Best electronic albums of 2020: six

6 – Shinichi Atobe – Yes (DDS)

Before we get stuck into this album, take a look at the photo at the bottom of this blog post.

Shinichi Atobe's new album arrived at Demdike Stare's Manchester headquarters on a CD-R, sent from Japan, accompanied by the track listing and this photograph. That's it. Nothing else.

He remains an international man of mystery. The music is easier to figure out: simplistic house tracks, ripples of rhythm, playfully basic melodies, structures that are stillwater-smooth, repetition that verges on mind control. Easy.

If I delivered these blog posts like Atobe delivers his albums, I'd be in trouble. "Fat Roland's shoving crayon-scrawled toilet roll through the letterbox again, and why's he included a photograph of his only nipple?"

But then, these blog posts are scrappy, first-drafty. Yes, however, is perfection. Every moment seems carefully tended, unhurried, unconcerned with trends, just pure harmonic hypnotism, pure Shinichi.

Browse the rest of the Best Electronic Albums of 2020

Best electronic albums of 2020: sixteen

16 – Nathan Fake – Blizzards (Cambria Instruments)

For this entry in the 2020 album countdown, we go over to our reporter Fat Roland. Fats, can you hear us?

    "Yes, I can, Fat Roland."

Fat Roland, what can you tell us about Nathan Fake's fifth and best album?

    "Erm. Nothing much."

What? Oh. I thought you were going to tell us about Blizzards.

"Don't really like music, sorry."

Apologies, viewers, we seem to have a technical fault, in that Fat Roland is technically an idiot. Instead, we can cut to this piece Fat Roland wrote for the Picky B*stards website:

"The cracking thing about Nathan Fake’s Blizzards is that it does all the best albums at once. The breakbeats of Cry Me A Blizzard have the nostalgic giddiness of Octo Octa.... North Brink seems to blend the icy hi-hats of Shinichi Atobe’s Yes with the melted warmth of Khotin’s Finds You Well to make a temperature that’s, erm, just right.... Blizzards works on its own terms too, powered by a frustrated energy, its rhythms rising from the foundations of the clubs we no longer go to."

Even it did drop down my Best Of 2020 list since I wrote that piece (read it in full here), Nathan Fake is on his best form here.

 

Browse the rest of the Best Electronic Albums of 2020

Best electronic albums of 2018: getting into the top 20 is a fragile path

Hold on to your monocle: this is going to be a longer-than-usual summary of albums that didn't quite make the final best-of-2018 list. They're all house music, or influenced by house music, or have once been in a house with some house music.

A choir from Hackney added a whole new direction for Simian Mobile Disco on Murmurations (Wichita) which led me to produce an alarmingly introspective review for Electronic Sound magazine ("Life is a fragile path that sometimes leads us to thin places we’d rather avoid"). There was solid house action on Specter’s Built To Last (Sound Signature): extra points for the insistent piano riff on Not New To This. I enjoyed the clean house stylings of Invisibility (Sushitech) from Romanian duo SIT – minimalism with sheen.

Essaie Pas's ominous New Path (DFA Records) was "enough to make you gleefully afraid of your own shadow" (Electronic Sound again). There was a masterclass in shrink-wrapped drum programming on Konduku’s Kıran (Nous'klaer Audio). Russian artist Evgenii Fadeev sounded restless on Litie (Gost Zvuk), turning up those bpms for his AEM Rhythm Cascade persona. And on my notes for Beta Librae's Sanguine Bond (Incienso), I've just got the word "hypnotic". So it must have been hypnotic. Ahem.

I liked rapper’s Galcher Lustwerk’s inconsequential chatter amid the smooth house of 200% Galcher (Lustwerk Music). RAMZi’s Phobiza Vol. 3: Amor Fati (FATi Records) was a heady mix of hazy house music. There was a dark urgency to Neville Watson's house breaks album The Midnight Orchard (Don't Be Afraid). Phew. Is this section over yet? It's going on a bit.

Shinichi Atobe sounded perkier than usual on Heat (DDS), not least in part because of his perfectly ratcheted snares. Underground favourite DJ Bone spilled a load of bright Detroit bangers this year on A Piece Of Beyond (Subject Detroit) – expect the trilogy to complete in 2019. And finally I utterly overlooked SCNTST's Scenes And Sketches From The Lab (Boysnoize Records) despite a previous album of his being in my 2013 top ten. I only just spotted it now. Blast. Maybe I should have been listening to that instead of writing this. Scandal. *drops monocle*





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

Listen to Shinichi Atobe's magical Regret

Here’s a track that doesn’t really do much, but ends up doing something a lot more. A kind of techno alchemy. It’s Regret by Shinichi Atobe.

This is from a recent album called From The Heart, It's A Start, A Work Of Art, which comes from further plundering of Atobe’s lost archive. Much of the album is from an acetate cut in Berlin 17 years ago – only five copies were made until now.

Until a few years ago, he had released one solitary 12-inch (Ship-Scope EP) before vanishing without a trace. Over a decade later, the Demdike Stare label tracked down the elusive producer and discovered a stack of unreleased tunes. A recent album almost made my top albums of the year list.

If the YouTube rip below disappears, have a listen here to Shinichi Atobe’s album on Boomkat.

Full-on also-rans hysteria

Almost there. Here's a bunch of solid techno albums that didn't make my final list.

I didn't want to deal with old stuff, so no space in my top 20 for the newly polished-up classic Mike & Rich's Expert Knob Twiddlers (Planet Mu). That also goes for Altern 8's Full-On Mask Hysteria (Bleech) which carries the only design in the world I'd have tattooed on my face. And no space either for the hugely pleasing 1995 (Skam), an ancient Jega album found on an old tape somewhere.

Here are three names I was sad not to include, including two names in my best-of-2011. I liked the sprawling soundtrack styles of Kuedo's Slow Knife (Planet Mu). And Illum Sphere's Glass (Ninja Tune) had a kind of echoing subterranean vibe that made me want to live in a techno submarine. Meanwhile, Surgeon kicked up an evil disco with From Farthest Known Objects (Dynamic Tension).

On a lighter housier note, it may be worth looking into the airy jazz-tinged electronics of Steven Julien's Fallen (Apron Records), the '90s bleepery of A Sagittariun's Elasticity (Elastic Dreams) or how about Shinichi Atobe's World (DDS), all sprightly beats and dubby ambience.

Only one more of these 'also-rans' round-ups left while the main top 20 marches on. Who will be the number one album of 2016? Get to William Hill and place your bets now (minimum stake: 2p).





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