Best electronic albums of 2020: perky special mentions and a P45

*ring ring*

Hello?

"It's Fat Roland here. There has been a terrible administration error."

Okay. How can I help fix it?

"Why have you left Four Tet out of the Top 25? Four Tet is meant to be in the Top 25."

It's not an error. It's just that there were so many good albums, and it got squeezed out.

"This is unacceptable. You cannot leave Four Tet out of the Top 25. You're sacked."

What? You can't...

"Clean out your desk. Gross dismissal. Never darken my doors again."

But I'm you. You're sacking yourself. You've just lost your own job working for you.

"Er... Forget I said that. Here, have a promotion. Excellent work, Fat Roland."

Thanks, Fat Roland.

I did feel bad for only including Four Tet's Sixteen Oceans (Text Records) in my special mentions section, but that's how my sorting hat sorted things when compiling my final list. I loved this album: so many zippy earworms and such glistening oomph. I've not had a chance to listen to the two (two!) albums he dropped over Christmas, Parallel (Text Records) and 871 (Text Records).

Here are even more special mentions, referred to as "perky" in my notebook. 

In Electronic Sound (yeah, I mention them a lot), I praised Moses Boyd for Dark Matter (Exodus Records) as he "pinballs around his ever-present drum kit like an oiled whippet". Kruder & Dorfmeister finally released their debut album 1995 (G-Stone Recordings), originally scheduled to be released in the year 1995 then, er, slightly delayed. The trip hop comeback you never knew you were waiting for.

You want the best? You want the pin-sharp house energy of Omar S's You Want (FXHE Records): sassy, straightforward, and superbly executed, despite that overused sample. Improvised in a cave, Capitol K's mini-album Birdtrapper (Faith And Industry) was a delightfully curious mix of driving organic rhythms and bamboo. Wajatta released second album Don't Let Get You Down (Brainfeeder), with the irrepressible Reggie Watts performing vocal acrobatics (and whistling) over John Tejada's fast and funky house.

Finally for this section, Black Nationalist Sonic Weaponry (Planet Mu), released under DeForrest Brown Jr's Speaker Music alias, sounded like the fierce heart of BlacKkKlansman pulsing to the rhythm of distended and shattered jazzy percussion experiments. An important album, but I've no idea why it's in this section: it's anything but "perky". Stupid notebook.

 

Browse the rest of the Best Electronic Albums of 2020

New music: Caribou, Wajatta & Grimes

Sometimes people release albums. I can't stop them, no matter how hard I try. Seriously, I attempt to catch as many as I can before they reach the general public, oh, no, another album got through my homemade anti-album filter, dammit.

Anyhoo, here are some new and upcoming February releases that got through my sausage net. I really should stop making nets out of sausages.

Caribou – Suddenly (City Slang)

It's a good job Caribou is Canadian producer Dan Snaith and not an actual caribou. If you let a caribou into a studio full of recording equipment, it would crap everywhere and snap all the knobs with its hooves. We can only assume Snaith doesn't do this, although I've never been in a studio with him so your guess is as good as mine.

Caribou (not the animal) is back this month with another album of summery pop called Suddenly. Single You And I is really good: half melancholic grief song and half broken bass banger. Never Come Back has a similar shimmery vocal vibe to his classic Sun. It's all sounding very promising indeed.

Wajatta – Don't Let Get You Down (Brainfeeder)

Here comes the second album from loop-pedal peddler Reggie Watts and house master John Tejada. You'll know Reggie from his television appearances and pop-parodying beatboxing. Go on, have a delve on YouTube: you won't regret it.

"Wajatta" is, by the way, a combination of their names and the j is pronounced as an h. In the same way that if I teamed up with Justin Bieber, we would become Jat Rober. Or Fatin Biebland. And the e would be pronounced as a q. Words are fun.

Grimes – Miss Anthropocene (4AD) 

And that's what I think of the fifth album of bleepy tunes from the headline-grabbing popster Grimes.

What? There appears to be some text missing from the above paragraph? Ah, that's because I typed the letters at the speed of light, in tribute to Grimes calling herself c (the symbol for the speed of light). You have to read it at the speed of light otherwise you won't be able to read it. Sorry about that.







Further Fats: New music – Squarepusher, Dan Deacon & Phase Fatale (2020)