10. Jonsson/Alter, 2
[Kontra-Musik] (buy)

It can be difficult not to have sky high expectations for artists after their debut blows you away. That was certainly the case for Jonsson/Alter, the Swedish duo whose 2011 LP, Mod, was as captivating as it was fully formed. How could the pair not only recapture but also build upon their exceptionally dreamy take on house music without crushing the lithe simplicity that was among its greatest charms? This year’s 2 proved it was not only possible but well in Jonsson/Alter’s reach to do so, firming up and gently embellishing their fundamentals with stellar results. Tracks like “En Melodi” and “Truffa Sig” offered the deep, hypnotic warmth we’ve come to love from the pair, while the thrumming, nerve tickler “Jimi” and “Svalor”‘s graceful dramatics make crystal clear how much beauty they can bring working with more ornate arrangements. Not only is 2 a magnificent step forward for Jonsson/Alter, it’s easily one of the year’s most accomplished albums — one that has earned its place in my heart alongside its predecessor. (Steve Mizek)

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09. Huerco S., Colonial Patterns
[Software Records] (buy)

With there being an incredible amount of high quality issues across a large spectrum of electronic music, it really seemed like 2013 was the year of the artist album. Huerco S.’s Colonial Patterns may have only come out in the last quarter of the year, but its effect was immediate and arresting. Huerco S. managed to make his debut album sound like he had spliced together a bunch of found soundtrack reel to reel tapes and dotted in the details with half-buried drums and sonic dust. Treacle thick washes of faded synths and pulsing, sidechained melodies ventured through beatless vignettes and drugged out basements, giving Colonial Patterns a hazy, dreamlike quality that few other albums could touch. (Per Bojsen-Moller)

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08. Oneohtrix Point Never, R Plus Seven
[Warp Records] (buy)

Dan Lopatin has firmly established himself as one of those artists whose fascination with texture verges on sonic fetishism. His albums are like time capsules of numb cultural dislocation, containing found sounds or carefully curated memories, and in that aspect, R Plus Seven on Warp isn’t all that different from its predecessors. But this time, his focus are software patches and MIDI in a carefully assembled, complex attempt of a discrete mnemonic whiteout. Familiar preset instruments, choral washes, anthemic organ stabs and broken-up exotic samples are proportionally organized between bursts of silence, denuded of the narrative provided by the songs. Like a video game designer, Lopatin manipulates them away from the protective gloss of their specific past, revealing them as unbearably vulnerable, exposed, like sea creatures lured out of their virtual shell. Listening to his oeuvre, it’s been all too easy to dismiss this approach as purely gestural, and one whose effectiveness has worn thin through overuse, but quite how he makes his music sound so wonderfully alien with such simple intervention still remains a mystery as deep as ever. There’s no holding back here, no hint of compromise, and while the results often may not be pretty, there’s no doubting his commitment to a singular vision. (Dino Lalic)

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07. Function, Incubation
[Ostgut Ton] (buy)

Easily the most eagerly awaited techno LP of 2013, Incubation saw Dave Sumner unleash his debut solo album after nearly 20 years in the game. Given Sumner’s hand in now-classic albums from Portion Reform and Sandwell District, expectations were high, and Incubation most certainly delivered. Function’s music has gotten much more cinematic over the years, a quality reflected in the record’s filmic structure and nailed with both “Voiceprint” and its reprise. The Reich-ian tones and hypnotic textures of “Counterpoint” sounded like an artist fully realizing a mature, signature sound, while the album version of “Inter” seduced with its rimshots and echoing melody. Yet fans of the rough stuff were certainly not forgotten, both with the rolling low-end and synthscapes of “Incubation (Ritual)” and the absolute monster of “Against The Wall.” Incubation‘s greatest achievement was folding it all into a memorable whole. (Chris Miller)

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06. DJ Koze, Amygdala
[Pampa Records] (buy)

I can’t remember any album taking as long to grow on me as Koze’s Amygdala. I probably would have given up on it, in fact, were it not for my car’s CD changer, which kept sneaking the German’s bizarre ditties into my brain. And once there, they just didn’t want to leave. “Royal Asscher Cut,” and its weird hyperventilating synths, “Homesick”‘s sweet and comforting take on hip-hop, and “Das Wort,” with its elegant yet indecipherable German lyrics. I have no idea what they’re talking about, but I sing along anyway. And that’s a pretty fair metaphor for Koze’s charms as a whole: the world he inhabits is totally foreign, but he makes it seem so damn enticing that you can’t help but want to take a look, then visit regularly, then stay forever. (Nick Connellan)

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05. Lawrence, Films & Windows
[Dial] (buy)

For a while there, it seemed like Peter Kersten’s Lawrence alias was rather adrift, lost in a sea of melancholy he’d once harnessed so thoroughly. Things started to turn around last year with the Etoile Du Midi single, but it’s his 2013 album Films & Windows that confirms Kersten is back at the top of his game. With melancholic elements brought to heel by firmer, singular grooves, Lawrence is free to paint affecting soundscapes with cinematic scopes that could command dance floors and fill a living rooms with equal ease. The strongest tracks balanced a need for aural breathing space and shifting swells of shaded synth pitches, yielding highlights like “Marlen,” “Lucifer,” and “Har Sinai” that immediately grabbed listeners’ attention. Other tracks repaid close listeners with a wealth of gorgeous details; like the way the melodies of the title track trickle down the scale like rain cascading down glass, or the slippery synth timbres of “Angels At Night” and tinkling sleighbells of “In Patagonia” that enrich the flowing motifs around them. Films & Windows would be an excellent album for any producer to release, yet its important place as a turning point in Lawrence’s discography makes his sixth album an essential slice of 2013. (Steve Mizek)

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04. Marcel Fengler, Fokus
[Ostgut Ton] (buy)

By common conception, Berghain and its label arm Ostgut Ton are a dichotomy, divided into dark, pounding techno, and bright, jaunty house. That’s a reductive point of view, really, but it works well enough. So when it came time for Marcel Fengler to release an album, most of us probably expected him to follow the rules established by fellow tech-heads like Ben Klock, Marcel Dettmann and Planetary Assault Systems. But he didn’t. Sure, Fokus held a few brutal monochromatic tracks, like “The Stampede” and “Sky Pushing.” Overwhelmingly, though, the crew’s long-time dark horse used his debut long-player to air his influences, from British IDM (“High Falls”) to German trance (“Jaz”) and modern classical (“Liquid Torso”). And while these beautifully-composed trend-buckers were thrilling enough as mere ideas, it was the way Fengler threaded them all together coherently, as if they belonged, that made Fokus one of the year’s most compelling albums. (Nick Connellan)

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03. Donato Dozzy, Donato Dozzy Plays Bee Mask
[Spectrum Spools] (buy)

Bee Mask’s Vaporware/Scanops is such a staggering achievement that tampering with it seems like a bad idea, at least at first. Granted there is some leeway when the remixer is Donato Dozzy, but cursory listens to Dozzy Plays Bee Mask reveal little of the original’s majesty. Dozzy pushes his trademark subtle repetition to the limit here, eschewing beats almost entirely (we’ll count some of his pulses as beats) and keeping the original motifs intact. Repeat listens, though, find those seemingly simple loops stealing their way into your head, and it becomes apparent what the artist is doing: holding a microscope to the original “Vaporware,” paying tribute to its smallest fragments, adjusting, caressing, and magnifying its tiniest aspects. Given the quality (and length) of the source material, he could probably do 20 more of these. (Steve Kerr)

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02. Steven Tang, Disconnect to Connect
[Smallville Records] (buy)

Much was made about how Steven Tang took 14 years to release his debut album, and for good reason. A person’s preferences can really change in that time, so it’s surprising how well Disconnect to Connect fits together. Its avoidance of the trends of the last decade-and-a-half is less surprising. Tang spoke to LWE about how some of its tracks were left off prior EPs for not being marketable, but the record’s easy flow attests to the contrary. Tracks like “Some Solace” and “Interstice” are perfect house “album cuts,” ultra tranquil but not without a pulse; Tang easily merges them with more jacking, uptempo material like “Sunspot,” which still reclines upon placid pads. It’s undoubtedly a conservative record, but it makes a great comfort blanket. (Steve Kerr)

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01. John Roberts, Fences
[Dial] (buy)

Fences isn’t a huge leap forward from John Roberts’s sublime debut, Glass Eights. It delivered on the promise of the transitional Paper Frames EP, shedding the earlier album’s overt nods to Chicago house in order to more fully inhabit the producer’s unique sound world, one where samples ebbed and flowed between tense, heated friction and relaxed, crumbly ambience. Just when things seemed too lean to heavily on the latter, the album corrects its course, taking us in a wide arc through shuffling boogie of “Plaster” to a corker like the title track. The club hasn’t entirely disappeared from Roberts’s work, but Fences seems to make room for his new role as the jet-setting editor of The Travel Almanac, trying to create livable, domestic spaces in between time spent in transit. While Dial boss Lawrence’s Films & Windows conveyed a lucid, hardware-driven mastery of patient deep-house tropes, Fences ventured deeper into the label’s predilection for wintry, classical music–indebted timbres in an inimitable way. Rather than a total overhaul, Roberts opted for manifold small calibrations, and listeners were rewarded with his most fully realized and free-standing work yet.
(Brandon Bussolini)

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