30: HUDSON MOHAWKE
BUTTER
(WARP)

If nothing else, Butter is consistent. Right down to the colours of the record’s cover – so synthetic they look polluted; toxified by neon – the debut album from Glaswegian hip-hop producer Hudson Mohawke deals in DayGlo; its plastic, tacky timbres recalling the most artificial parts of ’80s yacht rock, soul and pop like some evil, glistening P-Funk ghost. [Tom Lea]

29: LEGOWELT
AMIGA RAILROAD ADVENTURES
(STRANGE LIFE)

Though a frequent contributor to labels like Bunker and Creme Organization, Hague-based synth-savant Danny Wolfers saves his best and freakiest work for his own Strange Life imprint, adopting a bewildering array of guises for a staggering run of CD-R albums with bizarre backstories.

Amiga Railroad Adventures, a tribute to the age of “Amiga computing cosyness” is one of Wolfers’ most impressive album-length statements to date (and there have been dozens). Though the influence of his beloved Chicago house is evident on a couple of tracks, in the main this is streamlined, Kraftwerkian techno-pop: bassy as fuck, soaked in tape-hiss and, for all its retro grounding, somehow still bewitchingly futuristic. [Kiran Sande]

28: SILK FLOWERS
SILK FLOWERS
(POST PRESENT MEDIUM)

Silk Flowers consists of Aviram Cohen and Peter Schuette, formerly of New York outfit Soiled Mattress And The Springs, along with Car Clutch’s Ethan Swan. Muso credentials aside, this self-titled album is a gloomy synth-driven tapestry of haunting minimalism and powerful, evocative song writing.

Credit must go to the pitch-perfect production of Fred Thomas, who plays the album straight and lo-fidelity, avoiding the temptation to oversaturate the 80s vibes already on show. Silk Flowers aren’t self-consciously retro but they are nostalgic: the band look to the past to find inspiration for the future, and while they tread a fine line throughout the record, the originality in their song-writing ensures they stay the right side of copyist, resulting in an album that’s enjoyable and admirable. [Jeremy Parkinson]

27: 2562
UNBALANCE
(TECTONIC)

Unbalance is a dubstep album – you need to play it loud to truly appreciate it, but 2562′s songwriting – the melodies, the leadlines, the structure – has advanced such that you can listen to it on laptop speakers and still bliss out. Tracks like ‘Dinosaur’, ‘Flashback’ – there’s a subdued sadness to those melodies, bobbing along a river of crackle and rain, that hits you hard.

The looped vocals on ‘Lost’ are like reading Burial’s diary if he’d spent years alone on a spaceship, while the album’s title track has rhythms that recall Shortstuff’s more off-kilter percussive moments, but uses them to stagger emotion rather than set off dancefloors.  Rhythmically, Unbalance is more varied than any Huismans full-length to date, and another distinction between this and last year’s Aerial is given away by the contrasting cover art: finally, this is a 2562 album in multicolour. [Tom Lea]

26: CITY CENTER
CITY CENTER
(TYPE)

The first album from Fred ‘Saturday Looks Good to Me’ Thomas’ City Centre project got a lot of flack this year; certain quarters of the blogging cognoscenti quick to slam it as one fat-arsed Animal Collective rip-off.

Well, sure. It might be. As Deerhunter sound like a less shit MBV [er, arguably - Ed], so too does Thomas’ offering take an overrated inspiration and turn it into something more rewarding. City Center transcends any notions of irritating American Apparel-endorsed hippy hype and stands out on its own, charming merits – its addictiveness a result of Thomas’ enviable knack for melody rather than the sonic sorcery employed on its production. [Rich Hanscomb]

25: SND
ATAVISM
(RASTER-NOTON)

Atavism found snd more skeletal and minimal than before, each kick and snap razor-sharp, the digital synths like lasers cutting through ice. As far as doing a lot with a very small palette of sounds goes, Atavism murders 99% of what is generally regarded as minimal techno, both in terms of inventiveness and accuracy. And in terms of giving people something they didn’t expect, I doubt anyone – even those who’ve only heard last album 4, 5, 6 - will find many surprises in its sixteen tracks. But that’s probably par for the course when you’re dealing with a style as frequently faceless as European out-tronica: Atavism is a quality addition to snd’s catalogue, and the predictability of its quality is simply a side effect of the group’s reputation for doing this sort of thing so well, and so consistently. [Chris Campbell]

24: ATLAS SOUND
LOGOS
(4AD)

More intimate than much of Deerhunter’s output, the languid atmospherics of the first Atlas Sound album are still very much present on Logos. This time, however, the experimentalism has been turned down and the tunes have been turned up. A lot. That’s not to say it’s all happy and inane – as if. There are just melodies to bolster the rich palette of moods – from the spacey ‘An Orchid’, which sees Cox moan over a waltzing minor key melody that Thom Yorke would probably shed tears over, to ‘Walkabout’, where Noah Lennox – of Animal Collective and Panda Bear fame – brings his own sunny, Beach Boys pop vibes to bear with such force of will that it momentarily transforms Logos into Person Pitch. [Louise Brailey]

23: RSD
GOOD ENERGY
(PUNCH DRUNK)

Making a name for himself in the late 80s with his legendary DJ sets at St Pauls dances and early production work with Massive Attack, Rob Smith went on to extrapolate the soulful, breakbeat-led Bristol sound with Smith & Mighty and later the jungle-leaning More Rockers, always clinging tightly to a dubwise sensibility.

However, it was with the birth of his RSD alter ego that Smith begun to capture the underground’s collective imagination again: hooking up with Punch Drunk, the label run by Tom ‘Peverelist’ Ford out of the Rooted Records store in Bristol. Steeped in Jamaican dancehall flavour and topped off with a certain Bristolian je ne sais quoi, Smith’s recent singles – collected on this CD compilation – are undeniably, demonstrably dubstep, but have a lineage and a pedigree all their own. There’s something classic, or rather classicist, about every RSD production; the experience that Smith brings to the mixing desk audible in every note. [Tony Essler]

22: DAM-FUNK
TOEACHIZOWN
(STONES THROW)

Describing himself as a “Los Angeles based ‘Modern-Funk’ musician, wax collector, ‘Boogie’ aficionado and founder of L.A party Funkmosphere”, DâM-FunK filters elements of P-Funk, G-Funk and early ’80s electro-funk (e.g. Change, D-Train, Style-era Cameo) into a beguiling new concoction.

To misquote Simon Reynolds, many crimes have been committed in the name of funk, and all too often it’s the cartoon elements of the genre (Larry Blackmon’s codpiece, Jessie Rae’s claymore, Sir Nose D’Voidoffunk) that get more attention than the seriously good sounds. Thankfully, DâM-FunK brings the BPMs right down and manages to strike the right balance between the sublime and the ridiculous. [Justin Toland]

21: MORITZ VON OSWALD TRIO
VERTICAL ASCENT
(HONEST JON’S)

OK, so this wasn’t quite as game-changing as we might’ve hoped, but still – what a bold and rewarding album. Joined by two stellar sidemen in Max Loderbauer (nsi./Sun Electric) and Sasu Ripatti (Luomo, Vladislav Delay), there are occasional echoes of the Basic Channel man’s past – a Rhythm & Sound-style skank-out here, a Maurizio-style dub-house break there – but the emphasis is less on the exercise of club or soundsystem dynamics and more on layering, on building up a sheer density of sound. If you’ve ever wondered what a hook-up between Nurse With Wound, Ricardo Villalobos and Tony Allen might sound like, you really ought to check out Vertical Ascent. [Ben Fogle]

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 9th, 2009 at 9:26 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.