Manchester glorious bleep poppers Delphic will channel the spirit of New Order when they drop their Acolyte album in mid-January.

See him mashing up the beats and then serving them with peas and a steaming pork joint? That's Bullion. Already known for filtering the sixties through his turntablism sensibilities, his Say Goodbye To What single is described as having a “magical Boards of Canada-visit-Studio 54 feel”.

Howse about a big name for 2010? Croydon mailboy Peter O’Grady will have a great time as Joy Orbison. He is also working on tracks on Four Tet’s fifth album - and their first for four years: There Is Love In You is out towards the end of the month.

Also look out for Miike Snow's Silvia: there's something I like about that guy, despite his unkept hair. Keep one eye out for the Super 8 Bit Brothers, if only to distract you from the energy-sapping truth that William Orbit is releasing a whole box set ('Odyssey') of his pleasing, populist electronica.

Oh and if there isn't enough brainless acid mentalism in January, Mike Dred's got new material out.

February: "an ill-fated 22-track concept album"

February is an absolutely massive month for dance music fans. And no, I'm not referring to Josh Wink's Airplane Electronique or Groove Armada's no-doubt snoozesome Black Light album. Nor do I mean The Streets' Computers And Blues, or indeed Fatboy Slim and David Byrne's ill-fated 22-track concept album about Imelda Marcos.

No, the 'massive' refers to the return of Massive Attack with what is only their fifth studio album in a billion years. Heligoland will be released exactly seven years after 100th Window, and promises treats in the shape of Guy Garvey, Martina Topley-Bird, the guitarist from Portishead AND a seriously exciting remix project from dubstep king Burial.

Speaking of Bristol musicians, production mad skills for 2010 will go to Joker - watch out for his various mixes sprinkling the record shelves throughout the year.

Oh and speaking of dubstep, this slightly jaded sub-genre could go go seriously mainstream in 2010. The main contender could be Benga and DJ Zinc when they collaborate with Ms Dynamite in February. Look out for La Roux remixer Skream too.

Or maybe the battle for the mainstream will be won by Philadelphia’s Diplo, who has teamed up with chart-topper Robyn (the Swedish Kate Bush, anyone?) – although following the pair’s studio sessions, Diplo admitted “I think we broke dubstep.” Silly Diplo.

Hot Chip will make a welcome return in February. Their new long-player One Life Stand will include 70s rock legend, This Heat drummer Charles Hayward. No, me neither.

The Album Leaf will present A Chorus Of Storytellers. mixed by a member of Sigur Ros which gives you an idea of the direction of the album, while Flying Lotus will appear on Muhsinah's single Always / Lose My Fuse. Also watch out for FlyLo's other projects this year: his work with Samiyam under the name FLYamSAM and an inevitably stupendous DJ Kicks album.

If there isn't enough brainless acid mentalism in February, Ceephax Acid Crew has got a new one out ('United Acid Emirates' - genius).

Members of !!! and LCD Soundsystem will guest on electro producer Pantha Du Prince's Black Noise album in February. LCD themselves will release an album in March, although with its rock and disco influences, don’t expect it to feature too heavily on this blog. Which brings us neatly to...

March: "hear it on a BBC ident near you"

Cartoon popstars the Gorillaz have signed up very real, uncartoony versions of Snoop Dogg, Lou Reed and, um, Barry Gibb for their third LP Plastic Beach. Expect it to arrive before Easter.

Electronic breaks / trance duo Hybrid have promised an orchestra on their new album Disappear Here in March or April. I don’t think it’ll be very interesting, but do expect to hear it in a BBC ident near you.

For the less commercially-minded, there's Gonja Sufi's essential new album A Sufi And A Killer. There is also Plaid's "experimental Ambisonic piece" Nord Rute based on recordings taken with reindeer herders. Expect a launch event with Luke Vibert in March.

Autechre will feature on the same bill as Salt N Pepa at Bloc 2010 (mentioned here in November). I cannot write that enough. Autechre will feature on the same bill as Salt N Pepa at Bloc 2010. If you think about it, what's the difference? Really?

Tim Simenon will revive his Bomb The Bass moniker with LP Back To Light, while Dan Le Sac and his quick-tongued chum Scroobius Pip will try to revive the good old days of 2007 - they will start March with a single called Get Better and follow it with album Logic Of Chance a couple of weeks later.

Does It Offend You, Yeah? have the most nauseating album title of the year. Don't Say We Didn't Warn You will complete their final metamorphosis into being a slightly synthier Muse.

Ooo, I nearly forgot Goldfrapp. Head First will be preceded by single Rocket. I have something scribbled here about Tyondai Braxton, but I'm not sure what it means. Hopefullly he will take time out from his fancy classical music commissions to produde a new Battles album.

Finally in March, To Rococo Rot (they of big beat fame) promise their new album Speculation will be "measured" and "restrained". If you want to be as adventurous as Keane, what's the point? And Starkey will follow his 2009 single OK Luv with some more bad boy bleeps on his album Ear Drums and Black Holes, due out at the end of the month.

Sadly, there isn't enough brainless acid mentalism in March.

This is part one of two 2010 preview posts. Here is the link to part two.