Clash's Top Albums of 2013

After kicking in the door as a 16-year-old rap phenomenon, Odd Future\'s Earl Sweatshirt, now 19, is unleashing *Doris*. His first full-length album further establishes him as a promising talent in hip-hop. With production from The Neptunes (\"Burgundy\"), drunken ad-libs from RZA (\"Molasses\"), rapping by Frank Ocean (\"Sunday\"), and energetic cameos from Tyler, The Creator (\"Whoa\", \"Sasquatch\"), Earl\'s introduction is assertive. Swerving among hard raps, smooth melodies, and jazz-infused chords, *Doris* is eclectic, elusive, and hard to pin down. By the time the record finishes with the sweeping soul samples of \"Knight,\" Earl\'s outing makes for an entertaining ride.

James Blake\'s second studio album, *Overgrown*, is a hypnotizing foray from an artist whose influences have grown from the subtle, futuristic textures of his eponymous 2011 debut to embrace everything from gospel choirs to post-dubstep. On *Overgrown*, Blake further expands his omnivorous influences and yields eclectic results—from a hip-hop track featuring RZA (\"Take a Fall for Me\") to a piano ballad that foregoes synths and electronics entirely (\"Dlm\"). *Overgrown* is challenging but accessible, confidently pacing through a multifaceted garden blooming with complex electronic layers, styles, and emotions.

Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke delivers a brilliantly colored robotic carnival with his latest extracurricular endeavor, Atoms for Peace. Joined by a cadre of collaborators who supported his 2008 solo project—Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea, Brazilian percussionist Mauro Refosco, and drummer Joey Waronker—Yorke first led the group on an unstructured jam session. Then he spliced, manipulated, and reconstructed the recordings with the help of longtime Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich. The psychedelic result is *Amok*: a set of funky, doctoral-level laptop rock that groove as hard as anything Yorke has ever made.

Boards of Canada return to album-making with a meticulously realized creation that both fascinates and disturbs—often simultaneously. *Tomorrow’s Harvest* marks how far the Scotland-bred duo has come since starting on the fringes of ‘90s electronica. Dark shadings and ominous textures have largely replaced the more pastoral atmospherics of earlier releases like 2002’s *Geogaddi*; the tone of these tracks suggests sinister forces hovering behind the facades of a futuristic cityscape. “Gemini,” “Collapse,” “Nothing Is Real,” and similar cuts unfold with a sense of mounting tension conveyed by jittery keyboard figures and furtive pulsations. At times—especially in “Palace Posy”—the duo achieves a Teutonic pop grandeur. There are lighter moments too, such as “Jacquard Causeway” (built around a woozy loping beat) and “New Seeds” (almost cheerful with its funk-tinged groove). More typical, though, are moody, insinuating pieces like “Telepath” and “Uritual,” which suggest soundtrack excerpts from long-lost sci-fi films. Boards of Canada render these aural visions with cool intelligence and hints of deadpan humor.

In 2006, the first album by this British electronic producer found him exploring the outer reaches of trance, glitch, and minimal techno. Seven years later, having busied himself elsewhere in between, Holden followed up with an ecstatic explosion of sounds and styles on *The Inheritors*. The electronic merry-go-round that Holden presides over is based around thick, visceral analog synth tones that alternately throb, rattle, and wheeze as the situation demands, but they\'re framed in a multitude of mind-melting ways. On \"The Caterpillar\'s Invention,\" avant-jazz sax frenzy collides with a tribal groove and a prog-flavored accumulation of electronics. \"Sky Burial\" pits electro-acoustic edginess against old-school Harry Partch–style DIY clang-and-bang sound sculpture. Along the way, \'70s Berlin–style cosmic synthscapes dart around funhouse-mirror reflections of everything from ambient music and post-rock to videogame soundtracks—making for a sometimes disorienting but consistently engrossing journey.

More than just the mere sum of its moving parts, Moderat\'s second album exists as its own peculiar entity: artful pop angles melded with manic dance music in a way that works in both clubs and living rooms. So while tear-streaked tracks like \"Bad Kingdom\" and \"Damage Done\" are shielded from \"emotronica\" trappings by howling hooks and samples that split, scamper, and slide, the rest of the album reads like a series of compromises among three very opinionated producers: Apparat\'s Sascha Ring and Modeselektor\'s Gernot Bronsert and Sebastian Szary. Good thing everyone brought such full-blooded beats to the drawing board; \"Milk\" taps into a 10-minute trance like The Field, \"Versions\" imagines a slower, more soulful version of drum \'n\' bass, and \"Ilona\" follows a path lit by pitch-shifted vocals and the kind of kinetic programming that made Thom Yorke want to work on Modeselektor\'s last album and (most likely) listen to this one.

There are deftly wielded forces of darkness and light at work on Vampire Weekend’s third record. Elegiac, alive with ideas, and coproduced by Ariel Rechtshaid, *Modern Vampires of the City* moves beyond the grabby, backpacking indie of its predecessors. In fact, whether through the hiccuping, distorted storm of “Diane Young” or “Unbelievers”—a sprinting guitar-pop jewel about the notion of afterlife—this is nothing less than the sound of a band making a huge but sure-footed creative leap.

At just 16 years old, New Zealand pop singer Ella Yelich-O’Connor—d.b.a. Lorde—captured the top of the pop charts with the smart and wise-beyond-her-years single “Royals,” where she trashes modern pop and hip-hop’s obsession with materialism in favor of a world of love, friendship, and ideas. It’s the best Morrissey song he never wrote. Her earlier *The Love Club EP* primed audiences for what they’d be hearing, but nothing could prepare one for the actual excitement of her debut album’s best cuts. Lorde’s co-conspirator/producer/writer Joel Little ensures that songs like “Tennis Court,” “Ribs,\" and “Buzzcut Season” never lose their way. This is sharp, inspired pop music that knows how much fun it can be to play up to type and then spin things on their heads for a new conclusion.

There’s an audacity to the way the Arctic Monkeys\' fifth album gathers disparate musical threads—West Coast hip-hop, heavy ’70s rock—into something that feels so assured, inevitable and outrageously enjoyable. From biker-gang stomp of “Do I Wanna Know?” to the bouncing G-funk of “Why’d You Only Call…”, they turn the sounds of their adopted Californian home into a set of can’t-miss instant classics. Seductive, slinky and brimming with nocturnal attitude, *AM* is the sound of a band locating a sonic sweet spot no one else thought to look for.

While the fifth studio album from producer Simon Green (a.k.a. Bonobo) continues to soothe the eardrums with his signature style of soulful downbeat, *The North Borders* is also rife with previously unheard nuances. Over a more studied mix of acoustic and electronic textures, Bonobo mixes in some salient guest vocal parts—with Erykah Badu’s the most alluring. She sounds almost robotic in \"Heaven for the Sinner” as her phrasing matches the deliberately stuttered rhythms pulsing over a delicate tangle of horns, harps, strings, and woodwinds. Grey Reverend sets a mellow vibe in the opening “First Fires,” where his smoky inflections recall moments from Terry Callier’s 1972 opus *What Color Is Love*. Similarly, the creamy inflections of electronica soul singer Szjerdene are a perfect fit the ethereal “Towers,” which nicely balances the rich resonance of wooden percussion with the slow percolation of drum-machine beats and what sounds like vintage analog synth tones. She turns up again in the more spatial “Transits,” which has a dusty-vinyl effect that approximates the warm crackles and pops of playing an old record.

The story of Bonobo is one that's become uncommon in contemporary music. There was no sudden, viral internet sensation, no one-off big hit, no abrupt, accidental alignment with the zeitgeist. Instead, over the course of four albums, myriad tours, singles, remixes and production work for other artists, he quietly but very definitely became one of the most important artists in electronic music. The hard work paid off, and culminated in 2010's 'Black Sands;' a masterful album that married Green's inimitable melodic genius and musicianship to bleeding edge electronics, bass and infectious drums. After a year plus of touring the hypnotic, extended live versions of Black Sands, he finally found time last year to embed himself in his New York studio and write his fifth studio album. Now, in 2013, he stands ready to take things up yet another notch. 'The North Borders' is a long stride forward - both a natural evolution and a continuation of the electronic palette of Black Sands. Thematic, resonant, addictive and perfectly formed, it's a thrillingly coherent statement piece. It's also an album that shows just how far electronic music has come. Its richness of texture, emotive force and all round depth are facets found more often within, dare we say it, classical music. If there's a renaissance taking place within this scene, Simon Green could make a strong claim to being one of its key driving forces. As with previous albums, The North Borders features a careful balance between vocal tracks and instrumentals, ensuring that the productions themselves get room to breathe and shine. When Green discovered that he and Erykah Badu shared a mutual appreciation for each other’s work, he leapt at the chance to collaborate. The resultant ‘Heaven for the Sinner’ is one of the album’s triumphs, a transcendental, incanted vocal masterclass married to a brilliant two-step glitch and a yearning melody. NYC folk underdog Grey Reverend appears on album opener 'First Fires,' providing a raw, emotion-laid-bare growl that sets the tone for an album that's joyously unselfconscious. Bonobo has a long history of unearthing new talent, Black Sands having launched the solo career of guest vocalist Andreya Triana. The North Borders sees him do so once again. The startling, ethereal vocals of new collaborator Szjerdene are sprinkled across the album, and Green has yet again found the perfect voice to express where he's at. ‘Transits’ sees her vocal weave around a garage beat that’s somehow fragile and purposeful all at once, a gradually emerging hook rising from the depths of the song. ‘Emkay’ is a stunning example of the album’s marriage of addictive, urban-inflected drums to rise-and-swell melody that never fails to move the listener. Opening single ‘Cirrus’ sees a clockwork-precise rhythm drive a chiming, insistent melody that builds to one of the record’s great emotional climaxes. This is where Green excels; he knows how to invest electronic music with immense feeling. The North Borders – like all great records - is an album that demands to be listened to as such; a body of work with its own internal logic, themes and narrative arc. Bonobo’s abilities are at an all time high, and The North Borders everything his growing army of fans will have hoped for - a sheer delight.

With multi-instrumentalist Warren Ellis replacing Mick Harvey as his primary foil, Nick Cave finds his songs developing along the lines of his soundtrack work on *Push the Sky Away*. The mood is subdued, yet intense, as it forces Cave to sing from his deepest register and leads to some of his best work. Nowhere is it more effective than on the haunting “Wide Lovely Eyes,” where Cave and a Fender Rhodes keyboard provide the drama. The album is pure simmering genius, where life occurs in the shadows.

As a concept album dedicated to the districts of a would-be city, Machinedrum\'s *Vapor City* is something of an urban love letter. It\'s imbued with cues from footwork and early jungle, but what sets Machinedrum\'s style apart is his attention to subtle melody and texture amid minimal, exacting percussion that recalls contemporaries like dBridge or Burial. Much like life in the city, lonesome and nigh-mournful sections are juxtaposed with clarifying moments of ephemeral beauty. It\'s a distinctly well-honed realization of metropolitan character, giving new context to the urban landscape. 

Electronic music's Renaissance man Travis Stewart, better known as Machinedrum, is prepping for his biggest and boldest release to date with label Ninja Tune- Vapor City - the first full-length offering since his critically-heralded Room(s) in 2011. Between now and then, his output has been an unrelenting stream of versatility with skillful releases on LuckyMe (SXLND), Hotflush with beloved Sepalcure, and the dancefloor blitzkrieg known as JETS- his most recent partnership with frequent collaborator Jimmy Edgar- among other releases, collaborations, and remixes that have kept him always one step ahead of the bunch with fans and music critics eagerly awaiting his next vision. The man of many faces went back to the drawing board armed with inspirations sprouting deeper from within his psyche. Based on recurring dreams he has had for years about a metropolis known as Vapor City and which have become so vivid that Stewart can describe the place in detail district by district, he has finally crafted a fully-formed soundscape which doubles as a map into this imaginary universe. "Vapor City is an album inspired by a dream city" explains Stewart. "It's become such a recurring dream of mine throughout the past few years that I began creating music to it, a collection of different songs each representing different districts in the city." Stewart revealed more detail about the genesis of Vapor City in a recent interview with Creator’s Project: “In the dream I felt like I knew all the places, I kept seeing the same streets, the same shops and clubs. Weird little details that I kept noticing were recurring and it really started to freak me out that this kept happening. It was the first half of the year that I lived in Berlin. So it started to form this sort of combination architecturally between New York and a bit of Berlin. A sort of old-meets-new sort of architecture. But it was very vast. And I could almost sort of zoom in and see the city for what it was, and kind of get an idea of where I was in the city.” "I decided I was going to call this album Vapor City. I didn’t really think about the songs representing the districts until I started putting together the tracks for the album. I started noticing there was a consistency between all the songs, that there was a heavy sort of sonic kind of quality there. Some songs would sound like more a jungle kind of thing and some would be this more washed out 80s kind of thing. So it gave me the idea to develop districts out of the city and create songs based around that." He also discussed his hugely fruitful creative partnership with Dom Flannigan of LuckyMe: "I’ve been working with Dom for a lot of different releases. I had him come in and do the direction for Room(s). And I really loved working with him and how I could give him a concept and he would take that and interpret that in him own way. It just made me feel really good about having a concept but not having to direct him too much. We had a lot of conversations about dreams and that, but I knew at one point I was going to leave it up to him. So him and Eclair Fifi did the illustrations. I’ve developed a trust with LuckyMe and their art direction. I knew I couldn’t get exactly what my dream was like because it’s a dream, it’s changing every time. So I figured it was okay to let him sort of take that and interpret it in his own way, and I think he did a really great job. They both did." In addition to this latest musical offering, Machinedrum has been prepping a powerful new live show, which promises to be a visual companion to the album's layered sounds and visions, and showcase this new highpoint in the artist's musical career. “Audio-wise it’s me on synth and vocals and playing guitar, and manipulating elements of the tracks, and I’ll be playing with a drummer who’s also triggering some sounds and stuff like that. But essentially we’re going to be playing the album live, that’s kind of mixed together in a different way. But it’s going to be a different journey through Vapor City than you would listen to on the album, and visually you’re going to visit all these districts whilst hearing the songs. I think seeing the live show will really tie in the concepts together for people. It’ll be a very powerful experience for them

The Odd Future ringleader and serial provocateur gets real on his second studio album, though he hasn’t abandoned his mischievous ways. *Wolf* channels the Los Angeles rapper’s angst and dark humor into a wry, warped therapy session: Tyler explores his strained relationship with his dad on the murky, clattering “Jamba” and the death of his grandmother on the jazzy finale “Lone.” The album’s sprawling yet cohesive centerpiece is the clattering suite “PartyIsntOver/Campfire/Bimmer,” on which Frank Ocean and Laetitia Sadier soften Tyler’s sharp edges.

Critical acclaim for Pale Green Ghosts... “It's hard to imagine a more enjoyable and rewarding hour of music being released this year than Pale Green Ghosts: self-obsessed but completely compelling, profoundly discomforting but beautiful, lost in its own fathomless personal misery, but warm, funny and wise. - The Guardian – 5 Stars ***** "an exhilarating musical progression… "Pain it is a glacier… creating spectacular landscapes," he sings on ‘Glacier’: a truth his career makes self-evident.” - The Independent On Sunday – 5 Stars ***** “An album that, rather than juggling empty pop–song clichés, opts to expose the rawest emotional nerves: truth and beauty, rather than lies and blather.” - The Independent – 4 Stars**** “The abrupt changes between lush vintage balladry and stark electro ensure that Pale Green Ghosts is not as instantly cohesive as Queen Of Denmark. But it is arguably more satisfying, in its artistic courage, its refusal to meet expectations, and its willingness to paint a brand new picture of a gay demi-monde where the triumphs and tragedies have a deeper resonance than simple melodrama or camp… A masterpiece” - UNCUT – 8/10 “Several of the tracks here top the majesty of those on the debut… a bold, distinctive and genuinely excellent record” - Clash – 9/10 “Grant’s rich voice dovetails beautifully with the silvery synths of ‘GMF’ and ‘Vietnam’… This is audacious stuff from one talented motherfucker.” - NME - 8/10

The British duo F\*\*\* Buttons are probably suffering—to some degree—from the downside to having a name that requires asterisks for certain media outlets. *Slow Focus*, the duo’s third full-length release, shows again that the Buttons—what with all the permutations the name is subjected to—are incredibly good at what they do. Rhythmic machinations push and pull squealing, pinging, whooshing, humming synths and brittle, staccato percussion into a myriad of shapes and forms, and their instrumental prowess shows a keen awareness of how critical it is to put something fresh into each track. Two guys (Andrew Hung and Benjamin Power, who met in art school in England) use a bunch of electronic gear—and other odds and ends—to make some utterly entrancing music, all without lyrics or anything like a “hook.” You can headbang to “Brainfreeze,” zone to “Stalker,” and get robot funky on “Sentients.” You won’t sing along or hum a melody in the shower, but the Buttons have made sure you\'ll remember.

**Includes bonus disc of remixes from Lee Gamble, Kassem Mosse & Mix Mup, Hieroglyphic Being, Anthony Naples, Anthony Shakir, and more** Whistle crew, hold tight! Paul Woolford implants and augments memories of an 'ardcore future on his ravenous debut album under the Special Request emblem. Following four white labels deconstructing and splicing vintage 'ardcore tropes with both up-to-date and anachronistic house, grime and electro, the Special Request project has grown into a much larger beast, appropriating, much in the same way as the HATE crew, V/Vm, Zomby or Lee Gamble, the febrile spirit of UK warehouses, fields and flyovers in the early '90s. More specifically, Woolford dials into the raw energy of the pirate radio stations like Bradford's PCR which nourished his younger ears with a formative blend of proto-junglist rufige, bleep house and import techno: in other words, his 'Soul Music'. Considering Woolford's status as a big room house DJ, it's something of a radical move, and thankfully delivered with a deep-rooted sincerity. He's not merely whacking breaks over a turgid 4/4; he's cutting 'em up like a badman on a mission, and the effect is deliriously heavy, ranging from epic darkside assaults to swaggering bassbin business and even a deranged avant-garde piano piece that sounds like a lost hook stuck circulating the airwaves since '92. Massive album. One for the hardcore, you know who you are.

* Includes PDF version of original 'Engravings' zine *

After more than a decade of serving up solid Four Tet material for other labels, Kieran Hebden has gone rogue in recent years, using his Text imprint as a platform to press sporadic singles and one-off collaborations with high-profile underground heroes like Thom Yorke and Burial. Last year\'s *Pink* dropped many of those 12-inches in one place alongside a few new tracks, but it wasn\'t a proper \"album\" in the way *Beautiful Rewind* aims to be. Produced in relative isolation while Hebden refused press requests and shared the occasional song over Twitter, it ends up nailing Hebden\'s goal of going back underground while still making his music widely available. There\'s a reason \"Kool FM\" references one of London\'s most beloved pirate stations; *Beautiful Rewind* hopes to reclaim the mad-for-it spirit that warehouse raves and radio waves ran on before the Man started busting both of \'em. And with highlights as immediate as the fluttering hooks of \"Parallel Jalebi,\" the scrambled rhyme schemes of \"Aerial,\" and the peak-hour pounding of \"Buchla,\" it works.

Dean Blunt is becoming a master of collage, an artist whose aural assemblages are often so disparate that they manifest visual creations for those who listen closely. Using everything from harps and cellos, found vocal samples, hard beats, and watery soundscapes, Blunt seems to rarely find a sound he doesn’t think worthy of inclusion. There’s a grimy guitar riff he wants to let loose on “All Dogs Go to Heaven,” a massive gong on “Mmix,” trumpets and whistles in “Need 2 Let U Go,” a broken man and his piano on “Brutal,” and a crisp, bluesy guitar line on “Make It Official.” “Demon” is a patchwork of echoing toms (courtesy Kate Bush’s “Sat in Your Lap”), car horns, breaking glass, violin ostinato, and looping vocals chants that sound vaguely demonic. The title track floats on wheezing accordion or melodica notes, with the sweet vocals of Blunt’s former musical partner Inga Copeland fleeing from an ugly outburst of male frustration before faux strings soften the mood. Blunt’s knob wizardry isn’t for everybody—if you\'re looking for a good dance groove, a hooky tune, or verse/chorus/verse, keep going. But working through this multitextured pastiche offers a unique method for emotional temperature-taking.

Australia\'s Kirin J. Callinan has elicited comparisons to his homeland\'s greatest underground star, Nick Cave. Callinan\'s fearless intensity dips its toes into random dissonance (\"Way II War\"), which comes and goes as naturally as the songs ebb and flow. His music has a chameleon aspect, moving from electro-industrial sounds through synth-pop weirdness and foreboding ambient nastiness. Various tracks recall David Bowie (\"Halo\"), Iggy Pop (\"Landslide\"), Scott Walker (\"Embracism\"), and Depeche Mode (\"Victoria M.\"). Such big names might seem a bit much for an artist with just a debut album, but this former Mercy Arms guitarist doesn\'t let up through any of these 10 songs. He\'s got attitude aplenty, from crossdressing to playing with silly showbiz tropes. But from the extended meditation of \"Chardonnay Sean\" to the twitchy \"Stretch It Out,\" he sounds as poised as a long-term professional and as inspired as a young man who still believes he can change the world.

Recorded & arranged by Kim Moyes at Piper Lane, Sydney Australia Mixed by and additional production by Chris Taylor at Terrible Studios, Germantown USA Mastered by Joe LaPorta at Sterling Sound, NYC USA All tracks written by Kirin J Callinan except Embracism (lyrics: Callinan / music: Callinan, Moyes) Additional recording on Chardonnay Sean @ Terrible Studios USA; Additional recording on WIIW + Halo @ the Siberia Mountain Recording House, Katoomba; Stormbank Studios Melbourne; & Kriss Kross Studios, Sydney Australia Additional recording & assistance by Alex Akers, Chris Taylor,
Daniel Stricker, Ivan Vizintin, Jaie Gonzales, Pat Santa Maria, Sam Vine, Tim Dunn & Wade Keirghan.

The 2013 sophomore album by bass guitar virtuoso Stephen Bruner (A.K.A. Thundercat) is remarkably ahead of his already-impressive 2011 debut LP *The Golden Age of Apocalypse*. Having lent his magic-fingered skills to everyone from Erykah Badu to Suicidal Tendencies, it’s interesting to hear what he has cultured and crafted for his own album. Over retro-modern analogue blips and bleeps that recall vintage Sun Ra recordings, Bruner croons through murky fidelity that recalls Ariel Pink\'s Haunted Graffiti. Throughout the opening song, his bass pulses with a less-is-more foundation of pedaling rhythms. But this allows plenty of room for Bruner to overlap dense layers of progressive playing on other instruments. The following “Heartbreaks + Setbacks” pushes the advanced musicianship to the side, encouraging barbed melodies and a robust rhythmic groove to take center stage. On “Tron Song,” he deviates from the indie-infused R&B to bestow an astral folk tune trimmed with spacey filigree; it’s sure to hit home with anyone into Terry Callier’s 1972 opus *What Color Is Love*.

Coming out of Detroit, Danny Brown has gone from blog-friendly mixtape rapper to legitimate star in just a few short years. Now he\'s signed to A-Trak and Nick Catchdub\'s Fool\'s Gold Records, and *Old* is his third full-length (following *The Hybrid* and *XXX*). It\'s his first with major-label backing and officially for sale in stores. One of the most unusual, nontraditional emcees in the game right now, Brown has two distinct vocal styles: one mellow and laid-back, the other high-pitched and hyperactive. The songs here are also of the split-personality type; half are serious, darkly introspective, and thought-provoking (\"The Return\" with Freddie Gibbs, \"Gremlins\"), while the other half are spazzed-out let\'s-get-wasted-and-party anthems that wouldn\'t sound out of place on a LMFAO record (\"Smokin & Drinkin,\" \"Handstand\"). The production—from Oh No, SKYWLKR, Frank Dukes, and BadBadNotGood—is heavy on the freaky electronics, while vocal features come from A$AP Rocky, Schoolboy Q, Ab-Soul, and others. If you\'re already a Danny Brown fan, you\'re gonna love this.

Compared to the organic folktronica of Jon Hopkins’ preceding strum ‘n’ bass album, *Diamond Mine*, 2013’s *Immunity* is a departure in both music style and sonic texture. The former built an imaginative balance from the contrasts of electronic soundscapes rubbing against the grain of wood and wire. But with *Immunity*, Hopkins’ yin and yang swirl sublimely. The opening song, “We Disappear,” somehow makes techno sound light and breezy. On paper, the stuttered beats, rusty percussion, and deep bass should sound angular and abrasive. But under Hopkins’ touch, the elements here combine to sooth the senses with a feel that’s similar to reclining in a leather seat in the first-class section of a 747. “Open Eye Signal” follows, with more downplayed rhythms and tones gently pulsing and droning alongside what sounds like brushes on a snare drum. “Breathe This Ear” returns us to a time in the mid-\'90s when British shoegazers like Slowdive were collaborating with the ambient electro backdrops of Seefeel. “Collider” brings some innovation to this marriage with cleverly collaged samples of singer Lisa Elle (Dark Horses).

A powerful, multi-faceted beast, packed with the most aggressively dancefloor-focussed music Hopkins has ever made, Immunity is about achieving euphoric states through music. Inspired by the arc of an epic night out, the album peaks with Collider, a huge, apocalyptic, techno monster and dissolves with the quiet, heartbreakingly beautiful closer, Immunity, a track featuring vocals from King Creosote which could sit comfortably alongside the gems of their Mercury-nominated collaboration, Diamond Mine. Immunity is a confident, dramatic record defined by an acute sense of physicality and place.  It feels like the hypnotic accompaniment to a journey of creativity, a trip inside Hopkins’ mind, using analog synthesis alongside manipulations of physical, real-world sounds to make dance music that feels as natural and unforced as possible.

Mount Kimbie released a series of EPs that made them among the most name-checked outfits in the Warp Records\' roster, and they earned critical praise for their 2010 full-length, *Crooks & Lovers*. The return of the British production duo is filled with intricate, cerebral grooves, hazy digital textures, and cut-and-spliced samples that constantly muddle the boundaries between IDM, dubstep, garage, and hip-hop. It’s exciting stuff on its own, but the guest vocal of up-and-coming singer/songwriter/rapper Archy Marshall—a.k.a King Krule—makes riviting highlights out of “You Took Your Time” and “Meter, Pale, Tone.\" By the time the looping sample of \"Fall Out” fades, *Cold Spring Fault Less Youth* offers a head-spinning tour of genre-defying musical frontiers.