2022 Electronic Music 'Bests'

Best Aleksi Perälä release: CYCLES 3 星辰

The music-making monster from Finland released 21 albums in '22 and surprisingly I bought just three of them! I picked up the more Ambient-leaning offerings from the "Cycles" series (3,9 and 12).

Best track for a headache: Rudolf Abramov - Paracetamol

Best release featuring just an organ: Éliane Radigue and Frédéric Blondy - Occam XXV

Long form organ piece composed by celebrated French electro-acoustic composer Éliane Radigue and played by Frédéric Blondy. Peerless stuff.

Best music for yoga about a yogi: Éliane Radigue - Jetsun Mila

"An album in nine stages inspired by the life of Milarepa, a great yogi and poet who lived in Tibet in the 11th century"

Best label of 2022 - Subexotic

I've been enormously impressed with the quality and range of electronic music on offer from UK label Subexotic this year. I wrote about so many great albums, including Cyberwave by Violet Mist, Skins by Collins, Circles Within Circles by Pulselovers, Supermoon Moonlight Part Two by Forest Robots, The Phantomatic Coast by Conflux Coldwell, DECAS by Salvatore Mercatante and Hymns For Terry Francis by Xqui.

Subexotic offer a subscription for just £5 per month. Get on it!

Best reissue: Suicide - Surrender

Career spanning compilation worth getting excited about, compiled by Martin Rev, Liz Lamere (Alan Vega’s collaborator and wife), Henry Rollins and Jared Artaud, Surrender is the perfect introduction for new fans. Containing tracks spanning their entire recording career, from their 1977 self-titled debut through to their final studio album American Supreme in 2002, you can hear their influence on so many other artists at every beat and hnn!

Best track about a railway station: Kittin & The Hacker - Ostbahnhof

From their excellent third album (called Third Album) this standout cut brings Acid bleeps and Kittin's instantly recognisable atonal rap. Comfortably sits alongside their most celebrated work to date.

Best interpretation of the Celine Dion canon: Romance - Once Upon A Time

an extended love note to Celine Dion, re-imagining the Canadian icon's cultural locked grooves as a set of post-vaporwave crybient zoners. Smelting the iconic singer’s power ballad jewels to a hazed and glistening agenda, ‘Once Upon A Time’ sees Romance dial up the sonic dry ice to enveloping levels that trigger nostalgic senses like the whiff of a former lover’s perfume or Body Shop pot pourri on a saturday afternoon

Best cover version: Ada - 25 or 6 to 4

B-side to her Pampa Records single Moon Rider is a cover of Chicago's 70s hit. Better too.

A close runner-up came from Irish trio Everything Shook with their gorgeous cover of Goodbye Horses (originally by Q Lazzarus, aka Diane Luckey, who passed away earlier this year RIP).

Best compilation for Ukraine: A Dove Has Spread Her Wings - Relief for Ukraine

I picked up a few of these compilations in support of the various charities bringing humanitarian aid to Ukraine (including ...for my Ukraine, For Ukraine (Volume 1), Portals: Energostatic (For Ukraine) and Inigo Kennedy's Thinking Of UA) and this 34-track selection from Northern Electronics is, extraordinarily, filler-free!

Best 80s Electronic Goth Rock throwback: Curses - Incarnadine

Best Techno album made with a piano: Plastikman & Chilly Gonzales - Consumed In Key

A remake of Plastikman's seminal Minimal Techno album Consumed from 1998, with pianist Chilly Gonzales adding his jazzy vibes. It doesn't always work but there's a few moments of genius, e.g. In Side (In Key).

Best fabric presents: TSHA

A contemporary old skool Acid mix

Best 6th album: Franz Kirmann - Forget Me Not

Not just an Ambient Tour de Force but a sixth album!

Best album that came accompanied with a book: Queen Of Nowhere

The IIKKI books label continues to pair visual and musical artists with pleasantly surprising results. The collaboration between photographer Kourtney Roy and musician Dayve Samek (aka Trance Farmers) was a particular standout with the two art forms playing off one another perfectly.

Best Dub Reggae album: Paolo Dubfiles Baldini & Al Brown - Dub Cuts

The Italian bass player and studio-whizz Paolo Baldini has been adding his Dub-magic to a variety of collaborations over the years, and this reworking of Al Brown's 1990 album Be El Ze Bub is simply stupendous.

Best reggae track: Al Brown and Inner Force - Tribulation on the land

Baldini again (see above)! This track (originally named Daily News) first appeared on Al Brown's Be El Ze Bub album but was renamed Tribulation on the land with this immense makeover. Deservedly given its own release too. What a tune!

Best SAULT album: Today & Tomorrow

Six albums released this year from the London-based, genre-bounding collective, meant there was plenty of choice. ATM Today & Tomorrow is the standout for me... but that could change as I gradually dig deeper. Harold Heath liked (Untitled) God.

Best release from a Bandcamp subscription: XY0815 - Gates Need Inputs Vol. I

Until subscribing to Shall Not Fade in November, my only other Bandcamp subscription in 2022 was with the peerless brokntoys, which narrows the field down. brokntoys is the London-based label behind many quality releases this year from the likes of Exhausted Modern, Barking, Mick Woods, Obergman and Vertical67, but it was German producer XY0815 who crossed the line with an eight-track selection of the finest Downtempo Electronica called Gates Need Inputs Vol. I.

Best work from an artist whose established oeuvre is completely different: Paul Blackford - Jupiter Satellites

Previously celebrated for his upbeat Electro and Hip-Hop beats, Paul Blackford surprised me with a stone-cold Ambient album called Jupiter Satellites.

Best track that souned like Broadcast: Hydroplane - New Monotonic FM

Best album that sounded like Bowery Electric: Erasers - Constant Connection

Best non-electronic track: Molly Nilsson - Absolute Power

I used to be massively into Indie/Rock music but these days only ever listen to things in that style when they somehow cross my radar, like Julian Cope's I'm Bloody Sure You’re on Dope or Always Together With You by Spiritualized or The Fourth Cycle by Allison Lorenzen. I can't remember how Molly Nilsson's soft Rock album found its way in, but the chords and melody on the opening track Absolute Power evoke a powerful nostalgia that hits all my emotional senses.

Best Ambient compilation: Healing Together - A Compilation For Mental Health Recovery

Deeply pleasurable compilation from Past Inside the Present label, comprising 23 essential Ambient tracks. This has been on steady rotation since its release in May.

Best track with Patty Smith poetry: 3 Electro Knights - I Move In Another Dimension (Peter James 'Mandy Mix')

Best Danny Wolfers album: Noda & Wolfers - Tascam Space Season

Not as busy as usual (only a handful of musical releases under aliases like Hermit In A Rave Cave, Smackos and Legowelt) but his collaboration with Japanese Dub maestro Taka Noda (aka Mystica Tribe) found the sweet spot between Wolfers' melody-rich Electro and Noda's Dub sensibilities.

Best sequel album: Forest Robots - Supermoon Moonlight Part Two

With stiff competition from Om Unit and his follow up to Acid Dub Studies, this second part of Supermoon Moonlight by Fran Dominguez, aka Forest Robots, demonstrated artistic development in a real way through Dominguez's reaction to the pandemic and all its associated challenges. When the pandemic hit, Dominguez retreated down an Ambient path for two years before feeling comfortable returning to his established upbeat Electronic sound. A fine return to form!

Best fourth solo album: Steffi - The Red Hunter

A strong solo effort from the Dutch artist, continuing to pursue the rougher edges of deep House and Techno. Read the review.

Best album with a water-related theme: Cio D'Or - Polar Q

Water is to Ambient as space is to Techno, so yes, most contenders were primarily Ambient.

Included highlights are: Partial Deletion of Everything (Vol. 2) by Monogoto, The Phantomatic Coast by Conflux Coldwell, Glass Horizon by Precipitation, The Sails by loscil, Oceans by Le Code, Aquarealm by X.Y.R. and Tropical City by Wave Temples.

Best "big room" track: Riva Starr - Creators

It simply bangs.

Best long album: Nils Frahm - Music For Animals

Over three hours but all very nice.

Best all-female Dub Reggae compilation: Adrian Sherwood Presents - Dub No Frontiers

Dub and Reggae took me to new places this year and this Adrian Sherwood compilation featuring ten, non-English, female vocalists, was a highlight.

Best vinyl-only release: Shed - Towards East

I still shake my head at labels putting out vinyl-only releases in 2022 (seriously WTF?) so I wouldn't be surprised if this fine offering passed you by. It sees René Pawlowitz on top form, balancing Ambient, Dub and Breaks. Read my words.

Get hold of a copy if you can (otherwise stream it on You Tube).

Best cheesy 'Royale with Cheese' cheesy track: DVNO - It's all a Bluff

French artist and Justice associate Mehdi Pinson delivered a decent 4-track EP, oozing cheesy guitars, big pianos and melody to match. Read my words.

Best opening track: Actress - Dummy Corporation

This gargantuan 19 minute track drones, sprawls, teeters and quietly seethes, sparking a calm dread with its dark Dub Techno vibes.

Best album about climate change: Ben Frost - Broken Spectre

Combined with the harrowing film from Trevor Tweeten and the exhibition of photographs by Richard Mosse, Ben Frost's soundtrack to the devastating effects of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon leaves an indelible mark on your conscious. Incredibly powerful art. Read my words.