The A.V. Club's Best Electronic Albums of 2018

German electronic producer DJ Koze has always been a self-selecting outsider, the kind of artist who sits blissfully on the sidelines of the big picture while the world passes him by. His third proper studio album unfolds like a daydream: breezy, sunny, and strangely beautiful, filled with ideas that don’t make sense until they suddenly—thrillingly—do. As with 2013’s *Amygdala* (as well as his endlessly inventive DJ sets and remixes), the style here is curiously out of time, touching on house (“Pick Up”), hip-hop (“Colors of Autum”), and downtempo soul (“Scratch That”), all with a slightly psychedelic twist that keeps everything hovering an inch or two off the floor. Fashion is fine, but it’s no match for a muse.

“Qualm” is the new album by Helena Hauff, released via Ninja Tune. The title has a duality that Hauff enjoys - the German word “Qualm” ( kvalm) translates as fumes or smoke, whilst the English meaning refers to an uneasy feeling of doubt, worry, or fear, especially about one's own conduct. True to form, the record is unapologetically raw and finds her returning to her original modus operandi - jamming on her machines - “trying to create something powerful without using too many instruments and layers”. A former resident of the Golden Pudel club in her hometown Hamburg, Helena’s profile and global standing has grown exponentially since the release of “Discreet Desires” in 2015, purely on the strength of her authenticity and her expertly curated DJ sets spanning acid, electro, EBM, techno and post punk. Gigging incessantly (and still lugging a box of records across the world) Helena’s reputation earned her an invitation to join the BBC Radio 1 Residency, she was the subject of cover features for Crack Magazine and DJ Mag, she played headline sets at Sonar (b2b with Ben UFO) and Dekmantel, and at the end of 2017 Crack Magazine declared Helena “The Most Exciting DJ In The World (Right Now)” and her ballistic BBC Essential Mix was voted the best of 2017. Born and raised in Hamburg, a self-confessed child of the 90s, Helena was obsessed with the music she discovered via the television on channels such as MTV and VIVA. She recalls her grandmother buying Technotronic's 'Pump Up The Jam’ at the flea market for her and watching coverage of iconic electronic music festival Loveparade in Berlin on TV. She has fond memories of borrowing CDs from the local library and making her own mixtapes - these days an archaic practice but from a curatorial standpoint these were her earliest outings as a DJ. Helena picks out Miss Kittin & The Hacker and Toktok vs. Soffy O as inspirations but it was the self-titled album from 2001 by electro icon Radioactive Man that was "a real eye-opener" providing the stimulus for her to dive in and immerse herself in the music and culture. At university Helena studied first for a Fine Art degree, but whilst she enjoyed the emphasis on experimentation and artistic freedom, she realised that she didn’t have an innate need to make visual art, the prerequisite for a career in that oeuvre according to her lecturer. However, she did have exactly that compulsion in regards to DJing: “I was obsessed with DJing, there was no question that I had to do it. It wasn’t about the money, I just wanted to DJ somewhere,” she explains. Next Helena enrolled on a degree in Systematic Music Science and Physics. Heading in almost the polar opposite direction to her Fine Art background, it was a highly technical syllabus incorporating maths, physics and acoustics but perhaps on some level this juxtaposition of science and art has shaped her approach to coaxing music from her machines? Helena made her recording debut in 2013 on Werkdiscs / Ninja Tune. She has since partnered with PAN (as Black Sites alongside F#x), Lux Rec, Bunker sublabel Panzerkreuz, Texan cassette imprint Handmade Birds and established her own label Return To Disorder (2015). Most recently she released a 4-track EP “Have You Been There, Have You Seen It” (2017) via Ninja Tune that “pushed her machines to their breaking point… capturing the ironclad force she delivers in her DJ sets while further carving out her own space in the electro landscape” (Pitchfork).

On her debut, *Dark Energy*, Chicago producer Jlin took footwork music past the known limits of the form, braiding sleek, rolling drums into hypnotic triplet patterns; on the follow-up, *Black Origami*, she emphasized the globe-spanning percussive palette that makes her work unique. *Autobiography*, her score to a major piece by the British choreographer Wayne McGregor, represents a detour in her evolution. Stutter-stepping cuts like “Unorthodox Elements” alternate with synth-strafed trap mutations (“Annotation”) and even pensive ambient interludes like “Anamnesis, Pt. 1,” a minimalist study for piano and empty space. Jlin’s relentless kinetic energy shines like never before on tunes like “The Abyss of Doubt,” which sounds like a mainframe computer being torn apart by heavy machinery; it’s no wonder dancers would want to flex to this.

By now, the story of how Jlin went from working in a steel factory in Gary, Indiana to being one of the most widely appreciated electronic musicians is well known. “Black Origami” was one of the most lauded albums last year. Seriously prolific and seriously hard-working, she has toured constantly since its May 2017 release and despite being involved in a wide range of projects, still manages to find a balance and time to “do some personal healing and growing.” Here we are over a year later with “Autobiography,” the score for her collaboration with renowned British choreographer Wayne McGregor (a collaboration arranged by Krakow's Unsound). This isn’t technically her third album (that’s due to arrive in 2019 or 2020), but the soundtrack stands up on its own with all the emotional peaks and troughs of a well-sequenced LP. For Jlin, making music for dance is the fulfillment of one of her lifelong dreams – and remarkably, Company Wayne McGregor’s performance was the first show she’d ever seen. She describes the process of working with Wayne: “We first met face to face in October 2016 in a downtown Chicago hotel, talking for about a solid two hours. Immediately, I saw Wayne was very friendly and energetic. He’s brilliant, witty, and knows exactly what he wants; an absolute gem to work with. Before I even started composing for Autobiography, Wayne told me so gently that he trusts me completely with my direction of creating the score. That was the best feeling in the world. I would wake up at two in the morning and work until six in the evening until I completed all the pieces. We were both very happy with the outcome. Creating the score for an impeccable piece of work such as Autobiography changed my life as an artist.” “Autobiography” is a highlight in an evolving and growing career. During the last year, Jlin has also become an in-demand remixer, securing her place among a roster of music heavyweights. Unsurprisingly, given her positive and outgoing nature, she also developed friendships with the artists she has remixed such as Björk, Max Richter and Ben Frost. Jlin will be touring with Company Wayne McGregor performing “Autobiography” this year into next. She's also completed a commission for the Kronos Quartet titled “Little Black Book.” She still approaches every performance “with the same attitude of doing my best to execute a good show, no more, no less. Doing my best is what’s most important to me.” She also still lives in Gary, Indiana, which keeps her grounded. She notes with her typical humility, “The local community is a little more knowledgeable of me now. But I don’t mind my community taking its time.”

Building on his background as a classical pianist and composer, British producer Jon Hopkins uses vast electronic soundscapes to explore other worlds. Here, on his fifth album, he contemplates our own. Inspired by adventures with meditation and psychedelics, *Singularity* aims to evoke the magical awe of heightened consciousness. It’s a theme that could easily feel affected or clichéd, but Hopkins does it phenomenal justice with imaginative, mind-bending songs that feel both spontaneous and rigorously structured. Floating from industrial, polyrhythmic techno (“Emerald Rush\") to celestial, ambient atmospheres (“Feel First Life”), it’s a transcendent headphone vision quest you’ll want to go on again.

Please note: Digital files are 16bit. Singularity marks the fifth album from the UK electronic producer and composer and the follow up to 2013’s Mercury Prize nominated Immunity. Where Immunity charted the dark alternative reality of an epic night out, Singularity explores the dissonance between dystopian urbanity and the green forest. It is a journey that returns to where it began – from the opening note of foreboding to the final sound of acceptance. Shaped by his experiences with meditation and trance states, the album flows seamlessly from rugged techno to transcendent choral music, from solo acoustic piano to psychedelic ambient.

"What works reliably is to know the raw silk, hold the uncut wood. Need little. Want less. Forget the rules. Be untroubled." Laurel Halo presents six instrumental pieces that form a meditative, cinematic listening experience. Inspired by recent film score work for Metahaven and Ursula Le Guin's translation of the 'Tao Te Ching'. Featuring cello work by Oliver Coates and percussion by Eli Keszler. Working in abstraction leads to a deeper longing for touch and closeness. The tactile sensation of struck organ keys and bowed strings, wood and felt on drum heads. Smoke and dirt and stone. Febrile and tactile, hairy and hissy. A clover of highway onramps, a continuous flow, like old leaves melting on their way down a stream at the back of a house. Constant contradiction, the truth's nowhere. —

Lucrecia Dalt’s Anticlines is a volume of poetic theory and sound contemplating the bodies of self above and beneath the earth’s surface. On Anticlines, Dalt conjures a sonic space of speculative synthesis and spoken word where South American rhythms rattle contemporary composition recalling Laurie Anderson, Robert Ashley, and Annea Lockwood. LP / CD version comes with lyric booklet documenting Dalt’s collaborative work with Regina de Miguel and Henry Andersen alongside a multi-format digital download code. A portion of the proceeds from your purchase will be charitably designated on behalf of Lucrecia Dalt to Tierra Digna, an organization dedicated to the defense of Colombian communities affected by economic policies that violate human rights and devastate the environment. tierradigna.org Come! Mend! For More Info: shop.igetrvng.com/collections/all/products/rvngnl47

w&p by Skee Mask

Two years on since his last outing on the label, 'The Follower', Axel Willner puts on his Field suit again to present his sixth full-length effort for Kompakt, 'Infinite Moment' - which sees him striding further across the deeper, richer rims of the hue cycle. In Willner's own words, "the threshold of creating something new had to be broken", as had been done with his past albums, including his acclaimed debut 'From Here We Go Sublime'. On this release in particular "stepping outside of the studio opened up fresh perspectives on the creation of new music" he confesses, and it was the opening cut, 'Made of steel, made of stone' - the first to be finished, that got him into the flux of things, making the "making of the rest of the album easier as I went". Substituting the uptempo vim of his previous pieces for a sense of mind- expanding horizontality, 'Infinite Moment' is an album filled with hope and draped in a diffuse, appeasing light; easing the pain and troubles of the human soul through a lushly forested recital of shoegazing modular, complex textural interplays and solar, atmospheric fractals. The matrix cut 'Made of steel, made of stone' gets the ball rolling on a thumping downtempo note, "a lot slower than the previous ones" as Willner remarks, which he further explains "gives me a lot of hope". "Hope is something I've been missing in the nowadays climate and this album is a relief to me, a type of comfort, like a moment that feels good and you don't want to end." 'Divide Now' is a proper sonic mitosis, engaging the metamorphosis to come; like a larvae pupating and reemerging weeks later from under rough bark in the form of a vividly coloured butterfly - fluttering breaks eventually shedding their skin then making way for a crucially more intimate and hypnotic second chapter. 'Hear Your Voice' propels the lavish, pad-upholstered glamour of its melodic lines in the mixer for a bolder syncopated revisitation of '80s indebted pop harmonics, while 'Something left, something right, something wrong' returns to a flaring post-euphoric daze. Legs numb, mind confused and eyes lost into the greater whole, where nascent stars dance their way across the milky way to the rhythm of samba, and universal loving is no utopia. A more arrhythmic affair, 'Who Goes There' spins out into orbit wildly, fusing stealth acid bass moves with a haunting off-kilter motorik that bears The Field's seal of exclusivity, playing with the listener's mind intensely before the ten-minute-long epic 'Infinite Moment' ushers its listener in a highly immersive final ballet of buzzing chords, trampling drums and all-consuming drones. Syncing the self with its environment in ways never explored before, this album is a direct soul-to-soul transmission, aiming no further than at finding the right balance between contained emotion and an expressive eloquence. No fluff, no bluff - with 'Infinite Moment', The Field goes straight for the heart, stripping bare of all vain and futile attributes to focus on the very essential - He is hopeful, and so are we.