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Electronic Roundup: February 2012

Top 10 Electronic Albums, February 2012

by Philip Sherburne

This month's Top 10 electronic albums mostly avoid the dancefloor, but not entirely. Barcelona's John Talabot has whipped up a woozy whirl through club music's outskirts with his debut album -- even though it works just as well as indie pop, if you prefer -- while Ital's Planet Mu debut views house music through the prism of post-punk and gauzy, industrial electronics. (Or something. It's a trip.) Inhabiting more downbeat grounds, France's Air soundtrack a silent film from 1902, and Ghostly artist Mux Mool extends his perspective on abstract hip-hop.

On the outer limits, the improvising trio Tetras explores the boundaries of free jazz and drone, while Harmonious Thelonious delivers his third album of African music-box overdrive, and the electro producer Andrea Parker reworks Daphne Oram's decades-old tapes. Fans of Autechre, Monolake and Marcel Dettmann, meanwhile, will all be thrilled by Rrose's 2011 collaboration with Bob Ostertag for the Sandwell District label, which only recently saw a welcome digital release.

And then there's Grimes: Her debut album of chirpy electro-pop may not be to everyone's tastes, but it's certainly a different kind of album -- and, in my own experience, a grower.

For good measure, we've included links to 10 recent EPs from the fringes of electronic dance music.

Planet High School

Mux Mool

When it came time to quit Minneapolis, Brian Lindgren picked Brooklyn over L.A. -- a telling choice in his second album as Mux Mool. Where his debut was obviously in thrall to the hazy, faded wash of Flying Lotus and the So-Cal beat scene, Planet High School sets off in search of a new identity. Stumbling MPC beats remain the core of his instrumental hip-hop, but the range of influences is wider, from Daft Punk to Steve Reich, and Lindgren has amplified his sound world exponentially, fleshing out the crunch and growl with limpid melodies and gleaming samples.

Talking

Harmonious Thelonious

On his debut album, Barcelona's John Talabot builds upon the Balearic house foundations of his earlier singles without ever getting tripped up in retro fealty or tropical affect. Instead, he lets his loops lead him towards pop's ballooning outline, hovering somewhere in the middle between hypnotic disco and full-on sing-along. Madrid's Pional sings and co-writes two of the LP's strongest songs, but the whole thing's meant to be listened to in one go, from dusky rainforest chants to all-out electro-pop reverie.

Hive Mind

Ital

Ital is the dance music alias of Daniel Martin-McCormick, of Thrill Jockey post-punks Mi Ami and the creepy synth-pop project Sex Worker. As you might guess from that pedigree, Ital takes a pretty oblique view of dance music, pairing the squirrelly undulations of early Chicago house with dry, thudding beats cribbed from warped Factory tapes. Go straight to "First Wave" if you're looking for lysergic tone color and sweat-soaked groove; try "Privacy Settings" and "Israel" for bleaker, post-punk vibes. It doesn't sound much like anything out there -- not even its labelmates on Planet Mu.

Ghosts

Monolake

Inspired by a set of sinister, fragmentary texts about scientists, poisonous frogs and an expedition gone horribly wrong, Monolake's eighth album is a thrilling foray into techno at its most bleakly expressive. Elements of dubstep, industrial and techstep enliven the coiled grooves, and the sound design is unparalleled, with pinprick tones ringing out against cavernous reverb and seismic rumble. Listen loud, and with the lights off.

Ember

Function

Le voyage dans la lune

Air

The French duo Air have always had a retro yen, blending '60s lounge and '70s soft rock in a way that makes them a natural choice to score Sofia Coppola's films. Now they go even further back as they soundtrack a silent sci-fi film from 1902. Twice the length of the film itself, the half-hour album can be atmospheric, but it's punchier than you might expect, with prog/surf-rock jams like "Parade" and tuneful cameos from Au Revoir Simone and Beach House's Victoria Legrand. The spry, goofy "Sonic Armada" makes you wonder what they could do with a Roger Corman film.

Private Dreams and Public Nightmares

Daphne Oram

The late Daphne Oram's work was not well understood in her time; a co-founder of the BBC Radiophonic workshop in 1958, she left the following year to follow her avant-garde instincts and construct a bizarre, one-of-a-kind synthesizer called the Oramics Machine. Granted access to Oram's archive of tapes, Andrea Parker massages them into queasy drones and soundscapes. Glitchy electro rhythms lend a distracting contemporary touch in places, but for the most part her dark ambient atmospheres pay tribute to the timelessness of Oram's music.

Visions

Grimes

Post-Internet... super-hybridity... recombinant pop... whatever Simon Reynolds-approved tag you prefer, Visions nails it. On her debut album for dream merchants 4AD, Claire Boucher erects a fractal geometry from shards of electro, early-1990s R&B, synth pop, disco and new age. As with many other electronic producer-mavens to emerge in the 21st century, she sounds as if she grew up worshipping Björk, Enya and Gang Gang Dance. Though Visions contains discrete tracks, they appear to melt into one another, not unlike a DJ mix or, if you're old enough to remember, a well-crafted mixtape.

Pareidolia

Tetras

Tetras' first album traces a rippling, razor-thin edge between improv and trance-inducing drone jams. The trio of Jason Kahn (drums), Christian Weber (contrabass) and Jeroen Visser (organ and electronics) maps out a space somewhere between Kraut rockers like Can and the post-punk improv of New Zealand's Thela. Digging in for 17 or 20 minutes a pop lets them go long, drawing out a seismic rumble like the horizon being pulled taut before knuckling down into hypnotic, driven grooves. Fans of Sunn 0))), Polwechsel and Fennesz will find themselves sucked happily into the undertow.

Harmonious Thelonious

While most of Stefan Schwander's projects (Antonelli, Repeat Orchestra, A Rocket In Dub) have focused on dubby techno and house, his Harmonious Thelonious alias captures the bright sonics and interlocking rhythms of Afro-Caribbean music as projected through the prism of classical American minimalism. He's turned down the distortion since 2010's Talking, which sounded like Konono No. 1 playing through The Jesus and Mary Chain's busted amps; "Drums of Steel" and "A.O." remain exhilaratingly overdriven, but elsewhere his mallets, synths and drum machines are as glassy as a slow-moving stream.

The Night of the Burning