20: THE UNITS
HISTORY OF THE UNITS: THE EARLY YEARS 1977-83
(COMMUNITY LIBRARY)

The Units, who we confess we’d never heard of until this brilliant complication from Strategy’s Community Library label landed on our lap, emerged from San Francisco’s healthy performance art scene in the 1970s and their imaginative synth-based experiments summon Talking Heads, Eno, Suicide, The Human League and contemporary drone and new-New York bands like LCD and !!!. A must-have for post-punk-lovers and students of electronic music’s chaotic family tree.

19: JIM O’ROURKE
I’M HAPPY, AND I’M SINGING, AND A 1,2,3,4
(EDITIONS MEGO)

First released in 2001, this record is often billed as Jim O’Rourke’s “laptop” album – which is not inaccurate, but does a disservice to its very organic beauty and depth, and to just how different it is from contemporaneous European fare that’s similarly tagged. I’m Happy… is a startling rejoinder to his own pop-symphonic masterpiece of two years previous, Eureka, being a heavily processed, vocalless work of abstract folk-tronica, with the emphasis on the –tronica. But this is O’Rourke we’re dealing with, and what could’ve ended up a dry, academic exercise is actually incredibly moving, revealing new layers of tenderness with each successive listen.

18: DJ KOZE
REINCARNATIONS: THE REMIX CHAPTER 2001-2009
(GET PHYSICAL)

We all know that DJ Koze is good, but it’s easy to forget how good. Reincarnations features the German producer’s inspired reworkings of Noze, Matias Aguayo, Heiko Voss and many more; we were particularly captivated by his sensitive interpretations of Hildegard Knef and Wechsel Garland. Koze doesn’t just remix tracks in his own style, he enters into a dialogue with what he’s remixing, and with each successive project endeavours not only to reinvent the track but also himself.

17: BEASTIE BOYS
PAUL’S BOUTIQUE, CHECK YOUR HEAD, ILL COMMUNICATION, HELLO NASTY
(CAPITOL)

In their prime, the Beastie Boys are as wildly innovative as they were silly. And they were really fucking silly. This year their four finest albums got reissued: Check You Head, Ill Communication, Paul’s Boutique and Hello Nasty. All of them deserve pride of place in your collection.

Check Your Head was the 90s hipster’s choice, being the album where MCA, Adrock and Mike D picked up their instruments and got funky. Hello Nasty was a late and unexpected triumph, with a broad electro influence and a welcome return to absurdity and horseplay. Paul’s Boutique, of course, with its groundbreaking and still dazzling sample-stitched production from The Dust Brothers, still sounds sweet as a nut, and will doubtless be remembered as this band’s most important musical contribution. Ill Communication will always be a poor cousin to Check Your Head, but the fact that this poor cousin includes ‘Sure Shot’, ‘Root Down’ and ‘Sabotage’ tells you how on-it the Beasties were in the day. Just to listen to this record is to be transported back to a childhood of skateboards, ripped baggy jeans and MTV. Now it’s all butt-chafing drainpipes and Spotify, and we travel by bus. Take us back!

16: BERNARD SZAJNER
SOME DEATHS TAKE FOREVER
(BOUTIQUE)

Once described by Carl Craig as his favourite album of all time, we never thought Bernard Szajner’s self-proclaimed “electronic death-rock” suite of 1980, Some Deaths Take Forever, would live up to its formidable reputation. We were wrong.

15: THE MONKS
BLACK MONK TIME
(LIGHT IN THE ATTIC)

The greatest garage rock album of all time, and, barring The Velvet Underground & Nico and Forever Changes, the most exciting American album to come out of the 1960s, Black Monk Time still sounds prophetic of punk to come, and, above all, cool as fuck. If ever you wonder why we’re a little jaded at the world of contemporary guitar music, it’s because pretty much none of it is as good as this. And this is 44 years old.

14: STUDIO 1
STUDIO EINS
(KOMPAKT)

Another chance to own Studio Eins, the 1997 compilation of tracks made by Wolfgang Voigt under his Studio 1 alias; sternly funky stuff that established the blueprint for modern-day minimal house. Voigt just lets his grooves run and run, building a compelling narrative through subtle modulations and dub effects (hence, we presume, the project’s name). Though not as obviously miraculous as the Kompakt impresario’s grand, richly textured work as GAS, the Studio 1 material – in its own opaque, uncompromising way – is certainly just as radical and accomplished. Let’s hope Voigt continues his programme of self-reissuing; we’ve had Studio 1 and GAS, now, how’s about a Mike Ink singles collection?

13: PEPE BRADOCK
CONFIOTE DE BITS
(BBE)

An essential double-disc remix collection from one of house music’s true auteurs. Why, though, have BBE excluded what is – without doubt – Bradock’s finest moment? His re-work of Candi Staton’s ‘Do Your Duty’, which was released on Honest Jon’s 2004, is a truly remarkable piece of music, and it really, really should have been on this otherwise wonderful set.

12: HARMONIA & ENO ’76
TRACKS AND TRACES
(GRONLAND)

2009 found the FACT office feeling a little krauted out, after two years spent gorging on anything with even the faintest whiff of the kosmische about it. Nonetheless, we found space in our hearts for two reissues from the golden era of German electronic rock: Wolfgang Reichmann’s Wunderbar (an unfortunate ommission from this list) and, of course, Tracks and Traces. The work of Herrs Roedelius, Moebius and Rother in collaboration with their inscrutable pal Mr Eno, this hook-up isn’t quite the sum of its parts, but it’s still a high watermark of 70s pastoral futurism.

11: ROLL DEEP
STREET ANTHEMS
(ROLL DEEP RECORDINGS)

Roll Deep, the grime group once spearheaded by Dizzee Rascal and Wiley – though the pair are now an ex-member and fringe member respectively – have never made an album truly representative of their talent. Their highest profile LP, In At The Deep End featured classic tracks but was made with a firm eye on the mainstream, while ‘mixtape album’ Rules and Regulations featured too much filler to hold up over time. It’s generally best to pretend 2008′s Return of the Big Money Sound never happened. Street Anthems is a Greatest Hits collection rather than an album of new material, and predictably is the best Roll Deep full length by miles, even featuring the great lost vocal version of Wiley’s seminal ‘Eskimo’ riddim.

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