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 2018: this bit mentions a monkey and belly-dancing

I hope you're enjoying my countdown of the best albums of 2018, and that you're bitterly resenting these constant interruptions of albums that didn't make the final 20.

I missed a couple of old reissues. Smith & Mighty reminded us of how good they were on Ashley Road Sessions 88-94 (Punch Drunk). And following the rerelease of his classic classic ‘If You’re Into It, I’m Out of It’, covered elsewhere in these blog posts, Christoph De Babalon’s brought us some drum ‘n’ bass rarities with Exquisite Angst (A Colourful Storm). Listen to that awkward drum loop of Are You Talking To Me? – no wonder Thom Yorke counted himself as a fan of De Babalon’s work.

Now other stuff. The summer vibes were strong in the laid-back Detroit cuts of Jay Daniel’s Tala (Watusi High), while I enjoyed the wonky jazz of Palanquin Bearing Monkey on Yoshinori Hayashi’s Ambivalence (Smalltown Supersound). Ooo yes, and I can't forget the mystical ritualism of Aisha Devi's DNA Feelings (Houndstooth) – a strange but fascinating listen.

Also not quite making the cut were the belly-dancing beats of TSVI’s Inner Worlds (Nervous Horizon), which mixed Sufi percussion with grubby grime rhythms. Finally for this section, the caustic sound of Renick Bell’s Turning Points (Seagrave) led the charge for code-based algorave, while Tadd ‘Dabrye’ Mullinix had the entire history of rave on his mind when making X-Altera’s X-Altera (Ghostly International), throwing a lot of jungle and techno at the wall, making the wall sound really good.





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