Our Top 10 albums lists by genre continue with our staff picks for the best of dance and electronic music this year. Click next to read through the albums one by one, or use the list below to skip ahead to your favourites.
Top 10 Dance & Electronic Albums of 2013:
To see more of our Year-End Top Tens , head over to our Best of 2013 section.
10. James Holden
The Inheritors
(Border Community)
Over the course of the last decade, Border Community has fallen deeper into obscurity and further from the spotlight, and imprint boss James Holden wouldn't have it any other way. A hectic DJ schedule and label roster too big to manage forced Holden's company to trim the fat in a desperate effort to get back to basics. Seven years is a long time between full-length efforts, so it's no surprise The Inheritors was such an unpredictable statement. The album is as much about Holden's present compositional psyche as it is about what he's left behind: a desire to produce dance music. Holden has been vocal about his disdain for the cookie-cutter, carbon copy processes that permeate today's dance music landscape, and his latest album could easily be taken as a direct rebellion.
Indeed, "rebellious" might be the easiest way to describe these 15 disorienting live modular recordings, but there is plenty of substance behind each performance. The radically distorting, twisting and turning tracks have little to offer if taken out of context, but this is an album-lover's album, conceptualized from the ground up and standing righteously on its own. Inspired by William Golding's 1950's novel fictionally depicting humanity's evolutionary ascent into a new-found consciousness, ritualistic undertones and tribal sentiments are sprinkled throughout the album's challenging duration. And just when you're feeling Holden has completely checked out, the record concludes in fragmented harmony, demonstrating a fleeting sense of instinctual optimism. (Dustin Morris)
9. Oneohtrix Point Never
R Plus Seven
(Warp Records)
R Plus Seven wasn't about reinvention but a culmination of all the things that have made Oneohtrix Point Never so great. Revisiting old OPN stomping grounds like glitchy micro samples, MIDI-styled new age, kosmische synth wizardry and noise/drone textures, the record was familiar yet still entirely new, with Daniel Lopatin smoothing out any of his project's rough edges with a newfound melodicism, some oil-slick production and just a touch of pop.
It all led to more complex, multifaceted OPN, as Lopatin dove headlong into twisting, weaving electronic epics that rarely stayed in one place for long. Tracks repeatedly brought surprises, weaving in everything from Asian percussion, humming church organs, children's choirs and even some sexy sax work. If you weren't digging where the record was at, you only had to sit tight and wait for the next curveball.
All the while, Lopatin didn't get all clinical and stuffy about the whole thing; in fact, he was downright playful, making the album arguably OPN's most easy-to-digest and enjoyable to date, yet strangely, one of his most experimental.
Rather than boxing himself into a corner with R Plus Seven, Lopatin has made Oneohtrix Point Never seem like a project full of endless possibilities. (Brock Thiessen)
8. Ryan Hemsworth
Guilt Trips
(Last Gang)
At first glance, Ryan Hemsworth is a bit of an anomaly in the grand picture of electronic music: the decidedly low-key Haligonian doesn't plug in with one specific trend, and he eschews the web-presence naming conventions by utilizing the same moniker that appears on his birth certificate. Musically, too, his output was all over the place — jokey reworks like his A$AP Rocky/Britney Spears mash-up are at once timely, hilarious and disposable, while singles like "Colour & Movement" offered up emotive, near-twee compositions.
As Guilt Trips proved, hardline focus isn't always required to make a fascinating LP. Instead, excursions through cloud-rap, glitch-pop and all sorts of other hyphenates worked together, as did the wide array of guests Hemsworth brought in, among them Baths, Lofty305 and Sinead Harnett.
While Hemsworth's sense of humour disappeared some (or was, at least, harder to find), his ability to play within pop parameters was on full display. Guilt Trips is another great argument against genre segregation, and a reminder that we should keep paying attention to his every move. The final product is a snapshot of Hemsworth that's at once personal and, like a carefully curated social network identity that pulls from myriad subcultures, immensely personalized. (Josiah Hughes)
7. Fuck Buttons
Slow Focus
(ATP Recordings)
After previous studio collaborations with Mogwai's John Cummings and veteran British beatmaker Andrew Weatherall, for their third full-length studio album, Slow Focus, the Bristol-based electronic duo known as Fuck Buttons decided to go it alone, self-producing the album in its entirety at the band's Space Mountain studio. The result is perhaps their most abrasive and effortless album to date, mixing the caustic production and tribal grooves of their unpolished debut LP, Street Horrrsing, with the ethereal spaciousness and grandiose bombast of their 2009 sophomore effort (and 2012 Olympic Ceremony selected) Tarot Sports.
Taking their cues from the duo's early beginnings as minimalist noise experimenters, Slow Focus finds the IDM producers returning to their roots as over-indulgent art school protégés, creating a kraut-y mix of repetitive riffs and atonal melodies that both obscures and clouds their musical foreground, disorienting listeners as they try to make sense of the duo's hypnotic dreamscapes. Although not as instantly gratifying as other albums on this list Slow Focus is the kind of record that becomes clearer over repeat listens, as the group's claustrophobic cacophony of analog percussion and skittering synths gives way to panoramic vistas of calculated chaos. (Matthew Ritchie)
6. The Knife
Shaking the Habitual
(Mute)
In a lot of ways, the Knife's Shaking the Habitual is a bold statement about what an album can be in 2013. Seven years after the award-winning Silent Shout, Karin Dreijer Andersson and Olof Dreijer jolt listeners into a state of uneasiness and keep a tight grip on one's attention on this sprawling double album.
Clocking in at a challenging 98 minutes, Shaking the Habitual doesn't cut any corners or offer any easy outs. Jarring percussion, long ambient drones, calypso-influenced rhythms and unruly electronic experiments don't work well in a playlist, but in the context of the album, their power can be unexpected. Shaking the Habitual isn't just compelling because it demands one's attention — it wraps itself in the same mystique that the Knife have been carefully orchestrating over the years — but because it manages to defy expectations enough to make it sound entirely new.
While the band has always been shrouded in an eerie sense of secrecy, they seem more open and exposed on Shaking the Habitual, but that, too, is all part of the illusion. In our information-obsessed culture, few artists control their message and run counter to expectations better than the Knife. (Anthony Augustine)
5. Disclosure
Settle
(Cherrytree)
Dance music has always been the realm of forward thinking producers, with forays into the mainstream accompanied by caveats and concessions. Yet in 2013, a handful of artists flipped that old adage on its head — or at least its side — making full-length records that suited the demands of discerning dance floors and radio playlists alike. Chief amongst them were Disclosure, two English brothers, Guy and Howard Lawrence, whose ability to blend together pieces of dance's past belies their young age.
Yet their youth is likely what allowed them to mine elements of garage, house, trip hop and bass music with disregard for purist definitions; divorced from those genres' heydays, the pair work as musical scavengers, taking what they need and soldering bits and pieces together to create a sound that echoes the past while still sounding indisputably now. The result is an infinitely catchy and constantly exciting record that plays well both in bite-sized pieces and as a singular artistic statement.
Stuffing the record with guests certainly fuelled their commercial prospects. Their canny ear for similarly minded collaborators like Jessie Ware, Eliza Doolittle and AlunaGeorge make their guest list a reflection of pop's current crop of dance floor minded singers. While catapulting its creators to stardom, Settle effortlessly captured the sound of 2013. (Ian Gormely)
4. Bonobo
The North Borders
(Ninja Tune)
In recent years, Ninja Tune — arguably one of the most important electronic music labels of the late '90 and early '00s — had been having a bit of an identity crisis, but thankfully the decade so far has seen the Ninja camp regain their vitality. Bolstered by label mainstay Amon Tobin's return to form in 2011 and a upsurge in signings of both breaking and established acts — Machinedrum, Raffertie and FaltyDL to name a few — combines to reaffirm the UK label's continued relevance.
2013 was Bonobo's year to bring meat to the table, not only with his superb addition to the Late Night Tales series but more importantly with his finest studio album to date. On The North Borders, producer Simon Green moved away from the overt jazz bass lines that defined much of his previous work. Gone also are the often cheesy Eastern melodies that made 2010's Black Sands feel somewhat dated, not to mention incongruous next to the album's Brainfeeder-influenced 8-bit glitchiness. Instead, what you get here is a far more subtle and cohesive album, with Green's signature melodic downtempo vibes peppered with several higher tempo tracks; the kalimba-heavy "Cirrus" could be easily mistaken for Four Tet or Caribou.
Strong vocal performances running throughout the album provide an irresistible emotional pull, from Grey Reverend on album opener "First Fires" to Szjerdene and Erykah Badu elsewhere. The North Borders is an honest, beautiful and immersive album that not only stands up to repeated listens but demands it. (Vincent Pollard)
3. A Tribe Called Red
Nation II Nation
(Pirates Blend/Tribal Spirit)
In a banner year for A Tribe Called Red, it's far from surprising that the Aboriginal DJ trio's second full-length, Nation II Nation, has landed a spot in the upper reaches of our year list. Often credited with the creation of pow-wow step — a mashup of traditional pow-wow drums, electro, dancehall and hip-hop — ATCR have crafted an infectious, inflammatory sound that Nation II Nation owns.
The sophomore album leaves behind the overzealous electro elements of ATCR's first release and instead pushes to the forefront the refined pow-wow music and rich traditional First Nations elements that gave the trio a foothold in the realm of politicized First Nations-electro mashup to begin with.
Aside from this astounding release, 2013 also saw the group shortlisted for the Polaris Music Prize and an extensive North American summer tour. And as anyone who's ever seen the trio live can attest, their shows place a spotlight on cultural appropriation and political awareness that extends beyond the album commentary, offering a truly inspiring view of an act that are creating hype, generating awareness and exposing people to a truly new and monumental sound. (Ashley Hampson)
2. Jon Hopkins
Immunity
(Domino)
Immunity begins like one of Jon Hopkins' live sets.
Rather than kicking off full-throttle by pushing a button, he begins with a single sound, and in front of your very eyes, turns it into a stuttering rhythm track. From there, he teases out a melody from blips and bloops. A subtly humming bassline becomes a throb. Suddenly, one is immersed entirely.
Hopkins' knack for songwriting borders on sleight of hand, as demonstrated throughout Immunity. The bass-squelching shimmy of "Open Eye Signal" begins as a muted, aqueous bump; "Breathe This Air" is a plaintive piano piece until stuttering house rhythms pull it gently to the dance floor; centrepiece "Collider" finds Hopkins stacking rhythmic blocks atop one another until the towering track is swaying wildly, threatening to collapse.
A fine balance of subgenre, mood and sound — is this downtempo, IDM, techno, house, or all of them at once? — achieved by Hopkins' delicate touch, makes Immunity impossible to categorize. He never overdoes things here, ensuring to temper moments of club-ready bombast with airy interludes like "Abandon Window" and the self-titled album closer, whose twinkling piano and quiet, clattering percussion bring a sense of resolution to the grandiose album.
On his fourth solo LP, Hopkins proves that electronic music needn't be an experiment in genre, rhythm or sound to be cerebral, nor mindless fun to be danceable. Immunity easily manages to be both. (Stephen Carlick)
1. Daft Punk
Random Access Memories
(Sony)
You can tell how much of an instant game changer Random Access Memories was by the pure stealth of its backlash. Within weeks of its release, bloggers and critics were declaring that "('Insert electronic album here') was actually better than Random Access Memories." Yet anyone who was able to separate the hype from the art can attest: simply nothing was more inventive and imaginative than Random Access Memories.
While Disclosure have won over the music press by employing modern tropes (chopped and screwed samples) and capitalizing on the popularity of du-jour guest singers (AlunaGeorge, Jessie Ware), Random Access Memories obstinately comes off as their giddy antithesis. Using more singular and personality-rich elements, Daft Punk incorporate Todd Edwards' vulnerability, Julian Casablancas' confidence and Paul Williams' naked WTF-ness into their own swirling universe.
Even in the moments when Daft Punk don't sound like Daft Punk, Random Access Memories still sounds incredibly consistent and focused, as "Doin' it Right" shows just how much they understand what makes Animal Collective so alluring while Chilly Gonzales helps give the robotic duo their first truly heartbreaking ballad ("Within"). And what more can be said about the biggest, non-rapey hit of the summer, "Get Lucky"?
With their fourth and finest LP, Daft Punk have managed to create a thematically dense, multi-faceted, complex masterpiece with a simple purpose: give life back to music. (Daniel Sylvester)
Top 10 Dance & Electronic Albums of 2013:
- 1. Daft Punk - Random Access Memories
- 2. Jon Hopkins - Immunity
- 3. A Tribe Called Red - Nation II Nation
- 4. Bonobo - The North Borders
- 5. Disclosure - Settle
- 6. The Knife - Shaking the Habitual
- 7. Fuck Buttons - Slow Focus
- 8. Ryan Hemsworth - Guilt Trips
- 9. Oneohtrix Point Never - R Plus Seven
- 10. James Holden - The Inheritors
To see more of our Year-End Top Tens , head over to our Best of 2013 section.
10. James Holden
The Inheritors
(Border Community)
Over the course of the last decade, Border Community has fallen deeper into obscurity and further from the spotlight, and imprint boss James Holden wouldn't have it any other way. A hectic DJ schedule and label roster too big to manage forced Holden's company to trim the fat in a desperate effort to get back to basics. Seven years is a long time between full-length efforts, so it's no surprise The Inheritors was such an unpredictable statement. The album is as much about Holden's present compositional psyche as it is about what he's left behind: a desire to produce dance music. Holden has been vocal about his disdain for the cookie-cutter, carbon copy processes that permeate today's dance music landscape, and his latest album could easily be taken as a direct rebellion.
Indeed, "rebellious" might be the easiest way to describe these 15 disorienting live modular recordings, but there is plenty of substance behind each performance. The radically distorting, twisting and turning tracks have little to offer if taken out of context, but this is an album-lover's album, conceptualized from the ground up and standing righteously on its own. Inspired by William Golding's 1950's novel fictionally depicting humanity's evolutionary ascent into a new-found consciousness, ritualistic undertones and tribal sentiments are sprinkled throughout the album's challenging duration. And just when you're feeling Holden has completely checked out, the record concludes in fragmented harmony, demonstrating a fleeting sense of instinctual optimism. (Dustin Morris)
9. Oneohtrix Point Never
R Plus Seven
(Warp Records)
R Plus Seven wasn't about reinvention but a culmination of all the things that have made Oneohtrix Point Never so great. Revisiting old OPN stomping grounds like glitchy micro samples, MIDI-styled new age, kosmische synth wizardry and noise/drone textures, the record was familiar yet still entirely new, with Daniel Lopatin smoothing out any of his project's rough edges with a newfound melodicism, some oil-slick production and just a touch of pop.
It all led to more complex, multifaceted OPN, as Lopatin dove headlong into twisting, weaving electronic epics that rarely stayed in one place for long. Tracks repeatedly brought surprises, weaving in everything from Asian percussion, humming church organs, children's choirs and even some sexy sax work. If you weren't digging where the record was at, you only had to sit tight and wait for the next curveball.
All the while, Lopatin didn't get all clinical and stuffy about the whole thing; in fact, he was downright playful, making the album arguably OPN's most easy-to-digest and enjoyable to date, yet strangely, one of his most experimental.
Rather than boxing himself into a corner with R Plus Seven, Lopatin has made Oneohtrix Point Never seem like a project full of endless possibilities. (Brock Thiessen)
8. Ryan Hemsworth
Guilt Trips
(Last Gang)
At first glance, Ryan Hemsworth is a bit of an anomaly in the grand picture of electronic music: the decidedly low-key Haligonian doesn't plug in with one specific trend, and he eschews the web-presence naming conventions by utilizing the same moniker that appears on his birth certificate. Musically, too, his output was all over the place — jokey reworks like his A$AP Rocky/Britney Spears mash-up are at once timely, hilarious and disposable, while singles like "Colour & Movement" offered up emotive, near-twee compositions.
As Guilt Trips proved, hardline focus isn't always required to make a fascinating LP. Instead, excursions through cloud-rap, glitch-pop and all sorts of other hyphenates worked together, as did the wide array of guests Hemsworth brought in, among them Baths, Lofty305 and Sinead Harnett.
While Hemsworth's sense of humour disappeared some (or was, at least, harder to find), his ability to play within pop parameters was on full display. Guilt Trips is another great argument against genre segregation, and a reminder that we should keep paying attention to his every move. The final product is a snapshot of Hemsworth that's at once personal and, like a carefully curated social network identity that pulls from myriad subcultures, immensely personalized. (Josiah Hughes)
7. Fuck Buttons
Slow Focus
(ATP Recordings)
After previous studio collaborations with Mogwai's John Cummings and veteran British beatmaker Andrew Weatherall, for their third full-length studio album, Slow Focus, the Bristol-based electronic duo known as Fuck Buttons decided to go it alone, self-producing the album in its entirety at the band's Space Mountain studio. The result is perhaps their most abrasive and effortless album to date, mixing the caustic production and tribal grooves of their unpolished debut LP, Street Horrrsing, with the ethereal spaciousness and grandiose bombast of their 2009 sophomore effort (and 2012 Olympic Ceremony selected) Tarot Sports.
Taking their cues from the duo's early beginnings as minimalist noise experimenters, Slow Focus finds the IDM producers returning to their roots as over-indulgent art school protégés, creating a kraut-y mix of repetitive riffs and atonal melodies that both obscures and clouds their musical foreground, disorienting listeners as they try to make sense of the duo's hypnotic dreamscapes. Although not as instantly gratifying as other albums on this list Slow Focus is the kind of record that becomes clearer over repeat listens, as the group's claustrophobic cacophony of analog percussion and skittering synths gives way to panoramic vistas of calculated chaos. (Matthew Ritchie)
6. The Knife
Shaking the Habitual
(Mute)
In a lot of ways, the Knife's Shaking the Habitual is a bold statement about what an album can be in 2013. Seven years after the award-winning Silent Shout, Karin Dreijer Andersson and Olof Dreijer jolt listeners into a state of uneasiness and keep a tight grip on one's attention on this sprawling double album.
Clocking in at a challenging 98 minutes, Shaking the Habitual doesn't cut any corners or offer any easy outs. Jarring percussion, long ambient drones, calypso-influenced rhythms and unruly electronic experiments don't work well in a playlist, but in the context of the album, their power can be unexpected. Shaking the Habitual isn't just compelling because it demands one's attention — it wraps itself in the same mystique that the Knife have been carefully orchestrating over the years — but because it manages to defy expectations enough to make it sound entirely new.
While the band has always been shrouded in an eerie sense of secrecy, they seem more open and exposed on Shaking the Habitual, but that, too, is all part of the illusion. In our information-obsessed culture, few artists control their message and run counter to expectations better than the Knife. (Anthony Augustine)
5. Disclosure
Settle
(Cherrytree)
Dance music has always been the realm of forward thinking producers, with forays into the mainstream accompanied by caveats and concessions. Yet in 2013, a handful of artists flipped that old adage on its head — or at least its side — making full-length records that suited the demands of discerning dance floors and radio playlists alike. Chief amongst them were Disclosure, two English brothers, Guy and Howard Lawrence, whose ability to blend together pieces of dance's past belies their young age.
Yet their youth is likely what allowed them to mine elements of garage, house, trip hop and bass music with disregard for purist definitions; divorced from those genres' heydays, the pair work as musical scavengers, taking what they need and soldering bits and pieces together to create a sound that echoes the past while still sounding indisputably now. The result is an infinitely catchy and constantly exciting record that plays well both in bite-sized pieces and as a singular artistic statement.
Stuffing the record with guests certainly fuelled their commercial prospects. Their canny ear for similarly minded collaborators like Jessie Ware, Eliza Doolittle and AlunaGeorge make their guest list a reflection of pop's current crop of dance floor minded singers. While catapulting its creators to stardom, Settle effortlessly captured the sound of 2013. (Ian Gormely)
4. Bonobo
The North Borders
(Ninja Tune)
In recent years, Ninja Tune — arguably one of the most important electronic music labels of the late '90 and early '00s — had been having a bit of an identity crisis, but thankfully the decade so far has seen the Ninja camp regain their vitality. Bolstered by label mainstay Amon Tobin's return to form in 2011 and a upsurge in signings of both breaking and established acts — Machinedrum, Raffertie and FaltyDL to name a few — combines to reaffirm the UK label's continued relevance.
2013 was Bonobo's year to bring meat to the table, not only with his superb addition to the Late Night Tales series but more importantly with his finest studio album to date. On The North Borders, producer Simon Green moved away from the overt jazz bass lines that defined much of his previous work. Gone also are the often cheesy Eastern melodies that made 2010's Black Sands feel somewhat dated, not to mention incongruous next to the album's Brainfeeder-influenced 8-bit glitchiness. Instead, what you get here is a far more subtle and cohesive album, with Green's signature melodic downtempo vibes peppered with several higher tempo tracks; the kalimba-heavy "Cirrus" could be easily mistaken for Four Tet or Caribou.
Strong vocal performances running throughout the album provide an irresistible emotional pull, from Grey Reverend on album opener "First Fires" to Szjerdene and Erykah Badu elsewhere. The North Borders is an honest, beautiful and immersive album that not only stands up to repeated listens but demands it. (Vincent Pollard)
3. A Tribe Called Red
Nation II Nation
(Pirates Blend/Tribal Spirit)
In a banner year for A Tribe Called Red, it's far from surprising that the Aboriginal DJ trio's second full-length, Nation II Nation, has landed a spot in the upper reaches of our year list. Often credited with the creation of pow-wow step — a mashup of traditional pow-wow drums, electro, dancehall and hip-hop — ATCR have crafted an infectious, inflammatory sound that Nation II Nation owns.
The sophomore album leaves behind the overzealous electro elements of ATCR's first release and instead pushes to the forefront the refined pow-wow music and rich traditional First Nations elements that gave the trio a foothold in the realm of politicized First Nations-electro mashup to begin with.
Aside from this astounding release, 2013 also saw the group shortlisted for the Polaris Music Prize and an extensive North American summer tour. And as anyone who's ever seen the trio live can attest, their shows place a spotlight on cultural appropriation and political awareness that extends beyond the album commentary, offering a truly inspiring view of an act that are creating hype, generating awareness and exposing people to a truly new and monumental sound. (Ashley Hampson)
2. Jon Hopkins
Immunity
(Domino)
Immunity begins like one of Jon Hopkins' live sets.
Rather than kicking off full-throttle by pushing a button, he begins with a single sound, and in front of your very eyes, turns it into a stuttering rhythm track. From there, he teases out a melody from blips and bloops. A subtly humming bassline becomes a throb. Suddenly, one is immersed entirely.
Hopkins' knack for songwriting borders on sleight of hand, as demonstrated throughout Immunity. The bass-squelching shimmy of "Open Eye Signal" begins as a muted, aqueous bump; "Breathe This Air" is a plaintive piano piece until stuttering house rhythms pull it gently to the dance floor; centrepiece "Collider" finds Hopkins stacking rhythmic blocks atop one another until the towering track is swaying wildly, threatening to collapse.
A fine balance of subgenre, mood and sound — is this downtempo, IDM, techno, house, or all of them at once? — achieved by Hopkins' delicate touch, makes Immunity impossible to categorize. He never overdoes things here, ensuring to temper moments of club-ready bombast with airy interludes like "Abandon Window" and the self-titled album closer, whose twinkling piano and quiet, clattering percussion bring a sense of resolution to the grandiose album.
On his fourth solo LP, Hopkins proves that electronic music needn't be an experiment in genre, rhythm or sound to be cerebral, nor mindless fun to be danceable. Immunity easily manages to be both. (Stephen Carlick)
1. Daft Punk
Random Access Memories
(Sony)
You can tell how much of an instant game changer Random Access Memories was by the pure stealth of its backlash. Within weeks of its release, bloggers and critics were declaring that "('Insert electronic album here') was actually better than Random Access Memories." Yet anyone who was able to separate the hype from the art can attest: simply nothing was more inventive and imaginative than Random Access Memories.
While Disclosure have won over the music press by employing modern tropes (chopped and screwed samples) and capitalizing on the popularity of du-jour guest singers (AlunaGeorge, Jessie Ware), Random Access Memories obstinately comes off as their giddy antithesis. Using more singular and personality-rich elements, Daft Punk incorporate Todd Edwards' vulnerability, Julian Casablancas' confidence and Paul Williams' naked WTF-ness into their own swirling universe.
Even in the moments when Daft Punk don't sound like Daft Punk, Random Access Memories still sounds incredibly consistent and focused, as "Doin' it Right" shows just how much they understand what makes Animal Collective so alluring while Chilly Gonzales helps give the robotic duo their first truly heartbreaking ballad ("Within"). And what more can be said about the biggest, non-rapey hit of the summer, "Get Lucky"?
With their fourth and finest LP, Daft Punk have managed to create a thematically dense, multi-faceted, complex masterpiece with a simple purpose: give life back to music. (Daniel Sylvester)
