60 best electronic music albums of 2021: Paraadiso, Pauline Anna Strom, Planetary Assault Systems, Richard Norris & Rival Consoles

Fat Roland's Best Electronic Music Albums of 2021 presents five more brilliant albums:

Paraadiso – Unison (SVBKVLT)

Paraadiso is a project by Italian DJ TSVI and the audio-visual production Seven Orbits. So I assume there is a visual element to this, although I'm only reviewing the audio. The span of Unison is incredible, with, at varying points, nosebleed drum mayhem, transient choral voices, shattered fractals of tortured bass, and tidal washes of soothing melody. The choir bits are ace. The blurb compares it to FSOL's Lifeforms, and that's actually not a bad take. 

Pauline Anna Strom – Angel Tears in Sunlight (RVNG Intl.)

This was meant to be Pauline Anna Strom's big comeback. This San Francisco composer had been dormant in the music industry for decades, instead committing her time to Reiki healing. Her unexpected death a year ago meant this became a posthumous album – and what a legacy. These shiny instrumentals feel like nature writ large, with chimes and glistening synths evoking long summer afternoons and placid shorelines. All with a process or library music feel. A truly beautiful work.

Planetary Assault Systems – Sky Scraping (Token) 

The seventh album from Luke Slater’s hard-pumpin’ techno alias starts with an ace pun. The first track is called Labstract. Like abstract, but made in a lab. My scientist readers are going to love that. This is Slater in pure techno mode. Thump, thump, thump, thump. Rustle, squeak, squeak, thump, thump. Hiss, hiss, bang, bang. Thump, thump, rattatat, rattatat. It's pounding and hypnotic and sometimes I think it's a chem-mystery why all music isn't like this all of the time. Geddit? Chemistry. Chem-mystery. No? Oh for goodness sake. 

Richard Norris – Hypnotic Response (Inner Mind)

"Set phazers to mesmerize" says the American blurb with its fancy letter Zs. Hypnotic response indeed. Looping analogue synths lock into simple arpeggios, all drizzled with a sepia library-music wash. The bold Arca builds over 11 giddy minutes, its fuzziness barely changing and yet holding us spellbound throughout. The missing link between the warmth of modern artists like Luke Abbott and, in once supercool chord change, 1980s theme tunes. 

Rival Consoles – Overflow (Erased Tapes) 

Over to my Electronic Sound review for this one, incidentally another album on this list written for a choreographic dance production. "There’s a halogen hum throughout, its metallic yaws and molten drum pads bleached with a scorched ambience... He shows a human yet hesitant side in scattered vocal radio transmissions or as voice-responsive algorithmic ambience... his trademark keyboard shimmer as on point as anything on his [previous] spine-tingling studio albums." So there you go. Another corker from RC.

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

60 best electronic music albums of 2021: Jon Hopkins, Kasper Marott, Leon Vynehall, Loscil & Maxwell Sterling

Fat Roland's Best Electronic Music Albums of 2021 presents five more brilliant albums:

Jon Hopkins – Music For Psychedelic Therapy (Domino Recording Co) 

Everyone’s favourite piano raver came up with this album of beatless meditation after spending time in an Ecuadorian cave. An Ecuadorian cave! Do you know the most interesting place I've been this past week? Sheffield. Who's the winner now, Jon Hopkins? This is all very nice and ambient and epic and perfectly suited to playing in big churches. An inbetween album for the electronic master. Lights down, sit back, take in all the beautiful Hopkins production. Full of caves, it is, Sheffield. Can't move for 'em.

Kasper Marott: Full Circle (Axces Recordings) 

Marott is a Copenhagen techno producer whose first EP Keflavik, released a few years ago on Modeselektor's Seilscheibenpfeiler label, created a bit of a fuss. This debut album of euphoric club cuts takes us through breezy electronic jams, breakneck acid techno, cheerfully skippy breakbeats, urgent drum and bass and every other electronic music genre you could possibly pull out of a bag. I demand more fuss be made about Marott and his easily distracted but totally celebratory approach to dance music culture.

Leon Vynehall – Rare, Forever (Ninja Tune) 

Pitchfork calls him a "master craftsman". Mixmag calls him "an artist of distinct talent". Ethel from number 32 calls him "who? Never heard of him. Are you going to return my circular saw or what?" Jeez, Ethel, that the last time I borrow power tools from you. Where was I? Oh yes. This second album of dynamic downtempo techno-noise is essential listening. Such a mix of influences, from rave to classical to techno to jazz. It's a heady mixture and may possibly make you woozy. In a good way, of course.

Loscil – Clara (Kranky)

It's funny what people get obsessed with. Loscil took a short recording of a Hungarian orchestra, lathe-cut it to 7-inch, then scratched the heck out of it. He then used that final messed-up recording as a sample-base for the whole of Clara. I've not been that occupied with one thing since I built a lifesize blue-tac sculpture of H from Steps. The orchestra is all but excised from this unhurried ambience, as vast swathes of widescreen chords hover in the air, their shadows strangely bright.

Maxwell Sterling – Turn of Phrase (AD 93)

I read somewhere that double bassist Sterling took inspiration for this album from Los Angeles, London and Morecambe. In only one of those places have I played crazy golf. What we have here is a sonic palate that ranges from glooming ambience to wonky half-rave. It's difficult to categorise: in turn it sounds like hippos with an arpeggiator, wasps on a playground swing, and a jazz band populated entirely by insects. It was Morecambe, by the way. It had a windmill and everything.

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

60 best electronic music albums of 2021: Foodman, Nils Frahm, Howie Lee, Illuvia & Jacques Greene

Fat Roland's Best Electronic Music Albums of 2021 presents five more brilliant albums:

Foodman – Yasuragi Land (Hyperdub)

Takahide 'Foodman' Higuchi comes from Japan's footwork scene, so there are rhythmic trills peppered throughout this curious genre-bending album for London's Hyperdub label. The album is as abstract as heck, mixing Japanese environmental music with an improvisational multi-track set-up. The tracks feel episodic. There's no bass. The loops come laden with memorable hooks, but they're bitten through with hesitations and land as lightly as a feather. You'll not hear anything else like this. Extraordinary.

F.S. Blumm & Nils Frahm – 2X1 = 4 (LEITER) 

An underground German producer teams up with a classical maestro for an experiment in dub? Yes please. Over to my review of this album for Electronic Sound: "We’re talking bull-by-the-horns electronic dub. Blumm brings his experience from his duo Quasi Dub Development, where a tuba did the bass work... All along, Frahm’s melodies ooze with sadness. Like the confused maths of its title, it shouldn’t work but it does." The dub bits really, really work. With echo and everything. 

Howie Lee – Birdy Island (Mais Um Discos)

Beijing-based visual artist Howie Lee based the concept of this album around an imaginary floating theme park in which birds and ghostly spirits (I presume) go on the log flume together. It's suitably mystical and magical, with lilting accordions and jazzy drums lazily seeing the afternoon through. Imagine sparrows running a candy floss stall, or blue tits operating a Wurlitzer. Apparently, he's usually clubbier than this: we're certainly in pastoral territory. Not a rollercoaster in sight.

Illuvia – Iridescence Of Clouds (A Strangely Isolated Place)

Having written music journalism as long as I have, I'm pretty sure I've heard everything. And then someone like Ludvig 'Illuvia' Cimbrelius comes along. On the face of it, this is a sweeping ambient album typical of the excellent fayre produced by the A Strangely Isolated Place label (check their 9128 streams). But then... the drum and bass. The distant drum and bass, as if farted out by passing angels. An extraordinary sonic technique that already has me regretting not placing this further up my list.

Jacques Greene – ANTH01 (LuckyMe)

I had to break my rule about not including reissues in my best-of list because, oh my giddy trousers, this is so damn good. This is a collection of out-of-print records from earlier in Greene's career. The sparky house of Faded and the Brandy-sampling garage of The Look sound so in tune with recent dance trends, this might as well be brand new material. As jolly Jacques puts it himself, "time became quite slippery in the past year and a half." Too right.

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

60 best electronic music albums of 2021: Daniel Avery, Danny L Harle, DJ Seinfeld, Don Zilla & Eli Keszler

Fat Roland's Best Electronic Music Albums of 2021 presents five more brilliant albums:

Daniel Avery – Together In Static (Phantasy Sound) 

This album accompanied an especially written socially-distanced performance at Hackney Church in late May 2021. The last time I went to Hackney, I stayed in a miniature pod with black walls, and I've still not recovered. Nothing claustrophobic about this album though, despite Avery's knack for hot buzzy techno. Shaking techno rhythms lead to wandering analogue meanderings lead to, as the album progresses, genuinely optimistic IDM instrumentals. It's like a flower gradually opening: the release is glorious.

Danny L Harle – Harlecore (Mad Decent)

This album sees London producer Harle take on the personas of four people: DJ Danny, MC Boing, DJ Mayhem and DJ Ocean. Boing is the hyper one, Ocean is the chilled one... look, I haven't got time to introduce them all now. Just grab a Carling from the fridge and mingle with them in your own time. Harlecore is massive fun. There's banging euphoric rave, Scooter-style stadium crowd-pleasers, breezy 1990s drum and bass, hyper Italo piano house, and even a happy hardcore Golden Brown. Super daft. 

DJ Seinfeld – Mirrors (Ninja Tune)

This is a second album of Barcelona-sun drenched vintage house from a Swedish producer previously best known for his "lo-fi" vibes. Recorded in Berlin and Malmo, this feels like a much more polished Seinfeld, all very sharp and snappy and Bicep-y. He filters UK garage into something much more sultry, and ain't afraid of a big fat French disco slam-down. One of those albums which is bound to be on lots of end-of-year lists. And yes, he named himself after the US sitcom. Better than DJ Everybody Loves Raymond, I suppose.

Don Zilla – Ekizikiza Mubwengula (Hakuna Kulala)

This is the debut solo album from Don Zilla, from Uganda's Nyege Nyege collective. The collective's name refers to the urge to dance. However, those expecting a party feeling will only be partially sated. A party, yes, but soundtracked by pummelling thuds, growling mechanics and machinery assaults. At points it sounds like it's taking arms against its listener, but it also sounds every concrete basement club in every techno city. Uncompromising, and all the better for it. Take your coat off, this party's just getting started.

Eli Keszler – Icons (LuckyMe)

This hugely proficient percussionist and Oneohtrix Point Never collaborator brings us his tenth album. The tracks are jazzy and laced with complex beats, often tumbling into scattered ambient mood boards. The drums are perfectly poised, and know when to withdraw when the atmosphere needs it. Nice work. Apparently you can buy Eli Keszler candle too. It's got top notes of mandarin, black pepper and carrot. That might be the most interesting thing I've learned about a percussionist all day.

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

60 best electronic music albums of 2021: Alessandro Cortini, Andy Stott, Arca, Caro C & Cid Rim

The Top 90 becomes a Top 60. Fat Roland's Best Electronic Music Albums of 2021 presents five more brilliant albums:

Alessandro Cortini – SCURO CHIARO (Mute)

The Nine Inch Nails keyboardist custom built his own synthesiser for this solo album. Quite frankly, that's just showing off. It's a droning, peaceful work in which synth lines follow simple paths before building into something more intense: the micro-rhythmic climax of Corri, the buzzing swarm of Sempre. A pleasing listen, and no doubt benefitting from his recent work with the analogue master Daniel Avery. Custom built? Pffrt. Couldn't just get a Casio from Argos like a normal person, could he?

Andy Stott – Never The Right Time (Modern Love)

Is Andy Stott is rhyming slang for (a) beats so hot, (b) techno hotshot, or (c) Westlife he's not. Answers on a postcard to the usual address. Always innovative, this Manchester-based producer strikes a perfect balance between the ethereal and the electronic. Cocteau Twins wooziness against metronomic percussion. Dusted Autechre-isms against heavenly chords. Ghostly vocals courtesy of Alison Skidmore. And every album cover in black and white to match the industrial brutalism of his music. I like this a lot.

Arca – KICK ii (XL Recordings) 

Bjork’s favourite experimentalist released, like, a billion KICK albums at once. KICK i was last year's lockdown album. And now we have four more (slightly less than a billion, sorry). KICK ii does a kind of sun-bleached reggaeton. KICK iii is full of Spanish vibes. KICK iiii is all ghosts and witchcraft. And KICK iiiii does the hushed ASMR thing that sets my teeth on edge. I'm letting number ii get a place in my list because it's surprisingly accessible considering the contorted audio of her previous work. Also it's got a pretty impressive collaboration with Sia.

Caro C – Electric Mountain (self-released, I think)

Caro's fourth album was inspired by rock climbing – keen-eyed audience members will spot the use of a rock xylophone and carabinas in her live performances. In Electronic Sound, I called this a "cosmic space boogie", and it really is as uplifting as that sounds. "Motivational vocals add a maverick attitude, declaring 'we are magnificent!' and 'you are mighty like mountain'. This is no stock Insta-inspiration: Caro delivers the vocals like melted cheese over a toasted bed of ever-loosening percussion." Definitely worth a peak-- er, I mean, peek.

Cid Rim – Songs of Vienna (LuckyMe)

Previous album Material was lauded for its day-glo instrumentals, so it's a brave move for Cid Rim to switch to a more mainstream direction. Well. Kind of. This mix of gently psychedelic pop and club-friendly floor fillers are funk-lite, full of joyfully weaving synth lines and Animal Collective-happy songsmithery. Cid Rim is still having fun in the studio: tracks like Purgatory have LuckyMe style rhythmic drops, and there's pumping bass a-plenty. As radio friendly as ever: no bad thing.

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

90 best electronic music albums of 2021: Ripatti, Robert Ames, RP Boo, Sarah Davachi & Sedibus

Fat Roland's Best Electronic Music Albums of 2021 presents five more brilliant albums:

Ripatti – Fun Is Not A Straight Line (Planet Mu)

Vladislav Delay, real name Sasu Ripatti, joins Planet Mu for some fearsomely frantic footwork beats. "Ever shoved a rapper through a mincer?" said my review of the album in Electronic Sound back in the summer. "Vladislav Delay cleaves hip hop into stuttered vocal shards, pelting them with frenetic drums... rushes of glorious techno, underpinned by bass deep enough to blow your mincer’s electrics. Dissected dopeness of the highest order." Dizzying and fragmentary, yet it all makes sense.

Robert Ames – Change Ringing (Modern Recordings)

What a CV. Co-founder of the London Contemporary Orchestra. Conducting for Jonny Greenwood and Little Simz. Playing strings for Frank flipping Ocean. It's remarkable, then, that this rich ambient classical album is Ames' debut. Think Sigur Ros filtered via Philip Glass. Amazingly, he recorded a bunch of music, slowed it down, then annotated the slower version on sheet music for the purpose of rerecording. A proper old-school approach to something that turned out symphonic and distinctly sistine.

RP Boo – Established! (Planet Mu) 

Let's get one thing out of the way. Yes, that's a sample of Phil Collins' voice on All Over. You know what? It works. This is the only acceptable use of Phil Collins ever. maybe with the exception of Luke Vibert's I Can Phil It. The fourth solo Planet Mu album from this massively influential Chicago producer explores his early experiences with footwork and ghetto house. The result is an accessible collection of vocal slices, choppy rhythms and stuttering beats: a great primer on Boo even with the Collins.

Sarah Davachi – Antiphonals (Late Music)

I always thought a mellotron was something you could eat. Turns out its a mini-keyboard that operates with magnetic tape. The instrument was a key component in this latest work from Canada's favourite electroacoustic experimentalist. From horns to harpsichords, Davachi uses all the skills in her musical arsenal to come up with an ethereal collection of ambient meditations. It almost sounds like the echo of folklore past: stories of ancestors drifting on the wind. And it's definitely not edible, so don't chomp it.

Sedibus: The Heavens (Orbscure Recordings) 

Alex Paterson teams up with his old Orb mate Andy ‘Ultraworld’ Falconer for a debut release on his new Orbscure label. "Welcome to a wonderful evocation of classic-era Orb," I said in Electronic Sound. "Over four sprawling tracks, liquid chords curl around portentous piano, then rise into post-club euphoria that would make Sabres of Paradise proud." It's dead Orb-y. No, really. Cut it in half, and you'll find ORB written down its middle. Enjoy this adventure right back into the ultraworld.

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

90 best electronic music albums of 2021: Mouse On Mars, Nala Sinephro, Nightmares On Wax, Perila & Rat Heart

Fat Roland's Best Electronic Music Albums of 2021 presents five more brilliant albums:

Mouse On Mars – AAI (Anarchic Artificial Intelligence) (Thrill Jockey) 

I had a fascinating chat with Mouse On Mars earlier this year about their science fiction-ish project with scholar Louis Chude-Sokei. As I wrote in a review of the album, it's "an inspired work that, thanks to the very human inspiration of Chude-Sokei’s cyborgian studies, has more interesting things to say than 'bleep bloop'." A very entertaining listen. A special mention too for Jan St. Werner's other album Imperium Droop, which was a great collaboration with improvisational drummer Kid Millions.

Nala Sinephro – Space 1.8 (Warp)

Raised in Belgium and now based in London, Sinephro is a classically-trained musician who just happens to have produced one of the nicest sounding, folksy ambient albums of the year. This is technically a jazz work, a genre for which I have very little love. However, armed with sultry piano and mad skills with a pedal harp, Sinephro strays expertly into electronics and effects to produce a woozy meditation more akin to a field recording album. 

Nightmares On Wax – Shout Out! To Freedom... (Warp)

George Evelyn's energy is incredible: a one-man consciousness guru. It's no surprise one of the track titles here is Imagineering, this album having arisen from "life-affirming realisations". Actually, it doesn't necessarily stray from the car-boot soul he's known for, but the truly smokin' delight is the input from his many collaborators: Greentea Peng's flouride warning on Wikid Satellites is superb. Head-nodding beats, smooth soul vocals, Nightmares On Wax doing Nightmares On Wax. Nice one, George.

Perila – How Much Time is it Between You and Me? (Smalltown Supersound)

I once dropped a can of WD-40 lubricant. The can burst and the resulting high-powered instant fog of oil created an all-consuming fluid miasma that coated the room I was in and the two rooms adjacent. This glassy, glacial ambient album is that miasma. Tectonic plates of delicate instrumentation float endlessly in what Perila calls a "silence prism". I'm calling it a quietness can. An all-flooding, all-fogging quietness can.

Rat Heart – Rat Heart (Shotta Tapes)

Subterranean spookiness. Aaargh! Corroded hip hop beats. Woooo! Machine-gun electronic glitches. Lawks! Manchester / Wigan DJ Tom Boogizm’s superbly lo-fi album of crushed beats sits somewhere between RP Boo snoozing under his duvet and Actress having an especially grumpy session with a steel plate folding machine. Certainly one of this year's more pleasant surprises, and the winner of the Best Sudden Scream On An Album award 2021. AAAAAAAAARGH. Love it.

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

90 best electronic music albums of 2021: John Tejada, Loraine James, Lotic, Madlib & Meemo Comma

Fat Roland's Best Electronic Music Albums of 2021 presents five more brilliant albums:

John Tejada – Year Of The Living Dead (Kompakt) 

I've enjoyed Tejada's work with Reggie Watts: a real zippy approach to house music production. On this solo album, things are more simple. All bright and shiny. Sprightly bass drum pads skip hand-in-hand with spacey synthwork, while elsewhere the beats are slower and a little more broken, perhaps reflecting the introspective, lockdown theme of its title. In any case, it's a proper bag of loveliness, with a dubbier feel than usual. And I like it when the synths go pyow-pyow.

Loraine James – Reflection (Hyperdub)

For You and I was a cracker. I likened it to "being parachuted into a leftfield techno metropolis without a map" in my favourite albums of 2019. James's second album progresses her urban soundtrack of drill pop urbanistic futurism, or whatever it is. It's at once utterly r&b while slicing through that genre with a bass-busting chainsaw. It's complex and abstract, a gravity constantly pulling things down: Maxinquay on Xanax. Yet it's less bewildering than her previous work, now we're more attuned to its lackadaisical London vibes.

Lotic – Water (Houndstooth)

There are several things that come to mind with this second album of dreamy deconstructed electronica from this one-time Bjork producer. One: a choppy sea, sirens singing from beneath the waves. Two: ghosts singing your name from the clouds above you. Three: Kate Bush as supernova. Accompanying her gasping choral iterations are, as the title hints at, splashes of liquid synths and deep pools of electronic ambience. A deeply personal album that feels at once gentle and immensely powerful.

Madlib – Sound Ancestors (Madlib Invazion)

You know Madlib. Old Madders. L'il Lib. He's the hip hop guy turned jazzer who's been spitting soundpieces for over two decades. Sound Ancestors has all the feel of an old mixtape: the beats are smokin' and the whole thing has the warmth of well-needled vinyl records. Sorry for mixing my format metaphors there. The added element? This album was arranged by Four Tet, adding a sharpness to the blunted beats. As one review said, it's "jazzy, dirty, clean, and mean."

Meemo Comma – Neon Genesis: Soul Into Matter² (Planet Mu) 

Here's a bit of my review from Electronic Sound magazine. "A mystical mash-up of ancient Judaism and imaginary anime is the mood board for Lara Rix-Martin’s latest: Mononoke with a menorah... Grumbling incantations, hesitant slivers of rhythm and downright spooky calls to prayer. Even the fluid beats of Tif-eret is subsumed into haunting choral blessings: it’s audacious stuff. Not so much field recordings as demonic transmissions from an abandoned quarry." A deeply curious album. The Kabbalah's gonna get yah.

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