20 Best Albums of 2011

Best of 2011

EPs

Singles

Albums

With electronic production becoming ever more ubiquitous in mainstream culture and ever more experimental on the fringes of music, it’s no surprise that it dominates my list of 2011’s best albums. My favourites of this year included a good few atmospheric electronic pieces, a few dance-focused LPs and some stranger fare, but the overriding point in common is the exploration of how computers are being used to create ever more evocative and thought-provoking music.

Obviously in choosing only twenty I’m missing so many of the year’s great releases, but when reflecting on a whole musical year the factor that stands out besides innovation and skill is longevity; the year-end list is the unique spot where a reviewer can look back and say ‘Yes, that was great, but am I still listening to it? Will it stay with me beyond this year?’ If the answer to these questions is a fervent ‘yes’, then that album is on this list.

PS - The list is arranged in sets of five as I feel when you get to the very best albums of the year they appeal to different people and fulfil different criteria, so it seems pointless to separate them. Click on the album titles to see my full reviews from earlier in the year.

#20-16

SBTRKT  - SBTRKT

Wildfire

On his debut full-length, the anonymous UK producer achieved the rare feat of marrying Dance and Pop with unerring success, crafting a fun and exuberant selection of accessible tunes.

Tim Hecker – Ravedeath, 1972

The Piano Drop

The always brilliant Ambient / Drone producer released one of his very best works this year in Ravedeath, an evocative and haunting album that twists live organ recordings from an Icelandic church into a beautiful artistic statement with masterful electronic tweaking.

Peaking Lights – 936

All The Sun That Shines

Husband and wife duo Peaking Lights exceeded expectations with their blissed out LP landing somewhere between western Dub and the more experimental side of rock.

Andy Stott – Passed Me By

New Ground

With Passed Me By, Andy Stott finally broke out to a wider audience who rightly adored his unique take on House; fatigued, innovative, and utterly hypnotic.

Panda Bear – Tomboy

Surfer’s Hymn

Noah Lennox somehow met the stratospheric expectations heaped on his new LP before its release, refining his trademark sound of reverb-drenched vocals and hypnotic guitar loops into something fuller and more outward-looking.

#15-11

Sully – Carrier

2 Hearts

Sully didn’t exactly surprise me on his debut LP, delivering dark 2step tracks crafted with the same skill and care as his previous output, but just how much I still listen to these tracks is a surprise. The London feel is embedded deeply into these tunes, and each cut is a self-contained gem of paranoid dance rhythms.

Roman Flugel – Fatty Folders

How To Spread Lies

This carefully-produced LP is a masterclass tour of Techno’s many faces, straddling influences as varied as Dubstep, Kraut-rock, Minimal and Deep House, while always remaining crisp, danceable, and enchanting listen after listen.

Shabazz Palaces – Black Up

An Echo From The Hosts That Profess Infinitum

This uncompromising Hip Hop album married unusual flow and polemical subjects with some of the most challenging and innovative production I’ve ever heard on a Hip Hop album, resulting in a stunning piece that sounds like it was sent straight from the future.

Gang Gang Dance – Eye Contact

Mindkilla

Gang Gang’s staggering musical evolution continued unabated this year, and Eye Contact was business as usual from the Brooklyn band; fusing too many genres to mention to create an album of superb and enjoyable Dance Pop that not only sounds like nothing else, but also represents their most consistent release to date.

The Field – Looping State of Mind

Arpeggiated Love

This beautiful set of finely micro-edited loops showed that there’s more than enough life in Axel Willner’s formula to sustain an entire career. These hypnotic tunes are nothing short of staggering, proving yet again that no one does loops like The Field.

#10-6

Martyn – Ghost People

We Are You In The Future

Martyn’s latest was a true masterclass in Dance production, showing not only a producer bravely leaving his comfort zone (again), but a collection of varied and exciting tunes bursting with energy and atmosphere.

Tycho – Dive

Coastal Brake

A lot of artists over the last year tried to create sun-drenched Electronic tunes that mesmerise through chilled vibes and warm synths, but Tycho’s mature and detailed album Dive put them all to shame. This hypnotic and rewarding LP does its stunning cover art justice, and will stay with you long after the flames of 2011’s more immediate releases have died out.

Zomby – Dedication

A Devil Lay Here

Dedication is the most introverted and frustrating (mainly down to track length) release of Zomby’s glittering career, and it says a lot about Zomby as a producer that these facts hardly mattered. The introversion in fact worked to this album’s advantage, and six months on this collection still sounds fresh and brilliant; a moody and varied selection of dance-infused Electronic tunes.

BNJMN – Black Square

Black Square

Benjamin Thomas achieved quite a feat in releasing not one, but two superb albums in a single year. His second for Rush Hour, Black Square, was my favourite – a lush and innovative selection of beautiful Techno tunes that shift organically through an array of mesmerising sounds.

Kuedo – Severant

Scissors

Jamie Teasdale’s first solo release on leaving aggressive Dubstep duo Vex’d was an unexpected move, and all the better for it. Severant is an utterly unique LP presenting atmospheric and futuristic Electronic tunes, and by a long way one of the most engaging and innovative releases of the year.

#5-1

Shlohmo – Bad Vibes

Places

The LA-based Beats scene slowed down quite dramatically in 2011, but from the hush emerged its brightest star, in the form of young producer Henry Laufer. Exceeding the promise of his early EPs, on Bad Vibes Laufer created the ultimate chill-out album; lush and beautiful organic instrumentation combined fluidly with electronic clicks and beats. Bad Vibes achieves that rare combination of being both an easy choice for relaxation and an incredibly rewarding close listen due to the quality of these compositions, and for these reasons it’s probably my most played LP of the year.

Machinedrum – Room(s)

Now U Know Tha Deal 4 Real

Room(s) is an incredible achievement for dance veteran Travis Stewart; it somehow manages to combine almost every dance genre into an utterly brilliant full-length, traversing moods and styles with a rare ease while always maintaining the innovative details and tight production skills that keep the listener coming back for more.

Nicolas Jaar – Space Is Only Noise

I Got A Woman

Brilliant new producer Nic Jaar pulled out all the stops on his gorgeous debut album, appropriating vague influences from a huge variety of genres to create a sound entirely his own. These spacious and atmospheric compositions still sound exciting and unique almost a year after its release, and his future looks very bright.

Rustie – Glass Swords

Hover Traps

Rustie’s phenomenal debut album was surprising in so many ways; it was very distant from the producer first productions, it sounded like absolutely nothing else, but the biggest surprise was that he aimed so high on Glass Swords and track after track pulled it off with style. These tunes fuse every unfashionable genre in the book with style, creating a collection of unabashed joy, all underpinned by a display of masterful composition at its incandescent beating heart.

Balam Acab – Wander /Wonder

Apart

The young Alec Koone’s debut album is by no means the most accessible or exuberant album on this list, but for me it is easily the most beautiful. Here is an album of deeply emotive and expertly composed tracks that exists almost outside of genre; the tracks progressing like waves between enchanting synth highs and dark dubby lows, all held together by ethereal vocals to magnificent effect. The tunes on Wander / Wonder are quiet and unassuming, but given time they reveal themselves to be one of the most atmospheric and rewarding collections I’ve heard in years.

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I'm off to see Scuba and Joy O tonight, I hope everyone has a great New Year's and look forward to much more from White Noise in 2012.

Gang Gang Dance – Eye Contact

Gang Gang Dance are always doing so much. That's why the first few times you listen to one of their albums it just sounds like a condensed mesh of noise. It's also why all of their output so far has been frustratingly inconsistent; when there's so much there, some songs just aren't going to gel for you.

It feels like for the first time in Eye Contact, they've hit the sweet spot. They've always had an unnatural knack for layering just the right amount of different styles and sounds onto a single track; you're always pleasantly surprised but never overloaded; they sound enjoyable and interesting but the music never sinks into a mush of synths. This is a more clean, optimistic album than 2008's St Dymphna, and it feels like a move in the right direction.

I've made two mistakes in listening to the album. The first was that I thought the first half was better than the second half, and the second was that I thought the ∞ interlude tracks were filler. This is definitely an album of two halves, the latter is more slow-burn, but the first bursts into life. Well actually, it doesn't burst so much as slowly warm up for about 6 minutes, after the slightly profound/on the nose line “I can hear everything. It's everything time.” But the warm up is an exquisite journey through a swirling soundscape of synths that gradually develop a fluttering melody that finally, after an achingly long time, explodes with a shining kick into a racing rhythm, anchored in place by Lizzie Bougastos' distinctive vocals.

I could easily describe each track in that much detail and explain why I think it's so wonderful, but I recommend you just listen yourself. They've almost all been highlights for me at one point or another. Adult Goth is a dark and syrupy dance song with one of the most distinctive intros of any track I've heard in a long time. It could well be argued to be the best track the band have ever produced. It goes on with Chinese High's bouncing hark back to St. Dymphna which surfs into a gloriously sunny instrumental, followed by MindKilla's brute force and expert, energetic composition.

The second half of the album is definitely more of a grower. It takes a while to get into those tracks, but each one is just as brilliant as the first. Romance Layers is a gloriously sensual throwback to funk and new-jazz stylings. The next track, Sacer is a wonderfully poppy and oddly haunting cut. These are all bound together by the ∞ tracks which I'd argue serve as brilliant interludes; this is an album to be listened to as a whole.

Closer Thru and Thru is an astonishingly powerful piece of music. The driving beat of the percussion with Bougastos' ethereal warbling and the vaguely video-game sounding 'Egyptian-style' synth somehow transform into a huge, thumping thing which races along beside you. That's what's so special about this album- it is utterly transportative. We are told at the end of this track “Live forever”, and because you've been on this journey with the music the message really hits home.

On this transcendent and exuberant album, Gang Gang Dance have finally done good on their promise to make a solid, consistent LP to display all the skill they've had all along. This album is an absolute stunner, and it's genuinely worth giving a good listen to every track. I could hardly recommend it higher.

9/10

Gang Gang Dance – Saint Dymphna

Gang Gang Dance have come a long way from their super-experimental tribal noise that they played in the backrooms of Brooklyn. After the expected transitional LP 'God's Money' (which is well worth checking out), in this album for the first time the band have really stripped the haze away and come out with something original, shimmering and, well, dancey.

Album opener Bebey begins with a good 40 seconds or so of a whirring noise getting slowly faster and faster before dissipating into an electronic tumbling synth that itself turns into a strong, tribal beat. Then the harsh synths kick in, the pan-pipe-ish melodies, and then at the end you get everything together at the same time. It sounds like it shouldn't work, but the track is absolutely brilliant and sets the sound for the rest of the album perfectly. This band bring in so many different sounds and genres into their music that its almost impossible to see it working, but each time they pull it off with style. The trick up their sleeve is that in the midst of all of this noise there is a skilled hand exhibiting a remarkable degree of restraint, no sound is extraneous and there is a pure, unadulterated joy to their music which isn't often equalled.

The album plays less as individual songs and more as tracks that flow in and out of one another, which for the most part works really well. The transition from Bebey to First Communion is masterly, with all the accumulated noise of the first track compressed into a pressure that just shimmers out of existence to make way for the next. And First Communion itself is a great cut, Lizzie Bougatsos' yelping vocals, eccentric as they may seem, somehow tie together all the disparate sounds in this music, providing an anchor for the enormous range of synthed-up instruments and effects implemented across the album. In fact, the top half of the album goes from strength to unbelievable strength. First Communion disappears with one last cry into the harder beats of Blue Nile with its Asian twang and brain-crackling vocal drop that lays the track gloriously bare, and this song itself moves into the My Bloody Valentine-esque Vacuum which lays it on heavy but again, it just sounds so damn good. The combination between the almost spiritual tribal rhythms and the unashamed use of heavy, untreated synths is both surprising and consistently brilliant.

In the first four tracks this band show such astonishing range and are an absolute pleasure to listen to, combining a fascinating array of sounds with fantastic hooks and a new-found pop sensibility that's a first in a GGD record- it's almost too good to believe. And unfortunately, after this point the cracks start to show. Although Tinchy Stryder's turn in Princes is expertly produced (someone should get these guys to do some grime production for sure), his vocals are clearly a matter of taste, and after that the album doesn't quite pick back up where it left off.

The problem is, after all the excitement of the first few tracks, the majority of the rest feel much like filler. Inner Pace has some really interesting elements thrown in but the separate noises don't mesh particularly well, perhaps the track could do with some trimming. The next, Afoot again is fairly insubstantial, as much as Bougastos can chant about “A land where cows are sacred”, there is almost too much going on and it lacks the key balance that was perfected with seeming effortlessness in earlier tracks. However the listener is given a final reprieve after this with the album's standout track House Jam, in which GGD really go all out pop (their multi-ethnic, ADHD brand of pop anyway) to stellar effect, the track is an absolute delight and there's even a touch of genuine emotion in the final catchy refrain “Will the clouds carry my tears to you”. The remainder of the album is unfortunately more miss than hit, Desert Storm assails the ears in a way that is not wholly pleasant, and although album closer Dust is pretty, it isn't especially remarkable.

Gang Gang Dance take on such a mammoth task of infusing so much sound into these tracks, and its a remarkable display of their skill and restraint that they get so much right. But at the same time, the second half of the album is frustrating and leaves you wondering what would've happened if they'd kept up the quality.

8.5/10