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6
Emeralds
Does It Look Like I’m Here?
Emeralds arguably got more derivative from their breakthrough LP What Happened to their next record in wide distribution, Does It Look Like I’m Here?. Its references are pure 1970s electronic pop, krautrock, ambient, and classical minimalism. You can almost picture Robert Fripp and Brian Eno lugging their two big Frippertronics tape machines into Emeralds’ Cleveland, Ohio studio. Yet it didn’t sound like anything else in 2010, and among the bumper crop of wonky and dubstep, Emeralds stood out, inviting listeners to burrow through meshy layers of waveforms, analog synth and electric guitar.
Once inside the record, the mood is not entirely comforting. The keyboards’ movement is best described as uneasy saturation, while Mark McGuire’s guitar—amiable on the surface—sounds as if it’s playing the soundtrack to a taut domestic drama (and on the title track, it yowls with downright menace). Does It Look Like I’m Here? displays a peculiar futureworld that appears eerily like the present, where scientific developments and human patterns meet in strange places. It’s apparent not only in the sounds, but in the song titles: “Double Helix” and “Science Center” sit unsettlingly beside “The Cycle of Abuse” in the sequence. Likewise, “Summerdata” suggests that we might one day enjoy summertime by thinking of it as information to process. There are about 100 records my future self would rather live in than this one, but it is often captivating, and “Now You See Me” ends it with extraordinary beauty, in a brilliant moment of ecstatic peace. 
Mike Newmark
5
Four Tet
There Is Love in You
Carrying a less minimal crown in 2010 than he wore on 2008’s Ringer, Four Tet returned with an album unlike yet suitably complimentary to his smash 2009 12” with Burial. There Is Love In You‘s epic single “Love Cry” was a surprise early on in the year. Its pairing of midrange shuffle drums with a simple hushed vocal brought amid its test tones and tom fills is the sort of emotional electronic music for which the artist has always been known. But it’s the consistency on this album that makes it more than consoling. Throughout, there are introspective phrases—simple passages of chordal matter, synth pieces, or samples that truly speak to the listener. “Sing” is an example of this. It has the sweet trappings of indie pop without heading too far in a direction that might jeopardize the emotion felt elsewhere on the album. A cheerful, Dntel-esque elevation beyond the usual thinking-folktronica. Jason Cook
4
Shed
The Traveller
Perhaps the strongest definition of post-rave thus far, Shed’s The Traveller took from his landmark previous LP, Shedding the Past, and built, cut, expanded, and polished with such density that it spoke out as a definite retrospective on dance music, techno, and sections of the underground culture that have been institutional in supporting the artistic and intelligent properties of this music, from the house music of Chicago to Detroit and across the ocean to Berlin. Without any derivation, the early cornerstone of the album, “Atmo - Action”, is made of the plate ‘verb space that’s resounded since Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works 85-92. Closer “Leave Things” is transcendent, a nod to jungle, leaving at an arpeggiated speed far greater than with which it came. The Traveller is one of those albums that comes around. It becomes more accessible over time. Jason Cook
3
F
Energy Distortion
2010 saw a lot of buzz showered on a number of [genre]/dubstep hybrid albums, many of which were more hype than substance. F’s Energy Distortion, however, distills crucial elements of the Basic Channel/Chain Reaction dub techno sound and more ambient-leaning dubstep. Like the colors on its cover art, the music of Energy Distortion employs a limited palette to enrapturing effect. The beats are blunt, the pads cold and distant, and the vocals cut through like forgotten emotional memories. Furthermore, for such a lengthy LP, the focus and consistency is further impressive. Not once within Energy Distortion’s 70-plus minutes does it feel like F is getting bored or losing the plot.
What most separates Energy Distortion from the pack is its immediacy, both musically and emotionally. Space-focused drum ‘n’ bass pioneers like 4Hero and A Guy Called Gerald understood that a well-placed pad and a longing cry are the keys to a higher emotional plane. On album-closer “Perspectives”, F shines as a disciple of this school. Without resorting to tired indie lyrics (as some lesser peer albums did this year, to a fault), F conveys overpowering and indescribable emotional states. The effect is not unlike that of kindred spirit Burial.
Like a number of the best albums of 2010, Energy Distortion’s impact is, ultimately, understated. Without an engaging back story or hype-filled promotion (neither of which are necessarily a bad thing), F rises to the top on the strength of an honest, emotionally and physically present music. David Abravanel
2
Scuba
Triangulation
Alongside Scuba’s Sub:Stance mix or the lightly surging techno he issued as SCB, few electronic records were better suited for headphone listening in 2010 than Triangulation, the twisted, oscillating LP from the Berlin-based producer born Paul Rose. It’s a sonic wonder; ambient dark house, UK garage, and drum ‘n’ bass join a tide of trickling atmospherics on the album. Triangulation is a deep-lurking and kinetic standout in this year’s very impressive array of bass music releases. Those digging Mount Kimbie’s Crooks and Lovers would do well to check into the guy who put out their records. While his Hotflush label has been ahead of the pack in its forward-looking offerings, Scuba’s production work itself is mind-boggling. Triangulation furthers the experimental techno, dubstep, and house blends that the artist has explored recently via heavy EPs on Naked Lunch and his own imprint. On his second full-length release, Scuba’s beats are stacked with splintered verse, wood clacks, and air gusts piping through spare melodies and varied drum sounds. Gritty and potent, the album is melded seamlessly with the stinging efficiency of his DJ sets, so that Triangulation halts us in our tracks, planting us in the dank tunnel where it seems to have originated. Dominic Umile
1
Flying Lotus
Cosmogramma
Several years before Flying Lotus, instrumental hip-hop was largely a joke—rhymeless beats that rappers pumped out to sell records and make money or good-natured downtempo aimed at people whose hobbies included not paying attention. When J Dilla passed in 2006, a young Angelino from a famous family named Steven Ellison clutched Dilla’s torch without missing a beat and ran with it as fast and hard as he could go. Ellison, who called himself Flying Lotus, struck a brilliant equilibrium between his aunt Alice Coltrane’s mysticism and sedulity, his beloved Los Angeles, and the idle boyhood bliss he experienced behind the buttons of a Space Invaders arcade game.
The resultant music was urbane, hyper-stimulated, and flagrantly artistic. Ellison had a slight ego when his contemporaries played it cool, but it fit with the music’s supreme confidence. Hip-hop and electronic hadn’t made out so gracefully since the glory days of Mo’ Wax, and before you could say “Endtroducing”, droves of artists were using FlyLo as a touchstone to develop their own beat-heavy, “wonky” explorations. And just as the lot of them began saturating the market with this stuff in 2010, along came Flying Lotus to whop them all back to the starting line.
Cosmogramma, only Ellison’s third full-length statement, is not just his flagship piece of electronic music—it is one of the most forward-looking albums in the genre’s history, kicking up the bar just out of everyone’s reach. FlyLo’s imagination seems to know no limits and his definition of hip-hop is dazzlingly fluid, rarely relying on the jerky Dilla-esque kick-snare that his previous records employed as a base. The atmosphere is constantly alive, awash in glistening blacks and purples like specks of obsidian floating in all directions. And unlike its predecessor, Los Angeles, Cosmogramma never feels like it’s happening on a screen. You’re in it, baby; it is uncompromising body music that hurls you brain-first into its shuddering cosmic wilderness. Earworms abound, from Thundercat’s unbelievable bass in “Pickled!” to the motorcycle revs in “Recoiled” to the ping-pong balls bouncing behind Laura Darlington’s sultry singing in “Table Tennis”. We might have heard these things before, somewhere, but they never came together quite so inspiringly, never in a way that expands our field of vision and changes us so meaningfully for having taken the ride. Mike Newmark
