Best New Electronic Albums of 2008
I’m probably not the best guy to be doing an electronic list, since I hate about half of the category. If you like loud, simple, repetitive beats good only for dancing, this ain’t the list for you. And anything including guitars and vocals in pop song structures I already covered on my rock lists (M83, Portishead, etc.). But if weird and spooky is your bag, check these out.
I like dubstep because unlike most electronica, it’s so irregular, eccentric, fucked up and fucked with. You can dance to it, but you can do lots of other stuff to it as well, including just listen, and never get bored. Last year my fave electronic album was Burial’s; this year it’s this guy’s. If that’s a trend, at least it’s lasting pretty well.
Holtkamp works differently solo than he does in the duo situation of Mountains; paradoxically, the results tend to be slightly denser, suggesting an indie, 21st century version of the looped guitar layers of Frippertronics (though he also uses keyboards and various other instruments). He incorporates field recordings here (the hubbub of a children’s playground, birds chirping, wheels turning, etc.), hence the album title, and they keep the drones and crescendos from sounding purely abstract; his music’s organic, naturally developing quality is accented by these less structured sounds’ different sort of organicness. The results are soothing yet thoroughly engrossing.
Ambient electronica that’s way more interesting than most ambient stuff. Anybody who can make a career out of this style and not repeat himself, which describes Christian Fennesz, is a genius.
This guy’s doing stuff so avant-garde and alienating/alienated that it ought to have an audience of about fifty people, but miraculously this completely abstract, utterly unfunctional music reaches out way beyond the experimental set just by being marketed as electronic music.
As I wrote here, “Part of a trilogy, this is darkwave ambient music, quiet but with serrated edges on its drones. There’s nothing new agey about this ambient, which makes for uneasy listening with its buzzing and clanking amid the drones and a glacial pace of movement that oozes foreboding. Projecting an icy grandeur without even an iota of histrionics, this is dramatic without overt action or beats, sort of like if Ingram Marshall and Brian Eno constructed an alternative soundtrack to 2001 using samples of the eeriest moments of Lycia, Tod Dockstader, and Krzysztof Penderecki. Until ‘Extinct,’ that is, which adds to the mix avant-garde metal textures a la Justin Broadrick’s more atmospheric work.”
More weirdness that fits better into so-called experimental (“so-called” because it ain’t an experiment, John Twells knows what he’s doing). Type is one of my favorite labels because of stuff like this. The music is about fear, and appropriately draws Xela into its most abstract and harsh sounds yet.
This is electronic dance music I can love, a disco-y/house-y electronic outfit that IMO is the best thing DFA’s ever done. It’s a perfect fit for Antony Hegarty ’s voice, and the retroness of producer/mastermind Andrew Butler’s sound is changed up with some cool effects – there’s real originality here in how the old-school styles are blended/contrasted. Nor is this one of those dance albums that’s all beats and no hooks – there are melodies and some great horn riffs. Butler also sings a bit, as do the higher-voiced Kim Ann Foxman and Nomi, so there’s plenty of variety in that arena as well.
Appearing in the U.S. the year after it came out in England, this album returns The Orb (now a trio of Dr. Alex Patterson, the returning Youth, and Tim Bran) to more familiar territory after 2005’s excursion into techno. It’s not quite as dreamily ambient as their stuff I like the best, but it still sounds classic. It’s also got a ton of vocal samples, probably the most of any of their few albums. The quality’s not consistent and any sense of being cutting-edge is gone, but few if any Orb fans won’t enjoy this.
On Tim Simenon’s first album in 13 years, the biggest surprise is “Black River,” featuring the vocals of Mark Lanegan (always a pleasure). Paul Conboy of Corker/Conboy stars on five of the nine tracks, sounding somewhat Thom Yorke-ish; other guests are Fujiya and Miyagi, Jon Spencer, and Toob. The trip-hoppy production of some tracks is perfectly timed (Simenon was a major precursor of the genre); elsewhere he’s spacier (think Orb/ambient), or occasionally more dancey. It all coheres nicely.
The mash-ups of Greg Gillis just get more hyper and more hilarious.
