Best electronic music albums of 2024: from I.JORDAN to Kiasmos via Jon Hopkins

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far.

I. JORDAN: I AM JORDAN (Ninja Tune)
What's your name again? Oh yeah. Jordan. Hello, Jordan. This debut album has had all sorts of accolades, and rightly so. Colossal tunes abound, BPM turned up for the heavy club bits, and moodier instrumental when he wants to go introspective. Well done, er, thingy, whatever your name is.

Iglooghost: Tidal Memory Exo (LuckyMe)
This is the fourth album, I think, from Mr Ghost. It's powerful energetic stuff, like a steam train or me doing my boxercise. There's the big beats we'd expect from a LuckyMe release, but then there's his moody vocals which equally add humanity and frighten the pants of us. It's a real mood, this one. 

Jeff Mills: The Trip – Enter The Black Hole (Axis)
The Detroit techno wizard's "space opera". From my Electronic Sound review: "This is black hole noir, with clouds of ambience, a nebulae of woody xylophones, discordant free jazz, even a foxy organ here and there. If it’s not an opera, it’s a zero-gravity ballet: spaceman Jeff is clearly having fun." 

Jill Fraser: Earthly Pleasures (Drag City)
Modular synth genius Fraser mines her many years of composing for this collection of tunes created using her custom-built Serge modular system. Its twinkling frequencies are hymn-like in their elegance. Another excuse to plug an Electronic Sound interview? Of course. I have to get my earthly pleasures where I can.

Jlin: Akoma (Planet Mu Records)
Bjork turns up on the opening track on the third album from queen of footwork Jlin. So I'm won over. The job is done. Pop Bjork on the first track and I'm yours. Philip Glass appears too – best dinner party ever. It has been seven years since Black Origami, and Jlin is as jittery and as restless as ever.

Jon Hopkins: Ritual (Domino Recording Co)
This was originally written for an installation on an ice rink. The music is quiet and weightless, buzzy and airy, and designed to be heard in one sitting. Unlike actual ice skating, which is ankle-hurty and has me crying on the sidelines within five minutes. Worth a listen, but only while we wearing proper normal shoes. (Artwork pictured above.)

Julia-Sophie: forgive too slow (Ba Da Bing!)
Let's get this out of the way – here's my Electronic Sound interview with Julia-Sophie. I hope they're paying me for the clicks. There was much to love about Julia-Sophie's album. Poppy and dreamy in equal parts, and disarmingly personal. The dramatic disco of Numb is one of the tunes of the year.

Justice: Hyperdrama (Ed Banger Records)
I fell out of love with Justice. They got way too prog rock. This latest offering is much more likeable, with all the right beats in all the right places. It doesn't break any new ground, but there are tunes aplenty. One reviewer on Bandcamp sums it up: "If this album was a person I wouldn't marry it, but it would be a close friend."

Kiasmos: II (Erased Tapes)
In 2014, I said Kiasmos' first album was the third best album of the year. I was wrong. It was the best. This long-awaited follow-up couldn't shine a candle to the first, but it still has all the splendour and emotion that make this Arnalds–Rasmussen collaboration so special. Oh my giddy heart, I love Kiasmos. (Artwork pictured above.)

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far.

Best electronic music albums of 2024: from Frank & Tony to Howard Thomas via Glok & Timothy Clerkin

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far.

Frank & Tony: Ethos (Scissor & Thread)
I'm pretty sure Frank and Tony are the guys who laid my patio last year. This is the pair's second full-length album. It's an odyssey into the deepest of deep house. At one point, an acid line drops into a pool of warm ambience, and it feels like the album is floating outside of itself. Smooth, like well-laid paving tones.

Gavsborg: Presents : Select (Edwin)
This is a smattering of unreleased studio work by Gavsborg from Jamaica's Equiknoxx Collective. He's clearly had fun compiling this expertly-produced selection of electronic noodling and dub reggae moments. Worth a listen. It appears to have been released by a company that sells denim jeans.

Ghost Dubs: Damaged (Pressure)
We're staying on a dubby theme with this album, although this time the territory is sparser. It's dub techno, but such are its moment of deep statis, it's a few short furlongs from being a drone album. Volume up, slow down, immerse yourself.  It's out on The Bug's Pressure label.

Glok / Timothy Clerkin: Alliance (Bytes)
The chap from Ride teams up with a banger clubby bloke to produce a pleasing musical meander. For fans of Andrew Weatherall and Death In Vegas. In my interview with Glok and Clerkin ahead of this album's release, I warmed to their "distressingly detuned foghorn". I don't think it was an actual foghorn.

Hainbach: Breve (Seil Records)
One for synth geeks. Among his ancient gear used on this album, Hainbach employed a Ondioline, an old analogue synth first invented in 1939, and lent to him my synthesiser restorer Forgotten Futures. The album is slow, lilting, ambient, elegant, and wonderfully healing if you're looking for that sort of thing. 

Heavee: Unleash (Hyperdub)
It's like Chicago's Heavee is on a dance mat, skipping from one lit-up genre square to another. There's restless footwork, soulful r'n'b, giddy rave, wonky experimentalism, and rich synth jams. Yeah perhaps it needs more focus, but we're going dancing with Heavee and he ain't letting go of your hand any time soon.

Hesaitix: Noctian Airgap (PAN)
There's a moment in James Whipple's new album, about halfway through Geflatnet in fact, where you might yearn for the 'smoker's beats' era of trip hop. Yeah, daddio, I was down with the kids once. It's a blunty concoction of pristine sound design, and it missed out on my final top twenty by the tiniest sliver of Rizla.

Howard Thomas: Skin Breaker (Sound Signature)
Theo Parrish's Sound Signature's label presents their 100th release. Howard 'H-Fusion' Thomas deals in no-nonsense Detroit techno. It's inspired by the science fiction he grew up with: a pretty neat mood note for an album that is so robotic and so pleasingly alien. All very Detroit: hardware with heart.

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far.

Best electronic music albums of 2024: from Dean Spunt to Four Tet via DJ Fitness

 

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far.

Dean Spunt: Basic Editions (Drag City)
Dean what-now? Using an old E-M synth module he picked up for fifty dollars, Mr Spunt has produced an album of sonic explorations and process experiments. It sounds like we've fallen into a matrix, or at the very least, a second-hand dot-matrix printer. Very wonky, but there's warmth in the circuits.

DJ Fitness: The DJ Fitness Program (Domesticated)
I am not a gym type of guy. Those places are too sweaty. Miami's Pablo Arrangoiz has many aliases, and this is his most fun. Expect warm, funky acid cuts, delicious 808 electro beats, and leftfield bossanova. Its cover design, a pastiche of an old-school two-tone flyer, is a stroke of genius. (Artwork pictured above.)

DJ Lycox: Guetto Star (Principe)rt
Lisbon's kuduro music scene is probably not known to most, and I hope this album changes that. DJ Lycox's album is a mix of folky rhythms and twitchy drum works, led throughout by Afro-Portuguese song. Where else could you have a track called Mortal Kombat featuring a clarinet putting a donk on it?

DJ Nigga Fox: Chá Preto (Príncipe)
More kuduro music, and another one from Portugal. On this album, Rogério Brandão has earned comparisons to Ricardo Villalobos and Autechre. It's a real mish-mass of styles, with slow jams meeting skittering techno. Difficult to pin down, but an interesting enough curiosity to include here.

eL-Hortobāgyi Hortator: Thessalien Stoa Paradosi (Elhellel)
Here we have a collaboration between veteran Hungarian composer László Hortobãgyi and someone called Hadjilaskaris. And it is almost impossible to describe. Egyptian ambient dub? A Megadog gig in a desert? Psy-Sphynx? I dunno, but you should let these guys be your loop gurus because it's thoroughly compelling.

Fergus Jones: Ephemera (Numbers)
The artist formerly known as Perko releases his first slab of vinyl as plain old Fergus Jones. The album is sultry and spacious, and his numerous collaborators include Huerco S, James K and spacey beatmaster Koreless. A likeable (dare I say it) coffee table album, and at its best when embracing the dub.

FJAAK: FJAAK The System (FJAAK)
I need to admit something. I hate this album title. It's a rubbish pun. That aside, these two self-professed "hardware heads" from Berlin are bringing the party hard. Roof-raising drum and bass, screeching acid techno, and stadium-sized rave smashers abound. A big sound needs big names: Modeselektor and Skee Mask feature.

Four Tet: Three + (Text Records)
Mr Tet's twelfth album needs little introduction. You know his M.O.: Infectious grooves dappled with optimism, although he's on a pretty mellow tip on this album too. Closing track Three Drums is perhaps the most epic I've heard Four Tet. Amid the airy euphoria, on this he becomes Thousand Tet. Just lovely. (Artwork pictured above.)

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far.

Best electronic music albums of 2024: from 1127 to De Schuurman via British Murder Boys

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far.

1127: ض (Nashazphone)
Arising from the Cairo underground, 1127 produces a second album of dirty industrial techno and caustic rave. It's tough stuff, perhaps lightened by its occasional influences of early twentieth-century Egyptian music. 1127 in centimetres is about the same height as a telegraph pole, a fact which is no help to anyone whatsoever.

33EMYBW: Holes of Sinian (SVBKVLT)
You can abbreviate 33EMYBW's name to 33, pronounced "San San". She calls her music "limb dance", and this fourth album of footwork-adjacent, scratchy, experimental robotics will certainly encourage bodily convulsions. Collaborations include Marina Herlop, Batu, Forrest Gander and oxi peng.

AceMo: Save The World (Self-released)
This prolific Brooklyn DJ gives us a welcome blast of energy on this relentlessly positive album. Thundering house music, kinetic techno and dramatic electro. "Music made with the intent to make a positive impact on this Earth," says Mr Mo. He spent his youth in a marching band: I can see why. This just missed out on my top 20 of 2024.

Actress: Statik (Smalltown Supersound)
Actress composed his tenth album under an "extensive flow state", which I think might mean diahorrea or something. His rhythms are still squeaky, still cheeky, but perhaps softer and more accessible than previous work. Some of it sounds like early Aphex Twin – just listen to that paddy bass drum on Six. (Artwork pictured above.)

Anetha: Mothearth (Mama told ya)
Parts of Anetha's first album are so bouncy, you might start chanting "badger badger badger". This Parisian artist is a trained architect, and the beats are appropriately architectural: squared-off trance, perfectly symmetrical donks. A lot of euphoric fun. Mushroom mushroom!

Basile3: 43°C (InFiné)
A Bandcamp review of this album, recorded between Paris and Brussels, says: "43 is my favourite prime number for synaesthete reasons." Ah, looks like we have some friendly geeks in the house. Excellent. This album is a playful mish-mash of ambient techno, hyped-up club music and Insta-pop. A scrappy but fun debut.

British Murder Boys: Active Agents and House Boys (Downwards)
In my Electronic Sound interview with these guys, I mentioned this album's "excoriated acid lines", its "all-consuming reverberations" and it sounding like "a stack of modular hardware escaping from a torture chamber". All in a good way of course. Really great stuff from Surgeon and Regis. (Artwork pictured above.)

Christian AB: The Nu Life LP (Faith Beat)
No-nonsense pumping techno. Three of the tracks are called Locked Groove, which is pretty self-explanatory. The tracks here were tested on clubbers during Faith Beat founder Ryan Elliott's DJ gigs, then realised in vinyl form by Christian Browne. Listen if you like your beats minimalist and absolutely pumping.

De Schuurman: Bubbling Forever (Nyege Nyege Tapes)
"You think this is some gangsta sh*t" says a sample halfway through this album. If this music for gangsters, the mobsters are wearing clown noses, multi-coloured spats and silly-string machine guns. These party bangers are restless and raucous, with air horns, 8-bit beats and a tonne of Caribbean flavour. 

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far.

Best electronic music albums of 2024: an introduction

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far.

Welcome to my annual countdown of the best electronic music albums of 2024. I am about to write about a bonanza of bleepy bangers that are arbitrarily linked to one particular orbit around the Sun. Why group albums by year? It makes no sense.

Except my annual countdown is no longer annual. I had blogged my Best Albums every year since 2009, but last year, I didn't do a list. I had good reasons. My brain was recovering from a stroke, and so was, as the result of the stroke, the rest of my body. It's a good reason to miss a year. Consider this as a surprise return from a long absence, like Oasis or the Labour government or that bloke who turned up in the shower in that episode of Dallas one time.

I should start by giving my usual mealy-mouthed caveats:

• This list is not comprehensive. I usually miss something obvious – no, let's correct that. I always, without fail, miss something obvious.

• This list was written on a whim, without much forethought, care or attention. It's totally first-drafty and the list might have ended up entirely different if written on a different day, or if I woke up without drinking my usual bottle of morning Toilet Duck. In short: don't take it too seriously.

I try to avoid more obvious and popular electronic music, so this will be a different list to other compilers. Don't expect any Pet Shop Boys or Charlie XCX, despite their albums having more merit than a merit factory that has accidentally over-producing merits on its merit conveyor belt so everything's going to explode in what will be known as the Great Merit Factory Disaster of 2024. Having said that, there is one pop album, at number 20. You'll have to wait to find out.

I have 95 albums on my best-of-2024 list.

• 75 of these albums will be dealt with very quickly in nine summary blog posts, bish bash bosh, blink and you'll miss them. These posts will be published on Friday 3 January 2025.

• For the top 20, I will write something a bit more detailed. Probably. I don't know – I haven't written any of it yet. But those posts will publish throughout the weekend of 4 and 5 January 2025.

This will cumulate in my grand announcement of the number one top dog Best Electronic Music Album of 2024. This will happen some time later on Sunday, although I am popping out to see Nosferatu so you might have to wait while I get down with the vampires. When I do finally reveal my number one, feel free to celebrate with party poppers, fireworks, palm fronds and ritual sacrifices.

So sit back, pop your feet on a pouffe, and crack open a bottle of fizzy cola. It's time to bleep the best of the year. Further blog posts incoming.

This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far.

Ultimate 90s number one: Da ba da dan dee dee dee da nee na na na

This is the latest epsiode in an ongoing series called Ultimate 1990s Number One. How does it work? I write about every number one hit of the 1990s, and select a few of them to go through to a grand final, in which I will pick the bestest ultimate chart-topper of the decade.

My two judging criteria are: (a) it has to be bleepy, able to be categorised as electronic music. And (b) it has to be a banger. A choon. A bona-fide pop classic. Also, I am writing this while riding a unicycle through a hoop of burning flames just to make it more difficult.

Here is the latest randomly-selected batch from the full list of 206 number one hits.

The contenders

Cher: Believe  |  Dunblane: Knockin' on Heaven's Door  |  Geri Halliwell: Lift Me Up  |  Mark Morrison: Return of the Mack  |  Michael Jackson: Earth Song  |  Take That: Babe  |  The Beautiful South: A Little Time  |  Westlife: Flying Without Wings  |  Wet Wet Wet: Love Is All Around  |  Whigfield: Saturday Night  |  

Load of old gubbins

King of pop weirdness Michael Jackson hid under the mixing desk while Earth Song was being recorded because he was paranoid about his face. He was right to do so because Earth Song is a whiny sentimental load of old gubbins. I'm chucking this out of the competition. The Dunblane track is worthy too, but I don't really understand Bob Dylan songs.

Flying Without Wings was probably Westlife's most iconic single, and was one of five number ones scored in a single year by the Dublin crooners. Love Is All Around gave Wet Wet Wet a 15-week marathon run at the top of the charts, making history. These achievements do not impress me. Marti Pellow's lot prevented Kylie's Confide In Me from getting to number one, and I'm still upset about this. Seriously. I feel upset in my fingers and in my toes.

Very descript

Here's a fact for you. No-one in human history has listened to Geri Halliwell's Lift Me Up more than once. Have you? No, I didn't think so. One NME reviewer called it "astoundingly nondescript", which is like calling something "averagely brilliant". Pretty spot on.

Do you know what isn't nondescript? Babe by Take That. Those boys had an ear for a tune. It was a downbeat number that needed a string section to beef up Mark's weedy vocals, but it worked. Not bleepy enough for this competition, but I doff my hat to Babe, especially since it knocked Mr Blobby off the number one spot. 

 

Booty scores again

There a many things that people think are good, but about which I could not give a fig. Football, for one. I understand the euphoria of watching Belchford United's nail-biting 3–2 win against St Flatulence Athletic, especially with star striker Booty Nosepowder getting sent off for doing the Macarena. But football fandom is for other people, like tabletop roleplaying games, mushroom foraging and promiscuity. You do you.

Which brings me to Leicester bad boy Mark Morrison. Return of the Mack arrived to huge fanfare, without him actually ever returning from anything. The song has been sampled, interpolated, copied and ripped off in a zillion hits since. And despite Mr Morrison's requests for me to "come on" and "pump up the word", I remain unmoved.

There's also The Beautiful South, a band formed by two Housemartins by which I don't mean the bird. I'm glad The Beautiful South exist: they bring an indie sensibility to pop music, and they seem old fashioned yet switched on, like a sparky grandpa or Thomas Edison. I can't get that excited about their music, but they know how to write a banger.

Keep your Whig on

As with previous Ultimate countdowns, we are left with the bleepiest selection of the bunch, and our best contenders for qualification through to the Ultimate 90s grand final. 

Long-faced emoji-addled pop princess Cher changed music forever when Believe brought autotune to the mainstream in 1998. Do you believe in life after love, she asked rhetorically, her voice elegantly mangled by producer Mark Taylor. A dance music classic that laid the ground for pop queens turning into house music divas. Looking at you, Kylie Minogue.

If you don't know the Whigfield dance, please go away and learn it. Done? Good, we can continue. This daft Eurodance number is perhaps the most 1990s record featured in this blog series: it has a kooky indie sensibility, a heavy level of novelty, and lots of "da ba da dan dee dee dee da nee na na na" nonsense lyrics. And yes, that's a copy-and-paste from Lyrics.com. 

In conclusion

I'm going to put Whigfield through to the final. It's not a convincing win: none of this selection of tracks are bleepy / techno enough for me. but Whiggy is the best of a non-bleepy bunch. The song contains, embedded deep within its bouncy beat, a sample of the Amen break. There are bonafide bleepy credentials at work here, even though I can'r see the Chemical Brothers dropping it into a DJ set any time soon.

How many more singles are there to go in this series? Lots. Will we be done by the end of 2024? No chance. Are people still reading these blog posts? Probably not. Am I going to continue despite everything? Of course I am. Stay tuned.

While you're hear, read more Ultimate 90s number one.

What is the best music ending in the number 5?

Here is the best music ending in 5. It's a list you didn't know you needed but now you very much definitely want a list of music ending in the number 5.

1. Jackson 5
2. Jurassic 5
3. MC5
4. The Furious Five
5. The song 9 to 5
6. Christian rock band Deliriou5
7. Ben Folds Five
8. The tune Take Five
9. Mambo Number 5
10. Stars on 45
11. Maroon 5
...a large gap, then...
92. The 1975

How would I score this list? A mediocre 5 out of 10. There are a couple of glaring omissions, which can be attributed to one of two reasons. Reason one: my research team got kidnapped by aliens halfway through their task. Reason two: There is no research team: I spent five half-hearted minutes on Google before posting, which explains why my list is poor. I'll let you decide which reason is true.

My tens of friends on social media were quick to point out my five-themed failings. Here is a selection of their responses.

Willie said: "Poor old Dave Clark", a sentiment echoed by Dominic, Paul and Tim. My list did indeed lack the Dave Clark Five, a London rock band that took on the Beatles during the British Invasion with hits like Glad All Over.

The Connells' flaccid earworm hit ’74–’75 was suggested by Paul, which is a reasonable shout. The vocal ensemble Apollo5 was offered by Rob, although their version of Only You isn't a patch on the versions by Yazoo and The Flying Pickets. And Miles suggested Levellers 5, a bunch of Lancashire indie rockers championed by John Peel. Quite good suggestions, I think.

Both Ian and Jon asked me why I didn't include the cheeky pop scamps Five. You'd think this was a good call, but Five disqualified themselves when they styled their name as "5ive", thereby placing their 5 at the start of their 5.

John Paul suggested the "five" segment for Sesame Street's pinball counting animation. Sarah suggested Enid Blyton's dog-bothering child adventurers The Famous Five. And my cousin Dave suggested "Half of Perfect Ten". All these people should be arrested for crimes against the number five.

I would make this into a series, going through every number in the history of numbers, but I would rather give myself a citrus enema with a carton of Five Alive.

Overall verdict? Five stars. Excellent work, me and my friends.

What's the tea on Mr Scruff's miniature tour?

In the battle to secure the future of independent music venues, Ninja Tune beat juggler Mr Scruff is doing his bit.

Tickets for Mr Scruff's upcoming tour will have a £1 levy designed to fund the grassroots music scene. As far as add-on costs go, better this than the bottomless black hole that folks like Skiddle call "administration fees". Charging to generate an e-ticket? Are you (s)kidding me?

He's calling his tour the Miniature Arena Tour, which is cute. His chosen arenas include Cosmic Slop in Leeds, Wylam Brewery in Newcastle, Sneaky Pete’s in Edinburgh, and the Snoggy Snotbucket in Lytham St Annes. One of those was made up by me. It's the Snotbucket one. But it definitely sounds like somewhere he should play.

The UK live music scene is in a bit of a pickle. Tonnes of places have stopped running events, and dozens are closing. The scene is woefully underfunded despite contributing squillions of smackeroonies to the UK economy and providing a social glue that stops a lot of things becoming unstuck during difficult times.

Mr Scruff's support for grassroots music is a good move, and it makes up for my one massive bugbear about Mr Scruff. He likes tea. He's always going on about tea. Tea this, tea that. Tea, as every right-thinking person knows, is horrible ditch-water that tastes like disappointment. I'd rather suck on Elon Musk's damp underpants. Yuck.

In the distant past, Mr Scruff was a shelf-stacker at a Kwik Save supermarket. My theory is that this job seeded his tea obsession. So beloved was tea to him, I reckon he stacked the tea bags extra neatly. Lined up those corners of the boxes nice and flush. The coffee shelves were scattered and wonky, and the hot chocolate section was a clutter of broken jars. But the tea bags? Those shelves were spotless, and if a customer dared take a packet of English Breakfast off the shelf, he'd bat their hand away. "My tea," he'd hiss. "My precious tea."

Anyway, he's a wrong-un when it comes to tea, but he's right about small venues.

While you're here, have a nosey at this old video about Mr Scruff (screenshot from Selectors: Mr. Scruff, above). You'll see his dog and his record collection and the concrete he puts under his decks and his iconic cartoons and lots of shots of Manchester.

Further Fats: There goes the hear: Manchester has enough gigs (2011)

Further Fats: Why did the Fat Roland cross the road? (2017)