The number one best electronic music album of 2021: Koreless – Agor

Fat Roland's Best Electronic Music Albums of 2021 presents one final brilliant album:

Koreless – Agor (Young) 

The best electronic album of 2021 is Koreless's Agor. That's it. Decision made. Even Bleep agree with me. Please write this in your books because the decision cannot be changed.

Who am I kidding. My annual number one list over the years is full of albums that I wouldn't make number one now. Why didn't I make Luke Abbott number one in 2010? Or Kiasmos the best album of 2014? I'm such a little fickle douche.

Anyhoo. Let's double down. This is definitely the number one bestest long-player of the year, and if you disagree with me, you are a poopy poop-head.

Listening back to Lewis 'Koreless' Roberts's older releases is revealing. 2011's 4D is rooted in bass music, but the 'woooah' vocals are somewhat post-dubstep, and try so hard to be Hyph Mngo. It doesn't entirely work. What's curious about that is that vocals are such a central part of Agor.

Here's a moodboard for the first two tracks on Agor. An electrical burst. A splash of static. Lilting ambience. Images of the sea on a sunny day. Frequencies tighten and suddenly the synth is a rhythm. My tongue waters. I imagine clouds sweeping the sky above me. A honky siren kicks me in the face. I lose my balance. The sweeping ambience darkens. A fog lifts me into the air. I can see nothing but I know I'm weightless. The noise drops out guillotine-quick. I fall flat on my face into a dumpster.

THANKS for that, Koreless. Later on, on White Picket Fence, come the voices. A harpsichord-soft melody accompanies a crystalline chorister. I'm briefly confused. The choral voice fractals into scattered samples, echoing with the ever-more shining ambience. I momentarily forget how to breathe.

And so it goes. Loud, quiet. Chorister, ambience. Bursting dynamics, resonant silence. A stuttering vowel takes the place of a synth on Joy Squad, and suddenly we're in a beatless rave at the end of the universe. Shellshock is as close as the second half of the album comes to a straight house rhythm, complete with crowd-teasing EDM-style drops – and there isn't a drum in earshot.

We've been edging towards this kind of drum-free trance-ish classic for some time. Lorenzo Senni comes to mind, as does Nathan Micay. I think you have to get used to the vocals – it's all a bit Kyrie Eleison / liturgical at times. But embrace that and you have the most stunning album of 2021. As Bleep's far superior write up says, "Forget cinematic — this is the sound of waking up on an alien planet and coming to terms with an entirely different ecosystem."

So there we go. A Bangor beatmaker turned Glasgow producer pops out a debut album of shiny techno, and quite rightly has been bigged up by Caribou and Jamie xx. It's remarkable audio feat after remarkable audio feat: incredible to hear an experiment in sound design that is so entertaining. Quite rightly, it's a the top of my pile of 90 albums.

Thank you for reading my blog gubbins in 2021. It has been a less bloggy year than usual, but that's okay. I've been busy building a lifesize blue-tac sculpture of H from Steps or building a lifesize sculpture of Ronan Keating using only cardboard, sellotape and dozen dead octopuses or building a lifesize model of the universe from Plumber's Mait putty. Ah such original and varied content.

See you in 2022.

This is part of a series of the Best Electronic Music Albums of 2021. Read it all here.

Top ten best electronic music albums of 2021: Ross From Friends – Tread

Fat Roland's Best Electronic Music Albums of 2021 presents another brilliant album:

Ross From Friends – Tread (Brainfeeder) 

Rachel from Friends walks into a room. "Hello everyone, I have hair," she says, and already Joey from Friends is humping the sofa.

Monica from Friends shoos Joey from Friends away from the sofa. "That's not a neat thing to do," says Monica from Friends because she likes things neat.

Phoebe from Friends sets fire to the flat because it's a whacky things to do. "Could I *be* anymore on fire?" says Chandler from Friends as he's reduced to smoking ashes.

"Hey guys, I made an album," says Ross From Friends, but they're not listening because they're too busy making lazy jokes tinged with homophobia.*

And what an album. We've spent the best part of two years not clubbing much, so it has been a pleasure to mainline Tread into my stupid brain. Boogie in the discotheque of my imagination. Felix Clary Weatherall built his own Ableton plug-in for the album to allow for a freer form of recording. The result is a work that sounds truly live.

Highlight follows highlight. The Daisy's trippy IDM is a waterfall of tumbling sadness. Love Divide takes a more straight Bonobo route, while filtering power pop vocals into passing fractals. The slow hip hop beats of Spatter/Splatter background what sounds like a choir prepping for war. Run is pure 80s pop chewed up and spat out by Boards of Canada. Life In A Mind is a microphone-brandishing diva riding a sonic spaceship like a skateboard.

For me, Revellers is the crowning glory, but that accolade will be different for everyone. I recommended this track on my Twitter a month ago because, and I quote, "I just put it on, instinctively made a furrowed 'tuuuune' face, and whacked the volume right up." Actually, maybe XXX Olympiad is my fave: those skippy drums land so nicely.

Ross from Friends walk into a room and says sadly, "hey, let's talk about dinosaurs". Get lost, Ross from Friends. We've already got a Ross From Friends. He's a keeper.

*I am aware that I'm criticising lazy writing while making the hackest route-one reference I could think of when talking about the music artist Ross From Friends. Oh dear.

This is part of a series of the Best Electronic Music Albums of 2021. Read it all here.

Top ten best electronic music albums of 2021: µ-Ziq – Scurlage

Fat Roland's Best Electronic Music Albums of 2021 presents another brilliant album:

µ-Ziq – Scurlage (Analogical Force)

Things to do in Scurlage, which is a bit of countryside outside Swansea:

Go on a herbal walk which, according to a TripAdvisor reviewer, "is not easy with flip-flops".

Go to the Culver Hole cave which, according to a TripAdvisor reviewer, is "not too challenging with good footwear".

Explore the Gower Peninsular which, according to a TripAdvisor reviewer, requires decent boots so as to "avoids cuts and misadventure on the slippery rocks".

Things to do when listening to Scurlage, Mike Paradinas's first album of new works for donkey's years:

Gasp at the sinister atmosphere of the drum-rolling and ominous Blakers Loop.

Delight at the ping-pong percussion in the AFXian Preston Melodics.

Boogie on down to the insistent melody in the basement disco track Slade Treacher.

Mime playing a video game to the fun micro-techno of Oxwich & Penrice.

Get stupidly high to the credit-roll resolution of the sparking Blauwasser.

Lie gasping and spent as the murky Strawberry Aero closes out proceedings.

The front cover of Scurlage is an image of Welsh landmark Arthur’s Stone. The story goes that King Arthur removed a stone in his shoe. He chucked it towards Swansea, and by the time it had reached Swansea Bay, it was massive enough to be photographed for a µ-Ziq album cover.

I like to think of the idea of this album starting as a stone in Paradinas's mind. Given the extra time of lockdown, it grew into something substantial and, I'd argue, one of his best albums to date. In fact, I'd go as far to say if this was µ-Ziq's debut album, it would be up there with Selected Ambient Works. Every track is a banger wrapped in gauze and left to ride the thermals of the south Wales coastline.

The moral of the story is:

Always holiday in Wales because you might end up producing an album.

Be careful of where you throw stones because they can suddenly become massive.

Wear sensible shoes. Always wear sensible shows.

This is part of a series of the Best Electronic Music Albums of 2021. Read it all here.

Top ten best electronic music albums of 2021: LoneLady – Former Things

Fat Roland's Best Electronic Music Albums of 2021 presents another brilliant album:

LoneLady – Former Things (Warp)

I'm a Mancunian. Born in Manchester, raised in Manchester, still in Manchester. I'm possibly the least travelled person in the country. What this has given me is a strong identification with my city, and when the Madchester scene exploded all around me, I was a happy baggy lad indeed.

What I've connected less with is pre-rave Manchester. All the post punk stuff. And when people talk about LoneLady, they're likely to mention this more gothic past: Joy Division and crumbling mills and downtrodden guitar misery, things I've neuralysed from my memory Men In Black-style, with a sharp flash of glow-stick.

So when Julie Campbell brought the synths to the fore for Former Things, she caught my attention as never before. Opening single (There Is) No Logic was a body-popping, head-bouncing, spleen-jiving delight. The keyboards weren't just foregrounded: they were being dropped on your head from the top of multi-storey car parks. I was instantly hooked. What followed lived up to the hype, from the hesitant The Catcher to the downbeat closer Terminal Ground.

In Electronic Sound (yes, that again), I lauded the "feather-light strumming and electronic orchestral plucks" and the evocation of "Kraftwerk’s ‘Home Computer’ stricken by a blue screen" and the "feeling of doubt, of paranoia, of uncertainty, albeit threaded with memorable hooks: all the things that make for truly landmark pop music."

The unsettled nature of her previous albums, as skittery as someone walking the backstreets of East Manchester on purge night, is carried through into this album. Although this time there are touchstones of everything from Juan Atkins to Cabaret Voltaire to Bananarama. Techno punky synthpop. Punk poppy technosynth.

Look into this glow stick. Deep into this glow stick. You will give this album a spin. Repeat after me. You will give this album a spin. There, that should do it.

This is part of a series of the Best Electronic Music Albums of 2021. Read it all here.

Top ten best electronic music albums of 2021: Lone – Always Inside Your Head

Fat Roland's Best Electronic Music Albums of 2021 presents another brilliant album:

Lone – Always Inside Your Head (Greco-Roman)

Here, Lone, take a seat. Sit on the sofa, I'll take the futon. Are you comfortable? Have a cigar. You want to watch Netflix? Take an emery board, get those nails nice and neat. Put your feet up on the cat, that's fine. Help yourself to anything in the fridge. Yes, you can snuggle up to my Henry hoover. You make yourself at home.

He might as well move in. Lone has trudged around this part of my blog more often than me. In 2009, Ecstasy And Friends made my top ten end-of-year list then promptly blew my speakers. In 2012, he was my joint favourite album of the year. I called Galaxy Garden "in-your-face gorgeous." I say "gorgeous" a lot. For his album Reality Testing, my fourth favourite album of 2014, I raved about a "same kind of melancholia Brian Eno once gave earnest rock bands: a new tone for Lone." In 2016, I called Levitate a "junglist hymn to Good Looking Records and Goldie". 

Lone is back in my top ten list, back home where he belongs. In preparation for this album, he's been posting 'mood board' photographs on his social media. A fuzzy telly pic of Goldie. Old pics of what I think are Fluke and the Sneaker Pimps perhaps. But it's My Bloody Valentine and the Cocteau Twins that provide the main influence for this eighth album.

This is a hazy Lone. Clouds of heavenly vocals settle over floating streams of warm ambience. Slow trip hop rhythms amble care-free as lazy synth lines eddy and swirl. And it's oh-so-1990s, with flecks of happy trance and liquid drum and bass. I can even spot that new age flute sample so beloved of Enigma back in the day. Is that a Higher Intelligence Agency bleep sample? It feels very similar. Ah, this puts me in a good place.

Perhaps the centrepiece of Always Inside My Head is Akoya, a glowing puddle of ambient shoegaze smoked over with the angelic vocals of Morgane Diet – the album's best evocation of the extraordinarily personal and deep new Lone we find ourselves faced with. So soft, and yet so substantial.

No, you may not use the toilet. You can do it in the garden shed like all my other visitors. I like having you around, Lone, but limits are limits. Pssscht.

This is part of a series of the Best Electronic Music Albums of 2021. Read it all here.

Top ten best electronic music albums of 2021: GCOM – E2-XO

Fat Roland's Best Electronic Music Albums of 2021 presents another brilliant album:

GCOM – E2-XO (!K7 Records) 

This is Global Communication. Y'know. The ones who did 76:14. No, you're not taking this seriously. Listen to what I'm saying. This is Tom Middleton's solo relaunch of the greatest ambient project of modern times. You're not listening. This is big. This is seriously big. The GC bit stands for Global Communication. Are you hearing how massive this is? Hey! No, come back. Stop running. TALK TO ME. STOP RUNN--

Ahem. Sorry for bothering you. 

As with previous instalments in this best-of list, I had a chance here to revisit my review of this album for Electronic Sound magazine. The review, published a month or two ago, contains the following sentences:

"A Martian space whale mounts the International Space Station."

"A manatee from Jupiter swallows Elon Musk whole."

The review also contains some sensible bits, such as: "Opener Noctis Ultimus is Max Richter orbiting Saturn, stratospherically enriched by the swooning cello of Susie Blankfield. It leads us into the vacuum-packed intensity of XO Transmission #1, written with the late French IDM producer Thomas Denis. With its jagged asteroid belts of sharp, outlandish rhythms, the pairing feels like Westeros invaded by Autechre..."

So that should give you an idea of the tone of this Global Communication reboot. It spans the universes of modern classical and electronic composition with aplomb.

I referred to this in the magazine as "a sister planet to 76:14". I can come up with no greater compliment. A real treat of lockdown was to receive their impressive box set Transmissions, but this truly tops it. 

This is part of a series of the Best Electronic Music Albums of 2021. Read it all here.

Top ten best electronic music albums of 2021: Eris Drew – Quivering In Time

 

Fat Roland's Best Electronic Music Albums of 2021 presents another brilliant album:

Eris Drew – Quivering In Time (T4T LUV NRG)

Let's start this review by widening things out a little – in a rather unexpected direction. The KLF's gonna rock ya.

In 2017, Eris Drew revealed her belief in a healing goddess power she called The Motherbeat. She did this in a YouTube video which pinpointed her revelation as coming "23 years after the fire". Which fire? Stay with me...

In the same year, 2017, writer Daisy Eris Campbell directed the KLF's art show comeback. The KLF's big return was massive news for us electronic music heads. And what the KLF lads do 23 years previously? They burnt a million quid, to the shock of tabloid naysayers everywhere. One of the most famous pop music fires after Jacko's Pepsi hair shocker.

So in 2017, Eris revealed the Motherbeat and another Eris helped the KLF return to the art world, both of which happened "23 years after the fire". 23 is also a number associated with Eris, the goddess worshipped in the satirical religion of Discordianism. The KLF built their situationist publicity mongering around the world of Eris the goddess – it's where "The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu" comes from. Erises everywhere!

Phew. Let's get back to the most important Eris, namely the one who here presents her debut album on the label she runs with partner Octo Octa, also an amazing producer. Quivering In Time is brilliant. Recorded in rural New Hampshire, there's a joyful spirituality here that expresses itself as pure dancefloor mayhem. Poppy house beats! Rolling breaks and perky melodies! A rogue clavichord! 90s vocal interjections! 

If Eris Drew was hoping to channel the wild spirit of the KLF in her work, it's here in spades. The Loaded-sampling The Message / Ride Free is pure pop, the shimmering vibes on Quivering In Time is straight from Trancentral, and Pick 'Em Up's melody is as direct as any horned mu-mu chant.

It's just so damn fun. The Motherbeat is pumping loud and clear.

This is part of a series of the Best Electronic Music Albums of 2021. Read it all here.

Top ten best electronic music albums of 2021: Eomac – Cracks

Fat Roland's Best Electronic Music Albums of 2021 presents another brilliant album:

Eomac – Cracks (Planet Mu)

t'ndluoW ti eb gniyonna fi I etorw yreve drow sdrawkcab? Thankfully, the only backwards thing on this forward-thinking techno is his reverse-cameo name.

Ian 'Eomac' McDonnell had produced his previous two albums in Berlin, a busy city which hosts (checks the internet) the longest open-air gallery in the world, 200.000 pet dogs and Europe's most visited zoo. For this new album, he moved to rural Ireland where they have (checks the internet) an obelisk and an old friary.

This lovely beaty techno on this Lakker chap’s third album is dour stuff. The Akala-sampling Mandate For Murder has all the grumpy righteousness of a Twitter account. The spiralling chords on What Does Your Heart Tell You? sounds like an IDM tuned sandpapered over and over again. Reasons To Live has a whistle melody that's as chirpy as a chimberly sweep trapped in a sewer.

It's gorgeous, it's dirty, it's scratchy and strobing and Shamen-ic, and the best album that came out of a reliably excellent Planet Mu Records in 2021.

That Akala sample, by the way? It was from a comment in which rapper Akala responded to a newspaper column by a racist, who shall remain unnamed here. He said: "When you refer to humans as cockroaches, that is a mandate for murder." A timely reminder that this annual countdown is a celebration of music that brings people together, a very human unity through music that is needed more than ever. 

This is part of a series of the Best Electronic Music Albums of 2021. Read it all here.