Off to see the Wizard's Way, the wonderful Wizard's Way... oh never mind

On Friday, I popped to the BFI in Londontown* to watch a film called Wizard's Way.

Wizard's Way is a comedy about a pair of documentary makers who enter the world of online gaming. They meet Windows, a legendary dragon slayer, and his burger-obsessed friend Barry. As the movie progresses, the footage the filmers capture says more about them than it does about their subjects.

I should declare an interest. I'm an extra in Wizard's Way and I'm mentioned in the credits. I know the production team that made it, so there is less chance of me saying anything negative about this film than Hugh Grant's hopes of getting the lead role in a Rupert Murdoch biopic. Still...

If Wizard's Way doesn't end up rated as one of the funniest films of 2013, I'll eat my wizard's hat. There are so many highlights: Windows' hopeless looks to camera; Barry's earnest culinary exploits, the bickering of the film makers, and the terrible game itself. It's a masterclass in comedy editing: the low-budget production and entirely improvised dialogue is chopped to perfection. It helps that one of their editors also worked on Spaced, Slumdog Millionaire and Les Mis.

The film is also full of heart, turning its social freaks into friends you really care about. And the theme tune. The theme tune. Couldn't stop singing it all weekend.

Wizard's Way won the LOCO Discovery Award 2013, hence the screening, and is listed by LOCO's co-founder as one of the five comedy films to watch for in 2013. If Wizard's Way isn't picked up for distribution this year, I'll not only eat my wizard's hat, I'll shove my wand up somewhere unmagical. Because, although I'm biased, it really is hilarious and I want to see it again.

* Hat doff to my travelling companions Dave and Mark, to Guy and Laura for providing accommodation for the night, and to the numerous drinking chums I kept bumping into.

Further Fats: best movies of 2012

Whatever happened to the cheeky New Year number one?

So Bowie didn't get to number one last week.

Great.

That's that, then. Let's Dance remains his most recent musical legacy of any widespread significance. Sigh.

The thin white berk had a great chance to revive an important musical tradition in the UK pop charts: that of the cheeky New Year number one. It should be easy. No-one buys anything apart from headache pills and diet books in the week after new year, so number one should be a walkover.

The new year charts seem dull these days. A guaranteed post-Xmas X Factor chart-topper, some r'n'b guff and that's about it. A drum 'n' bass track tiptoed in at number 100 and it seems Bon Jovi got back in the top 40, but neither are worth tweeting home about.

Iron Maiden famously topped the charts in 1991 with Bring Your Daughter... To The Slaughter, followed by the ridiculous sadistic monks Enigma. Made-up people often took the chance for a cheeky early-January number one, with Mr Blobby and Bob The Builder inexplicably retaining their top positions after Christmas because there was naff all else to buy.

Cotton Eye Joe. Chocolate Salty Balls. Even Daniel Bedingfield's squeaky anthem Gotta Get Thru This. You cannot tell me that those tracks would have had the same chart-dominating impact without lower sales across the rest of the January charts, as great (or otherwise) as they were.

This weekend may well see the return to the top of the charts by Eminem, 50 Cent and that kazoo-voiced triangle man from Maroon 5. If they were covering White Town's Your Woman, or Aphex Twin's We Are The Music Makers, I'd class it as a cheeky new year number one.

They're not. And so it goes.

Further Fats:  Fat Roland's number one album chart death rant (2010)

If it goes bleep, it may or may not be EDM

Many things have changed since this blog first limped onto the internet: the rise of dubstep; the dominance of downloads; Basshunter.

One of the most interesting changes for someone as geeky as me is the crossover into popular culture of the abbreviation "EDM", which stands for Electronic Dance Music.

EDM was virtually unheard of before 2005, but the last two years has seen a resurgence in the phrase, driven, it seems, by a dramatic upsurge in US dance culture. Vice have a cracking article explaining rave culture to Americans, The writer looks across the Atlantic to the crazy Americans and their worship of Deadmau5 and Skrillex, and says of Europe:

"This is a continent that had Born Slippy soundtracking political campaigns and school runs alike. We have politicians who have taken pills and DJs who open youth centres. Us watching you get into ecstasy and dance music is how I imagine you probably feel when you see footage of line-dancing classes in Runcorn and hear TGI Fridays waiters "YEE-HAW!"-ing their way to lonely and inevitable suicide."

Love it.

Labels don't matter, and as soon as you discuss them, it's easy to enter a moronic YouTube clickfest that results in two people drawling "gaaaaaay" at each other until they each literally die of stupidity. Also, this blog attracts many Americans with superb taste in music.

But I'm not convinced by "EDM" either. It stands for Electronic Dance Music. In the UK, we have a name for that. It's 'dance music'. I think that article says as much. We may also call it IDM (Intelligent Dance Music) or techno or electronica, and perhaps IDM suggests a certain lineage via early Warp Records, and perhaps EDM is more energetic and commercial... but if we poke it and it goes bleep, that's enough for us. Or, at least, it should be.

Maybe I should rename this blog Fat Roland On Stuff And That.

Then again, I shouldn't bother. No-one cares anyway: just look at Google Trends.

Further Fats: The devil has all the best IDM (2010)

Hugely Monetarily Volatile: the decline of HMV

While journalists across the UK rush to be the first with a 'His Master's Voice silenced' headline, let me share a few thoughts about HMV, who at the time of writing look set to call in the administrators.

The news is tragic: a true end of an era for chain record shops. I work in a wonderful independent bookshop that knows a thing or two about retail the age of the internet. It is no surprise that HMV couldn't see out January: they launched a massive post-Christmas sale in an effort to avoid breaching banking covenants. It's all about cash flow and HMV were struggling.

The Chief Executive Officer link with Jessops and Threshers will be raked through by the press and maybe suggests a management problem. But let's be honest. How many CDs did you buy a year from HMV?

I still shopped at the Manchester HMV, although the last thing I bought was a while ago. Orbital's Wonky perhaps, because Piccadilly Records had sold out. I've been in since, but I'm not a gamer and I've limited need for the many accessories that adorn their once CD-rich racks. Money talks: if I'd wanted to HMV to survive, I would have spent more with them.

We don't shop local any more, do we? I remember when shop-local campaigns burst out onto the high street, encouraging us to plough our pound coins into the local economy when we began to notice the desolation of the high street caused by major supermarkets. And yet those people who still buy from grocers and from butchers think nothing of ploughing their money into Amazon, me included. Shop local be damned.

HMV will now be in the hands of administrators as they negotiate a future. The shops remain open for now, I believe. The chain sells over a third of all physical music and more than a quarter of all DVDs and Blu-Rays (dammit, modern world, we need a collective term for those formats). I worry about the impact on distributors and its effect on the wider industry. And I worry about Fopp: I hope the administrators see its value.

Spare a thought for the staff, and spare a thought for what has been lost. HMV was once great. Have a look at these kitsch photos of an old HMV from the 1960s. Maybe now this is the age of the independents and we should all finger their racks at the earliest opportunity: the likes of Piccadilly Records are more relevant than ever.

Meanwhile, old Woofy, or whatever the dog is called, sits staring into an abyss. It listens for its master's voice, but all it can hear is faint ZX Spectrum loading bleeps as an echo from the past translated as "one day, HMV, these computers will find you and we will destroy you - it just may take thirty years. Hold on while the tape loads..."

Further Fats: His master has spoken (2007)

Top ten best movies of 2012

Digested all the blog lists summing up 2012 in increasingly shrill tones? Time to click the internet away until 2013? You don't get away with it that easily. There is one final list I would like to shove in your face.

These highlights of 2012 are incomplete because I'm not Mark bloody Kermode and I haven't got 92 hours a day to sit in a darkened room wondering how much better the movie would be in 2D. So I missed The Hobbit, Looper, The Raid, Argo, Holy Motors, Marley, Don't Think, Katy Perry's Part of Me and all those fancy films with subtitles.

Still, I love the cinema. It's the one time when I can truly get away from my troubles / my past / the bailiffs / the police. Here are my top ten movies for 2012, peppered with other titles that didn't make it into the final running.

10 - Ted

I wanted to dislike Ted. Talking teddies are in the same furry league as anamophic animals: all cutesie and moralistic. Leave it to Pixar to get that stuff right.

However, it works wonderfully in the paws of Seth MacFarlane, who played writer, director and bear. It's not subtle (like I said, it's Seth MacFarlane), but it's deliciously funny even before you take into account Patrick Stewart's bitter narration.

And if it gets a generation of plush toy-hugging kiddywinks into smoking crack, what's not to love?

9 - Skyfall

After an adequate cut-and-shut job in Quantum, Bond is back on form as a weakened Daniel Craig battles the mayhem of M's past.

The central premise of Skyfall - a lost hard drive - is so believable, we can forgive all the action film tropes (deux-ex-machina, plot-serving support characters). It's great fun and has a solid Bourne feel about it.

Sam Mendes has a clear affection for the franchise, and Bardem's baddie is psycho-Larry Grayson. Just let's not think about Adele's woeful rhyming couplets.

Intermission

There are two films from 2011 which I wanted to mention. I spent such a long time wanting to see Another Earth, it just seemd so magical and different. I sat down to watch it this year. I fell asleep. This is no comment on the quality of the film, and it just means that the little paragraph raving about it in my 2012 summary has turned into this: a grovelling apology. Sorry, Another Earth.

I did, however, see Martin Scorsese's 2011 movie Hugo which truly was magical although not necessarily anything different. It does that Cinema Paradiso thing of romanticising the flicks to great effect. I'm a Scorsese sceptic (a 'Sceptsese') but Hugo hits home with every single beat. Didn't bother with 3D though. More about that later...

8 - Room 237

The Shining is a movie about a boy with a talking finger, right? Wrong. It's about the carpet. It's about Native Americans. It's about the moon landings.

Five bonkers Shining fans waffle for the entire film about their insane theories about the hidden meanings of Kubrick's horror masterpiece. And it's brilliant.

With more reveal moments than a Rihanna performance, Room 237 fizzles with celluloid geekiness as the theories unfold. Ultimately, though, it's a celebration of the human imagination - nutty or otherwise. Mostly nutty. Link

7 - The Muppets

Yes. The Muppets.

Animal is in rehab. Gonzo is a plumber. Fozzie is in a crap Muppet's tribute band. If only they could get the gang back together for one last time... a bog-standard career revival story becomes a moving celebration in the fuzzy hands of Kermit and his pals.

It's loaded with nostalgia, but the daftness is quite affecting and the Flight of the Conchords music (the white suit moment made me clap with glee) is worth the ticket price alone.

Intermission: thoughts about Prometheus

Die, die, die. I hope you all die. Oh look, you're walking over there. Oh look, now you're walking back again. There's a hostile alien environment. There's a weird gloop. There's a creature inside someone's torso. Someone's talking. They're still talking. Someone's got a mysterious map. If you join all the symbols on the map, it says I CARE ABOUT NONE OF YOU AND I HOPE YOU ALL GET EATEN BY THE ACTUAL ALIEN FROM ALIEN.

6 - Seven Psychopaths

I wrote about Seven Psychopaths on Screen 150, so go there. In short, Martin McDonagh's whimsical world is populated with Coen Brothers characters speaking Tarantino dialogue.

It has the courage to get the McGuffin of a plot where a gangster persues his dog's kidnapper, put it to one side, and let the first-rate actors go town on the best script I've heard at the flicks this year.

Just wait for the DVD to come out. I seriously think this film's IMDb quotes page will get very full. What? You think I'm not serious just because I carry a rabbit? Jeez.

5 - The Artist

I'm not a film critic, so I don't have the luxury of advance screenings. So it goes that The Artist, which was released here in the UK on 30th December 2011, counts as a 2012 film. And what a film.

It may not the first time we've seen a black and white tale of movie makers struggling in the transition to talkies, but The Artist's light touch brings us a perfect balance of drama and humour - as well as hugely effective use of its silence.

It's worth seeing again without all the, er, noise generated by the critics a year ago.

Intermission

21 Jump Street is a stoopid buddy comedy about cops impersonating high school students to bust a drugs ring. The Woman In Black is about a grieving lawyer poking around a village terrorised by a ghost. One is funny and one is scary. One of them has someone being kicked in the goolies. One has someone stepping on a teacup. One has Channing Tatum. One has Harry Potter. Both have vomiting of some kind. Neither are in my top ten.

4 - Chronicle

If Donnie Darko had true superpowers (and no, "thinking of rabbits" doesn't make you superhuman), then you'll probably get Chronicle. It has that free-wheeling freshness that made District 9 similarly entertaining.

Careless teenages are afforded telekinetic abilities, forcing them to either grow up or stay as isolated teens forever. A science fiction story becomes a study of loneliness and anger.

I wrote about this on Screen 150, but essentially it's a stupid premise handled with a fresh eye and an intelligent mind. The plot piles what-if upon what-if until we end up... well, that would be telling. "Andreeeeew!"

3 - Cabin in the Woods

Oh crumbs.

Cabin In The Woods is a horror film, except it's not. It's about college kids in an isolated cabin, but it's not. It's about horrific blood-soaked deaths, but it's not.

This film is unreviewable, so I'll keep it vague. AAAAARGH! AAAAAAARGH! AAAAAAAAAAARGH! WHO THE HELL IS THAT? WHAT IS HAPPENING? OH MY CRAPSIE! AAAARGH! Multiplied. A super-charged tour-de-force where the merest "ding" of a lift's arrival will give you the terrors for weeks afterward. Highly recommended.

Intermission

Unlike many of my friends, I loved The Dark Knight Rises. Much of it doesn't make sense and I suspect the sheen will wear off with a second viewing, but I was in awe at Christopher Nolan's complete world-noir. I'm yet to see a better trilogy, so I was somewhat gutted to bump this from the top ten in favour of James Bond. The nagging plot holes probably sunk the Dark Knight this time.

Meanwhile, The Master may be the darling of everyone's best-of list, but I couldn't shake its poor ending. Philip Seymour Hoffman, Joaquin Phoenix and Amy Adams build the tension terrifically, so believable is the madness in the methods of Hoffman's titular Master. But the movie went for what I can only describe as an 'I drink your milk' moment and it didn't work. Still a cause worth watching for, though.

2 - Moonrise Kingdom

A boy goes missing and Edward Norton's slightly pathetic scoutmaster is on the case. Except, the boy is busy discovering being a grown-up with a weird girl carrying binoculars.

Moonrise Kingdom is constructed from the strange storyboards and camera cues in Wes Anderson's mind, but unlike some of his previous films, it serves this beguiling and hilarious film brilliantly.

Moonrise is a joy from start to finish. Hollywood stars (Willis! Swinton! McDormand! Bill blimming Murray!) play support to the child leads, themselves nailing the uncertainty of adolescence as the ominous clouds roll over the coast. It's eccentric, unsentimental and quite beautiful. This is Life Aquatic On The Shore.
1 - Life of Pi

Young Pi loses his parents to the sea and finds himself in literal choppy waters: uncertain fates await him as he battles to survive with only a vicious boy-eating tiger for company.

Life Of Pi is an incredible achievement. Not only does it map out the dramas of the supposedly unfilmable book with remarkable clarity, the hyper-realistic CGI is unlike anything else I have seen. Anamorphic animals? This tiger's wrath is visceral throughout.

You could argue it handles the novelistic metaphors a little ham-handedly (God, nature, all that stuff), but Life Of Pi is a near-perfect cinematic experience that had me gasping, looking away from the screen, laughing in delight and crying floods of tears. Ooo. Best not mention floods. Sorry, Pi.

The man who brought us Crouching Hulk Hidden Mountain may have brought us his most amazing film yet. Well. Unless you watched it in stupid 3D.

The 3D. Bah humbug. I don't want a pair of odd glasses to come between me and an immersing cinematic experience. Anything that takes your eyes a step away from the action is not a good thing. I saw Life Of Pi in 2D and, honestly, it's fine. It's amazing. It's my film of the year and is up there with Where The Wild Things Are. Anamorphic animals. Again.

Best electronica albums of 2012: number one

What was the best electronica album of 2012? Stephen Hawking's Olympics follow-up where he sang the War of the Worlds soundtrack with Swedish House Mafia? Something the Mayans cooked up with a tub of LSD and a rack of 303s? Or is it something I'm about to spew out of my blog gob? I think you know the answer.

Firstly, let's get stuck into a final selection of also-rans.

[Read other parts of the top ten here: numbers 10-8; numbers 7-5; numbers 4-2. Click here for the whole lot.]

Also-rans

Some of this year's best electronic moments weren't in album form. Burial and Four Tet's haunting reunion for example. The Underworld and Orbital moments at the aforementioned Olympics. Anything Chvrches did.

Back to the albums. I excluded Plug's Back On Time (Ninja Tune) from the running because it's an archive collection. Still love him though. Very much in the running was Gonjasufi's MU.ZZ.LE (Warp), which spent a lot of its time firmly lodged in my brainworm's little ears and would have been in the top ten if there hadn't been so much competition.

Albums that didn't grab me so much but are still worth your time are Shed's powerful The Killer (50 Weapons), the sprightly disco of Lindstrøm's Smalhans (Feedelity) and the beautifully organic Voices From The Lake (Prologue) from Voices From The Lake.

The lie

Time for the number one album of 2012. Except it's not a number one. It's a joint number one. Two halves, if you will. This renders this entire top ten numerically nonsensical, but I tore my wig out with this year's choices and there isn't a single one of these 11 albums I can omit from this listing. Ten? Pah. Everything is a lie. This is the whole Bobby Ewing in the shower thing again. Stop reading, switch off your computer and get some fresh air.

Still here? Okay then. Here are the number one albums of 2012. They're both Manchester artists. I assure you, this is a co-incidence...

 1a - Andy Stott - Luxury Problems (Modern Love)

If Andy Stott had a more interesting name, he’d be Thrumming Basslord Of The Universal Spheres or Mr Monged Out In The Corner Of Sankeys Soap Chewing Himself A New Ulcer. But no, he’s called Andy and he’s operated well under this reviewer’s radar with two albums on Modern Love and a couple of deep-as-hell dub techno EPs in 2011.

It seems for this third album Luxury Problems (Modern Love), he stuck a microphone under the nose of his piano teacher – or possibly nicked her singing-into-hairbrushes tapes - and littered his record with sampled loops. Snippets of phrases are ever-present: always catchy, always heavenly, often rotating in mad gibberish.

But then there's all the stuff lower down. Opening track Numb starts off all very nicely with her layered vocals, but when the track breaks down at the two minute mark into sinister voice cymbals followed by a bass drum with such gravity it would rip the sun from the clouds, this becomes something quite astonishing. Mid-tempo snares and industrial scrapes punch through much of the haze, but this is never far from a terrifying underground thunder (listen to the rising terror of Expecting). The power. The sheer power.

It's a dub techno album that's more versatile than you think, from Lost and Found's angry rumbles and the pure sub bass of Hatch The Plan, to the comparatively brisk house of title track Luxury Problems and the junglism of Up The Box. Stott is in no rush and has the confidence to keep his ideas in check, only opening them up to the listener at exactly the right time. Luxury Problems is measured, like a movie with perfect pacing. The result is addictive.

Like many of the best albums this year, it's not just techno. It's ambient, it's industrial, it's somehow reaching beyond the chalk lines that demarcate EDM/IDM sub-cultures. It's an immersing soundtrack that speaks of the stark Manchester mills and alleys in which this album was no-doubt made. Buy it. Stream it. Be awed and afraid. If you've got Luxury Problems, I feel good for you, son.

1b - Lone - Galaxy Garden (R&S)

Can I review Lone's Galaxy Garden (R&S) without using the much-trodden metaphors in other reviews of strange underwater worlds and video games, each one suggested by the music's contrasts of rich fluidity and punchy simplicity? The day-glo album cover itself suggests a hyper Mario submarine adventure full of bubbles, bleeps and electric octopuses.

Lone is no stranger to this here blog. In 2009, I included Ecstacy and Friends in my albums of the year, rather bluntly calling it Goldie's Timeless without the d'n'b. In 2010, he missed out but still lured me with his lusciousness. And now, here he is at number one. Galaxy Garden is his first album for R&S, a classic Belgian techno label that has more recently become home to James Blake, Juan Atkins and Delphic, and it deserves to be listened to as a classic.

Layers and layers of super magic sparkle dust are sprinkled across the silky smooth instrumentation on this album. Elastic rave chords and acid muzak are washed in filtered chords on The Animal Pattern, while the sweet and delicate Raindance delivers choppy techno and soaking wet snares. There are waterfalls, steel drums and tabla. It couldn't be more lush if you lay naked in the dew grass in a shower of bubbles. Wait. That sounds weird. Let's move on.

Beyond the futuristic fat pads and multi-coloured vibrancy of Galaxy Garden, we also have an album of old influences. Lone has mainlined not only into the glassy hyper-charged world of Rustie, perhaps its most immediate modern comparison, but in places there is Underworld, Kevin Saunderson, early Warp and Tresor. Most notably, the gorgeous glow of tracks New Colour and Dream Girl/Sky Surfer stands as a tribute to the kings of smooth, 808 State. In-your-face gorgeous.

I had this album on 'random' recently. There was a moment as Cthulhu faded away - the fifth track on the album but late on in my listening - where I took off my headphones, pulled out a chair from the corner of the room and let the memory of the tracks echo around my head. It sounded like I was listening to my own past. All the techno I had ever loved was here. That, my friends, is some endorsement.

[Read other parts of the top ten here: numbers 10-8; numbers 7-5; numbers 4-2. Click here for the whole lot.]

Further Fats: other amazing lists on Fat Roland On Electronica.

Best electronica albums of 2012: numbers 4 to 2

We're into the top five of what I believe are the best electronic music albums of 2012. I've wet myself with excitement so many times, I'm having to sit on four layers of towels surrounded by a makeshift wall of mop-heads.

We're into to rock-solid (or should that be bleep-solid) classic territory here. If numbers four to two are this good, my chart-topper is liable to trigger a flood alert.

Inevitably, lots of artists didn't make the top ten. Here are some more also-rans for this year's chart.

[Read other parts of the top ten here: numbers 10-8; numbers 7-5; number 1. Click here for the whole lot.]

Also-rans

Brian Eno's Lux (Warp) missed out on the top ten, as did another big-hitter, Clark. His Iradelphic (Warp) seemed to be Clark-by-numbers to me despite some spine-tingling moments and despite topping my chart three years ago. Shame.

The DJ in me enjoyed I:Cube's mixtape-tastic “M” Megamix (Versatile) and Stunt Rhythms (Big Dada) from my favourite Amon Tobin guise Two Fingers. Also missing out is the noisy improvisation of Carter Tutti Void's Transverse (Mute), an utterly replayable IDM album Steam Days (Border Community) from Nathan Fake and two records from Mouse On Mars: comeback LP Parastrophics (Monkeytown) and follow-up mini-album WOW (Monkeytown).

4 - Grimes - Visions (4AD)

Grimes. Of course, Grimes. I played with the idea of excluding her because she might be too ‘pop’ for the EDM/IDM subculture this blog appeals to. Then I decided only an flipping idiot would exclude her, and although I am an idiot, I’m not a flipping idiot. Because, if you didn’t already know, Visions (4AD) is one of the best albums of the year in any genre.

Among the hazy layered vocals, analogue synth hooks and the light touch that keeps everything in a perfect balance, you’ll find Grimes reclaiming the orchestral stab (Oblivion), bringing back 1980s Prince beats (Colour Of Moonlight) and making a good job of a Mariah wail (Be a Body).

Ah yes. The voice, the voice, the voice. This will make or break the album for you. She’s high, she’s low, she’s delicate and she’s bluesy – almost choral on tracks like Skin. The voice is everywhere, and at its most effective, it is versatile and moving. Tied with such solid instrumentation, if this doesn’t grab you on first play, try it a dozen more times. Deserves to be on as many coffee tables as Moby (ask your grandad).

3 - Actress - R.I.P (Honest Jon’s)

Two years after I excluded Actress’ Splazsh from my end-of-year top ten, here he is making waves in the 2012 list. And what an unexpected treat: Actress has shut his drum machine under the stairs with the hoover, instead producing a collection of loops that take their rhythm from the likes of tape hiss, broken orchestration and eerie rattles. And probably from the hoover too.

R.I.P (Honest Jon's) is a dirty affair, but he allows space for the crackles and nastiness by keeping it simple. Actress has dug down into the essence of each track, finding the trashy distortions and frequencies then ditching anything else that doesn’t fit the groove. It’s puffy, fuzzy but not fussy.

Tracks like Raven are so smothered in hiss, it takes a while to find the rhythm. Somewhere amid the hissing loops of Marble Plexus, I hear a bass drum: I almost write a letter of astonishment to the Telegraph. Serpent has a shaky Splazsh-style rhythm but it’s bedded beneath layers of strings – in the true orchestral sense – and is the best example of why there's no other album like this in 2012. R.I.P is deep, metallic and, erm, dead good.

2 - Orbital - Wonky (ACP)

You wait eight years for a new Orbital album and one comes along at once. It is an unwritten rule of music criticism that comebacks should not work. Chinese Democracy. Free As A Bird. Dark Light*. They often give you the feeling you've been cheated. And yet Wonky (ACP) was Orbital’s best album since the mid-90s, leaving sweating fans everywhere throwing deep shapes of relief.

The throw-back moments are here, for example the Satan remix or the Belfast-style old tape loop reused for Stringy Acid, or indeed in the cut-up vocals starting One Big Moment or the skipping Distractions snares. But Orbital don't rely on these production details: instead they choose to rack up their live punch front-and-centre. New France is stadium dance music at its most euphoric, while title track Wonky is all build-up and build-up designed to wear out the soles of your disco crocs.

The two 2012 gig tickets in my pocket prove I am an Orbital junkie, so maybe I shouldn’t be placing them so high up in this top ten. But comeback albums of this quality are rare, and to top that, this album has a live anthem with as much potency as Chime and as much catchiness as Impact: album closer Where Is It Going equals their absolute best. They couldn't have done this better - and if you need one more reason for the Satan-bringers appearance in this top ten, this just so happens to be my 666th blog post on Fat Roland on Electronica. Even a top blog gives the right number etc etc...

[Read other parts of the top ten here: numbers 10-8; numbers 7-5; number 1. Click here for the whole lot.]

* You remember Dark Light, right? No?
Further Fats: Best electronica albums of 2011

Best electronica albums of 2012: numbers 7 to 5

This is my count-down of the best electronic albums of 2012. Dozens of discs were whittled into a select ten that your reel-to-reel mp3 player should not be without.

Before we get stuck into the middle bit of the top ten, here are some albums that didn't make it through.

[Read other parts of the top ten here: numbers 10-8; numbers 4-2; number 1. Click here for the whole lot.]

Some also-rans

It pained me to exclude two amazing albums from this top ten. The first was Leila's between-the-eyes electro on U&I (Warp), much of it worth checking out by Orbital fans, while Lukid's Lonely At The Top (Werkdiscs) is my number 11 in a list of 10.

I reviewed several albums for Electronic's debut magazine, and the one that sticks in my head is Sterac's smooth remaster of Secret Life of Machines (100% Pure) and Last Step's deliberately dream-driven Sleep (Planet Mu) in which Venetian Snares does accessible.

Thomas Datt's punchy trance album Picking Up The Pieces (Discover) was likeable,
The Gaslamp Killer's Breakthrough (Brainfeeder) wasn't quite the breakthrough I was hoping for but still had a smoky charm.

I need to mention Dave Monolith's Welcome (Rephlex) which I listened to too late for last year's countdown (it was first mentioned here and yes, it's a masterpiece), while finally I've never quite tuned into the critically-lauded Shackleton's wavelength (Music For the Quiet Hour (Woe To The Sceptic Heart)).

7 - Squarepusher – Ufabulum (Warp)

A welcome return to form from the brother of Ceephax Acid Crew. Ufabulum (Warp) may not forge new territory, but it brims with trademark chords, clipped snares and bonkers digitalism reminiscent of Go Plastic. The d’Demonstrator funk is reigned in as is the live bass, and this, uh, albulum is stronger for it. (That's now a word.)

Opening track 4001 is a hymn to hands-in-the-air IDM, a sound more evident in the first half of the long-player with much of the deformed compression saved for later in the record. In fact, his light touch is faintly comical, such as the computer game bleeps of Unreal Square, the Plone-style tunefulness of Stadium Ice and the punchy power chord theme-tune of Energy Wizard.

By the time we get to closer Ecstatic Shock, the melody is suffocated by farting bass and stop-start beats: it reminds us the machines are truly in control and we are a long way from the Squarepusher as the saviour of live electronics. Maybe he could have pushed more boundaries, but this is his best album since Ultravisitor and, whisper it, a bit of a relief.

6 - Vessel - Order of Noise (Tri Angle)

Vessel seems to have come from nowhere – well, actually, Bristol – to produce one of the surprise highlights of 2012. Not really techno, not really house, not really anything, he signed to the influential Tri Angle label to become labelmates of Balam Acab and oOoOO for his debut album.

The strength of Order of Noise (Tri Angle) is its understatement. Lache, for example, shuffles along nicely, while the slow breaths of Silten are quite lovely. But then Vessel will grab some Global Communication-style tones or Leftfield warmth from somewhere, or perhaps a simple drum fill, a suspended chord or a sub-bassline, and suddenly the simple motifs become something quite affecting.

Villane sounds like Thom Yorke in his death-throes, while I love the whooping halfstep dub of Images of Bodies. The chugging Court Of Lions is a highlight, all tick-tock disco and wafer thin ambience topped off with a late-in-the-day four-line refrain. Vessel commented on this site in 2008 that he was "trying his ass off". Taken as a whole, Order of Noise is such a complete vision and a triumph of ideas, it can be considered as one of the most effective debuts of recent times.

5 - Flying Lotus - Until The Quiet Comes (Warp)

Describing the new Flying Lotus album is a bit like trying to describe the weather: we all seem to know what it looks like, what it feels like, and there are plenty of places on the internet where you can get much more information than from anything I can jab into my worn Logitech keyboard. Although I'm not sure Elijah Wood appeared in a weird amputee fantasy video to warn us about an approaching cold front (Tiny Tortures).

There was a danger with Until The Quiet Comes (Warp) that FlyLo would begin to believe his astral zodiac cosmogrammic shizzle and become as nakedly overrated as the proverbial emperor’s clothes. Think how UNKLE went. Instead, he has taken a small step away from the free jazz claustrophobia of his last work and produced a beautiful odyssey that is easier on the ears but no less fascinating.

The jazz is back as are the guest vocalists (See Thru To U), but the album really shines in the stranger corners: the playground insanity of Putty Boy Strutt, that beguiling “oh no” refrain of All The Secrets, and the African influences throughout, especially on the steel drums of Yesterday//Corded. Strange, thoughtful and delicate, and great for all weathers.

[Read other parts of the top ten here: numbers 10-8; numbers 4-2; number 1. Click here for the whole lot.]

Further Fats: Best electronica albums of 2010.