Best electronic albums of 2020: please do not throw these special mentions off a cliff

Throughout this countdown, there will be many albums that didn't make the final list but still deserve to be festooned with garlands and cocaine and fresh puppies. Welcome to the first selection of 'special mentions'.

Firstly, I try not to include compilations in my Best Albums list, but I have to give a tip of the hat to the blistering Alterity from Houndstooth. In a piece of especially quality journalism, I described this album in Electronic Sound as sounding "like a bunch of synth modules being chucked off a cliff. Like, properly chucked with a run-up and everything." That was meant to be a good thing.

Another compilation worth a nod is PlanetMµ25. The sauciest thing to ever come out of Worcester, Mike Paradinas's Planet Mu celebrates its silver anniversary with some of my favourite artists, including Ital Tek, Gábor Lázár and Bogdan Raczynski. Right good treat.

Back to artist albums. Here are some dark, dubby delights that deserve a special mention despite not making my final 25. Following rereleases of his early albums, it was great to get some glorious new glitch from Pole in Fading (Mute). This was utterly hypnotic, as was Recondite's haunting Dwell (Ghostly International), an album which took one minimal monotone and turned it into something as immersive as falling into a pool of Diet Pepsi (I really like Diet Pepsi).

Let's also not forget Life Cycles (Cultivated Electronics), a lively collection of old rusted electro from the archives of Orbital’s early label-mates The Advent (1995's Elements of Life is still worth a listen). Finland's Morphology achieved a vintage feel too on the echoing electronics of Horta Proxima (FireScope Records). I'm amazed this didn't make my final 25. And finally, I loved the haze that emanated the smoked-out techno knees-up going on at the heart of Matt Karmil's ace STS371 (Smalltown Supersound).

More special mentions to come. And more countdown to come. Stay tuned.

 

 

Browse the rest of the Best Electronic Albums of 2020

Please spell Freeland versus Daft Punk. "OBAMA." You are correct

Just for one day, hide your cynical Private Eye brain in your sock drawer and celebrate a sparkling slice of political history.  In tribute to the USA's most listenable president since, er, well, George W Bush, here is coastal breaker Adam Freeland's reworking of Daft Punk's Aerodynamic, set to an energetic cut-and-paste video by a bucketful of sickeningly talented visual artists.

Oh and while I'm here, in the comments under my Stefan Betke's Pole piece, you'll spot a top tip from Go Flying Turtle's Steve.  Go to Last FM and download tracks from the Wasted Magic In The Sand compilation for free.  (See the 'free' button in the grey box, top right.) Recommended for fans of Proem, Lackluster and Boards Of Canada.

Alles Gute hat sein Ende, especially when chucked across the room

Stefan Betke's started his career as the influential techno experimentalist Pole when he dropped a piece of music equipment (pictured, suitably rearranged) and the resulting crackles it produced became alluring to him.

As Pole releases his new 12" Alles Gute/Alles Klar, two dubby tracks of scratchy Underworld in slow motion, I decided to have a go at becoming an influential techno experimentalist. I decided to create music through destruction.

I began my smashing in my television with the fridge (and not a cat as I nearly did on Mercury prize night). I wanted to throw the fridge at the TV, but it proved too bulky to carry - and suprisingly hot - so instead I hurled the telly at the fridge. Screen first.

The telly no longer made any noise, but now my fridge is emitting a threatening hum. I like it.

Shooting my sandwich maker with an air rifle proved to be a more tricky affair. I don't own an air rifle. Nor a sandwich maker. So I went into Argos, and flicked an elastic band at a picture of a sandwich maker.

This failed to produce any interesting noise.

I then re-tuned my DAB digital radio to Radio 2. This produced a frightening noise, which is too horrific-- no-- too chilling to describe here.

So I shall stick with Pole. The A-side Alles Gute is the better track. It's a gloopy groove where the spaces are filled with buzzes and sub-bass. Alles Klar, the one featured on his Round Black Ghosts dubstep compilation, is slower and moodier, cutting its own rhythm in a choking post-rock apocalypse.

Reviving my shrivelling grandma and getting out of my depth with Mahler

Just because I've been adjusting to a new job for the first time in nine years, that's no excuse to leave my blog shrivelled on the edge of the pavement like an old forgotten grandma.

Still, there's nothing better to distract you from your blogless disappointment than some nice charts. Above is a bar chart interpretation of Jay Z's 99 Problems, and you can see plenty more here. If anyone can tell me the collective noun for charts, tell me using a graph.

Because blogging is the way I speak, I've kept silent about lots of music. Not least Sun Electric's Lost & Found (1998 - 2000). The tracks were rediscovered on an old CD-R, as the title suggests, and it's a welcome reminder of a band that have been dormant for donkey's.

Sun Electric always lacked the crunch of their techno peers Orbital, and perhaps the production talent of some-time Orb dabbler Thomas Fehlmann lent their music too much whimsy.

When it's not trying to be Brian Eno's Nerve Net on a little too much horse tranquilizer, Lost & Found works wonderfully, not least in the flapping rhythm of Echelon which sounds as though the whole thing was recorded inside a pipe.

A hop over to the Leaf Label now, and Murcof have thrown a curve-ball with their new album Cosmos.

Their glitchy precision has been buried in favour of ambience sweeping from Mahler-inspired moodiness to Wagner-inspired pomposity. (All the other reviews have mentioned György Ligeti, but I don't know who he is and I'm bloody useless at classical comparisons).

It's either quiet, or it's the ambient equivalent of a guitar solo. It's certainly not worth buying it on its own, which is good because apparently it'll be fully realised as an audio-visual project.

In fact, stuff all this lot. Screw it. If you're looking for something on which to spend your hardcore pimp wage, plump for Luke Vibert's Chicago, Detroit, Redruth. Playful acid rave has never been so listenable, and it's the first album I've owned dedicated to a Cornish town.

mpSunday: Pole's Stefan Betke remastered the newly found gems on Sun Electric's Lost & Found. Pole are seriously underrated, so here's a free track. Grab it while you can, because as soon as I post another mpSunday, this mp3 will be kicked to the kerb like gran. POW! This mpSunday is no longer available - click here for the latest mpSunday

There's an erroneous glitch in the space / time continuum, and it just so happens to be in Cheltenham

So I've been a smidgeon busy with things and stuff and that, but normal blog action will be resumed when the holiday season is over in September.

Meanwhile, the flood-hit plains of Cheltenham are next in the Fat Roland diary. I will be hosting Glitchbelt, an hour of electronic musing at the Greenbelt Arts Festival, in the New Forms cafe this Sunday from 9pm.

Glitch is a sub-genre of electronica / IDM. Wikipedia describes it as "comprised of glitches, clicks, scratches, and otherwise 'erroneously' produced or sounding noise". So expect me to get erroneous with the likes of Gescom, Pole and The Books, as well as new material from the Vector Lovers.

Must go. I'm counting the pockets n my new rucksack, and I'm up to four so far.

Edit: You had better read the next post...