Best electronic albums of 2019: one

1 – Plaid – Polymer (Warp Records)

I've plopped on about Plaid on this website many times in the past. They're no stranger to this end-of-year listing, appearing at number three in 2011, at number six in 2014 and at number two in 2016. In 2019, they finally take the title of Best Electronic Music Album of the Year. Congratulations, boys, you did it. You can finally retire. Pipe and slippers.

Polymer is modern Plaid's masterpiece. In recent years, they've tended towards the pastoral, but now they've descended into a valley of darkness. They've scuffed their shiny bits, sandpapered their synths, creosoted their balls and given melody a good old duffing up. It's spiky enough to deter casual listeners, but if you don't mind a few scrapes during repeated listens, it's their most rewarding album for many years.

As the synthetic hairiness of their album artwork suggests, this work is a true polymer: part organic and part android. Los squeaks and snarls as if snapping at the bars of cage and yet it's bedded by the blinking lights of robotic synth patter. The disembodied vowels of Ops spill from some unknown belly but when the track soars, its chimes skitter with clockwork regularity. The detailed patter of the beautiful Dancers is both flesh and machine in extremis.

Each track has its 'thing', as each tangled motif stretches its shoulders. Drowned Sea gets so het up, at the three-quarter mark it collapses into sparkles. All To Get To Her quickly locks into a classic looping Plaid pattern. The shuffly Nurula revives The Bee's nifty guitar-work from The Digging Remedy. And Dust is their version of a lullaby despite ubiquitous synth blaps constantly threatening to bite off your hand.

So many times during Polymer, I find myself holding my breath as the band raise Hitchockian levels of tension, and they know exactly when to press the release valve. Only on the percussive attack of Recall does there seem to be no hope, but even that track melts into ambience after two minutes, which makes sense in the context of the album's softer second half. It all fits.

Best of all, this is a Plaid album that feels angry, raising their complicated post-IDM noodlings to the heights of justified emotion, and in turn adding even more heart to the more traditional Plaid melodics. I don't need to tell you the reasons to feel furious in 2019, but I'm glad this album was here for some psychosynthetic succour.





Thanks for reading this mega list, and for reading my blog in 2019. Fifteen years and counting! Scroll the full best-of-2019 list here.

Best electronic albums of 2019: two

2 – Pelada – Movimiento Para Cambio (Pan)

Let's listen to the opening track together. There's the thump-thump of a bass drum. It's joined by a stuttering synth. Here come some finger snaps, but wait, something's happening. Are they speaking Spanish? Yes, I think it's Spanish. They're not stopping for breath. The beat drops. They start yelling. Oh my crap, the voice.

This is Pelada.

There is no album in 2019 that has side-swiped me more than Movimiento Para Cambio, which means "movement for change". Politics runs through Pelada's veins, as any lazy google-translating of their lyrics will attest to. Proper slacktivist, me.

It's also musically a rich experience. I love the snap of Habla Tu Verdad, the soft melt of Granadilla and the glorious stadium techno reverb of Aquí.  I flipping love everything. It's Canadian Chicago house in Spanish, via New York punk and 1990s dance music.

Put the production and politics together and you get this strange Robin S-tinction Rebellion pairing. And what a pair. The fierce vocals of Chris Vargas are alarming and may send some running for the hills, but their arresting energy constantly delights. Producer Tobias Rochman clearly bathes daily in dance music history: the album has the same try-it-and-see bedroom production vibe that made, for example, Bjork’s Debut so charming.

Now let's stop listening to the opening track together. Why are you even sat on my lap? Weirdo.



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Best electronic albums of 2019: three

3 – Loraine James – For You And I (Hyperdub)

For You And I is the sound of London bustle, of coming out of basement clubs, of tube stations shuttering their doors, of a queer life in a contemporary capital. Apparently. I don't live in London. In Manchester, we don't go on tubes, we just swagger with our maracas.

This freewheeling collage of broken bass music gets more compelling with every listen. The drum sounds are as loose as a bag of nuts: cheese-grated cymbals and strangled toms collide with precarious snares that rattle the walls of the album.

It's like being parachuted into a leftfield techno metropolis without a map, but that's not to say there aren't familiar touchpoints as we hear Loraine's story. Scraping My Feet has some serious Aphexian melancholy. There's something Autechresque about the scrunched rhythms of So Scared. And London Ting is pure grime bravado – "look at my skin!" – told through a tough techno lens.

All this on a debut album. Remarkable. As broad as London itself, it's one moment brutal, the next moment tender, all of it uneasy, all of it compelling. A boundary-breaking statement that's queer by nature and queer by noise. *shakes maracas*



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Best electronic albums of 2019: four

4 – Chemical Brothers – No Geography (Virgin EMI) 

Of course No Geography's in my top five. Of course! It's the best Chemical Brothers album for ages. It's full of pow-pow and chug-chug and build-build and wooh-wooh and slam-slam and Tian Tian. Actually, that last one might be a panda. You get the idea, though.

It's moment after moment of sheer clubbing energy. The robo-electro of Free Yourself! The power-snare roll on Gravity Drops! The old block-rockin' Chemicals showing themselves on the acidic We've Got To Try! Don your gold pants and get on that dancefloor and/or coffee table.

The album is accompanied by a spectacular live show which has Tom and Ed at their career best. MAH's Network-style rant of "I ain't gonna take it no more!" is all the more powerful because I can picture the big arm-wavy guy from the show. But you don't need the visuals: just on its own, for example, the "you and me" speech on title track No Geography rattled my heart strings.

There are no big guest vocalists: just the pow-pow and the build-build. It's pure uncut Chemicals. See what I did there? That's a drugs reference. Not that I know: the most I can manage these days is an extra spoonful of hot choc in my Highlights. If I know anything, it's how to make my drinks claggy.



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Best electronic albums of 2019: lovely earworm soup

For the last time in this best albums countdown, let's park the rollercoaster for a moment and smell the candyfloss. Here's a longlist of music heavyweights who failed to make the final cut: they're totally good and brilliant, but I kicked them to the kerb like a sassy Simon Cowell.

First up in this best-of-the-rest is Kornél Kovács and the thoroughly likeable Stockholm Marathon (Studio Barnhus). What starts as sugar-sweet vocal pop becomes a sun-glazed soup of instrumental  earworm after instrumentalearworm. Not that I'd drink a soup filled with worm ears. It sounds disgusting.

Jacques Greene got his epic on for Dawn Chorus (LuckyMe), which balanced the bright boldness of Jamie Xx and the scuzzed darkness of Clark. Jenny Hval dived into some sparkly electronics on The Practice Of Love (Sacred Bones Records), a seventh studio album fired off while writing a novel – hashtag multitasking. And Signals Into Space (Les Disques du Crépuscule) was the soft-focus return of Ultramarine, techno's answer to Channel 4's Watercolour Challenge.

The ever-filmic Amon Tobin was in an ambient mood on the intricate Fear In A Handful of Dust (Nomark). Flying Lotus was as generous and as overwhelming as ever on Flamagra (Warp Records), a work pepped up with a strange appearance by David Lynch. And although I thought Modeselektor's Who Else (Monkeytown Records) was a mixed affair, there was enough fried gold to make this longlist.

And finally here are some giants of electronic music who I've consumed in small portions in 2019, but haven't absorbed enough to include in my final list. Because I can't knowingly give full recommendations, I shall describe each album with a meaningless simile. James Blake's Assume Form (Universal Music) was like a hot toaster on a day trip to a dog-strewn beach. Hot Chip's A Bath Full of Ecstasy (Domino) was like a hovercraft balancing atop the concept of green. And finally, Metronomy's catchy Metronomy Forever (Because Music) was like a metronome catching the metro with a, er, gnome, um, er, jeez, this is worse than the fruit puns. *destroys computer with chainsaw*





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Best electronic albums of 2019: five

5 – Special Request - Vortex (Houndstooth)

In 2019, Special Request released a billion albums. He fired them at our faces like a tennis ball cannon. There were albums everywhere: on the floor, down our trousers, down the back of the sofa, down the plug hole. Someone get me a plunger: SR's fired out another one.

In October, he released the galactic r'n'b of Offworld, and a stonker it was too. In June, he gave us the brilliant Bedroom Tapes, taken from old cassettes he found in a house move. But since I'm only allowing him one album, it's May's storming Vortex that makes the list.

Vortex is a speed-fuelled hymn to BPM: the breakbeats trip over each other to see who can get to the finish line fastest. You think things are hectic, but then tracks like Fett and (deep breath) A Gargantuan Melting Face Floating Effortlessly Through The Stratosphere join the speedway and kick everything else to the hard shoulder.

There's a line to be drawn from peak smash 'n' grab 1990s Prodigy to Special Request's wonderfully futuristic visions. Vortex will leave you gasping — but don't gasp too much or he'll fire another album at your gob.

(While this blog post was hovering in my drafts, Special Request dropped the fourth of his promised 2019 albums. Too late for consideration here, but click here to have a listen: the title perfectly summarises his balls-out attitude to music production this year.)



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Best electronic albums of 2019: six

6 – Nathan Macay – Blue Spring (LuckyMe)

In this Picky B*stards piece, I refer to Nathan Micay as a "weightlifting producer who chugs protein shakes during DJ sets." I joined a gym for a year once. The place was sweaty and full of posers and I never want to go there again.

However, if Nath had a gym, I'd definitely go. He's already won the gold-plated accolade of album of the year on this very website under his Bwana alias. Can you imagine how many treadmill miles you'd clock up with his quality beats pouring from the speakers?

Blue Spring threw me at first. It's no Bwana mark two, despite him still being in thrall to the amazing manga artist Katsuhiro Otomo. There's only one full-on house track here (The Party We Could Have): everything else is dialled back to feel introspective and cautious.

What elevates this many levels above being nice-enough rainforest electro is simply how darn good the ideas are: the swagger of Moon Scepter Elimination, the wide-eyed voices of He Has The Key, the synthy drama of Blue Spring. You'll go back to it again and again. Most unlike a sweaty gym.



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Best electronic albums of 2019: seven

7 – Octo Octa – Resonant Body (T4t Luv Nrg)

Resonant Body takes us on a trans journey, which is a bit like a bus journey only there are loads of Twitter warriors running alongside trying to cancel out your existence. It's tough enough coming out as trans, even tougher to produce an album this good.

Here we have a party album bursting with breakbeats, acidic lines, sloshy snares, buoyant bass and choppy synths. It has depth too, such as in the plunging junglism of Ecstatic Beat and the misty ambient ripples of My Body Is Powerful.

There's even a bit that reminded me of Orbital. I can't remember which bit. That's good, isn't it. Quality music journalism. I've basically just told you there's a bit that sounds like something somewhere on the album. Nice and specific.

The climax of 'Body (as it's known to its friends) is almost bizarre as the final track is overtaken by an awkward crowd chant, but it feels deserved: Octo Octa's brilliant album isn't just a celebration of the body, but of a community. An unqualified joy: probably the most celebratory thing in this top 20.



Scroll the full best-of-2019 list here.