The releases below are in contention for my year-end top-10 albums
list. Allow me to explain why.
King Midas Sound, Waiting for You… (Hyperdub,
www.hyperdub.net). Those who
know British producer Kevin Martin from the Bug, Techno Animal, Ice,
God, and other equilibrium-subverting projects will be shocked by the
blissed-out tracks on Waiting for You…. Superbly assisted by
Roger Robinson and Hitomi’s pillow-talk-soft vocals, King Midas Sound
delve into that rarely explored zone between Massive Attack and
Tricky’s smoldering triphop and Burial’s stark, bruised-soul dubstep.
Disc opener “Cool Out” sets the tone and does exactly that: easygoing,
brothel-creeper skank with Robinson’s creamy soul croon bearing the
faintest wisp of Jamaica as a guitar rings in a minor key. Waiting
for You… is the most languorous, accessible work Martin has done,
but it’s no sellout. Rather, it’s the zenith of a seldom-plumbed facet
of electronic music, a kind of hauntological lovers dub; “Meltdown” is
the epitome of this, inducing a sense of dissolution with immeasurable
longing. Even relatively up-tempo cuts like “Lost” and “Outer Space”
move with languid, dream-logic grace. Waiting for You… enters
your bloodstream like some miraculously beneficial strain of heroin. It
hooked me from the first listen.
Emptyset, Emptyset (Caravan,
www.myspace.com/multiversemedia). Emptyset (Bristol, England’s
James Ginzburg and Paul Purgas), by contrast, largely eschew emotional
depth, focusing intently on a monomaniacal brand of stoic, steel-wool
techno that’s as pitiless as deep space. The album bears the
Raster-Noton label’s evocation of hospital-equipment whir and
precision, but put in service of monochrome, dubwise techno that seems
especially attuned to a sort of Plutonian desolation. The 10 tracks on
Emptyset burrow into your brain with a cool-browed, methodical,
and, frankly, scary intensity.
Demdike Stare, Symbiosis (Modern Love, www.modern-love.co.uk). Yet more
Brits, Manchester’s Demdike Stare (Miles Whitaker of Pendle Coven and
Sean Canty of Finders Keepers Records) create dark-ambient miasmas that
embody some of the most arresting qualities of hauntology and dubstep,
without staking a flag too solidly in either camp. Symbiosis peaks on “Haxan,” a reverby smear of Chain Reaction–like
ominousness, and its dub version, a cavernous, crackly cut that sounds
like Monolake remixing Scorn in an icy cave. We’re not in Kingston
anymore, Jah damn it.
Matias Aguayo, Ay Ay Ay (Kompakt,
www.kompakt.fm). Leave it to the Chilean to bring some welcome
sunniness to this column. Ay Ay Ay finds Aguayo using his own
voice as primary pleasure-provider over 11 tech-house tracks. The album
is akin to Dave Aju’s Open Wide, with quirky percussion and bass
sounds emanating from this savvy producer’s mouth, as well as
conventional if whimsical vocals, all of which are layered and
leveraged for skewed, world-music-y festiveness and ass-shaking
hedonism. Ay is gimmicky, yes, but it’s so wondrously executed,
so melodically and rhythmically infectious, that this usual sticking
point is rendered moot. Aguayo here provokes more smiles per beat than
anyone in techno history. 
