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| Peggy Gou |
The global reach of electronic music was felt this year, with some of the genre's best new albums coming from places like Pan-Asian: Japan/South Korea (Tengger), Germany (Ellen Allien, Barker), Canada (CFCF), Australia (HTRK), Russia (Kedr Kivanskiy), Berlin, British Columbia, Canada (Jayda G), and South Korea (Peggy Gou).
Peggy Gou feat. Pegasus - Perseguido Por el Rayo from DJ-Kicks
During the 2010s, Peggy Gou quickly became one of underground dance music's brightest stars due to her driving, energetic DJ sets as well as sublimely crafted tracks like "It Makes You Forget (Itgehane)" which felt like instant classics. In 2019, she achieved a career goal when she mixed a volume of !K7's lauded DJ-Kicks series...
Turning Jewels into Water - Map of Absences from Map of Absences
Haitian turntablist/producer Val Jeanty (aka Val-Inc) met Indian drummer and electronic musician Ravish Momin at an artist workshop in Brooklyn in 2017, and the two soon began collaborating as Turning Jewels Into Water. Continuing in the direction set by 2018 EP Which Way Is Home?, TJIW's first full-length is filled with improvisation-based creations that draw from the duo's combined ancestries by electronic instrumentation and samples...
Working as Teebs, producer Mtendere Mandowa developed a distinctive style of floating, dreamlike beatmaking, one that reflected the easygoing climates and warm breezes his Los Angeles environs. Following his 2014 album Estara, Teebs became a father and music took a back seat to parenthood for a time. Life lessons and personal experiences from the five years between new work inform his 2019 album Anicca, a warm and generous-feeling collection of Teebs' signature ethereal production and collaborations with like-minded peers...
CFCF - Oxygen Lounge from Liquid Colours
Liquid Colours is the spiritual sequel to The Colours of Life, CFCF's 2015 song cycle that explored maligned '80s genres such as smooth jazz, soft rock, and worldbeat, yet managed to sound entirely sincere rather than ironic or condescending, and was one of the Montreal-based artist's most successful works. This time, CFCF (Mike Silver) focuses on the late 1990s, particularly the brief moment in time when "electronica" was poised to take over the world. Pop stars such as Madonna were flirting with techno and trip-hop, and drum'n'bass was regularly heard in the background during commercials and movie trailers. Liquid Colours is a continuously flowing suite of brief tracks that blend lush, sweeping synths with continuously evolving breakbeats, recalling LTJ Bukem and Adam F as well as the types of accessible jungle tracks Tracey Thorn would've sung over during the second half of the 1990s...
HTRK - New Year's Day from Venus in Leo
It's hard to talk about Australian group HTRK without mentioning the tragedies they've faced since their formation. They recorded their first studio album, 2009's Marry Me Tonight, with Rowland S. Howard shortly before his death from liver cancer, and founding member Sean Stewart committed suicide halfway through the recording of 2011's Work (Work, Work). Throughout all of this, guitarist Nigel Yang and vocalist Jonnine Standish have persevered, continuing to create astonishing music that is emotionally heavy yet remarkably intimate, and not as unbearably dour as one might expect. Venus in Leo arrives five years after Psychic 9-5 Club, their first album fully recorded as a duo, and while the slow, measured drum machines and airy echo immediately identify this as a HTRK release, the lyrical content makes this one stand apart from their past work...
Mtendere Mandowa, better known by his stage name Teebs, is an American record producer and visual artist from Los Angeles, California. He is a member of the My Hollow Drum collective. He is also one half of the duo Sons of the Morning.
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| Sudan Archives |
Mtendere Mandowa, better known by his stage name Teebs, is an American record producer and visual artist from Los Angeles, California. He is a member of the My Hollow Drum collective. He is also one half of the duo Sons of the Morning.
As Sudan Archives, Brittney Parks has combined left-field strains of R&B, hip-hop, folk, and electronic music with the fiddling style of West Africa, as heard on a pair of EPs and the full-length Athena (2019), all of which have been released on the Stones Throw label.
HTRK - New Year's Eve from Venus in Leo
Telefon Tel Aviv - a younger version of myself, from Dreams Are Not Enough
The future of Telefon Tel Aviv seemed to be in doubt when Charles Cooper unexpectedly passed away in early 2009, right when the duo's third album was released. After spending the majority of the 2010s concentrating on several other projects, including Sons of Magdalene, the Black Queen, and ongoing involvement with Nine Inch Nails and Puscifer, Eustis reactivated TTA as a solo venture, performing shows and reissuing the duo's first two albums through Ghostly International. The same label also released Dreams Are Not Enough, the first TTA full-length in a decade, and it's every bit as beautiful and devastating as fans would expect. As with the second and third TTA albums, this one matches innovative sound design with emotive lyricism, but following the deaths of Cooper and several of Eustis' other friends and family members, the album takes on a much more harrowing tone...
Mixing abstract electronic textures with hip-hop and R&B elements, this British producer is right at home on Flying Lotus' Brainfeeder Records.
Lapalux - Limb to Limb from Amnioverse
With his third album, Ruinism, Lapalux (producer Stuart Howard) shifted his sound from syrupy R&B and hip-hop mutations to jagged, deconstructed audio design closer to visionaries like Rabit or Demdike Stare, and switched the thematic focus from lovelorn dreaming to alarmed ponderings about mortality. Amnioverse continues in this existentialist mode -- its title is a portmanteau of the amniotic sac and the universe, relating to a fluid, perpetual cycle of life, death, and rebirth. The album contains the producer's most complex, detailed arrangements yet, incorporating sounds of the elements and modular synthesizers into pristinely detailed compositions that progress from near stillness to intense, fractured rhythmic sections. Vocals play an equally significant role as they did on past Lapalux albums, with guest singers JFDR and Lilia providing key moments of heartfelt introspection, but this time Howard additionally threaded spoken snippets from people close to his heart into the tracks...
Cleveland-based synthesizer wizard initially known for co-founding acclaimed ambient trio Emeralds before embarking on a notable solo career.
Steve Hauschildt - Subtractive Skies from Nonlin
Steve Hauschildt's first release for Ghostly International, Dissolvi, was one of the most beat-heavy full-lengths he's ever made, as well as his most collaborative effort since the breakup of Emeralds. Follow-up Nonlin was developed in several cities while Hauschildt was touring, and it's one of his more spontaneous-sounding records, making usage of generative systems and granular synthesis as well as improvisation. Some of the tracks are smooth and starry; the trance-y arpeggios of "Subtractive Skies" glide through the night air in a manner similar to Barker's Utility, yet this feels a bit more humid...
Los Angeles-based experimental hip-hop producer whose grimly atmospheric work is influenced by R&B, metal, and drum'n'bass.
Four years following career highlight Dark Red, Shlohmo returned with the ominously titled The End. Even grimmer than its predecessor and no less brilliant, The End is a gloomy, apocalyptic record which sounds like it's trying to break out from underneath the wreckage of civilization. While Shlohmo has always recorded his music at home to cassette tapes, this album feels even messier and smudgier than his earlier work, filled with disorienting pitchshifting and tape mangling. Yet somehow the production itself is clean and dynamic, with heavy bass and more of an attack to the higher ranges. Shlohmo acknowledged metal as an influence on Dark Red, but the guitars on The End are much heavier and doomier...
Innovative drum'n'bass producer and DJ whose output includes lush yet heavy jungle tracks as well as house-influenced crossover hits.
J Majik - Red Moon from Full Circle
Full Circle is only the second solo full-length from J Majik, a drum'n'bass pioneer whose early singles for Metalheadz, recorded while he was still a teenager, were among the most awe-inspiring releases of the genre's early days. Since then, he's released more accessible material, often co-produced by frequent collaborator Wickaman. He reached the Top 40 of the U.K. singles chart twice during the 2000s, both through house-inspired collaborations with American diva Kathy Brown, and flirted with dubstep during the early 2010s. After 2013's Out of Sight (with Wickaman), he dropped out of the music scene for a while, but he felt re-inspired after playing a set at a 2016 Metalheadz reunion and a 2017 gig at Rupture, a London club night and record label at the epicenter of the late-2010s revival of jungle and breakbeat hardcore. J Majik reactivated his own Infrared label and began releasing vintage unreleased tracks as well as new productions by himself, Adam F, Peshay, and others. Full Circle is a revisit of his classic early sound, but it's so faithful to that era that you start to wonder if the teenage Jamie Spratling owned a time machine and transported himself two decades into the future...
One of the earliest members of N.Y.C. experimental act Black Dice as well as composer of volumes of his own always difficult sounds.
Eric Copeland - Light Fantastic from Trogg Modal, Vol. 2
The counterpart to Eric Copeland's first Trogg Modal release continues in that album's carefree mode, with the Black Dice leader capturing the spirit of countless late-night synth and drum machine sessions on tape. However, Vol. 2 is somehow much more focused than its sibling and is perhaps the closest Copeland has come to making straightforward dance music. More often than not, the tracks have heavy, banging kick drums, as well as more DJ-friendly structures than we're used to from this artist...
Electronic indie folk outlet of West Midlands producer and multi-instrumentalist Stephen Wilkinson.
On 2017's excellent Phantom Brickworks, Bibio's Stephen Wilkinson took a deep dive into his music's ambient side that was unexpected, yet made perfect sense within his body of work. This time, Wilkinson spotlights the acoustic elements that have added warmth to his sound since the beginning, and the freshness of Ribbons suggest that his break from song-based music reinvigorated him. In interviews, Wilkinson has mentioned he prefers the simplicity of writing on acoustic guitar, and that purity shines through on the album's numerous instrumentals... Ribbons' pastoral world that recalls early efforts like Vignetting the Compost, but its eloquent clarity reflects Wilkinson's increasing sophistication as an artist. Ribbons also showcases his finesse with strings of all sorts...
Kaleidoscopic blend of soundtracks, foggy electronics, and fragments of forgotten techno; associated with cult label Ghost Box.
Pye Corner Audio - Surfacing from Hollow Earth
Conceived as a sequel to 2016's Stasis -- which itself was a sequel to 2012's Sleep Games -- Hollow Earth continues Martin Jenkins' trend of honing his Ghost Box releases without sacrificing any of Pye Corner Audio's evocative power. At over an hour long, the album allows him to give equal time to the most kinetic and abstract sides of his music. Jenkins delivers a little of each on the album's title track: Glimmering chords soon give way to a four-on-the-floor beat and choral vocals that serve as a beguiling prologue for the rest of Hollow Earth's excursions. Jenkins' music remains as vivid and distinctive as it was during the Black Mill Tapes days, and he provides glimpses of an adventure as he conjures narrow passages, vast caverns, and mazes in this subterranean playground...
Jayda G - Sunshine in the Valley from Significant Changes
Globetrotting DJ and producer Jayda G has emerged as a major figure in the underground house scene since she began playing international gigs and releasing tracks during the mid-2010s. Known for her boundless charisma and love of vintage disco and funk, Jayda released several dreamy, unpretentious house 12"s on labels like Freakout Cult (which she co-ran with DJ Fett Burger) and 1080p before signing with Ninja Tune for the release of her first album. Significant Changes is a culmination of her life passions as well as everything that's made her music stand out thus far. While certainly a club record, the album moves through a wide range of moods and emotions...
Canadian DJ and producer who received much acclaim for his tracks, which blended R&B and U.K. garage influences.
Jacques Greene - Whenever from Dawn Chorus
Jacques Greene's second album is intended as a set of post-rave reflections, meant to soundtrack all of the thoughts and sensations taking place as the club shuts down and the partygoers disperse into the morning air to begin the shuttle back home. This is a far cry from a chill-out or comedown album, however, as there's still a bit of energy required to navigate the way back, so these tracks are alert and conscious, yet a bit hazy. The Canadian producer's tracks dwell on simultaneous feelings of joy, pain, regret, and longing, illustrating how they interact with each other. Throughout his decade-long career, Greene has typically chopped up R&B vocal samples in order to help convey these feelings...
Maya Bouldry-Morrison, Brooklyn-based producer of lush, dreamy house music, with releases on labels like 100% Silk and HNYTRX.
Octo Octa - Can You See Me from Resonant Body
Maya Bouldry-Morrison's work as Octo Octa has always looked to dance music's past for artistic inspiration while simultaneously gazing inward, exploring deeply personal subjects and feelings. Her first album, the tellingly titled Between Two Selves, was released before she came out as transgender, and follow-up Where Are We Going? reflected her uncertainty and emotional instability. Resonant Body, her third full-length, is the sound of an individual much more at peace with herself and her surroundings, and it's some of the most thrilling work she's produced. Described as her most spiritual and nature-connected work, she recorded it in a cabin in New Hampshire, and there's something free and open about it that sounds unconfined by the pressures of a city environment...
Maya Bouldry-Morrison's work as Octo Octa has always looked to dance music's past for artistic inspiration while simultaneously gazing inward, exploring deeply personal subjects and feelings. Her first album, the tellingly titled Between Two Selves, was released before she came out as transgender, and follow-up Where Are We Going? reflected her uncertainty and emotional instability. Resonant Body, her third full-length, is the sound of an individual much more at peace with herself and her surroundings, and it's some of the most thrilling work she's produced. Described as her most spiritual and nature-connected work, she recorded it in a cabin in New Hampshire, and there's something free and open about it that sounds unconfined by the pressures of a city environment...
Plaid's tenth studio album is inspired by environmental concerns, as well as humanity's relationship with synthetic objects and how they affect the planet. Similar to many of Plaid's past albums, the duo weave acoustic instrumentation throughout their tricky compositions, fusing machine precision with warmth, humanity, and wonder. As with 2016's The Digging Remedy, Polymer is a bit darker than usual for Plaid, reflecting the album's eco-conscious themes, but it's still playful and spirited, if more mature-sounding than their earlier work...
Syrian-Armenian-American producer and singer/songwriter who blends her heritage with elements of classical, pop and electronic music.
Káryyn - Segment & the Line from Quanta Series
For an artist releasing her debut album, Káryyn has a remarkably rich history: A Syrian-Armenian-American who was raised in Indiana but maintained close ties with her overseas family, her world changed with the 2011 deaths of two of her relatives in Aleppo. For the next 18 months, Káryyn went into seclusion, grieving and creating in private at her sister's home in upstate New York. This period of isolation was also the beginning of her personal and artistic rebirth. For the next seven years, she traveled the world, writing songs that she self-released in 2017 and 2018. She collects those songs -- as well as three new tracks -- on The Quanta Series, a fittingly ambitious first album for a musician who initially earned renown for her work on the opera Of Light. On tracks such as "Ever," Káryyn's multi-octave vocals and glitchy productions call to mind the work of Arca, Holly Herndon, and Björk (who became a fan after attending a performance of Of Light in Reykjavik)...
London-based IDM producer signed to Kode9's Hyperdub label.
Loraine James - Sensual from For You and I
Loraine James' first Hyperdub release is an homage to her London upbringing, as well as an exploration of her own identity, specifically as a queer black woman residing in the city. The cover art shows her standing in front of her childhood flat while holding up an old Polaroid photo of the same building. Reflecting the multiculturalism of the city, her music is influenced by numerous genres and styles, but it rarely feels like she's dipping into any of them for train spotters' sake. Her music is the sound of spontaneous expression beyond any perceived limitations...
Russian indie electronic musician whose brand of lo-fi pop draws from '90s techno and jungle influences.
Kedr Livanskiy - Why Love ( з а ч е м л ю б о в ь) from Your Need
Russian electronic artist Kedr Livanskiy's early releases contained wintry lo-fi house and jungle tracks with supremely haunting vocal melodies which still resonate several years later. As fantastic as those records were (particularly 2016's January Sun EP), her second full-length, Your Need, outdoes them and feels like nothing less than a creative rebirth. The fog has mostly cleared, and these songs sound much brighter and sunnier. They're also shorter, poppier, and more energetic...
Jamie Spratling, best known as J Majik, has remained one of the most innovative drum'n'bass producers since the genre's infancy.
J Majik - Codebreaker from Full Circle
HAAi - Systems Up, Windows Down from Systems Up, Windows Down
Teneil Throssell's early singles as HAAi, issued in 2017 through her own Coconut Beats imprint, were lush, somewhat laid-back house tunes, but she's really come into her own with her subsequent material, which has been harder, more complex, and just plain trippier. After her debut "Essential Mix" for BBC Radio 1 was crowned the program's best mix of 2018, she became a Radio 1 resident DJ, and has been constantly traveling around the world, delivering her lengthy, mind-warping DJ sets to ecstatic ravers and festival-goers. Systems Up, Windows Down is her first release for Mute, and it's her most intense, hypnotic, and psychedelic material thus far. Rather than delivering instant gratification, she takes time to rev her tracks up before slamming on breakbeats and fizzling oscillations, but all of the tracks end up being bangers...
Prior to 2018, Sam Barker was known for making intricately designed, functional techno as one half of Barker & Baumecker, as well as co-founding Leisure System, the event series and label which expanded the scope of Berghain, booking more experimental acts than the purist techno commonly associated with the Berlin superclub. With his 2018 solo EP Debiasing, Barker introduced a cascading form of techno that reaches towards the euphoria of trance without falling back on any of its clichéd elements -- most outstandingly, doing so without the usage of kick drums. The release was hailed as a fresh evolution of techno, and built up anticipation for a full-length. Utility expands on the unique sound of Debiasing, additionally pushing it in a few other directions...
Ellen Allien - Bowie in Harmony from Alientronic
Following Ellen Allien's back-to-basics club album Nost as well as a pair of commanding singles ("Take a Stand," "UFO"), the BPitch Control founder released Alientronic, which continues in much the same direction but ventures a bit further out of orbit. Much shorter than Nost, Alientronic is a set of focused interstellar voyages which convey a sense of mystery while delivering the requisite amount of club energy...
Caterina Barbieri - Pinnacles of You from Ecstatic Computation
Caterina Barbieri's fourth full-length is closer to the deep-space synth arpeggios of 2017's Patterns of Consciousness than the minimalist, cello-heavy drone pieces of 2018's Born Again in the Voltage, which was recorded earlier. Brilliantly titled Ecstatic Computation, the album is deeper, darker, and trippier than any of her previous releases. Monolithic ten-minute opener "Fantas" immediately overwhelms the listener's senses, building up springy, neon modular synth sequences and gradually making it feel like the entire world is crumbling, or all the stars are beginning to burst, one by one...
Floating Points- LesAlpx from Crush
Sam Shepherd's second Floating Points album is as distinct from Reflections: Mojave Desert as that live band-oriented 2017 EP is distinguishable from the painstaking 2015 LP Elaenia. The making of Crush was powered in part by the lasting creative energy Shepherd felt during a string of dates supporting the xx, for which he performed alone with only a modular synthesizer. Contrary to his intent, his sets were typified by a newfound level of dynamism and a lack of regard for merely easing early arrivers into the mood for the headliners. That approach is sensed through much of Crush. Shepherd created the overwhelming majority of it on his own, albeit with more than enough gear -- including his Rhodes Chroma, this time controlled with a customized tablet app -- to stage a 2019 equivalent to the photo on the back of Herbie Hancock's Sunlight...
As Benoît Pioulard, multi-instrumentalist/writer Thomas Meluch combines found sounds, electronics, and bittersweet pop into dreamy songs and contemplative ambient pieces.
Sean Curtis Patrick / Benoît Pioulard - Nordmeer from Avocationals
After spending years intending to work on music together, longtime friends Benoit Pioulard and Sean Curtis Patrick found a project worthy of their talents. A set of ambient pieces inspired by the ships wrecked in the Great Lakes during the shipping boom of the mid-20th century, Avocationals makes the most of their ability to imbue their music with a sense of place and history. Pioulard's music frequently incorporates field recordings, while Patrick often builds entire works from them. Their approaches blend seamlessly on Avocationals, which they crafted with Patrick's vintage reel-to-reel tape machines and synths as well as guitars and vocals. The duo set the tone for the album with the eerily beautiful melody of "Zenava," which beckons listeners to follow Pioulard and Patrick further into its depths...
Matmos - Fanfare for Polyethylene Waste Containers from Plastic Anniversary
With Plastic Anniversary, Matmos' Drew Daniel and M.C. Schmidt celebrate 25 years of romantic and creative partnership. While this might be a silver anniversary for almost any other couple, in this case plastic is much more apt: Not only does it echo their relationship's durability, it reflects the dedication to transformation at the heart of their music... Even by the duo's standards, the album's palette is outlandish. "Breaking Bread"'s cartoonish boings, squishes, and wobbles -- which were sourced from broken vinyl records by '70s soft rockers Bread -- are equally whimsical and unsettlingly unnatural. Coming across like a collaboration between Spike Jones and the Art of Noise...
Anna Meredith - Limpet from FIBS
Merging elements of pop, electronic, and classical music into a short-form, compositional indie electronica, British composer Anna Meredith made her full-length debut with Varmints in 2016. Between its arrival and the release of the follow-up, among other projects, Meredith reimagined Vivaldi's Four Seasons for an immersive multimedia event (and later recording), she composed her first film score (Eighth Grade), she opened the Proms with a piece commemorating the end of World War I, and was made an MBE. She still managed to prepare a second solo album before the end of the decade. As was the case with Varmints, 2019's FIBS includes both songs and instrumentals. A reportedly time-consuming endeavor involving more and different instruments than on Varmints as well as more layers, it's a vibrant, kinetic album with often relentless rhythms...
Holly Herndon - Last Gasp from PROTO
On each of her albums, Holly Herndon thoughtfully examines the boundaries between humankind and technology, and how our innovations define us as much as we define them. She began her explorations with the sketches of physical and virtual intimacy that made up 2012's Movement and broadened her scope on 2014's Platform, where her self-surveillance of her everyday online interactions ranged from mundane to unsettling. On 2019's PROTO, she takes another significant step forward. A collaboration with Spawn, an AI that Herndon created with her partner Mat Dryhurst and programmer Jules LaPlace, her third album reflects her own evolution as an artist and thinker as it documents the project's development. As its name suggests, Herndon's neural network was in its infancy when she made PROTO. To train this cutting-edge technology, she connected it with the oldest roots of her music, and music in general: the human voice...
Pan-Asian experimental electronics duo inspired by new age drones, travel experiences, and driving Krautrock vamps.
Tengger - Wasserwellen from Spiritual 2
Musical family Tengger is made up of experimental electronic musicians Marqido and Itta, occasionally joined by their young son Raai. Before Raai came along, the couple had already been making drony and hypnotic sounds for several years, calling on the influence of classic Krautrock bands as well as misty new age influences. Spiritual 2 marks the most clearly presented material in an already sizable discography, offering the best of the group's various approaches to drifting, carefully constructed electronic music. The hypnotic one-note jams of legendary bands like Neu, Harmonia, and Ashra have long been a key reference point for Tengger's sound, and several tracks here return to those inspirations. Album opener "High" has the same bounding, upbeat quality as some of the best minimal Krautrock grooves, with analog synth bass lines and clicking drum-box rhythms supporting Itta's floating wordless vocals...
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| Holly Herndon |
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