March first is a good day to post this, right? I mean, the rush to get these out is gone, so now mine will appear more impor­tant for lack of competition.

So, remem­ber how I did it last year? The tier­ing sys­tem, as opposed to rank­ings? Yeah, that’s how I’ve been rat­ing every­thing since then. Hard and fast rank­ings are for the inflex­i­ble and narrow-​​minded.

The movers

The xx The xx
Telefon Tel Aviv Immolate Yourself
DJ Sprinkles Midtown 120 Blues
The Lullaby League Dormio Animus
Monolake Silence
Intrusion The Seduction of Silence

Yep, these are the best. Not only are they really good, but they’re really mov­ing. That may come as a sur­prise in the case of Monolake. It’s a good Monolake album, on par with Interstate, for sure, but mov­ing? Perhaps an odd claim, but I find this album really affect­ing. The same goes for the Intrusion album. Not only am I com­pletely com­fort­able call­ing that one of the best (dub or oth­er­wise) techno albums of all time, it’s so evocative.

DJ Sprinkles is Terre Thaemlitz’s moniker for house-​​influenced mate­r­ial, as opposed to his usual glitched ambi­ence. Amazing how one guy (er) could do two such diverse gen­res so well. Midtown 120 Blues is one of the three best house albums I’ve ever heard. Granted I’m not a house head, so my tastes are a bit off, but this is a clas­sic. It’s really warm and organic, uplift­ing yet moody, and just sloppy enough. Oh, you can dance to it, of course. Now that you know about Terre, I bet the Lullaby League is the obscurest thing here. I don’t know much about them either. I stum­bled across this album, and it trans­fixed me. It’s also warm, organic, and kinda sloppy, but it’s a slightly glitchy ambi­ent album with some great spo­ken word on top. It does won­der­ful things: when you’re try­ing to fall asleep and lis­ten­ing to it, it keeps you in the space between asleep and awake. Really cool.

Many know the story of the Telefon Tel Aviv album at this point: two guys, one of them kills him­self the week before this album is released. I don’t bite on those kinds of sto­ries; the music stands alone to me. In the end, I am self­ishly moved by his death, because this is the first Telefon Tel Aviv album that blew me away…and now I don’t get another. Shitty. So go buy this one. It’s shoegazey-​​IDM-​​synthpop. Odd combo, I know, but I love it.

And then…the xx. Forced to choose, I think I have to go with this album as my favourite of last year (with very close com­pe­ti­tion from Intrusion). It’s pretty much per­fect. A lot has already been said about it, so I’ll try and not repeat any of it. It’s amaz­ing. Go buy it. (Crap, that’s already been said.) The most aston­ish­ing thing about this album is its restraint. To make an album so sub­tle and relaxed is not com­pletely aston­ish­ing, but it is for four 20-​​year-​​olds. That’s the age when rock­ing is impor­tant. Subtlety is for the old who can’t han­dle the noise. Let this be the first sign of a new era in barely-​​there music.

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