70: BELL
‘MAGIC TAPE’
(TWOSYLLABLE)

Brooklyn trio Bell – named after vocalist Olga Bell – appeared on radars this year with this single on their own Two Syllable label; a song that flips from creaking, pitch-bent passages of vocal ambient to sweeping freak-funk choruses. Half of its strength lies in Olga, who can switch up her vocal tone to echo the music in the drop of a hat.

69: KINGDOM feat. SHYVONNE
‘MIND READER’
(FOOL’S GOLD)

Punchy 4×4, cut-up vocals, full fat synths, diva vocals and a massive fucking handclap breakdown? Talk about pushing our buttons.

68: DESIRE
‘DON’T CALL’
(from DESIRE II, ITALIANS DO IT BETTER)

Though lacking the pathos of Chromatics and the disco pizzazz of Glass Candy, Johnny Jewel’s other band Desire remain an interesting concern. The highlights of their Desire II LP couldn’t have been more different: the grievous instrumental ‘If I Can’t Hold You’, which would’ve sounded right at home on Side 2 of Bowie’s Low, and the ludicrously catchy ‘Don’t Call’, arguably the most memorable pure pop song to emanate from the Italians Do It Better camp to date.

67: HOUSE OF HOUSE
‘RUSHING TO PARADISE (WALKIN’ THESE STREETS)’
(WHATEVER WE WANT)

A collaboration between Still Going’s Liv Spencer and vocalist Saheer Umar, House of House’s debut single for Whatever We Want was – for about two weeks in early 2009 – inescapable. Paced somewhere between a stroll and a swagger, it came immaculately produced and continued to reveal new attributes over time: that little handclap breakdown, the rave stabs at the end. It also featured one of the year’s most absurdly overwrought vocals, terrible lyrics and some seriously dodgy sampling, so let’s call it somewhere in the middle.

66: MARTIN KEMP
‘NO CHARISMA’
(BLUNTED ROBOTS)

“Future garage” trio Brackles, Shortstuff and Martin Kemp’s label might be called Blunted Robots, but a more accurate reference for their sound – and one Shortstuff used in an interview with FACT this year – is broken robots. ‘No Charisma’ is circuit-bent house at its finest, with staggered percussion and wonky (not Wonky) synths that warble and fizz.

65: NACHO PATROL
‘AFRICA SPACE PROGRAM’
(from FUTURISTIC ABEBA EP, KINDRED SPIRITS)

Nacho Patrol’s debut EP came to be when Danny ‘Legowelt’ Wolfers got hold of a vintage Sola Color Sound wah-wah pedal, and started feeding synths and dusty organ sounds through it; the resulting tracks were remarkable, bearing the unmistakeable musk and groove of vintage African jazz, but curiously – impossibly – futuristic.

“I put them on the old CBS blog as a kind of joke,” he recently explained to FACT. “Saying that they were from the 70s from Ethiopia…with a fake record cover and background story
I guess some people really thought it was from the 70s ’cause it started to appear on other blogs!” ‘Africa Space Program’ is the most immediate track from this essential, utterly unique EP – think Mulatu jamming with Omar-S and Pharaoh Sanders and you’re not far off.

64: A MADE UP SOUND
‘REWORK’
(A MADE UP SOUND)

Much as we love Dave Huismans’ work as 2562, it’s his A Made Up Sound project which has always moved us most. As such, we were delighted when the Dutch producer kicked off a new AMUS imprint exclusively to showcase his work made under that name. Existing at the intersection of house, techno, funky, dubstep and broken beat, ‘Rework’ subtly tore up the rhythmic rulebook and won fans across the dance music spectrum.

63: NICK HÖPPNER
‘MAKEOVER’
(OSTGUT TON)

Ostgut-Ton label boss Nick Höppner proved his expertise extends beyond A&R with an awesomely sly dancefloor bomb that combined the reductionist techno sound of Berghain with the rhythmic exuberance of UK funky. A firm fixture in the FACT DJs’ boxes ever since its release back in Spring.

62: LADY GAGA
‘PAPARAZZI’
(INTERSCOPE)

We all want to love Lady Gaga – the new Madonna; the result of mainstream pop’s incest finally catching up with it, producing a sexually confused, motherless genius with a split personality – but sometimes she’s just a bit shit. Not on ‘Paparazzi’ though, where Gaga hits all the right notes over whirring industrial bump, with the undisputed chart chorus of the year and lyrics that revel in their artificialness. “My lashes are dry, purple teardrops I cry / It don’t have a price, loving you is cherry pie / ’cause you know that baby I – I’m your biggest fan.”

61: SHYSTIE
‘PULL IT’ (ILL BLU REMIX)
(IT’S FUNKY)

Some of the best UK Funky to date has been great ideas looped; tracks, rather than fully-formed songs. In 2009 more singles – among them ‘Make It Funky For Me’, ‘In the Morning’ and ‘Frontline’ – followed ‘Do You Mind’s lead, using that tribal percussion and bubbling bass as foundation for pop songs, and Ill Blu’s remix of grime MC Shystie’s ‘Pull It’ was almost certainly the hardest, with ominous opening chords, explosions of bass, rudegirl lyrics, and hand-claps that acted like warning sirens.

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