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60: MATIAS AGUAYO
ARE YOU REALLY LOST
(KOMPAKT, 2005)
Kompakt were one of the most important and consistently great labels of the past decade, wistfully recasting techno as a kind of melancholic/ecstatic futurist pop. Are You Really Lost is one of the label’s finest moments, which crystallises why they matter so much. This is impeccably stylish music, but also utterly heartfelt, sensual and close. Along with Ricardo Villalobos, Matias Aguayo is one of the true geniuses of contemporary techno. [Simon Hampson]
59: WHITE STRIPES
WHITE BLOOD CELLS
(XL RECORDINGS, 2001)
Success rather went to the head of The White Stripes; it’s easy to forget what an appealing – and worthy – proposition they were back in 2001. They were already two albums old by this stage, but it was the jaw-dropping White Blood Cells that caught everyone’s imagination. Indie-disco staples ‘Fell In Love With A Girl’ and ‘Hotel Yorba’ have been so overplayed that they tend to grate now, but you can never tire of hearing the righteous crunch of ‘Dead Leaves And The Dirty Ground’, can you? [Anna Griffiths]
58: HORSEPOWER PRODUCTIONS
IN FINE STYLE
(TEMPA, 2002)
Without Horsepower there’d be no dubstep – fact. This, their effervescent debut album, was more of a garagey affair than it’s murkier, breaksier and ultimately more influential 2004 follow-up, To The Rescue. Still, the emphasis on dub style – from clipped, Maurizio-style chords to sampled badman chatter and, of course, cavernous sub-bass – certainly anticipates the coming era.
What’s staggering about In Fine Style now is just how pert and polished it sounds, and also how unconstrained by genre: ‘Classic Delux’ pairs swinging 2-step rhythm with sampled spy-flick brass, ‘What We Do’ and ‘Stone Cold Vibes’ sound like Carl Craig making jazz-fried broken beat with a British soundsystem mentality, while ‘Fat Larry’s Skank’ lays down the gauntlet there and then to Skream, Digital Mystikz et al. Without doubt the greatest full-length album to emerge from the UK garage explosion, a techno and reggae-infused masterpiece that’s absolutely begging to get royal re-issue treatment. [Kiran Sande]
57: STUDIO
WEST COAST
(INFORMATION, 2007)
On paper the idea of two stoned Swedes referencing Fleetwood Mac, Holger Czukay and lush piano-house on tracks that run well past the quarter-hour mark didn’t exactly inspire confidence, but with West Coast Studio elegantly sidestepped the dub-disco waffle that was so ubiquitous in the late noughties – and instead turned out a fat-free, optimistic but still gloriously strung-out song-suite that sounds fresh even after, oh, 3021 listens.
A feat of songwriting and production both, these six tracks conjure vast aural vistas out of languid synth pads, plangent guitar licks and driving, full-bodied basslines, coloured with rococo percussion and vocals that recall the ‘Mondays and The Cure (in a good way). West Coast is so pretty, so individual, so charming and euphoric that you could basically die happy in its company. Up there with Surf’s Up as one of the all-time great summer albums. [Trilby Foxx]
56: RHYTHM & SOUND
W/ THE ARTISTS
(BURIAL MIX, 2003)
Having brought a dub sensibility to bear on high-BPM techno as Basic Channel, as Rhythm & Sound Mark Ernestus and Moritz von Oswald set about making dub with a techno aesthetic. The resulting riddims would’ve been impressive enough in instrumental form, but the Berliners proceeded to coax amazing vocals out of a carefully chosen cast of Jamaican collaborators – among them Cornel Campbell, Paul St Hilaire and Jah Batta – recording their efforts with incredible understanding and fidelity, situating them in their perfect space, so to speak.
While so many attempts to “modernise” dub feel soulless and derivative, w/ The Artists’ roots-futurist confections have a timeless gravity about them. A big influence on Kode9, Appleblim and other key dubstep denizens, not only is this album an unlikely feat of thoughtful cross-cultural exchange, it’s also a divinely sensuous listen. [Daniel Feeld]
55: MATTHEW DEAR
ASA BREED
(GHOSTLY INTERNATIONAL, 2007)
One of the finest electronic pop releases of the decade – a deft mingling of traditional song-form and rhythmic modernism that was a deserved underground hit. Brushing aside the over-sexed techno vibes of his Audion project and re-connecting with the micro-house balladry honed on 2004’s Backstroke, here Dear privileged storytelling and emotion over dancefloor effect. That he still got feet tapping and arses wiggling is to his infinite credit. [Kiran Sande]
54: BOREDOMS
VISION CREATION NEWSUN
(BIRDMAN, 2000)
Julian Cope once described this as sounding “like the Faust Tapes’ most euphoric uplifting moments were digitally tape-sped into some kind of Beyond Time.” What else needs to be said? That it sometimes sounds like a load of native Indian drummers trying to summon Aphex Twin? That it’s one of the biggest, most life-affirming albums ever made? Just listen to it if you haven’t already. And if you have, then do so again. [Jay Shockley]
53: THE XX
XX
(YOUNG TURKS, 2009)
Okay, so five years down the line the xx placing this high on an end of decade list might seem ludicrous, but when was the last time a young British band arrived equally respected in indie, dance and pop circles, acclaimed by both the underground and mainstream, with artists as disparate as Skream, Hot Chip and Florence and the Machine wanting to work with them? Much is made of the space and lighting offered by the xx’s production – courtesy of the band’s own Jamie Smith – but it’s easy to forget that without songwriting skills ahead of their years, this band would get shown up across the course of a full length. As things stand, they’re far from punching above their weight on this list. [Jay Shockley]
52: JAN JELINEK
LOOP-FINDING-JAZZ-RECORDS
(~SCAPE, 2001)
A post-graduate diploma in a subject not yet invented is required to give Loop-finding-jazz-records the analysis it deserves, so let’s settle for the basics here. Comprised of one-second samples of, yes, vintage jazz records and inspired by the Moiré effect (wiki it), L-f-j-r is the most sublimely complex and disarmingly pretty work to emerge from the clicks’n’cuts diaspora. [Trilby Foxx]
51: J DILLA
DONUTS
(STONES THROW, 2006)
I still remember walking past London’s Deal Real Records a few days after Donuts was released and seeing “DILLA – R.I.P” in the window. It wasn’t just a tragic death, but shittily timed one: the Slum Village founder – who’d provided beats to Common, Busta, The Pharcyde and more in his fifteen plus years producing – was finally getting the wider recognition he deserved due to praise from Kanye West and Pharrell. Dilla made Donuts while dying in hospital, and it’s a remarkably celebratory album, revelling in soul samples and mischief. More than any of his other records, its legacy lives on, with everyone from Doom to Drake paying tribute on tracks. [Tom Lea]
