Albums of 2009
Thursday, December 17, 2009 at 01:20PM 
Here’s my choices for 2009’s best. It’s been a good year I feel, and there were quite a few releases that failed to make this non-sequential top 10. Please note that it is not in order!
I personally thought that artists such as Shackleton and Moderat matured enough to make a dramatic impact, and there was even a surprise in the form of Louderbach. Traditional house and techno for me, at least, didn’t really produce anything of truly top form, but that’s not unusual. In the ambient and experimental fields, thumbs down for anyone producing boring droning landscapes. That’s so 2005.
HUDSON MOHAWKE - BUTTER (Warp)
An album that positively glitters with life. Precocious, arrogant, vibrant and downright brilliant at times, this is a sonic trifle of influences and ideas that shrugs off the obvious combinations that seem to be permeating dance music right now, casts aside purity and rams down your throat an 18 song mishmash of fun for you to consume.
VLADISLAV DELAY - TUMMAA (Leaf)
Sasu Riipatti is making a name for himself as a serious musician, and this, his first release on Leaf confirms his qualities. It’s unlike his other more ambient material, eschewing software for a more treated approach with 2 conspirators, including Lucio Capece. At the heart of it is an experimental jazz aestethetic, but in keeping with his Baltic origins, wood and metal play a key part in an album full of unexpected turns and ideas.
LOUDERBACH - AUTUMN (M_nus)
Given that Hawtin’s “Contakt” project has generally dismissed as “stadium minimal”, it was all the more surprising that his label turned up this goth-top gem. Troy Pierce’s production is exceptional throughout, and whilst it could be argued that this is nothing more than Joy Division with Ableton, there’s a surprising amount of emotional richness in this. Surprise of the year for me.
ATOM™ - LIEDGUT (Raster-Noton)
Raster-Noton almost jumped the shark this year. If I hear another sinewy drone album with a few atmospheric melodic washes composed from atomised laptops whilst sitting in Narita airport, I’m going to cry. Thankfully they redeemed themselves with this little beauty from none other than one of the true masters of modern music, Uwe Schmidt. It’s light, very short and almost translucent, but there’s so much humour and sophistication here that I feel that he is one step away from joining that fabled pantheon of Cluster, Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk.
TRAXX - FAITH (Nation)
House music in 2009 is a peculiar beast - racked by indecision, and subject to revisionism on a grand scale. So many producers are looking to find that elusive brand of authenticity that they know deep down can never be found again, which is why we’re subjected to a welt of releases thinking it’s 1987 again. It’s all very well merging genres with one another, but ultimately they dilute matters. Melvin Oliphant III has often been on the periphery of a genre that he perhaps more than anyone can summon up the spirit of, and this is muscular evidence of what is essentially proper house.
LEYLAND KIRBY - SADLY THE FUTURE IS NO LONGER WHAT IT WAS (History)
3 hours of unbridled nostalgia, transporting you to dusty hallways in an empty mansion circa 1925. One of the grandest albums I’ve ever heard, and most likely to still be playing in a few decades time.
MODERAT - MODERAT (Bpitch_Control)
Yet more sophisticated technopop. For me, 2009 was a year when several German labels and artists whose work I had admired without ever really being convinced of their abilities came good. Their by all accounts stunning live show accompanied an album that shows them being at the centre of a nexus of genres, both in Germany and the UK, that understand the simplicity of techno and also the nagging need to move it on. Sascha Ring’s vocals are masterful, and throughout there’s a keen sense of future pop.
THE BOATS - WORDS ARE SOMETHING ELSE (Home Normal)
Home Normal get my vote for label of the year, although this little gem is something different from their usual output. This is a delightful little vignette of a release, ambiguous and impressionistic, but full of life. It’s fragile minimal techno, but doesn’ make any concessions to DJs or the dancefloor. You get the feeling that they are cocooned somewhere on a Suffolk beach, blissfully unaware of trends.
SHACKLETON - 3 EPs (Perlon)
9 tracks of bewildering simplicity, but laced with a sense of knowing where the future lies with techno and dubstep. There’s no doubt that the future is very, very bright for him.
DJ HELL - TEUFELSWERK (Gigolo)
The very embodiment of the “statement” album, this is quite an epic. It’s undeniably grossly flawed at times, but it also encapsulates Hell’s aesthetic and in a saturated age of hipsterism, it’s rare that one can listen to something that seems brash. It’s even got Bryan Ferry on it, and a 13 minute krautrock extravaganza that is as good as anything he and his affiliates have recorded.
Toby Frith
Reader Comments (3)
Totally agree on the Shackleton release...can't wait to hear what's next!
Interesting,
The album art for HUDSON MOHAWKE - BUTTER is really inspiring,
Thanks for writing about it
holy crap, u r right....there a couple of lovely tracks on the hell release.......