Best Albums of 2015

 12. Grant – The Acrobat [The Lauren Bacall]

The Awful Truth

An unknown artist on an unknown label was responsible for one of the year’s most mesmerising deep house LPs. Grant’s sound is decidedly subdued yet his production talents should not be underestimated. Grainy rhythms and swooning pads are everywhere yet this is no standard house-by-numbers – flashes of warehouse techno, sublime ambience and snarling acid are teased into a single slinky package. Like the striking photo on its cover, these tracks are rich moments of suspended animation: joy, movement, and grace.

11. Sven Atterton – The Cove [Omega Supreme]

The Cove

Omega Supreme and People’s Potential Unlimited have spent the last few years issuing the very best of modern funk, and nothing came better than Sven Atterton’s early 2015 debut The Cove. An outstanding musicality stalks through these sun-drenched jams, played out through sinuous keyboard solos, hazy pads and languid basswork. Absolute killer for the summer chill.

10. Palmbomen II – Palmbomen II [Beats In Space]

 

Mary Louise Lefante

"As a Dutch transplant to LA, Hugo is clearly a sun-worshipper, a fact abundantly clear in his colourful, saturated take on club music. The sun blazes through a thick haze over these tracks, which corral burbling house, dew-eyed new age melodies and the occasional foray into gurgling acid into a memorable, mesmeric package… It’s a winner, an album that invites you to wander through an alien landscape guided by a warm, comforting hand. It’s a walk you’ll want to take time and again.”

Read the full review here

9. Linkwood – Expressions [Firecracker]

Off Kilter (No Midi Mix)

“It’s been four years since the last Linkwood emission, and six since his debut LP, and you can hear how slowly these tracks have matured, offering a richness and attention to detail uncommon in the fast-paced dance scene, particularly when it comes to albums. Whether you come for the gorgeous ambient meditations, the compelling club cuts or the whole opulent package, Expressions is an album you’re not going to want to leave anytime soon.”

Read the full review here

8. Lifted – 1 [PAN]

Bell Slide

“Lifted’s debut is the rare album which feels purely next-level, like music beamed from an idealised future. The sound that the group have created is like an unstable chemical: constantly mutating, joyously effervescent. So few artists who chart fresh electronic terrain manage to do so with such lightness and joy in their sound. Because Lifted do, you won’t just follow them willingly – you’ll do it with a broad smile on your face.”

Read the full review here

7. Domenique Dumont – Comme Ca [Antinote]

L’esprit de l’Escalier

“These aren’t really tracks or cuts, they’re songs, addictive and hummable, but with a fine producer at the helm, who has a light touch but never lets things get too sugary… a curious and winning package from yet another great Antinote discovery, as if they needed another feather in their cap.”

Read the full review here

6. DJ Sotofett – Drippin’ For A Tripp [Honest Jon’s]

 

  

Drippin For 97 Mix

Honest Jon’s struck gold this year, offering us the broadest exploration of DJ Sotofett’s demented musical world yet. Here the inimitable producer teams up with an array of collaborators but takes his own tools along for the ride – birdsong, reggae rhythms and acres of post-euphoric ambience. It was a tripp that took us from future-afrobeat to humid house via beatless excursions poised impossibly between prog and Balearic. Absolutely essential for fans of the Sex Tags crew.

5. Project Pablo – I Want To Believe [1080p]

 

 
Sky Lounge

“The beats crunch and shuffle, lush pads drift like smoke, and the basslines are summoned straight from a 70s funk record. Then there’s the rising melody, hitting the perfect balance between hope and introspection. With this first track, Project Pablo hits a wondrous note which he sustains across the album without a single misstep… Listening to I Want To Believe, faces seem happier, objects prettier, and all those pesky problems seem like they might just work out okay, after all.”

Read the full review here

4. Dwig – From Here To There [Dwig]

Different Days

“It’s immediately accessible yet generous to the attentive listener, excelling in the mesmeric capabilities of the genre while pushing a varied, refreshing palette. If there’s any upside to the fact that this graceful album is unlikely to sell out or chart on critics’ lists at the end of the year, it’s that those few listeners who caught it and engaged will forge a more intimate relationship with this music, unhindered by hype or popularity. For theirs is an album of rare substance and beauty, something to treasure for them and them alone.”

Read the full review here

3. J Albert – Dance Slow [Exotic Dance]

Love Delivered

It’s a shame that J Albert’s stunning debut came out on such a limited cassette run, because this is music that demands to be heard. Deftly weaving between starry-eyed house and ruff analog exploits, Dance Slow is a twilit masterclass in 4/4 dance.

Read the full review here

2. Floating Points – Elenaia [Pluto]

Silhouettes (I, II & III)

After six years of stunning singles, we were expected big things from Floating Points’ debut. Yet Sam Shepherd’s long-awaited debut album, the fruit of five years’ work, wasn’t what anyone expected. Slow, slight, strangely ineffable, Elaenia makes you come to it. But when you do, and give this music time and attention, a world of sumptuous detail reveals itself, with a lifetime of emotions and influences ever-shifting across its dappled surface. This is a record of a subtlety and mastery that only Floating Points could achieve. We’ve rarely been so happy to be wrong.

1. DJ Richard – Grind [Dial]

Nighthawk

“DJs will find some great club tracks if they choose to skim it for parts, but that would be to miss the holistic effect of the album. This is narrative techno, and in typical artistic form, the narrative of conflict draws us inexorably towards reconciliation. This is heard on Vampire Dub, a confection of twinkling synth work, gauzy keys that leave behind calming jet-trails, and bubbling mechanical accents. Here the feelings of displacement are left behind, resolution can be found in a composition which is nakedly beautiful. This is the deserved conclusion to a great artistic accomplishment; a dance album with no fat, no misfires, every tune essential, surprising and rewarding. We hear darkness and conflict resolved through artistic expression, and we find peace.”

Read the full review here

***

What we listened to when we couldn’t bear to hear another synth:

You can’t always listen to electronic music. Well, we can’t. Every so often you need some nice acoustic earthiness to soothe those throbbing ears. 2015 was a rich year outside of electronic music, with Kendrick Lamar pulling an astonishingly ambitious jazzfunkhiphopsoul album off to perfection that’s still got us reeling. Young Thug picked up a lot of the excess hip hop weight with an endless slew of tunes baring his half-crazed flow and stark trap production.

Meanwhile Beach House kept doing exactly what we want them to with two new albums of dreamy, nostalgic pop, D'Angelo returned after 14 years with an RnB masterclass and Sufjan Stevens bared everything on the supremely affecting Carrie & Lowell. Finally, White Noise patron saint Joanna Newsom made a welcome return after five years with the satisfyingly dense and complex Divers, packed with allusions, esoteric instrumentation and heart-rending melodies.

***

That’s all for the best albums of 2015. Come back next week for a roundup of the best tracks of the year.

Lifted - 1

Label: PAN

There’s an interesting tension that exists in the world of dance music between the ideal of innovation and its execution. As heavy consumers of electronic and dance music, we tire of hearing the same thing and long for something that feels new and exciting, yet in general our expectations of ‘new’ and ‘exciting’ fall within a very narrow margin of musical possibility – we still want our sturdy beat pattern and arresting melody, just with the variables tweaked in a fresh way. Ultimately the difference between critically lauded ‘forward-thinking’ dance music and the most generic tech-house imaginable is a little like the genetic difference between a human and a banana – absolutely crucial if you happen to be a human (/banana) or a dance-head, but rather minor if you’re looking at the situation from the outside. Example: would one of your friends who doesn’t listen to dance at home but casually enjoys it in the club actually hear a huge difference between your favourite underground house jam and the latest David Guetta single?

This is why, in a sense, when we encounter true innovation it first seems baffling rather than dazzling, given that it doesn’t conform to our very strict expectations of what ‘our music’ should be. Lifted’s debut album '1' is just such an example. Granted, this wouldn’t exactly be called dance music, and while the broader electronic music tag includes some sounds which could be distant relatives to this LP (perhaps Oneohtrix Point Never and Holly Herndon as second cousins, twice-removed), the fact that Lifted is in fact a collaboration of some of our dance scene’s most brilliant minds makes it a worthy inclusion to the debate.

Lifted is an artistic project in the truest sense. Future Times’ endlessly compelling Max D (Andrew Field-Pickering) has teamed up with Co La (Matthew Papich) to create an album of material which is damn near uncategorisable, enlisting the help of Jordan CGZ and Gigi Masin on the overdubs. The music, all sent remotely between the group with little physical contact and released on Bill Kouligas’ reliable PAN imprint, shows the team breaking free from the fetters of the 4/4 and conformist dance music, shooting joyously into the sky with a rush of featherweight free-jazz and synthwork.

The music of '1' is so removed from points of reference that it defies easy description. It’s slippery, and on first listen may prove challenging, hard to grab on to. But once the listener gets used to the album’s internal logic it’s a thrilling piece that feels genuinely liberated, experimental music which soars with a light playfulness not often found in music which so overtly defies convention.

There are two key ingredients to Lifted’s sound. One is its chaotic rhythms, more free jazz than house. Whether the drums are hyper-filtered on Intoo, tumbling beyond rhythm on 3D or occasionally courting the ghost of a 4/4 on Total Care Zero, the effervescent percussion provides a nimble base for the range of melodic experimentation that is the album’s other crucial ingredient. The synths glide like chrome on Intoo, drift opulently on the gorgeous Mint or sketch future-grime figures on album highlight Bell Slide, constantly giving something new to the listener. 1 even briefly comes down from its lysergic rush on a couple of lush piano pieces, Lift a gentle celestial voyage and Silver more earthy, evoking a hushed loss.

Lifted’s debut is the rare album which feels purely next-level, like music beamed from an idealised future. And on its best moments, like Mint or the sparkling chill of closer Medicated Yoga, that future is very jazzy indeed. The sound that the group have created is like an unstable chemical: constantly mutating, joyously effervescent. So few artists who chart fresh electronic terrain manage to do so with such lightness and joy in their sound. Because Lifted do, you won’t just follow them willingly – you’ll do it with a broad smile on your face.

8.5/10