A final bunch of also-rans: all the way from Aa to Zomby

Before I reveal the toppest top albums atop the album top table, here are a final few names that didn't make the top 20 but are well worth a mention.

Baauer fiiiiinally dropped a debut album: Aa (LuckyMe) was full of scrunchy bangers to shake yer Harlems and much more besides. A grimier, stronger brother to that album is Skepta's Konnichiwa (Boy Better Know), with Novelist guesting on both those albums. Incidentally, this is not a hip hop list, but while we're on an MC tip, get yourself And The Anonymous Nobody by De La Soul (AOI Records).

Machinedrum bogged off to California to turn out his poppiest long-player yet, Human Energy (Ninja Tune). The rambling Callus (Warp Records) saw Gonjasufi in as psychedelic a mood as ever before. DJ Earl brought in Oneohtrix Point Never for his delightfully dizzying footwork experiment Open Your Eyes (Teklife). And Mala took in some Peruvian inspiration (and panpipes) for the bass-heavy and beguiling Mirrors (Brownswood Recordings). I was less convinced by Zomby's Ultra (Hyperdub) which seemed to float by unnoticed.

On EARS (Western Vinyl), Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith did some wonderful things with voice on an unusual and captivating album. These Hidden Hands did some weird things to my brain on the woozy and surreal Vicarious Memories (Hidden Hundred). Lakker did strange, dark things on the theme of water with Struggle & Emerge (R&S Records). And finally, Matmos did some unspeakable things to a washing machine on Ultimate Care II (Thrill Jockey). No really. The whole album is constructed from washing machine samples.

That's the last of the rejects. Over 100 albums mentioned... and just two to go in the final top 20 countdown. Coming up: a big number two followed by a big number one. You'll enjoy that, won't you? You disgust me.





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

Listen: Zomby and Burial's Sweetz

I've been listening to the sweary collaboration between Zomby and Burial, two names with so much weight in the electronic music world, they're practically creating a black hole of excellence.

It's a track which takes its time, almost living in its own vacuum. The rolling bass is so low, it's practically in another universe. The result is some seriously menacing drama.

Zomby's new album Ultra is out on Hyperdub this week and includes a Darkstar collaboration that's all clonky and whizzy. In a good way.

Have a listen to Sweetz: I've had trouble embedding so click through to Bleep or Juno to put Sweetz in your ears. And once you've heard that, go here to hear the Darkstar track, although I warn you now, the DJ does a reeewind. Stupid DJ.

Best electronica albums of 2011: numbers 10 to 8

Welcome to my annual review of the best electronica albums.

I must start dear reader, with an apology. I got it wrong last year: Luke Abbott's Holkham Drones (Border Community) languished at number three on 2010’s list, but repeated plays makes me think it should have taken the top spot. Oh well. Mount Kimbie ain’t giving their crown back.

So no pressure then. This year’s best electronica list is, if I may say so, utter brillsocks. Every album featured I love to bits, have slept with several times and have moved into a bungalow with. Before we lap up the goodness, let’s see some of the tracks I spat out. After that, we’ll crack on with the top ten.

[This is part one. Click here for part two. Click here for part three. Click here for part four.]

Some also-rans

Walls were darlings of the ambient community in 2010, so they went and ditched the driftiness and took up dance beats instead. Their album Coracle (Kompakt) was closer to techno and therefore closer to my heart, but it wasn’t enough to make the list.

Bibio scored highly in my best electronica review two years ago but 2011’s Mind Bokeh (Warp) seemed confused: their sub-Orson rock song Take Off Your Shirt was, well, like Orson. Meanwhile, Tycho's Dive (Ghostly International) was lovely, Zomby’s Dedication (4AD) didn’t quite do it for me, while I got Dave Monolith’s Welcome (Rephlex) for Christmas and haven’t had time to absorb it yet.

10 - Falty DL - You Stand Uncertain

You Stand Uncertain (Planet Mu) is such a complete world and yet, by all rights, it ought to be a disconnected mess of rave, house, r’n’b and techno samples.

Take Lucky Luciano. It starts with some slow-motion rave riffery, hypes it up with some breakbeat samba and “oooh yeah” vocal samples, throws in some frenetic funky drummer-ness and suddenly we’re in a watery world of 808 State techno followed by some drill’n’bass-lite. The fact that this one track holds together is a miracle, never mind the album as a whole.

I’m less keen when it gets too far down the garage path and I could do without the female vocal tracks: they feel too much like a bid for radio play. You Stand Uncertain works better in the abstract as repeated melodies work their way into your brain and hang around for the rest of the record, or when a new opposing theme drifts into the music as if uninvited and the whole records hangs beautifully in the delicate, titular uncertainty.

9 - Machinedrum - Room(s)

If Travis Stewart was an actual machine, he’d be a bit rusty around the wingnuts because he’s been in service now for ten years as Machinedrum, Sepalcure, Tstewart and Syndrone.

A brief flirtation with Glasgow’s Lucky Me record label oiled his creativity as he left behind his glitchy past in favour of more upfront electro. Room(s) (Planet Mu) is the full-flexing realisation of that change: swirling vocals and complex breakbeats abound.

In fact, that’s pretty much the motif of Room(s). Busy rave rhythms agitate echoing soul vocals, such as the “for real” refrain of Now U Know Tha Deal 4 Real, the auto tuned U Don’t Survive or the people wailing at the choppy synths in The Statue. A highlight is the additively repetitive She Died There. And with a lot of the tracks coming in at the four or five minute mark, Mr Drum knows how to structure things so that nothing outstays its welcome. Pitchfork wrote off this album as “devoid of its creators voice” – they couldn’t be more wrong.

8 - Kuedo - Severant

Three Planet Mu albums in a row: crikes.

I never thought a Carly Simon sample would end up in my annual album reviews, but it’s happened thanks to the fifth track on Kuedo’s debut album which sees the famous “la de dah de dah” refrain from the ‘80s songstress go to battle with a helicopter or at the very least, a synthesiser that dearly wants to be a helicopter. Next up, Burial doing Coming Around Again on a hovercraft?

Kuedo is a new name around these parts, but most will recognise him as remixer and producer Jamie Vex’d out of, um Vex’d. There is not much comparison, however. While Vex’d The Duo snarled and growled like some crazed darkstep killing monster, and Jamie Vex’d The Soloist sounded like Ninja Tune down a k-hole, the new Kuedo project has a different flavour.  Severant (Planet Mu) sounds like a Vangelis remix album. It is a landscape of yearning 1980s chord sequences (Truth Flood), cinematic analogue ambience (Salt Lake Cuts) and delicate melancholia (Visioning Shared Tomorrows). This album will pluck your heart strings until they shimmer.

[This is part one. Click here for part two. Click here for part three. Click here for part four.]

Battles at the Apollo: A gaping hole where Imelda Staunton should be

Apart from the odd blog thing and a number plate I once won at secondary school, I don't tend to get many prizes.

So when I won tickets to Battles and Caribou at the weekend, courtesy of Now Wave and Chimp Magazine, I was somewhat made up.

It came on the back of getting a story into an anthology for the first time. You can read it if you want to. The tale will be especially pleasing for people who like speedboats, Lenor or guttering.

Anyhoo, Battles were superb, what with their complicated rhythms and unreasonably-constructed high-cymballed drum kit. It took me back to 1926 when I first discovered post rock, back in the days when music had to have subtitles because it was still all silent.

Manchester blogging legend The Pigeon Post got a shout-out from Star Slinger, which was lovely because it felt like "one for the bloggers". And I ended the night at the Greenroom for one last hurrah as that brilliant venue was finally mothballed.

It was strange, then, that there was a sour taste to the night. For that taste, we have to look to a curious no-show from one of the support acts: Actress.

You cannot underestimate the hugeness of Actress. He co-founded Hyperdub and through his Werk label has brought us Starkey, Lukid and Zomby. I called his Splazsh LP an "essential album for 2010". I was looking forward to his set more than the others.

Despite the hype (NewsicMoos pick of the week, for example), Actress forgot to put the date in his diary. He simply didn't turn up. It's not the first time, of course: he also failed to show at Deviation and Eastern Electrics' bank holiday bash in London a week ago.

My views on artists that don't do their jobs has been made crystal clear on these blog pages before now.

I'm not sure how to react. I can't tweet him because he's deleted his account. And he hasn't updated the Werk Discs website for a couple of years.

There's only one thing for it. I'm boycotting all actresses.

I now dedicate my life to the following:

- an entire absence of Nicole Kidman;

- approximately zero amounts of Michelle Williams;

- no Greta Garbo;

- not a single Halle Berry: not even one;

- a gaping hole where Imelda Staunton should be;

- no Whoopi Goldberg, although to be honest...;

- Grace Kelly? Not on your nelly;

- I'm even boycotting Frances McDormand. Don't try and stop me.

Actress has driven me to this. I'm prepared to unleash a torrent of similar boycotts, so watch out - especially Zomby, Deadboy and Border Community's Lazy Fat People.

No Burial was harmed in the making of this blog post: new tracks from LV, Actress, Pantha Du Prince

Time to find out what noises people have been making and say to them OI YOU LOOK AT YOUR NOISE.

LV and Untold

LV and Untold's track Beacon is so minimal, I'm not sure it exists. It's a terrifying slab of stretched-out, bass-whomping clicks and pokes, but it seems to nestle in a cold ether that exists neither here nor there. It's reality drawn out: the sound of loose cartilage if Burial's bones were all broken.

I like this for the Mount Kimbie remix because it achieves a staggering feat. It smears a load of choppy rave chords over the dubbiness of the original track and manages to make it sound more desolate, more textured, and more like Burial not only with broken bones but with his mealeable body stretched out like uncooked dough.

Actress

If running Werk Discs (Lone, Lukid, Zomby) gave his twiddly-knob hands enough to do, it's not showing because futuristic funkster Actress is busy churning out some massive music on Nonplus Records.

Machine And Voice is his latest, all broken funk and manufractured(TM) staccato bleeps, and not for the first time on this blog, I've found the real gem by flipping over to the b-side. Loomin' does what it says on the tin
(Nonplus Records) and is the highlight here because of the ferocity of the whirring robotics.

Pantha Du Prince

I'm delighted Pantha Du Prince's stand-out track Stick To My Side has not only got a single release, it has also got its own video that seems to mix two filmic moments from last year: the enthusiastic nightime dancing in Where The Wild Things Are and the eerie visit of the dybbuk in A Serious Man.

It's a smashing track that mixes clubbiness with curious off-tunes and it comes on this single with a thumping remix from Efdemi, an all-too-busy workout from Four Tet, and, on the digital version, a heavenly choirs and bells retake from Walls. As I've said before on this blog, I'm discovering house music again.

68 million light years into inky space: Hyperdub is five

If this decade leaves one solitary thing lingering in the world of dance music, it's the evocative urban hauntings of dubstep.

Somehow mashing the bassment ghostliness of slower Massive Attack and the simple languar of techno circa Trance Europe Express, dubstep has trodden a stubborn path.

It has nodded like a gentleman toward the grime-ridden streets of urban R 'n' B and even (via Burial) tipped its hat toward bassline diva vocals. But the genre has remained true to itself - and, some would argue, a little stuck in the groove of late.

Still, that hasn't stopped leading label Hyperdub releasing Hyperdub 5. As you have already deduced, it's a five year celebration of the label that kicked off with Sign of the Dub in 2004 by label boss Steve 'Kode 9' Goodman (pictured).

The compilation features some exclusive gems and old favourites (some of which are on CD for the first time), from the cardboard beat of Zomby's Tarantula, to the heroin-hazed Psycho stabs of Kode 9's Time Patrol, to the broken vocal swoops of Burial's Fostercare (think Maxinquaye flung 68 million light years into inky space).

It's the first time Burial's dug up anything new since Untrue in 2007, and for that alone, Hyperdub 5 is worth more than a few of your pennies.