Pitchfork's 20 Best Electronic Albums of 2017

Planet Mu are very excited to announce Jlin's long awaited second album “Black Origami”. A percussion-led tour de force, it's a creation that seals her reputation as a unique producer with an exceptional ability to make riveting rhythmic music. “Black Origami” is driven by a deep creative thirst which she describes as “this driving feeling that I wanted to do something different, something that challenged me to my core. Black Origami for me, comes from letting go creatively, creating with no boundaries. The simple definition of origami is the art of folding and constructing paper into a beautiful, yet complex design. Composing music for me is like origami, only I'm replacing paper with sound. I chose to title the album "Black Origami" because like "Dark Energy" I still create from the beauty of darkness and blackness. The willingness to go into the hardest places within myself to create for me means that I can touch the Infinity.”  Spirituality and movement are both at the core of “Black Origami”, inspired largely by her ongoing collaborations with Indian dancer/movement artist Avril Stormy Unger whom she met and collaborated with at her debut performance for the Unsound festival – ”There is a fine line between me entertaining a person and my spirituality. Avril, who collaborates with me by means of dance, feels the exact same way. Movement played a great role in Black Origami. The track "Carbon 7" is very inspired by the way Avril moves and dances. Our rhythms are so in sync at times it kind of scares us. When there is something I can't quite figure out when it comes to my production, it’s like she senses it. Her response to me is always "You'll figure it out". Once I figure it out it's like time and space no longer exist.”  Similar time shifting/folding/disrupting effects can be heard throughout the record – especially on “Holy Child” an unlikely collaboration with minimalist legend William Basinski. She also collaborates again with Holly Herndon on “1%”, while Halcyon Veil producer Fawkes' voice is on “Calcination“ and Cape Town rapper Dope Saint Jude provides vocals for “Never Created, Never Destroyed“. Jlin will be touring extensively this year and is currently lining up appearances including Sonar festival. She also has plans to collaborate with acclaimed UK choreographer Wayne McGregor who played her music recently on Radio 4's Desert Island Discs and described her music as “quite rare and so exciting".

Even in the increasingly crowded field of electronic music, Kelly Lee Owens’ debut album arrives as a wonderful surprise. An album that bridges the gaps between cavernous techno, spectral pop, and krautrock’s mechanical pulse, 'Kelly Lee Owens' brims with exploratory wonder, establishing a personal aesthetic that is as beguiling as it is thrillingly familiar.

Mount Kimbie’s music isn’t easily classified. Think of it like electronic music made with the casual precision of a bedroom indie band—hooky but abstract. Dialing back some of the dollhouse dubstep of their first two albums, *Love What Survives* continues the duo’s subtle, exploratory streak, from the buzzy fever dreams of “Blue Train Lines” (featuring King Krule) to a pair of gorgeous collaborations with James Blake (“We Go Home Together” and “How We Got By”), which fuse the spaciousness of ambient music with the steady heart of soul.

Visible Cloaks’ Reassemblage is a collection of delicately rendered passages of silence and sound that invokes – and invites - consciousness. The foundation of the duo's second album could be described as translingual or polyglottal, working within an eastern / western feedback loop of influence, Fourth World ambiguity, and the universality of human emotion. For More Info: shop.igetrvng.com/collections/all/products/rvngnl37

From the creator of Deep Reggaeton and the hit record ​"​¡Estéreo Bomba! Vol. 1​"​, DJ Python, returns with the first masterful full length album "Dulce Compañia". Comprised of eight ethe-real, banging hits of the most unique and thought provoking calibre - mixing Deep House, Shoegaze, Trance, and of course, Reggaeton - these songs-not-tracks slide over the Dembow in the unique way only Python can dream up. Rated E for Everyone.

Returning with his first album in 13 years, Errorsmith’s ‘Superlative Fatigue’ long-awaited release on PAN arrives as his perhaps most optimistic record yet. Placing a strong emphasis on spectral exploration, the tracks tell an inherent story and span a musical arc with his recognisable synthesised tones, computerised vocal effects and timbral changes in motion. In comparison to his previous productions, Errorsmith (Erik Wiegand) sees the release as less abstract, harsh or aggressive: “I would say it is rather accessible and cheerful; at times ridiculously cheerful but still very sincere and emotional.” He suggests. “I find it touching when this little android raises its pitch at the end of ‘Lightspeed’ or the android catching its breath in ‘My Party’ for instance.” The album title, ‘Superlative Fatigue’ reflects this tension between an over-the-top, hysterical emotion, against more deeply felt expressions or realness. Besides collaborating with the likes of Mark Fell, to Berghain resident Fiedel as MMM, and Soundstream as Smith N Hack, Wiegand has released a string of seminal dancefloor tracks. Building his own instruments using modular software synthesizers is a large part of his work. Where almost all the sounds in the LP were created with his synth, ‘Razor’, (a synthesizer plug-in he developed for Native instruments, released in 2011) or slightly modified versions of it. Premiered at Unsound Festival last year, this new material he has developed since has finally taken form in this epic full-length. The album is mastered by Rashad Becker, featuring artwork by James Hoff and layout by Bill Kouligas.

13 nuggets from Gavsborg & Time Cow recorded December 2016 to June 2017. Number 7 in Rolling Stone's Electronic Albums of 2017 Top 20 FACT mag albums of 2017 Pitchfork, Resident Advisor, Vinyl Factory & XLR8R best of the year albums of 2017

Following his acclaimed debut album Suzi Ecto, Call Super returns with LP number two, the equally arresting Arpo. Another mesmerising environment of restless beauty that refuses to conform to much else beyond his own work, it affirms Call Super's place as one of the most remarkable electronic musicians working today. Arpo refines and then traipses further afield than anything else in his discography - Pitchfork (8/10) Arpo feels like a real album, with a distinct narrative and recurring themes. Most of all, it’s a captivating and original listen, from an artist who sounds like no one else - XLR8R (8.5/10) Album of the Year - DJ Mag 8/10 Pitchfork 9/10 DJ Mag 4/05 The Guardian 8/10 Crack 8/10 Mixmag 8.5/10 XLR8R Bleep - Album of the week Norman Records - Album of the week Guardian Newspaper - 'Outstanding after-hours techno'

Kieran Hebden’s restlessly inventive, genre-splicing music is often as unpredictable as it is hypnotic. That holds firmly on his ninth album as Four Tet, where harp-mottled openers “Alap” and “Two Thousand and Seventeen” suggest the supple, folk-inflected electronic of 2003’s *Rounds* but soon give way to singular experiments in ambient techno (“LA Trance”), head-nodding deep house (“SW9 9SL”), and abstract neoclassical (“10 Midi”). As ever, Hebden builds his music with precision, warmth, and a rare gift for consuming melodies.

This is generous music, tactile and febrile. It carries its creator’s traces — her joys, her sorrows, the sounds that make her dance — and happily gives them over to the listener, so that they may create their own mesh of associations, find their own moments of uplift and stillness within its dislocations. A viral transfer of bricolage; music for swaying bodies and grinning faces. (TINY MIX TAPES) (Nídia) has a keen instinct for moving tracks beyond their percussive elements, fluid melodies and hypnotic brass samples leaving the listener unable to sit still. (THE WIRE) With her own strain of batida music, the Portuguese-born, Bordeaux-bred producer Nídia offers a debut album of mind-bending complexity. (PITCHFORK album review) I doubt there will be many more infectious club records than this released this year. (THE QUIETUS album review) The album offers a no-holds-barred distillation of the riotous energy that has punctuated all of her music and DJ sets over the last couple of years. Lead track ‘Sinistro’ is a smoky sub-100BPM collision of percussion, as adept at getting a dancefloor moving as any speedier Príncipe cut. (THE QUIETUS track review) Her unmistakable taut looped drums are still a force to be reckoned, with some of the album’s best moments built around ideas of repetition and precision, but there’s also a mysticism that wafts around its darker corners, betraying an almost devotional fervor. (FACT) “Sinistro” doesn’t draw you in not by virtue of its rhythm or groove, because it has almost neither of those qualities. Rather, the song shows that Nidia’s music, magnetic as it is, no longer needs to fit into the grid of the dance floor, and can exist all in its own space. (PITCHFORK track review) + "One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation, compassion”, Simone de Beauvoir once offered. Nídia has embraced as much as conducted her path on earth so far by means of her senses and her acute intuition, learning from the positive and negative sides of experience, contemplating the marvel of the human spirit, ever inspired by her own curiosity for the unveiled. Her music sounds to us as the perfect expression of her attitude in life. More than appropriate intro titled "Mulher Profissional". It's a shout of empowerment, setting the pace for what is indeed a highly energized album. Listen closely and you will spot production skills that are beyond the standard of dance music genres, running wild but with a definite sense of purpose. This sounds like Africa taken (further more) into the future by command of a rogue mind - we'll save you the thrill of translating the album's title. The hint of nostalgia possibly detected on a title such as "I Miss My Guetto" is quickly obliterated by a sort of hunger for the future, what's to come, but also what's already bubbling feverishly. It's as if Nídia is hit from every side and everything is so exciting that she just has to incorporate all manner of sights and sounds into her productions. Tracks are kept generally short. They are strong, compact entities that announce the coming of something else - "Biotheke", for example, soundtracks a parade of Tripods if such an event could fit the narrative in "War Of The Worlds". The LP ends - whenever the listener chooses - with the locked groove ‘Indian’. The CD version has 3 bonus tracks, including recent live favorite, the slow & sensuous burning ’Sinistro’.

English producer Actress has always struck a brilliant balance between body and head, offering high-concept deconstructions of techno idioms without forgetting important stuff like the beat. His fifth album—a semi-surprise after having announced his retirement—goes further down his hazy, retro-futuristic rabbit hole, offering left-field takes on garage (“DANCING IN THE SMOKE”), electro (“RUNNER”), and straight-up house (“THERE’S AN ANGEL IN THE SHOWER,” “X22RME”). It respects conventions while stretching them to their limits.

Actress, real name Darren Jordan Cunningham, known to friends as DAZ, returns with a new album, now on Ninja Tune and a new music system called “AZD” (pronounced “Azid”), a chrome aspect journey into a parallel world. An artist who has always preferred to make music than to talk about it, in “AZD” he has achieved another remarkable landmark, one which is as resistant to interpretation as it is demanding of it. Following on from his previous albums, R.I.P, Splazsh and Hazyville, an epilogue poem attached to the press release for Ghettoville was construed by media, commentators and spectators that Cunningham had retired. This led him to conceptualise this mass of conclusion as the key to ‘Giving power back to identity.’ So a few pointers, or possible ways to think about “AZD”. The album is themed around chrome – both as a reflective surface to see the self in, and as something that carves luminous voids out of any colour and fine focuses white and black representing the perfect metaphor for the bleakness of life in the Metropolis as suggested by Anish Kapoors Cloud Gate. Another way to approach would be through the art of James Hampton and Rammellzee (who inspired “CYN,” which Cunningham also sees as a vision of New York in reverse…) – both of whom, though of different generations of the African-American slave diaspora, created art through “Sourcing castaway materials from their environment and reinterprating them into absolute majesty given from the fourth dimension.” There is also the career-long influence of the Detroit techno pioneers, something which becomes clear on this album “there is a contrast in the type of glow or reflection”. Alternatively, you could write your PhD thesis on Jung’s Shadow Theory and AZD: “Lots of ideas come from dreams, this isn’t new, but sometimes the conscious mind starts to meld into the universal consciousness through constellation tunnelling.” If that sounds too taxing then you could always fall back on Star Wars and, in particular, the Death Star: “It has a dark dystopian backdrop, with highly sophisticated technology, but it is fading into the ether, still holding on and emitting a powerful energy. The music remaking the embers, binding them together and pulling them apart again.” Alternatively, just listen. That “glow” Cunningham talks about makes this in some ways more immediate than previous Actress releases. Take lead single, “X22RME” (pronounced “Extreme”) which elegantly plays between the lines of Oriental classic rave and Balinese warehouse Techno machined in a Rotherhithe lock up welding the grooves into a seamless cracked joint. At the other end of the spectrum is “Faure in Chrome,” a byproduct or development from his collaboration with the London Contemporary Orchestra, in which he “repatterns” aspect of Faure’s Requiem into a piece which sounds like the very institution of classical music being encased in electronic ice and scanned through a high frequency bandwidth. In between are gems like “Runner,” a personal re-soundtracking of Blade Runner “its from the deleted Fade Runner scene where AZD in a Peckham Cafe realises his barber has over the years etched a faded scroll into his head using early 80s African synthpop as a vexing serum“, or “Falling Rizlas,” an alienated music-box ballad. It’s a remarkable piece of work, that harks back both to Actress’ previous productions and to earlier iterations of the (broadly conceived) “techno” project without being beholden to anything but Cunningham’s forward-facing, individual and disembodied vision. As if the record itself isn’t enough, Cunningham is currently preparing a new live show, to be debuted at as part of Convergence at Village Underground on March 24th. Presented as AZD, Cunningham says it “will be a test frame for linking circuits using various forms of language — Midi globalised language, Lyrical language, Tikal Graffiti code and various other Synthesiser language — to create one intelligent musical instrument called AZD, if successful it will produce the first translucent, non-soluble communication sound pill synergised through impressionistic interpretations of technological equipment. This is the music vitamin of the Metropolis.” The simplest you could say about “AZD” is that it’s art – the unique creation of a unique mind. There will be few more distinctive, brilliant or visionary suites of music released in 2017. Call him what you will, this is the year that Darren ‘Daz’ Cunningham - aka Actress, aka AZD – asserts more clearly than ever before his complete independence.