Throughout the 2000s, Manchester's Claro Intelecto (Mark Stewart) was known for his dark, pulsing, warehouse-ready techno productions for the Modern Love label. After a few years of silence, he turns up on Amsterdam's Delsin imprint with a more ruminative, melancholy variant of his classic, analog style. Like his colleagues Andy Stott and MLZ, he's slowed his tempos considerably, with tracks like "Second Blood" sinking into narcotic (even narcoleptic) stupor; others, like the pumping "Blind Side," will keep you awake at the wheel for those long, destinationless night drives.
Boston's Soul Clap aren't afraid to get a little goofy, if the situation calls for it; they take the party seriously, but never themselves. Their guilelessness and their embrace of '90s R&B have found them success, ironically, among dance music's hipster jet-set. On their debut album, EFUNK -- "Everybody's Freaky Under Nature's Kingdom" -- they variously evoke PM Dawn's peace symbols and Deee-lite's colorful funk over a bed of 808s, sampled breakbeats and analog inspired keys. Recorded in Miami, informed by parties in Ibiza and L.A., it goes down as easy as a $20 cocktail (or a $3 PBR).
"We know now we want more/ A life worth fighting for," Santigold dazedly drawls on "Disparate Youth," the standout track from her sophomore album. And she fights hard here, after four years of writer's block and touring burnout, getting Karen O to crash the party on the militaristic dub-punk opener "Go!" and snatching writing and production help from such A-listers as Dave Sitek, Boys Noize, Q-Tip and Major Lazer's Switch and Diplo, whose apocalyptic, bass-heavy dancehall dominates much of the album. Meanwhile, Santi herself sizzles with sass and spunk on songs like "Fame" and "Freak Like Me."
Ireland's John Daly doesn't mind wearing his heart on his sleeve; hence titles like "Moon Pool," "Daybreak," "Release" and, of course, Sunburst, shining benignly over the whole collection. Daly's work has ranged from buoyant dub techno to stripped-down floor-fillers; here, he explores the middle ground, with purposeful machine rhythms enveloped in sumptuous synths. Drawing heavily on the analog sounds of classic Detroit techno, Chicago house and even Italo disco, Sunburst aligns itself with dance music at its most classic: no bells, no whistles, just sweet, emotive grooves.
The San Francisco producer Dave Aju's second album traverses similar territory to his 2008 debut, Open Wide, with moody house grooves and a heavy dose of funk. Ranging from uptempo floor-fillers to low-rider-appropriate cruising jams, the record keeps the palette focused on deep, swirly chords, shuffling drums and suggestive baritone vocals. If there's a ruminative cast to the music, that might be due to its origins: Aju's late father was a jazz musician, and the son extensively sampled his recordings in making the album, turning legacy into tribute.
The first dozen or so releases on Skrillex's OWSLA imprint have tended to follow his own lunging, grating, overblown fashion, but San Francisco's M Machine take the label confidently into home-listening territory. "A King Alone" is chiming electro-pop that asks what happens if The Postal Service had grown up on trance music; "Immigrants" is paced for the festival stage, but it's still a pop song at heart. "Deep Search" explores the triplet rhythms of German schaffel techno of the '90s, and the final three tracks go from Hot Chip vibes to searing dubstep without batting an eye.
The brutalist architecture featured on the cover of CFCF's mini-album Exercises belies the soft, supple music featured within. Recorded in part while the Montreal musician was living in Paris and had most of his gear in storage, its stripped-down palette of piano and synthesizer speaks to the emotive potential of extreme economy. Ryuichi Sakamoto's piano work helped inspire the record's meditative tones; so did the romantic pop of David Sylvian, whose "September" is covered here. A short, sweet set, the record goes down as easy as breathing.
Nine years after his debut single, "The Sad Piano," introduced Justin Martin's name to the worldwide house-music community, the San Francisco producer finally puts his name to a full-length LP. He sticks largely to the bouncy brand of house that he's perfected on numerous records for Dirtybird, balancing sumptuous hooks with jacking drums, hints of breakbeat and deep-diving bass lines reminiscent of golden-era drum 'n' bass. It's the rare "dance" LP that sounds as good at home as it does in the club; it arrives just in time for backyard BBQ season.
Vedomir is another alias of the Ukrainian producer Vakula (Mikhaylo Vityk), also known as V and Viguel. We'll just assume all those "V"s are for "victory," because he shows himself absolutely in command of his craft yet again, turning out some of the deepest, strangest house music this side of Theo Parrish. Blissed-out, late-night jams are his stock in trade, with woozy tracks like "Hello" and "Forks, Knives and Spoons" whipping up bleary-eyed delirium; he also lets his synthesizers lead him down more esoteric paths, like the pulsing "Jump in the Past" and the unorthodox "Orthodox Ambient."
With the albums released post-Creature Comforts, one gets the feeling Black Dice are intentionally demolishing their reputation as cosmic tribalists. Mr. Impossible is no different. This is damaged electronic music, jarring and uneasy. Several tracks sound like brown-acid remixes of arcade-game soundtracks; in fact, "Spy Vs. Spy" is a title nicked from an old school video game. Due to this nostalgia for the '80s, it's tempting to say Black Dice now make hypnagogic pop. Yet this ignores the music's spazzoid core, which shares more in common with older, lo-fi freaks like Coin and Pufftube.
Suzanne Ciani has been best known for her limpid new age keyboard music. In the '70s, however, she was a pioneering user of Buchla modular synthesizers, which she used to make avant-garde music as well as sound effects for film and television. This collection, put together by the Finder's Keepers label, gathers live recordings, studio experiments and excerpts from her commercial work, presenting the picture of a singular talent with an exceptionally thirsty ear. The opening "Lixiviation" is simply one of the most spellbinding ambient tracks you're likely to hear.
Figuring out the London duo Dean Blunt and Inga Copeland might be an exercise in futility. The infamous tricksters, aka Hype Williams (a reference to the hip-hop video producer), delight in biographical misinformation and bizarre, conceptualist antics. Their first LP for the Hyperdub label, though, is surprisingly forthright, swirling up New Age synth froth with rickety drum machines, in styles ranging from lo-fi hip-hop to stunted juke mutations, and taking inspiration everywhere from Moodymann to Third World flea-market cassettes. Strip away the PR feints, and their music's no joke.
Inspired by the British comic-book character Judge Dredd and the metropolis he patrols, Mega-City One, Drokk is the work of Geoff Barrow (Portishead, Beak>) and film composer Ben Salisbury. But don't expect trip-hop ambience or sweeping strings. Instead, the two get deep into the circuits of their analog synthesizers to produce a dystopian array of buzzing, throbbing, coldwave drones somewhere between Klaus Schulze and Cabaret Voltaire.
A little like James Blake, How To Dress Well and even The Weeknd, Kindness (the U.K.'s Adam Bainbridge) applies a hazy, nostalgic filter to the pop and R&B of the '80s and '90s on his debut album, turning out a dreamy set of synth-pop jams that reference the glossy synths and gated snares of Phil Collins, early Talk Talk and Scritti Politti. Philippe Zdar lends his hand to a production that's as rich as an éclair, and even if the songwriting doesn't always measure up, the album's pneumatic disco and lovers' pop stylings are plenty seductive on their own.
If the big news in this decade's house music is a return to classic sounds, a less noted feature is the revival of song form in a four-to-the-floor context. Damian Lazarus' Crosstown Rebels label has contributed as much as any to the phenomenon, with Art Department and Jamie Jones infusing moody, pumping club tracks with a dose of lysergic pop; now Toronto's Amirali extends Crosstown's remit with an album that owes as much to Depeche Mode as it does Larry Heard. It's a cozy, homespun record, with understated arrangements and Amirali's imperfect voice lending intimacy to slow-burning songs.
