Best of 2013: 11 EPs

It’s normal to round up the year’s best albums and tracks, but here at White Noise we like to pay a little attention to the EP format as well. While lacking the depth of a long-player, an EP can still offer a striking mission statement, and a platform for more than a simple collection of dance tracks. The best EPs work like miniatures, exploring a single idea from several angles or allowing a producer to flex their creative muscles over a series of different styles. Here we’ve collected the EPs that really stood out to us over the year, by either offering something a bit different or showing an artist at the very top of their game.

There were so many excellent releases this year, and the cruel selection process meant that many couldn’t make the list: superb outings from Big Doint, Innershades, Motor City Drum Ensemble and Palms Trax offered some of the year’s best house tunes, while DJ Rashad, Call Super, and White Material returned with a vengeance on a series of ace records. The EPs on the list gave us just a little bit more, and while some came out almost a year ago, the following vinyls are still on regular repeat here at White Noise HQ.

If you want to read more, click on the title of any release to read the full WN review.

11: Mix Mup – After The Job [Hinge Finger]

After The Job

Mix Mup broke away from Kassem Mosse’s shadow on this fantastic outing for Will Bankhead and Joy O’s Hinge Finger, plying a pitch-perfect brand of lofi house and techno. Doomed and Copa Jams were menacing rollers with a strong undercurrent of funk, while closer Bungalow was a radical left-turn into glistening beatless territory. It was on the title track, however, where Mix Mup really hit the mark, a warped collision of Tina Turner, clicking percussion and an unholy bassline.

10: Martyn – Newspeak [Dolly Dubs]

Oceania

Martyn proved why he’s still one of the best in the game with this expert three-tracker, with glistening bass music backed by two retro-house bumpers on the b-side. Oceania was a beautiful trip, but it was on the low-slung grooves of Newspeak and What Is Room 101 that Martyn really got his jack on. It’s rare to get an EP where every tune is a highlight, but you can trust a producer like Martyn to really nail it.

9: Laurel Halo – Behind The Green Door [Hyperdub]

Throw

Hyperdub’s Laurel Halo was responsible for two of the year’s best releases: this EP and her Chance Of Rain album, and it’s a credit to her remarkable talent that the two couldn’t have been more different. While the LP saw Halo toying with icy, autumnal textures, Green Door was a masterclass in machine-fed funk, from Throw’s beautiful piano to Sexmission’s suffocated techno.

8: Visionist – Snakes [Leisure System]

Snakebite

Logos may have secured the year’s best grime album, but this year’s 12” crown belongs to Visionist. The restless producer let out a slew of lethal productions across the year, but it was on Snakes for Leisure System that he conjured a high-def psychedelia which sounded like nothing else.

7: June – Don’t Be Seen With Me [June]

Face This (Deep House Mix)

We’d be the first to admit that there’s a lot of hardware-driven retro house going round, but none hit that sweet spot of past and future like June did this year. Don’t Be Seen With Me was a masterclass in mood, offsetting glistening melodies with taut drum machine workouts and the occasional foray into acid and new age territory.

6: Romare – Love Songs Part 1 [Black Acre]

Taste Of Honey (From The City)

After topping this list last year, Romare once again scored a winner on his second EP for Black Acre. His collage of samples and genres is executed with a fascinating socio-historical bent, making Love Songs a feast for the mind as well as the feet.

5: Levon Vincent – Rainstorm II [Novel Sound]

???

After a blistering mix for Fabric, Mr Vincent returned to our decks on the superb NS08, where he plied his unique brand of warehouse stomp. Rainstorm saw a return of the untreated synths we loved in Impressions... and Man or Mistress, while the gargantuan ??? saw Vincent aim squarely for the dancefloor, all thanks to the year’s most distinctive bassline.

4: Dopplereffekt – Tetrahymena [Leisure System]

Gene Silencing

Leisure System’s second coup of the year was beckoning Gerald Donald back into the dance game, where he issued an update of his singular scifi funk under the storied Dopplereffekt moniker. Doppler’s hi-def electro has never sounded better than on the propulsive Tetrahymena, or in the tunnelling bassline that reinforced Gene Silencing’s slo-mo menace.

3: Tessela – Nancy’s Pantry [R&S]

Horizon

Not content with issuing what might be the year’s best single, Tessela took to R&S in the Autumn to expand his staccato experiments with breakbeat dynamics. This is techno at its most visceral, from the searing test tones of Nancy’s Pantry to the giddy abandon of the rave-indebted Horizon. Tessela’s palette couldn’t be more current or more vital, even allowing for patience in the simmering threat of Gateway.

2: Anthony Naples – Ill Still [Rubadub]

Faceless

P O T, El Portal, Moscato: Anthony Naples released a lot of brilliant music this year, but for us it was Ill Still that had them all beat. Taking a smoother approach than on other releases, Naples allowed his melodies to shine on these addictive grooves, and all three were superb in their own right. The simplicity of these tracks was addictive: the whirring synthline and straightforward drum programming of Ill Still, or the ghosted vocals and shimmering melodic haze of Faceless: both made for two of our most played tracks. On I Don’t See Them Naples turned a little psychedelic with effortless style, a throaty bassline complimenting a sifting soup of synths and atmospheric detail.

1: A Made Up Sound – Ahead / Endgame [A Made Up Sound]

Ahead

Perhaps more a single than an EP, Dave Huisman’s staggeringly strange single was undoubtedly the most futuristic music we heard all year. Ahead throws dance convention out of the window: no comfortable beat pattern, no melodic hooks to latch onto. Huismans takes a stuttered beat pattern and guts it, splicing in jagged funk samples and splintering percussion. It’s wildly unpredictable and jarringly, brilliantly broken, and we wanted to keep returning just to see if we could manage to make some sort of sense of it all.

Endgame is straighter but by no means simple: a crushed melody split open across an epileptic beat pattern, eventually allowed to morph into sputtering warehouse techno for a searing finale. It’s difficult, perplexing music, and perhaps not aimed explicitly for the dancefloor: but no record left us more dazzled this year.

Best of 2013:

* Best Labels of 2013

* Best EPs of 2013
* Best Tracks: 85-26
* Best Tracks: 25-1

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Laurel Halo - Chance of Rain

Label: Hyperdub

Laurel Halo makes slippery music. Throughout the Hyperdub producer’s catalogue of restless electronic compositions there persists an ungraspable quality: whenever you feel, whether on the early techno experimentations as King Felix or on last year’s vocal-led Quarantine LP, that you’d really found something to hold onto, it slips through your fingers. In many ways, this constant mutability, this defiant middle finger to generic expectations, makes Laurel Halo’s music challenging, at times inaccessible. Yet the tricky productions are so becoming of the producer’s recurring themes – paranoia, individual agency, the relationship between man and machine, systems and viruses – that each release feels not difficult but brave. When news came that Halo’s latest, around six months after her club-driven Behind The Green Door EP, did away with the vocals which served as an anchor on Quarantine, we could have feared a disconnect, an isolation in a mist of alien noise. Yet given her superb track record to date, a sense of trust and an abandonment of preconceptions is all that’s necessary to feel rewarded by Chance of Rain. A demanding album then, but a ruthlessly thrilling one.

Album Clips

In the mould of a true sonic explorer, Halo’s sound cannot be tied down. A nervous energy pervades A Change Of Rain, whose generic touchstones shift from Warp-style IDM to outsider house distortion, from hypnagogic experimentation to drowned club music. Many take their shape as fleshed-out versions of Halo’s live experimentations, a fact which only enhances the unpredictability of this musical suite. The longer tracks mostly take the shape of percussive exercises, yet each is impressively singular. Oneiroi is as dreamlike as its name suggests: a quivering field of largely unidentifiable sounds jostle for attention, leaving the listener adrift and vulnerable, only able to latch onto the occasional clean woodblock or vocal distortion. Serendip takes shape with a foggy techno pulse, a warbling bassline left to wander beneath the mist, while later the abrasive Thrax adds a boiling dose of acid to stuttering drum patterns.

Still in these harsher numbers a softness persists: the emotive chords that occupy Thrax’s final minutes, or the jazzy piano which dissipates the tension built over Chance Of Rain’s angular workout. These melodies take the listener to curious emotional terrain, discomforting rather than tranquil given their placement in such harsh environments. These organic instrumental moments, whether on the piano pieces which bookend the album or stirring mid-point Melt, which moves from soaring strings to a single isolated wind instrument, distil the broader ambiguity left in the wake of A Change Of Rain. Here, Laurel Halo leaves the listener with an anxious album which trades abrasion for serenity at a moment's notice, an endlessly enigmatic collection of music. It may take some work to truly get to grips with her latest, and even then a specific emotion or idea may slip through your fingers, but the only thing that won’t elude your grasp will be this record’s quality, and it's composer's singular vision.

7.5/10

Laurel Halo – Behind The Green Door

Label: Hyperdub

The inimitable Laurel Halo returns to Hyperdub after her lauded debut album Quarantine, treading brave new ground on her taut new EP. Gone are the vocals and glassy ambience of the LP as Halo mines a more unsettled, paranoid vein of sound, focussing on low-end and percussion while flirting seductively with the fringes of dance music.

The release’s title may reference a notorious porno flick, but any sexuality present is tainted and distorted by an disquieting energy which courses through each of these immaculate productions. Opener Throw kicks off powerfully, with crystalline keys echoing out over a tense field of shifting percussive twitches and muscular bass hits. The beauty of this track relies on its contrast; the beat pattern constantly shifting and mutating, while the reverberation of those fragile keys continues to linger even when their melody is all but gone.

Throw

Second cut Uhffo is more rugged, a tough kick the only anchor in an agitated soundfield occasionally interrupted by strangled synth swells. The unpredictability of each of these tracks keeps the listener constantly alert, here an insistent hiss sounds like a scratch on the record, while descending keys gradually give way to a soft ambient wash. If the A-side never really lets the listener get comfortable, third cut Nofyb takes it a step further. A bouncing, DJ-friendly intro opens up to an alarming synth loop, before a bed of metallic chimes give on to a searing scifi intrusion. Throughout this release, Halo persistently plays with the listener’s comfort zones, following each sudden rest with an equally abrupt freak-out in a genuinely disconcerting manner.

The package is rounded off with the distinctly technoid Sexmission, some of the straightest dance-work we’ve seen from Halo this side of her King Felix alias. It’s another proud piece, a tough kick receding and emerging from a disconcerting bed of suffocated machine noise and foghorn bass notes. Halo’s latest may prove an unsettling listen but it is undeniably powerful and rhythmically complex music. To not only attempt such an abrupt stylistic shift but to pull it off with confidence and finesse is a rare feat, resulting in a stellar addition to the increasingly impressive repertoire of one of the electronic scene’s bravest artists.

8/10

May Roundup 2013

White Noise may have taken a break from writing, but we certainly never stopped listening. Before normal service resumes with a fresh set of reviews and features, here's a 25-strong selection of our top tunes from the month of May(ish). In keeping with the inconsistent weather, our list is split, kicking off with bumpin’ party grooves and backloaded with dark, percussive stompers. Get listening.

Tracklist:

Wildchild – Renegade Master (Applebottom Power Bootleg)

Genius of Time – Love Thang (Genius of Time Re-edit)

Innershades – That Girl

Huxley – Walk 2 U

Kingdom – Bank Head feat. Kelela

Head High – Burning (Keep Calm Mix)

Laszlo Dancehall – Gave Up

Lucretio – Want

Glimpse – True South

Pev & Hodge – Bells (Dream Sequence)

Dark Sky – In Brackets

Laurel Halo – Throw

Ron Hardly – Subway Antlers

Cliff Lothar – Dro Friday

DJ Haus – Cold As Ice

Helix – Whoosh Ice Dispenser

Kowton – TFB [Clip]

Akkord – Navigate

Paula Temple – Colonized

Huerco S. – Apheleia’s Theme

HNNY – Boy

Kevin McPhee – Who Loves You

Pearson Sound – Figment

Koreless – Sun

Mala – Changes (Harmonimix)

Laurel Halo – Hour Logic

Aquifer

Constant Index

Hour Logic

After being premiered as a vocalist for Ford and Lopatin, Ina Cube crafted her first EP, King Felix, less than a year ago and here in her second she has taken a rather unexpected turn. While the most striking aspect of her last EP was her unique voice, here she almost completely abandons vocals to focus on the instrumental aspect of her songs. So does this surprising move work for the young artist? Well, sort of. Some of these tracks are great, some are rather dull, and I'd argue none of them are truly excellent.

There are certainly some strong tracks here. Aquifer is a brilliantly pacey cut with fantastic layering and some gorgeous touches, showing how adept Halo is at mixing different textures to create fizzing dancefloor techno. Second track Constant Index is without a doubt the highlight of the EP, but the fact that it's the only one to clearly utilise her vocals perhaps hints the move to a more instrumental style was a misstep. Either way, it's a rushing techno odyssey with gorgeously powerful vocals that soar through the tune. It was wise to mix them into the instrumentation, sometimes creating the effect of an epic background roar, accompanied by a destructive bass and a killer not-quite-drop late in the track which shows what she could be doing this whole time. Later title track Hour Logic is also quite nice, although a pounding 4/4 beat breaks in and contorts it seems more a stage to portray the exploration of tension and release in the glacial ambient tones she employs.

Unfortunately for every track which shines, another falls flat. Head is an journey through an ugly (not necessarily in a bad way) soundscape of lush electronic detail, but it ultimately gets a bit dull before it reaches its nevertheless well-orchestrated climax, ending with a final couple of minutes that are immersive and cacophonous but not quite an adequate pay-off for the wait. Speed of Rain is an interesting but forgettable diversion into IDM beats, and I would argue delving into the terrain of Aphex Twin and Autechre does her no favours in comparison. The melodies here are abandoned before they really have time to shine, and I feel the track hints that perhaps not just here but across the whole EP a few textures and ideas could be removed from the mix. I could go either way on final cut Strength in Free Space, the whole voice-as-intrument approach is done well, the pitch-perfect vocals competing with long tones and a quiet but important beat for prominence across the track.

Ultimately few of these tracks really shine, and while each is an interesting experiment the EP doesn't really come together as a whole that makes you sit up and take notice. However the fact that Halo refused to build upon the strong sound that she produced in her previous EP seems to me less an indication that this is a misstep but more proof that this is an artist who refuses to compromise her vision and that whatever comes next it will be unexpected and interesting. Let's just hope the next release is of a higher consistent quality than this EP, because there is clearly so much talent and so many ideas just waiting to find the perfect form to be expressed.

(P.S. - Check out Actress' awesome remix of Constant Index here)

6.5/10

Dance and Electronic Roundup

Here I've collected the tracks I've been sessioning this week, brand new dance and electro from great albums and singles or from artists who are about to release a new LP. Just thought it might be nice to share some thoughts on what I'm listening to at the moment.

Silo Pass – Bok Bok

A track from the new Southside EP by one half of juggernaut label Night Slugs, Bok Bok. Throughout the EP he showcases weird sounds and full-throttle dance production, but here is where he connects most with the grime flavour that threatens to emerge throughout the EP. Opening with a spare buildup consisting of far-off voices, an enthralling beat and creeping synths, at the one-minute mark the track breaks down magnificently into a filthy grime bass that is dancefloor catnip. Despite the unusually long runtime for a dance track this cut never gets boring, with the bass receding and coming back each time bigger and more intoxicating than ever.

Streetz Tonight - Araabmuzik

Part ambient, part trance, the new album from gangsta-rap producer Araabmuzik was a big surprise to everyone. In this prime cut he incorporates classic 90s euphoria vocals in the form of a sped-up version of those from Kaskade's 4am, clipping the sample and never quite letting it reach its peak before it is battered back down by his snares and beats. The result is a completely hypnotising cross-breed of genres which is a prime example of the old adage that however uncool the genre you're reviving, a masterful control of tension and release can make any track a banger. You're now listening to Araabmuzik.

Unglued – Objekt

Harking back in some ways to older dubstep, the mysterious Objekt's (Berlin-based TJ Hertz) latest single was undoubtedly fantastic, but it was this B-side that kept me coming back for more. The track is stripped to a level of pure aggression, moving through several distinct movements before settling into a propulsive beat with acid and jazz tinges cheekily laced throughout. Added to this, after a minute or so of cut-throat beats and violent 2-step snares is one of the most explosive and messed up drops I've heard this year. Suffice to say there's a reason everyone's getting so excited about Objekt, and I expect this track to continue ripping up dancefloors for the next few months.

Open Your Eyes – XXXY

XXXY's particular brand of future garage has been attracting a lot of attention this year, and his latest release looks set not just to continue the brilliance of cuts like Ordinary Things but also to change things up and better them. Adopting a more jungle aesthetic, the drums on this track are exploding hardcore-style 808 beats that are absolutely ferocious especially after the huge drop, and an emotive element is woven into the mix with the sampled refrain “Let's go somewhere”. It's clear from the off that this Manchester-based producer is moving somewhere special, and with tunes like this I'm more than happy to go with him.

Laurel Halo – Aquifer

This is the opener from Laurel Halo's new EP Hour Logic, and it's a gorgeous techno-trance mindbender. Opening with fizzing liquid synths, the track builds slowly and carefully with subtle vocal snatches before the slow-drive bass kicks in to ground the crazy pace of those synths. Laurel Halo has shown a consistently cerebral output and this track is no different, showcasing her compositional skill beyond her astounding voice. It's busy but always lucid, and the distorted pipe-synth kicking in midway through the second minute lends an epic oriental grandeur to the sound introducing a steady beat. The layers are brief but expertly interlaced, declaring proudly that Arbor is one to watch.

Oh, Why – Balam Acab

The first full track from Alec Koone's album due out late August entitled Wander / Wonder. Balam Acab is one of my very favourite artists around at the moment and this taster shows that he's likely to deliver on his Triangle debut. Opening with his trademark treated vocals which sound otherworldly and unlike anything else, the track showcases a luxuriantly slow build that reveals gorgeous depth on repeated listens. The ethereal vocals are backed by a perfectly pitched loop of lazy synths and record hiss, introducing a bassline of masterful subtlety halfway in. Then the dubby bass kicks in accompanied by a soaring male vocal line, building quietly into a beautiful release of eery synths and straining vocals with instantly recognisable bubbly arpeggios breaking through the noise. Dark and beautiful, this promises great things for his debut LP. Another fantastic track from the upcoming album, Apart, can be found here.

Shell of Light (Shlohmo Remix) – Burial

I've saved my favourite until last, this track has been on daily repeat on my iTunes since I first heard it. Remixing Burial is a daring move, but Shlohmo's take on the gorgeous and all-too-brief end of Shell of Light is pitched perfectly, treating its source material with respect and turning it into something completely different. Opening with the untreated sample, the single vocal line is achingly emotive and only enhanced by the masterly bass and broken beats. Just before the 2-minute mark the track drops off and a sampled falsetto is laced expertly with the sample, creating a ghostly and beautiful song which is utterly hypnotic, demanding repeated listens in its thrilling interplay of lost voices, subtly insistent percussion and entrancing synths. An exciting sign of the quality of Shlohmo's debut album Bad Vibes which drops next month, from which a track can be found here.