15 Best Albums of 2012

Year End Coverage

* Best Albums of 2012

* Best EPs of 2012

* Best Labels of 2012

* Best Breakthrough Artists of 2012

* Best Tracks of 2012 - 101-76
* Best Tracks of 2012 - 75-51
* Best Tracks of 2012 - 50-26
* Best Tracks of 2012 - 25-1

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So many great albums come out in a year, and it’s all too easy to be listening to one thing and feel sure that nothing else could possibly beat it. That is, until you start listening to the next record. On White Noise’s year-end roundup, we pay special homage to those albums which challenged the way you think about music while still delivering quality tunes, those that stretched their concepts a little bit further than the dancefloor. More than anything, these are albums with real longevity- that we’re still listening to months after the hype died down.

As a treat, I've included White Noise's 5 Best Non-Dance Albums at the bottom of the post.

Just missed out: 

Austin Cesear - Cruise Forever

Flying Lotus - Until The Quiet Comes

Daphni - Jiaolong

Session Victim - The Haunted House of House

  

15 - Gerry Read – Jummy [Fourth Wave]

 

Let's Make It Deeper

With the UK House scene becoming ever more densely populated, Read's unique lofi approach stood out from the crowd on his great debut LP. Rough DIY beats and syrupy textures lent the record a hazy feel that stood as a loud statement against the over-polished productions of so many scenesters.

14 - Darling Farah – Body [Civil]

Body

2012 was an uncommonly fine year for Techno albums, which often stood out for their precision and propulsive drive. What Farah really nailed on his debut LP, as well as these things, was atmosphere. The music of Body felt like a contingent world surrounding the listener, and his minimal approach to layering meant that every sound really counted.

13 - Holy Other – Held [Tri Angle]

 

Held

The publicity-shy Holy Other made good on the promise of 2011's With U EP by expanding his sonic palette and increasingly the emotive scope of his sounds. Drenched in moody atmospherics, his crunchy Hip Hop beats and soaring synths spoke of an emotional desolation rarely conjured on electronic records.

12 - Juju & Jordash – Techno Primitivism [Dekmantel]

Stoplight Loosejam / Diatoms / Backwash 

This Amsterdam-based pair have been a Techno secret for two long, and with this outstanding LP they finally stepped into the limelight. Fusing an embarrassment of genres and styles into a muscular Techno framework, the details and pure grooves on offer throughout this album kept us coming back for more and more.

11 - Andy Stott – Luxury Problems [Modern Love]

 

Numb

Notching up his second superb LP in as many years, Stott returned to his weary industrial House sounds with a fresh eye on Luxuruy Problems. Warping the vocals of his former piano teacher Alison Skidmore into the mix, Stott's detailed atmospheric productions still stand without equal.

10 - Donato Dozzy & Neel – Voices From The Lake [Prologue]

Album Clips

Italian Techno legend Donato Dozzy returned to long-time collaborator Neel to conjure one of the year’s quietest and best surprises. The tracks here work as a continuous whole, always impressing while never insisting, conjuring an organic sonic landscape in which the listener will want to get lost again and again.

9 - Recondite – On Acid [Acid Test]

Tie In

Just when you thought you'd heard everything that could be done with a 303, in came Recondite. These cerebral and meditative tracks are not Acid as you'd expect it, unravelling and building as long constructions which carefully conjure mood and feeling. It was a remarkable thing in itself to hear those pure crystalline notes eked from the famous squelching synthesizer, and this LP was one of the year’s most thoughtful and delicate successes.

8 - Cooly G – Playin Me [Hyperdub]

 

Come Into My Room

After a sporadic series of releases delving into the UK dance tradition, Londoner Cooly G took us by surprise with her exploratory and sensuous debut album. The tracks here feel remarkably free of genre convention, fusing dance tropes with treated acoustic instruments and frequently the producer's own warped vocals. The thrill of structural exploration is matched only by a surprising emotive punch beneath the ghosts of UK Funky drum patterns, resulting in a moody and powerful post-RnB epic.

7 - Dean Blunt and Inga Copeland – Black Is Beautiful [Hyperdub]

 

2

The duo also known as Hype Williams turn out a lot of material, and to date little has stood up to the excellence of their Untitled LP. But here on their Hyperdub debut they've conjured another slice of warped brilliance. You'll recognize the syrupy synths and hollow drum patterns, but with more structural and sonic experimentation and the prominence of Copeland's sensual vocals, these fractured soundscapes start to give way to something confusing, profound, and often beautiful.

6 - LHF – Keepers of the Light [Keysound]

Chamber Of Light

A dance album that clocks in over two hours is almost never a good idea, but shadowy London collective LHF exploded onto the scene with this thrilling and atmospheric collection. Each producer has his own distinctive voice and impressive production chops, crafting an epic homage to London's dance lineage that never tires despite its ambitious runtime.

5 - Actress – RIP [Honest Jon’s]

IWAAD

With his challenging and genre-defying follow up to Splazsh, Actress stepped even further away from convention to serve up a fragmentary narrative of meditations on death. The heavy subject matter did nothing to take away from Actress’ production prowess, and with repeated listens this album opened up like a dream, letting you in, little by little, to his devastating, perplexing, and utterly unique world.

4 - Benjamin Damage & Doc Daneeka – They!Live [50Weapons]

 

No One feat. Abigail Wyles

They!Live won’t turn any heads for radical innovation or experimentalism. It was simply a very, very good dance album. Perfecting the fusion of moodier pieces (greatly helped by the lovely vocals of Abigail Wyles) and nuanced dancefloor bangers, the whole thing just worked perfectly. Each track was impeccably polished, the pair producing a diverse and engaging collection of tracks that amazed just as much on headphones as it did on the dancefloor.

3 - Jimmy Edgar – Majenta [Hotflush]

 

Sex Drive

It would be easy to brush off Majenta. There’s something undeniably filthy about it all; an electro-funk odyssey drenched in sleaze and neon lights. But beneath the 80’s backroom vibes there is one of the most engaging, diverse, and flat-out fun albums that came out all year. Every track sizzles with energy; Edgar’s pairing of razor-sharp IDM beats and big Funk basslines is pulled off without a single error, creating a lurid musical world that we returned to more than any other this year.

2 - Vessel – Order of Noise [Tri Angle]

 

Court of Lions

There was an unusually high quality in the LP debuts put out this year, and a lot of this had to do with the Post-Dubstep search for a new deconstruction, a new fluid melding of genres that defied easy labels. Sebastian Gainsborough’s debut for Tri Angle proudly wore the tropes of Dub, Techno and Ambient on his sleeve but created something utterly unique. Order of Noise is a true journey; enticing and mysterious, dusty and religious. Here is a rare confidence, a complete journey with myriad details to return to, a piece of music that will stay with you long after the final track fades into the distance.

1 - Jam City – Classical Curves [Night Slugs]

How We Relate To The Body

A lot of the albums on this list worked to reconstitute Dance music’s rich past, bringing a range of styles up to date with canny production and new technology. But Jam City’s phenomenal debut album was the record on which these historical tropes truly felt as if they were envisioning a new future for the scene. This polished collection of tunes embodied the ubiquitous conflict of contemporary culture- in turns funky and dark, soft and abrasive, ambient and propulsive. The best albums pull the listener into the producer’s world, and from the first note of Classical Curves we were right there: amongst the blood, the oil and the chrome, and all of the dangerous beauty lurking within.

White Noise’s 5 Best Non-Dance Albums

For the hell of it, here are the five albums that have got the most play here at White Noise HQ outside the constraints of the Dance spectrum.

5 - Jessie Ware – Devotion

Sweet Talk

Ware took on a host of talented Dance producers to put out the best thing that happened to Pop all year. Catchy while remaining impeccably produced throughout, Devotion soared above all the competition.

4 - Julia Holter – Ekstasis

 

In The Same Room

How do you follow up an album as universally adored as Tragedy? Holter tackled her sophomore release admirably, crafting a more accessible but just as brilliant album that gave us a lot to chew on. Complex compositions vied with Pop sensibilities, resulting in another slice of brilliance from one of the music world’s most fascinating and unique contemporary voices.

3 - Beach House – Bloom

 

Myth

We’ll be the first to say it: Bloom doesn’t really sound that different from Beach House’s phenomenal third album, Teen Dream. But we didn’t need it to. The Baltimore duo have captured the hearts of many with their gauzy textures, cheap drum machines and Victoria Legrand’s phenomenal honeyed vocals. If they keep putting out albums of this quality and never change an iota, we’ll keep buying them.

2 - Chromatics – Kill For Love

Back From The Grave

Johnny Jewel finally delivered on a follow-up to 2007’s glorious Night Drive with stellar double-album Kill For Love. The return of those 80s synths and Ruth Radelet’s anaesthetized vocals couldn’t hide a new compositional prowess and the killer pop sensibilities that made so many of these tracks absolutely essential.

1 - Kendrick Lamar – Good Kid M.A.A.D City

Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst

Lamar’s surprising and fantastic new album is probably one of the year’s most critically revered releases. But this isn’t a case of the hype machine working at full pelt. Good Kid M.A.A.D City showed a rapper with a rare focus on emotional experience and honesty, a brave move in the face of mainstream Hip Hop’s caricature of thug life. Lamar went a step further, parodying Gangsta Rap by deftly manipulating an array of personas that attempted to show just where Hip Hop went wrong in the evolutionary process. But this wasn't just about the lyrics, a keen ear for production means the tracks never sound less than brilliant, complimenting the layered narrative which you’ll come back to long after the year is out.

Guest Mix: Dark and Dirty

Moth comes round with another guest mix for White Noise. Tracklist on this one is killer, featuring a lot of our favourite bass, techno and house bangers.

Tracklist

Akkord – The Drums

Tom Demac – Critical Distance Pt. 2

Midland & Pariah – Untitled 2

A Made Up Sound – Take The Plunge (Beat Mix)

Trikk – Jointly

Blawan – Why They Hide Their Bodies Under My Garage?

Benjamin Damage – Swarm

Head High – Rave (Dirt Mix)

Boddika & Joy O – Dun Dun

Breach – Fatherless VIP

Darling Farah – Bruised

Pangaea – Hex

Sully – The Loot

Bok Bok – Silo Pass

Ghost – The Club

Genius – Waiting

Visionist – Come In

Dusk + Blackdown + – High Road 

Darling Farah - Body

Label: Civil Music

A blustering electronic wind blows out over skittering snares. Out of the darkness, a deep kick intrudes, followed by a sophisticated beat pattern that loops over that ominous mechanical wind. One minute in, and you’re already waist-deep in the dark, percussive world of Darling Farah. As the opener, North, continues, tensions mounts through those tough beats and a rattling sub-bass, each detailed layer given space to breathe, mount and be recognised by the listener. It’s a low-key beginning to a Techno album but could hardly be more effective in introducing all the elements of Body that will set it apart for fans of the genre; powerful atmospherics in a spacious, reduced soundfield.

When it comes to the most minimal forms of electronic music, a sense of space is of paramount importance yet it seems to be something that so many budding producers don’t realise- the silence between sounds is just as important as the sounds themselves, and when something makes a sound, that sound has to count. Born in Detroit, 20 year old Darling Farah’s interest in Techno shouldn’t be surprising. What is surprising is how he fostered this interest and talent despite a move to the United Arab Emirates, a country where dancing is illegal outside of the home or a licensed club. Now based in London, and with a handful of confident EPs on Civil Music behind him, Darling Farah now brings us Body, his debut album that was entirely produced in just three months.

Realised

After the quiet atmospherics of the opening track, second cut Realised brings out the big sounds. And what sounds they are- there is a certain breed of producers, among whom I’d rank (off the top of my head) the likes of Actress, Floating Points, Andy Stott or BNJMN who have such distinct, vibrant sounds at their disposal that they immediately leap out at you compared to the generic Ableton lego-blocks used by the majority of artists. Farah easily joins this group, his sounds decayed and twisted to the point where each layer and effect has a life of its own, particularly at high volumes, as the sounds feel uncommonly rich and attract the listener to the details and structure. On Realised, a huge bouncing rhythm is driven forth by hissing pistons and whirring atmospherics, alongside some terrifying sub-bass towards the close- and that’s it. This is dance music at its most reduced and tempered. When each track is structured so carefully and the sounds are so perfectly complimentary the effect of only a few layers is staggering, proving to all maximalist producers how much can be done with so little.

Body

Across Body Farah takes these basic tools, along with blistering synth winds, and applies them to a range of unique percussive constructions, from the minimal 4/4 of Fortune, cloaked in reverb and warm analogue hiss to the canned loops of All Eyes which heavily references Dub Techno with its echoing synth strokes. All the tracks here are dark but there’s a certain degree of range across the album, and the tracks tend to err on the shorter side, keeping Body listenable and making you pay attention to the details across repeated spins. When you start to become familiar with the tracks certain sounds leap out at the listener, particularly subtle human touches such as the background chatter deep in the mix of Fortune or the looped half-sigh that haunts the decaying synth melodies and slow building percussion of stunning title track Body.

Each track here is so finely wrought as to continually demand the listener’s attention. Curse casts chugging Techno into slow-motion, with a ghostly ambience and subtle synth sweeps accompanying the relentless kick which settles into the LP’s brightest moment, the beatless arpeggiated expanse of Aaangel, a brief respite which shines bravely yet coldly against the percussive onslaught surrounding it. The smattering of details I’ve highlighted are only some of the joys to be found in a dedicated listen to Body, and any Techno fan will want to listen again and again to catch the stuttering synths of Fortune Part II or the hollow beat at the end of closer Telling Me Everything which sounds like someone ominously dribbling a basketball.

Bruised

The album’s darkest moment comes in the form of Bruised, a late track that hits like nothing else. Haunted synths underpin spare kick stabs before everything halts at the entrance of a devastating bass growl, a voice intoning darkly ‘this is it’ before the growl and vocals are pitched down to somehow become even more threatening, echoing out into the vast abyss this music always teeters next to. The beat patterns are expertly sequenced and Farah nails the sense of mood, but the same could be said of every one of these eleven tracks. This is an album of deeply atmospheric and spacious Techno music you’ll want to keep returning to. Just when you thought Actress rewrote the rulebook with RIP, there’s a new contender in town- Darling Farah’s debut is stylish, brave and thrilling.

8.5/10