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December 22-28, 2005

music

Power of Tens

Our critics run down the best Jazz, Dance/Electronic, Classical and Roots CDs of 2005.

Top 10 Dance/Electronic CDs of 2005 By Sean O'Neal

1. Richie Hawtin DE9: Transitions (Minus/Mute) Now sporting a hipster hairdo and naked eyes, Mr. Plastikman lifts the concept of a mix CD into unrivaled terrain. It's the tiny details that blow your mind. On Transitions, 28 tracks are crafted (and mixed) from his own digital edits of various minimal techno cuts from artists like Sleeparchive, Villalobos, DBX and Pan Sonic. Each track consists of four to 10 edits mashed into one new experience. Also included is a 96-minute DVD in 5.1 Dolby surround sound.

2. Ezekiel Honig and Morgan Packard Early Morning Migration (Microcosm) Rest your head amidst hissy, shoe-gazing drone and comatose rhythms: This New York duo delivers gritty lullabies that ooze with delicate dissonance and dreamlike bliss. Eleven pieces range from ambient tones to submerged minimalism spiced with field recordings and found sounds.

3. Alex Under El Ganado Ovino Blanco (Trapez) Minimal techno is über-trendy at the moment (well, at least in Europe). On his debut album, Spain's Alex Under bursts above the recent ambush of minimal producers by providing 10 quirky ass-shakers that bounce with sparse melodies and digital effects suited for both late-night drug binges and home listening alike. El Ganado is emotive, vivid and tastefully psychedelic.

4. Portable Version (~scape) The South Africa-born London-dweller keeps it heady and laid-back — but still danceable — while fusing traditional African rhythms (taken from field recordings he made all over the African continent) within layers of minimal glitch-techno/house. Your head is gently bombarded and then hypnotized by dense textures of shakers, congas, flutes, pulsating kick drums and who knows what else. Version is a compositional masterpiece for both the body and mind.

5. Various Artists Compilation 01 (Freude-Am-Tanzen) Freude-am-Tanzen (sister label of Musik Krause and home of Robag Wruhme and Wighnomy Brothers) is an odd and forward-thinking experimental techno/deep house imprint from the puny East German city of Jena. Compilation 01 demonstrates why the vinyl label changed the face of European dance music in recent years. Eleven tracks from Robag, Gamat 3000, Soulphiction, Mark Henning, DJ Koze and others offer a very human, nonmechanical, amusingly unique outtake on electronic dance music.

6. Capitol K Nomad Junk (Faith And Industry) Kristian Craig Robinson's third album transcends IDM with patchworks of assembled field recordings made in the Far East. Disorienting, broken drum loops frolic behind textures of Chinese rap, flutes, koto strings, video game bleeps, vinyl crackle and spoken word. Meanwhile, Robinson maintains a krautrock feel (ˆ la Neu! and Can) with psyched-out textures of guitar and quirky keys.

7. Four Tet Everything Ecstatic (Domino) Following up his breakthrough Rounds album, Kieran Hebden maintains his lush trademark sound of folky ethnic left-field hip-hop and electronic jazz, but this time adding a raw and wind-chimey exploration of clatter employing gongs, bells and tribal polyrhythms. Recorded in a mere two months, Everything Ecstatic plunges gently through helium vocals, slow-building melodies and beat-heavy brilliance.

8. [a]pendics.shuffle Helicopter Hearts (Orac) Kenneth James Gibson is a man of many aliases, but this one might be his best. On Helicopter Hearts, eight tracks of deep and stompy microhouse zingers slither and bounce with calculated funk. Meanwhile, you're peacefully lost amidst the Chain Reaction-like dubby-ness of cavernous echoes, stuttering percussion and sparse, murmuring vocals.

9. Matthew Herbert Plat Du Jour (Accidental) In recent years, each Herbert album is something else. On Plat Du Jour, he uses found sounds to ridicule our substandard food industry. Compositions range from melodies made with eggs on Pyrex bowls and blowing into Coke cans to percussion made with drumming on a jar of pickles, egg cartons or petrol cans (all explained in stunning detail at www.platdujour.co.uk). The result is an electronic joyride through quirky IDM, minimal house and… well… it's Herbert. He's the fucking man.

10. Various Artists Katapult Vol. 2: A Karat Mix by Krikor (Karat) The Paris-based label dishes out comically obscure minimal techno for the head and dancefloor. Krikor (also from Paris) interweaves some of Karat's finest tunes with 25 tracks by Ark, Cabanne, Egg, Skat, himself and others. It's like a jazzy, punked-out brain titillation that makes you giddy amidst gurgling, syncopated mush.