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.

Weird-​​looking, but secretly the most inter­est­ing peo­ple at the party

The Twilight Sad Forget the Night Ahead
Shackleton 3 EPs
Piano Magic Ovations
Bvdub White Clouds Drift on and on

Kind of an odd assort­ment here, but they make sense together: they’re all very good, but there’s a lit­tle hook to each one that might drive some peo­ple away. If you can get over the hump, though, you’ll be rewarded. (The bumps? Twilight Sad: “Haven’t I heard this before?” Shackleton: “This is a lit­tle repet­i­tive.” Piano Magic: “This is kinda wannabe late-​​period Dead Can Dance.” Bvdub: “Wait, it’s over and I for­got to pay attention.”)

Precocious vinyl

Burial /​ Four Tet split 12″
Others in Conversation “Two Instrumentals“
Data & Cell “Doors of Perception“
Indigo/​Synkro “Runes/​My Own World”

Putting out two tracks on a piece of vinyl usu­ally pre­cludes you from get­ting on year-​​end best-​​release lists. Not for me. Qualitatively, these records are 100% awesome.

Returns to form

Gus Gus ²⁴⁄₇
Tortoise Beacons of Ancestorship

Tortoise and Gus Gus are each com­ing off two albums or so of so-​​so mate­r­ial. Ah, they’re back! These albums hold their own against their best.

Doing what they do, and doing it well

Fluxion Constant Limber
Alva Noto Xerrox vol. 2
jj jj n°2
Lawrence Until Then, Goodbye

Much like find­ing your way back from a period of point­less­ness, there’s some­thing to be said for know­ing how to do what you do, and then doing it very well. (Junior shout-​​out to Fluxion, who decided to make a track with a vocal­ist, and made my jaw drop. It was so unex­pected and not ter­ri­bly orig­i­nal, but the fact that it hap­pened and was suc­cess­ful is something.)

Artist of the year

Fever Ray

Oh yeah, yes, YES. Karin Dreijer Andersson, wel­come to the pan­theon, Micah’s Pantheon of Sorta-​​Crazy, Intensely Creative, Inspirational Women. You already know Kate Bush and Björk, of course.

This album is stun­ning. The sin­gles are stun­ning. The remixes are stun­ning. The graphic design and videos are stun­ning. The live show (going from the live album) was stun­ning. What can’t this woman do? I was sur­prised at how mel­low, dark, and per­sonal this album is. The Knife are dark, and sorta per­sonal, but rarely mel­low. She turned it around for the album. The moment that gets me the most is in the album’s cen­ter­piece, “Keep the Streets Empty for Me”. The last line, repeated, is “uncover our heads and reveal our souls”. Definitely heavy com­ing from a woman known for wear­ing strange and com­plex masks for pub­lic appearances.

Remixes of the year

Florence & the Machine “You’ve Got the Love” xx Remix
Hell “The DJ” Radio Slave Remix

Hey, it’s the xx again. These damn sneaky kids, in addi­tion to pro­duc­ing their own album, are appar­ently capa­ble enough to turn out an amaz­ing remix of a song, not in their style, and twist it around to their style. [shakes fist]

I’ll keep shak­ing my fist at Matt Edwards, Mr Radio Slave, doing what he does so well: show­ing you that when you think you’ve had enough, stick­ing with it a lit­tle longer is bet­ter than enough. Great track for him to work his magic on, too. This DJ Hell album missed the above short­list by only a lit­tle bit (iron­i­cally, it’s too long), but this track is great. It’s good on the album, bet­ter as a remix. All of this is pre­lude to my say­ing that I’m aston­ished I ever loved a track with Diddy (yes, Sean Combs) rant­ing about DJs who only play edits and should be play­ing the extended ver­sions instead.

(If I hadn’t already given the praise to Fever Ray, we’d see the Rex the Dog remixes of “Triangle Walks” and the Scuba remixes of “Seven” here.)

Great pro­ducer choice

Fuck Buttons Tarot Sport

Their pre­vi­ous album I loved when I first heard it, but it fell down the list pretty quickly. Why? Too nar­rowly focused, no soul. What can fix that? Getting Andrew Weatherall to pro­duce, of course! A turn­around and a great piece of work. Cheers, gents.

Ask me when sum­mer comes

King Midas Sound Waiting for You

I think I like this…but as a soft-​​yet-​​thick reg­gae album (or a dubstep-​​with-​​vocals album), I’m not going to know until sum­mer. Just the way it is. Can’t fully grok this kind of music until it’s warm out and I’m liv­ing on Cruzan Single Barrel Estate Rum.

It’s ambi­ent music

Leyland Kirby Sadly, the Future is No Longer What It Was

It’s four hours of dis­tressed record­ings of worn-​​out 78s. Oh, it’s ambi­ent in the tra­di­tional Eno def­i­n­i­tion: aural wall­pa­per. Wallpaper can be oppres­sive and really affect your sub­con­scious, though…

Disappointment

Sven Weisemann Xine

The “Xine Zero” 12″ is great. A pretty tight lit­tle com­bi­na­tion of elec­tronic rhythms, strings, and piano. It’s quite orig­i­nal. So why is the album so painfully dull? Not enough elec­tron­ics. Only a cou­ple tracks really bring it all together nicely. Without the beats, it just sounds like sketches for a snip­pets of a sound­track. A shame, as I was really look­ing for­ward to hear­ing this kind of sound…

Oh wait, what’s this?

Field Rotation Licht und Schatten

Hey, here it is, sub­tle elec­tron­ics with strings and piano. Sven has more of a minimal-​​housey flavour to his work, Field Rotation sounds more like Move D: sorta housey, sorta ambi­ent techno. Damn good. Excellent work by this obscure pro­ducer. Now, make haste over to his web­page for two free remix EPs.