Top 50 electronic music albums of 2022: Rival Consoles, Pye Corner Audio, Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan

     

My top 50 favourite electronic music albums continues. Some real crackers here.

See the full countdown here.

Rival Consoles: Now Is (Erased Tapes)

Ah, that Rival Consoles shimmer. It’s his trademark, like the Nike swoosh or my sexy dance moves. The latest album from the London producer feels like Consoles in Luke Abbott mode, letting the fuzzy analogue nature of his gear seep in ever-pleasing ways. It’s certainly a slower listen, with much of his previous drama hazed into a reverby wash. Still shimmering.

Pye Corner Audio: Let’s Emerge! (Sonic Cathedral)

One of the things I’ve loved about Pye Corner Audio is the electronic drama of it all. The fiercest techno expressed as stately, beatless ambience. Including Ride’s Andy Bell on half of the tracks destroys that drama. The guitar makes it more shoegaze and meandering… but actually, I love it. It’s Pye turned hippy, albeit a hippy bathing in a bath of warm, orange gloop.

Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan: Districts, Roads, Open Space (Castles in Space)

While we’re on an ambient tip, here’s are superbly chilled meditations disguised as council blueprints. The ‘Open Space’ of the title describes things perfectly, as these inwardly-focussed reflections build into something quite gorgeous. Lazy loops, blossoming synths, even a touch of ambient acid. Way more interesting than a council planning meeting, although probably as sleep-inducing. Lovely.

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

60 best electronic music albums of 2021: Paraadiso, Pauline Anna Strom, Planetary Assault Systems, Richard Norris & Rival Consoles

Fat Roland's Best Electronic Music Albums of 2021 presents five more brilliant albums:

Paraadiso – Unison (SVBKVLT)

Paraadiso is a project by Italian DJ TSVI and the audio-visual production Seven Orbits. So I assume there is a visual element to this, although I'm only reviewing the audio. The span of Unison is incredible, with, at varying points, nosebleed drum mayhem, transient choral voices, shattered fractals of tortured bass, and tidal washes of soothing melody. The choir bits are ace. The blurb compares it to FSOL's Lifeforms, and that's actually not a bad take. 

Pauline Anna Strom – Angel Tears in Sunlight (RVNG Intl.)

This was meant to be Pauline Anna Strom's big comeback. This San Francisco composer had been dormant in the music industry for decades, instead committing her time to Reiki healing. Her unexpected death a year ago meant this became a posthumous album – and what a legacy. These shiny instrumentals feel like nature writ large, with chimes and glistening synths evoking long summer afternoons and placid shorelines. All with a process or library music feel. A truly beautiful work.

Planetary Assault Systems – Sky Scraping (Token) 

The seventh album from Luke Slater’s hard-pumpin’ techno alias starts with an ace pun. The first track is called Labstract. Like abstract, but made in a lab. My scientist readers are going to love that. This is Slater in pure techno mode. Thump, thump, thump, thump. Rustle, squeak, squeak, thump, thump. Hiss, hiss, bang, bang. Thump, thump, rattatat, rattatat. It's pounding and hypnotic and sometimes I think it's a chem-mystery why all music isn't like this all of the time. Geddit? Chemistry. Chem-mystery. No? Oh for goodness sake. 

Richard Norris – Hypnotic Response (Inner Mind)

"Set phazers to mesmerize" says the American blurb with its fancy letter Zs. Hypnotic response indeed. Looping analogue synths lock into simple arpeggios, all drizzled with a sepia library-music wash. The bold Arca builds over 11 giddy minutes, its fuzziness barely changing and yet holding us spellbound throughout. The missing link between the warmth of modern artists like Luke Abbott and, in once supercool chord change, 1980s theme tunes. 

Rival Consoles – Overflow (Erased Tapes) 

Over to my Electronic Sound review for this one, incidentally another album on this list written for a choreographic dance production. "There’s a halogen hum throughout, its metallic yaws and molten drum pads bleached with a scorched ambience... He shows a human yet hesitant side in scattered vocal radio transmissions or as voice-responsive algorithmic ambience... his trademark keyboard shimmer as on point as anything on his [previous] spine-tingling studio albums." So there you go. Another corker from RC.

This is part of a series of the Best Electronic Music Albums of 2021. Read it all here.

Best electronic albums of 2020: five

5 – Rival Consoles – Articulation (Erased Tapes)

Rumour has it Mr Consoles graphs out his tracks before composing them, like Charlie with his conspiracy theory board in It's Alway Sunny In Philadelphia. Apparently he's also scribbled ideas on napkins, like politicians trying to fix a vote.

However he preps, Articulation is more than just a carefully planned loud-quiet aesthetic. Listen to the sorrowful squawks of the melody in Still Here. The stretched saws of Vibrations On A String, all wistful and woebegone. Oh my heart.

This is probably his most soundtrack-y album yet: a snatch of harpsichord comes and goes, gentle strings ripple in the background, a light brush here, a ghostly woosh there. "Rival Consoles" suggests a battle, but this is more intimate than that: "Friendly Consoles" maybe, or "Hugging For A Little Bit Too Long Consoles".

We're in the final five of my countdown now, and honestly this album has been yo-yoing up and down my top ten like a trampolinist's testicles. But it was always going to be top ten because this is a sonic world I want to live in forever. It ticks my 'Jon Hopkins box'. And apparently, it's all planned out, like a terrorist attack or a day trip to Whitby.

Other possible names:

"Pen-Pal Consoles"

"Passive Aggressive Consoles"

"Only Speaking Through Lawyers Consoles"

"I Couldn't Have Partied Because I Medically Can't Sweat Consoles"

"Viral Consoles"

 

Browse the rest of the Best Electronic Albums of 2020

Best electronic albums of 2018: three

3 – Rival Consoles – Persona (Erased Tapes)

I have listened to
the Rival Consoles album
that was on
the Spotify

and which
reminded me of
Jon Hopkins
and Clark

You should listen
Persona is delicious
so sweet
and so warm



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

Visiting Rival Consoles' jellyfish space beach

I've been spinning the new Rival Consoles album recently, if Spotify tracks spin, that is.

Rival Consoles is a London synth bloke and he was the first ever signing on the trouser-flappingly influential Erased Tapes label. This year's Ingmar Bergman-inspired Persona album is currently on constant repeat in chez Fat Roland.

Here are two videos. Firstly, as an appetiser, the unhurried ambience of Untravel, accompanied by a video set on some kind of jellyfish space beach (pictured). And then, there's Hidden, which is a corker and no mistake.





Further Fats: Watching space from inside papier mâché (2016)

Further Fats: No more harrumphs: Kiasmos are back (2017)