Here are some more also-rans. A bit more of a house music flavour amid the techno this time, so four to the floor, here goes…
Just missing out on my final list is the fifth album from The Field. The Follower (Kompakt) is a splendid assembly of spiralling techno. Gold Panda is always a nice listen, so the travel-inspired Good Luck And Do Your Best (City Slang) didn’t disappoint.
I enjoyed Juan Atkins & Moritz von Oswald / Borderland's Transport (Tresor) for two reasons: firstly, its unwavering commitment to solid house music, and secondly because I managed to shoehorn a C+C Music Factory reference into an Electronic Sound review of them earlier this year.
I enjoyed his debut Workshop 19, so it was a welcome return for abstract technoist Kassem Mosse with Disclosure (Honest Jon's Records). Meanwhile, Matt Karmil released two albums of note: the dubby IDLE033 (Idle Hands) followed by the throbbing gritty house of ++++ (PNN). I preferred the latter. The dark, spacey Planet 4 (Prime Numbers) by Manchester’s own Trus'me is worth a look in too.
House Of Dad’s House Of Dad (House Of Dad) samples a toilet flush and has a loo seat on the cover. It’s much better than it sounds, honest.
Finally, there were the deep, otherworldly rhythms of Dorisburg’s Irrbloss (Hivern Discs), and, for those with a bit of time on their hands, you should check out Prince Of Denmark’s magical and engaging 23-track 8 (Forum) if you can find anywhere selling it.
Scroll all of the best 2016 electronic albums by clicking here.
Showing posts with label gold panda. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gold panda. Show all posts
Dec 29, 2016
Dec 16, 2016
Gold Panda is almost the best panda of 2016
Anyone who has seen me live this year will know I bang on about pandas a lot. Baby pandas, sad pandas, confused pandas, future pandas.
So it's strange that I'd forgotten that Gold Panda had a new album out. Mr Panda, as I like to call him, released Good Luck And Do Your Best after collecting noises and images with photographer Laura Lewis in Japan. The title comes from well-wishing farewell from a taxi driver in Hiroshima.
This skippy little number called Chiba Nights tickles the ears good and proper. The album's mixed by Luke Abbott too, so this makes it almost my favourite panda of 2016.
Sorry, Mr Panda. Future panda beat you to it.
Further Fats: Luke Abbott's Drones: not so atonal now (2010)
Further Fats: A complete guide to the 2012 Mercury music prize nominations - contains a panda (2012)
Dec 30, 2011
Best electronica albums of 2011: numbers 7 to 5
Welcome back to my countdown of the best electronic music albums of 2011. Have a look at my previous post, why don’t you.
Before we fondle the edges of the top five, let’s have a look at some more people that coulda been a contender but they weren't because I wiped them on the doormat on the way in.
[This is part two. Click here for part one. Click here for part three. Click here for part four.]
It’s always a tightrope wobble producing this annual series of blog posts, because I don’t want my top ten to be too guitary. Metronomy fell just about on the wrong side of the divide so they are not included in my final list, but that doesn’t stop The English Riviera (Because) being one of the best albums for ages.
Katy B, darling of what I call the Radio 1 dubstep scene, did wonders for Magnetic Man. However, On A Mission (Rinse) didn’t convert me and she misses out on the top ten. Again. At this rate Skream will be round my place brandishing a pointed microphone stand. Again.
Balam Acab’s liquid loveliness on Wander / Wonder (Tri Angle) missed out on a place in the final list, which is a shame for such a brittle marvel. Thundercat’s The Golden Age Of Apocalypse (Brainfeeder) was too jazz funk for my tastes while Shigeto’s Full Circle Remixes and Gold Panda’s Companion (Ghostly International) walk away from this blog with nothing more than this brief mention right here in this sentence just here.
Like an agoraphobic moo-cow, I have been ignoring The Field. In 2007, his album From Here We Go Sublime scooped critical praise but it skittered past me because I was probably too busy listening to The Klaxons. And so to 2011, when I finally not only listened to The Field, but I whacked them straight into my top ten with their Looping State Of Mind (Kompakt).
The album opens with the soft siren call of Is This Power, which is all very nice, then they hit you with the monumental It’s Up There, a chugging 4:4 builder not a million miles from Rez-era Underworld. Arpeggiated Love too has a special kind of 10-minute stuck-needle aesthetic.
It’s probably the easiest listen in this whole top ten, but there’s something about the slow evolution of each song, the recurring sounds and the minimalism that helped this album find a particularly warm spot in my listening hole.
Dubstep is a term batted about more than Max Mosley’s bum in a dungeon, and I’m not sure it means anything anymore in a world in which Benga, Burial and Skrillex all lay claim to the term. Post-dubstep is easier. If it’s someone electronic trying to sound like The xx, then it’s post-dubstep. We’re New Here (XL) is post-dubstep. Apparently.
Jamie XX’s stroke of genius was only choosing to use the vocals when remixing Gil Scott-Heron’s 2010 album I’m New Here. He loaded his remixes with future party goodness and created an album that stands on its own. An instant classic and an essential for your record collection, Mr XX’s incredible attention to detail will keep you glued to the speakers. We’re New Here has bouncy bass (NY Is Killing Me), house music (I’ll Take Care Of U), utter beat mayhem (The Crutch) , all underpinning lashings of that smoky, smoky voice.
A true pioneer bringing another true pioneer to a new audience. Gil Scott-Heron, lost to us all in 2011, lives on in the dub.
Taking
a million years out doesn’t tend to encourage a quality comeback (see
James Cameron’s Avatar or the Stone Roses’s Second Coming), but by the
sounds of the furious techno on offer on Breaking The Frame (Dynamic Tension), Surgeon has been percolating quite nicely.
He is in an utterly uncompromising mood, but as the static anger of Radiance gives in to the harps from hell on Presence, there is beauty here too. An evil beauty.
The loops are tight although they still give the impression of an army of machines with steam valves and dangerous malfunctions, the hisses and the gasps stretching out loosely over waspish choirs and malevolent melodics. In some ways, it’s a throw-back to the faceless, tuneless Tresor techno of the 1990s: you know, when dance music was good. And most importantly, more than any artist of 2011, Surgeon stands out as someone unwilling to bend, someone out to please only himself; a man and his machines and, as a result, a bunch of slobbering (and terrified) techno fans.
[This is part two. Click here for part one. Click here for part three. Click here for part four.]
Before we fondle the edges of the top five, let’s have a look at some more people that coulda been a contender but they weren't because I wiped them on the doormat on the way in.
[This is part two. Click here for part one. Click here for part three. Click here for part four.]
Some also-rans
It’s always a tightrope wobble producing this annual series of blog posts, because I don’t want my top ten to be too guitary. Metronomy fell just about on the wrong side of the divide so they are not included in my final list, but that doesn’t stop The English Riviera (Because) being one of the best albums for ages.
Katy B, darling of what I call the Radio 1 dubstep scene, did wonders for Magnetic Man. However, On A Mission (Rinse) didn’t convert me and she misses out on the top ten. Again. At this rate Skream will be round my place brandishing a pointed microphone stand. Again.
Balam Acab’s liquid loveliness on Wander / Wonder (Tri Angle) missed out on a place in the final list, which is a shame for such a brittle marvel. Thundercat’s The Golden Age Of Apocalypse (Brainfeeder) was too jazz funk for my tastes while Shigeto’s Full Circle Remixes and Gold Panda’s Companion (Ghostly International) walk away from this blog with nothing more than this brief mention right here in this sentence just here.
7 - The Field - Looping State Of Mind
Like an agoraphobic moo-cow, I have been ignoring The Field. In 2007, his album From Here We Go Sublime scooped critical praise but it skittered past me because I was probably too busy listening to The Klaxons. And so to 2011, when I finally not only listened to The Field, but I whacked them straight into my top ten with their Looping State Of Mind (Kompakt).The album opens with the soft siren call of Is This Power, which is all very nice, then they hit you with the monumental It’s Up There, a chugging 4:4 builder not a million miles from Rez-era Underworld. Arpeggiated Love too has a special kind of 10-minute stuck-needle aesthetic.
It’s probably the easiest listen in this whole top ten, but there’s something about the slow evolution of each song, the recurring sounds and the minimalism that helped this album find a particularly warm spot in my listening hole.
6 - Gil Scott-Heron & Jamie XX - We’re New Here
Dubstep is a term batted about more than Max Mosley’s bum in a dungeon, and I’m not sure it means anything anymore in a world in which Benga, Burial and Skrillex all lay claim to the term. Post-dubstep is easier. If it’s someone electronic trying to sound like The xx, then it’s post-dubstep. We’re New Here (XL) is post-dubstep. Apparently.Jamie XX’s stroke of genius was only choosing to use the vocals when remixing Gil Scott-Heron’s 2010 album I’m New Here. He loaded his remixes with future party goodness and created an album that stands on its own. An instant classic and an essential for your record collection, Mr XX’s incredible attention to detail will keep you glued to the speakers. We’re New Here has bouncy bass (NY Is Killing Me), house music (I’ll Take Care Of U), utter beat mayhem (The Crutch) , all underpinning lashings of that smoky, smoky voice.
A true pioneer bringing another true pioneer to a new audience. Gil Scott-Heron, lost to us all in 2011, lives on in the dub.
5 - Surgeon - Breaking The Frame
Taking
a million years out doesn’t tend to encourage a quality comeback (see
James Cameron’s Avatar or the Stone Roses’s Second Coming), but by the
sounds of the furious techno on offer on Breaking The Frame (Dynamic Tension), Surgeon has been percolating quite nicely.He is in an utterly uncompromising mood, but as the static anger of Radiance gives in to the harps from hell on Presence, there is beauty here too. An evil beauty.
The loops are tight although they still give the impression of an army of machines with steam valves and dangerous malfunctions, the hisses and the gasps stretching out loosely over waspish choirs and malevolent melodics. In some ways, it’s a throw-back to the faceless, tuneless Tresor techno of the 1990s: you know, when dance music was good. And most importantly, more than any artist of 2011, Surgeon stands out as someone unwilling to bend, someone out to please only himself; a man and his machines and, as a result, a bunch of slobbering (and terrified) techno fans.
[This is part two. Click here for part one. Click here for part three. Click here for part four.]
Dec 28, 2010
Top ten best electronica albums of 2010: part two of four
This is part two. Please do read the other parts of this blog post: part one, part three and part four
To read last year's top ten best electronica albums, click here.
There's something about the great nephew of John and Alice Coltrane that enables him to kidnap heavyweight vocalists with Guru-like ease (Erykah Badu, Thom Yorke, Outkast, Laura Darlington) and yet still beguile the casual listener with the strangest cacophony of polymathic twiddling whilst provoking bemused reviewers into penning juxtapositional metaphors of space travel and smokey 1970s jazz clubs. That and his beats are well phat.
So, among the laidback hip hop of Zodiac Shit, the shuffling funk of Dance Of The Pseudo and the swirling headnodding of MmmHmm, we have a multitude of influences: jazz, garage, hip hop, techno, classical, folktronica and Enrique Iglesias. Despite all of this, I can't help feeling Cosmogramma is an album none of us can quite understand yet and perhaps it should be enjoyed more some time in the distant future, maybe in a smokey jazz club in space.
FlyLo isn't just a comedy airline created by Matt Lucas and David Walliams. Buy Cosmogramma at Bleep or Boomkat or Piccadilly.
The Wills and Kate of Manchester electronic music produced three records in 2010. 3 Telepathics Meh In-Sect Connection was a banana-themed collaboration by Sean from Autechre, Move Of Ten was technically an EP (although it's longer than the Flying Lotus album, above), while the release featured in my top ten, Oversteps, gave notoriety to Altered:Carbon who dressed their own LP as Autechre.
Listening to Oversteps is a bit like cuddling up to your favourite hedgehog: it's sharp and awkward, yet you're allured by the familiar scent. I don't get the detractors who write this off as difficult. known(1) has harpsichord, qplay is as delicate as my tummy after a night on the rohypnol, whilst see on see and Treale (oh NOW they use capital letters) are bonafide Autechre hits. Kind of. Warmer than Quaristice, this is music that spikes the bloodstream.
Buy Autechre's Oversteps at Bleep or Boomkat or Piccadilly.
Arriving on Rough Trade Records like a supercharged Sosumu Yokota, Pantha Du Prince produced eleven minimal techno masterpieces that were so fluid, so organic, they could only have been harvested as they were literally dripping from the trees. Minimal techno often bores me, so why on earth is this several leagues above places six to ten on my list?
Maybe it's the snarling acid on Behind The Stars, the heavenly rave chords of Satellite Snyper, or the clanks and bells and feedback and heavenly choirs of synthdom that eddy and whirl around crisp beats that couldn't beat more crisply even if accompanied by a Walkers advert starring Gary Lineker being thumped to a pulp by sixteen heavily-armed packets of Seabrook. I'm not sure if Black Noise can be topped, but there are four albums on my list that have done just that. Stay tuned.
Bring the Noise: buy Pantha Du Prince's album from Bleep or Boomkat or Piccadilly.
Not quite in the top ten (part two)
I'm pleased with my top ten, although excluding any amazing album is a bit like shepherding your ten favourite sheep into the pen then shotgunning the rest into blasted pulps of smoking mutton. Here are more lambs that have been silenced.
Gold Panda's glitchy Lucky Shiner (pictured) probably got bumped because a couple of artists in my top ten are doing similar things. Massive Attack's Heligoland probably got bumped because, although the album was an improvement, it still sounded like veterans keeping the life support going. Also on a mainstream tip, I never quite connected with LCD Soundsystem's swansong This Is Happening.
A notable omission from my top ten is Squarepusher's Schobaleader One project, but I couldn't separate how he could make some tracks on d'Demonstrator sound like Royksopp and then not expect to be compared to Royksopp. He's excluded because he sounds like Royksopp. There, I said it. Squarepusher sounds like Royksopp. Royksopp's funnier the more you say it.
Actress' Splazsh is an essential album for 2010, and I feel pained to exclude it. Oneohtrix Point Never received major acclaim for Returnal and again was a close call. And Starkey's Ear Drums And Black Holes, bringing ballads and grime to Planet Mu Records, also just missed the cut.
This is part two. Please do read the other parts of this blog post: part one, part three and part four
To read last year's top ten best electronica albums, click here.
To read last year's top ten best electronica albums, click here.
7 - Flying Lotus – Cosmogramma
There's something about the great nephew of John and Alice Coltrane that enables him to kidnap heavyweight vocalists with Guru-like ease (Erykah Badu, Thom Yorke, Outkast, Laura Darlington) and yet still beguile the casual listener with the strangest cacophony of polymathic twiddling whilst provoking bemused reviewers into penning juxtapositional metaphors of space travel and smokey 1970s jazz clubs. That and his beats are well phat.
So, among the laidback hip hop of Zodiac Shit, the shuffling funk of Dance Of The Pseudo and the swirling headnodding of MmmHmm, we have a multitude of influences: jazz, garage, hip hop, techno, classical, folktronica and Enrique Iglesias. Despite all of this, I can't help feeling Cosmogramma is an album none of us can quite understand yet and perhaps it should be enjoyed more some time in the distant future, maybe in a smokey jazz club in space.
FlyLo isn't just a comedy airline created by Matt Lucas and David Walliams. Buy Cosmogramma at Bleep or Boomkat or Piccadilly.
6 - Autechre – Oversteps
The Wills and Kate of Manchester electronic music produced three records in 2010. 3 Telepathics Meh In-Sect Connection was a banana-themed collaboration by Sean from Autechre, Move Of Ten was technically an EP (although it's longer than the Flying Lotus album, above), while the release featured in my top ten, Oversteps, gave notoriety to Altered:Carbon who dressed their own LP as Autechre.
Listening to Oversteps is a bit like cuddling up to your favourite hedgehog: it's sharp and awkward, yet you're allured by the familiar scent. I don't get the detractors who write this off as difficult. known(1) has harpsichord, qplay is as delicate as my tummy after a night on the rohypnol, whilst see on see and Treale (oh NOW they use capital letters) are bonafide Autechre hits. Kind of. Warmer than Quaristice, this is music that spikes the bloodstream.
Buy Autechre's Oversteps at Bleep or Boomkat or Piccadilly.
5 - Pantha Du Prince - Black Noise
Arriving on Rough Trade Records like a supercharged Sosumu Yokota, Pantha Du Prince produced eleven minimal techno masterpieces that were so fluid, so organic, they could only have been harvested as they were literally dripping from the trees. Minimal techno often bores me, so why on earth is this several leagues above places six to ten on my list?
Maybe it's the snarling acid on Behind The Stars, the heavenly rave chords of Satellite Snyper, or the clanks and bells and feedback and heavenly choirs of synthdom that eddy and whirl around crisp beats that couldn't beat more crisply even if accompanied by a Walkers advert starring Gary Lineker being thumped to a pulp by sixteen heavily-armed packets of Seabrook. I'm not sure if Black Noise can be topped, but there are four albums on my list that have done just that. Stay tuned.
Bring the Noise: buy Pantha Du Prince's album from Bleep or Boomkat or Piccadilly.
Not quite in the top ten (part two)I'm pleased with my top ten, although excluding any amazing album is a bit like shepherding your ten favourite sheep into the pen then shotgunning the rest into blasted pulps of smoking mutton. Here are more lambs that have been silenced.
Gold Panda's glitchy Lucky Shiner (pictured) probably got bumped because a couple of artists in my top ten are doing similar things. Massive Attack's Heligoland probably got bumped because, although the album was an improvement, it still sounded like veterans keeping the life support going. Also on a mainstream tip, I never quite connected with LCD Soundsystem's swansong This Is Happening.
A notable omission from my top ten is Squarepusher's Schobaleader One project, but I couldn't separate how he could make some tracks on d'Demonstrator sound like Royksopp and then not expect to be compared to Royksopp. He's excluded because he sounds like Royksopp. There, I said it. Squarepusher sounds like Royksopp. Royksopp's funnier the more you say it.
Actress' Splazsh is an essential album for 2010, and I feel pained to exclude it. Oneohtrix Point Never received major acclaim for Returnal and again was a close call. And Starkey's Ear Drums And Black Holes, bringing ballads and grime to Planet Mu Records, also just missed the cut.
This is part two. Please do read the other parts of this blog post: part one, part three and part four
To read last year's top ten best electronica albums, click here.
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