Best electronic albums of 2017: joint number one

1 – Clark – Death Peak (Warp Records)
1 – Jlin – Jlin – Black Origami (Planet Mu)

Two things to say right off the bat. Firstly, I missed out doing a number two because that's what you're meant to do when you have two big number ones. Secondly, it's such a cop-out to have two joint winners of album of the year.

Let me explain. It's a head / heart thing, and no two albums summed up that tension more than the two I'm presenting here.

Jlin's Black Origami is a perfect expression of percussion, where all the fury and fire of 2017 has been propelled into a clinically devastating work. You know you're in a different world altogether when you have a child saying into your headphones, "you’re all going to die down here" and for a moment, you believe it.

This album may be abrasive on first listen, but let the beats become the music: let the spikes of sound become waves. That said, this is not an album you feel. It seems to plug itself into you physically - body music full of sub-bass and minimalism. An album for the head that just happens to have rewritten the footwork genre.

Meanwhile, Clark's Death Peak twanged my heart trumpet like no other. I've shown plenty of love for Clark before, whether I'm digging up facts about him, awarding him the second best album of 2014, or the best album of 2009. So it's no great surprise to see him here again.

The reason is simple: Death Peak was the one album throughout 2017 I returned to again and again. I played it to pieces. I couldn't escape the "buzzing arpeggios, ambient fogs, analogue snarls", as I said in my review for Electronic Sound. And, like Jlin, more terrifying children, this time in the form of a choir singing "we are your ancestors". I'm beginning to think that this Clark album, in equal parts baleful and hopeful, is his most complete yet: an emotive journey from start to finish.

Jlin for the head. Clark for the heart.

It's much better having two at the top. Yin and yang. Sweet and sour. Shock and awe. Ant and Dec. Little and Large. Mitchell and Webb. Morecambe and-- wait, hold on, I'm just naming comedy duos now.

Thanks for reading my blog in 2017. With the help of today, this year I've totalled 165 blog posts, which means it's my most blogged year ever. Views range from a couple of hillbillies and their can of beans to hundreds of salivating music addicts, and just this week I've had over a thousand clicks for an old blog post about Autechre. Probably a bot. Every reader is huuugely appreciated, so thank you.

Hur hur. Bot. Sounds like bottom.

Sigh. See you in 2018.





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Best electronic albums of 2017: the final also-rans

You have been so patient waiting for me to parp out this long list. We're nearly there. In fact, I can reveal that this year's NUMBER ONE BESTEST ALBUM is a joint number one. It'll be the first time the top spot has been shared since Andy Stott and Lone split the accolade in 2012.

Before we get there, here are some big and big-ish names that didn't make my list.

Perhaps Sampha's soul is too straight-up to be considered for inclusion here, but the instrumentation on the Mercury-winning Process (Young Turks) was top notch. I also fell for the alluring ethereal pop on Colleen's A Flame My Love, A Frequency (Thrill Jockey). I was perhaps less personally taken with the prog tendencies of James Holden & The Animal Spirits' The Animal Spirits although it's clearly a very good album indeed.

Mount Kimbie surprised me (pleasantly) with the post-punk vibes of Love What Survives (Warp Records). Vintage synth fans take note. I found Clap! Clap!'s A Thousand Skies (Black Acre) in some ways exhausting, but then again that album is a spaceship ride, not a Sunday drive. And I doff my hat to Fever Ray's Plunge (Rabid Records), a trip for fans of quirky pop and big fat keyboards.

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith got plenty of accolades this year for her new-agey The Kid (Western Vinyl) vocal-led, as did Kelela on the astonishing debut album Take Me Apart (Warp Records). Both albums are worth your time, particularly if vocal-led albums tickle your tassels. And finally for this section, maybe start your 2018 resting in the hot dappled glow of lackadaisical sounds on Laurel Halo's Dust (Hyperdub).





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Best electronic albums of 2017: three

3 – Errorsmith – Superlative Fatigue (PAN)

Remember the dirty filters Daft Punk used on their debut album Homework? They went biddidy-dow biddidy-dwow baddidy-pyow boddidy-pyooo, and so on.

Superlative Fatigue is full of those kind of filters. They are the best filters ever. There's something so fat and dirty about Errorsmith's first album in 13 years - everything is banged up to the most bangiest bang ever. If I was dancing to this, it would be the best dancefloor ever. There's acid and trap and techno and house and the BEST MUSIC EVER.

Those superlatives getting on your nerves, yeah? Funny, that.

Every fart and every pow is a treat on this album. The filtered gasping vocal on My Party is all kinds of stupid, title track Superlative Fatigue is an absolute tune piped through a tonne of scaffolding, and Retired Low-level Internal Server sounds like, well, an old bit of computer kit on its way out... but with more heart.

An album which came late in the year, but thank goodness it did.



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Best electronic albums of 2017: four

4 – Shinichi Atobe – From The Heart, It's A Start, A Work Of Art (DDS)

Give me eggs, flower and fairy dust, and I'll bake you a cake. You may want to spit it into the bin, but it will contain all the right ingredients. Even if the end result was lacking, it is a cake.

Cakes contain fairy dust, right?

Give me the ingredients to produce house music, and I might produce something okay given the right YouTube instructional videos and Ableton training sessions. Those that have heard my 2012 recorded output may argue that....

However, some people can take basic ingredients and make something amazing.

I present to you the simple dubby house rhythms of From The Heart, It's A Start, A Work Of Art. Atobe is a Japanese producer clouded in mystery, but I would love to know why he, say, plonked the snarling air-gun percussion over the terribly sad Republic - it's a stroke of genius.

From the glimmering work-out of Regret to the echoing shimmy of closer First Plate 3, this collection of rediscovered old tracks is full of sparkling, driving techno in the vein of Jon Hopkins and Four Tet. It works more slowly - no builds or swoops here - but the result is no less rewarding.

I bet Shinichi Atobe uses fairy dust in his cakes. No easy streams to embed, so here's a YouTube rip of Republic. Give it time...



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Best electronic albums of 2017: sorry about the fake news joke

Let's pause the countdown once more. Here are some tasty techno tidbits which, although worthy of your attention, just didn't make the grade for the final top 20. Consider them as pathetic rejects, but also really brilliant albums wot you should listen to.

Here's some Fake news (ha ha): Nathan Fake nearly made it into my final 20 with Providence (Ninja Tune). He seems to have beaten down his writer's block with some impressively chunky synth work. Peverelist's Tessellations (Livity Sound Recordings) matched beefy bass with airy ambience. I definitely detected some Stranger analogue Things in Pye Corner Audio's superb The Spiral (Death Waltz Recording Company) Stranger analogue things

Just finished thowing shapes and/or having it large? Enjoy some amazing post-club non-bangers in Teengirl Fantasy's 8AM (Planet Mu). Two decades of German techno were represented on Thomas Brinkmann's Retrospektiv (Third Ear Recordings), with it all feeling like an odd basement party with
Kraftwerk. And Manchester's Modern love label pumped out some staggering, paranoid techno on Turinn's 18 1/2 Minute Gaps (Modern Love).

Not enough? Then try some moody pounders on 400PPM's Fit for Purpose (Avian), shiny electronic funk on Sinjin Hawke's debut First Opus (Fractal Fantasy). beguiling afro-euro dancehall techno on STILL's ungoogleable I (PAN) or Andrew Weatherall's positively polite Qualia (Hoga Nord).

Phew. We're nearly there.





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Best electronic albums of 2017: five

5 – Bicep – Bicep (Ninja Tune)

Here it is. The top five best albums of 2017. What shall we start the top five with? Nose-flute ballads from Peru? A compilation of Asda in-store radio jingles? The sound of the universe dying?

No, let's have some irresistible prog house in the form of Bicep. Matt McBriar and Andy Ferguson have produce a stormer here. Although covered in a coffee-table sheen, every beat feels urgent, every skipping snare a call to action.

Glue should have every Moderat fan mopping their broken heart off the floor. And the filtered ravey chirrups in Rain will have Chicane devotees salivating.

Let's not forget where Bicep came from. Producers, yes, DJs, yes. They were music bloggers, which is very much the greatest form of art. In a million years, when the columns of empire have crumbled and humanity is a mere sliver of carbon amid the layers of the earth, they will talk of music bloggers. "Do you remember Bicep's blog," whisper the future aliens. "Yes, and we remember Fat Roland too."

THANKS, future beings, thanks.



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Best electronic albums of 2017: six

6 – Rhys Celeste– Microlith (Fundamental Records)

When I am dead and gone, and my ashes have been loaded into a Casio keyboard and cannoned into the heart of the sun, I'd like to think there'd be a lasting tribute to me. A statue, a bench, a catch of the day at my local fishmongers, anything really.

After we lost Rhys Celeste earlier this year, Fundamental Records took his final recording sessions and produced Microlith, named after the Maltese knob-twiddler's pseudonym. That's way better than a statue or a blue plaque or having a piece of Ikea furniture named after you. (*adds that one to the list*)

This album is really nicely done. Chattering Roland drum machines splash rhythmic colour throughout, and you're never far away from a puddle of squelchy acid. No frills here - just lashings of lo-fi and buckets of reverb. It has a similar vibe to Aphex Twin's comeback material, but warmer.

There is a down side. It looks like this is a vinyl-only release. Actually, this is good news - what a lovely tribute to the music. But it does mean not much digital traction here. Do track it down if you can.

Totem pole. I've decided. I want a totem pole. Inside a Tesco Metro.



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Best electronic albums of 2017: Color, noise and more

The top 20 best electronic albums are progressing nicely, but let's take a break to stuff some more also-rans down your music pipe so you can smoke every last one of them. Here's a hotch-potch of various genres that didn't quite make the cut.

I enjoyed getting greased up on the oily, dirty electro on Patricia's Several Shades Of The Same Color (Spectral Sound), while it's worth checking in on Le Car's Auto-Reverse (Clone Classic Cuts) and its old-school claps, blaps and bleeps. Oh and let's not forget Floating Points' sandswept but somewhat noodly Reflections - Mojave Desert (Pluto).

Here are some noisy ones for you. Tzusing's 東方不敗 (L.I.E.S.) put the "angst" into "bangers" if you ignore some of the letters. Emptyset made a load of instruments for Borders (Thrill Jockey) to produce some nicely rasping sound design. And Pharmakon's Contact (Sacred Bones Records) prompted me to open my Electronic Sound review with: "The hairy wet artwork of Contact will grab your attention way before the screaming begins."

Definitely make some mp3 space for Biogen's posthumous retrospective Halogen Continues (Trip) and its lovely Icelandic IDM that spins from zaniness to glistening ambience. And James 'Drexciya' Stinson's back catalogue popped out some unreleased work in the form of Jack Peoples' Laptop Cafe (Clone Aqualung Series) - just imagine if IDM-heads took over Radio 2. Also worth a nosey is his classic work as The Other People Place: the reissued Lifestyles Of The Laptop Café (Warp Records) has some great Drexiyan IDM, overlooked first time round.

One thing I should mention before I forget: Stinson aside, I've tried to steer clear of reissues, soundtracks and compilations in this end-of-year round-up. I have too much on my list as it is. So apologies to Leftism 22 and Kraftwerk, and to Oneohtrix Point Never, Winged Victory For The Sullen, and the various people who did Fabric and DJ Kicks compilations. SORRY, EVERYONE.





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