

Graphic by Mark Hofmann

You know a year has been fruitful for dance music when the singles, good as they are, happen to be eclipsed by a crop of especially great albums. 2011 was just such a happy anomaly, a year stacked so high with exceptional LPs that winnowing down a list of the 10 best was an unexpectedly difficult task. Even once the list was finished it seemed rather incomplete, with so many fine records by Kode9 & The Spaceape, tobias., DJ Qu, Rick Wilhite, Nebraska, Portable, James Blake, Moritz Von Oswald Trio, and many more on the edge of being included. Still, after much internal wrangling and voting, LWE has chosen the top 10 albums that feel representative of 2011. Our staff lists, where everything else resides, are below as well.

10. Agnès presents Cavalier, A Million Horses

[Drumpoet Community] (buy)

It wasn’t until this year that Agnès, partially under the guise of Cavalier, laid out his blueprint for an ideal house on a canvas bigger than an EP. In many ways A Million Horses lives up to the Swiss producer’s great potential, offering his refined take on more than a dozen facets of house. They arrived in an array of sizes — some only as baubles, others as full-on Jesus pieces — each bearing his Swiss precision hi-hat programming, attention-grabbing bass lines, and subtle melodies that stand up to close scrutiny and club play. The tracks really move, too, putting all their weight into swinging rhythms or playing it deliberately straight, but always with a grace that feels instinctual instead of studied. Rather than trying to turn house on its head, it was obvious Agnès preferred to work with the same forms as his peers and just did a superior job within those parameters. Although at times uneven, A Million Horses repeatedly proved Agnès is one of house music’s most talented craftsmen whose low-profile toiling paid off even in the tricky album format. (Steve Mizek)

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09. Steffi, Yours & Mine

[Ostgut Ton] (buy)

With just six tracks to her name at the start of the year, no one knew much at all about Steffi. Setting aside her lauded DJ sets, that is. Nevertheless, with the release of Yours & Mine, it became clear the Dutch artist had been doing much more than just collecting records. For a debut album (hell, any album) it was technically impeccable, delivering stomach-dwelling bass and radiant synth work with equal clarity. One thing it didn’t do was break the mold compositionally, nor offer incredible variation. That didn’t matter: in distilling deep house down to such reliable elements, Steffi created a long player that was exceptionally dependable, wherever you dived in. There was the innocent dreaminess of “Lilo,” the relentless pulse of “Nightspacer” and of course, “Yours,” the track that lodged Virginia’s imploring vocals deep into everyone’s brains. Who wants to race to the end of the pool when treading water is this pleasant? (Nick Connellan)

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08. Legowelt, The TEAC Life

[Self-Released] (buy)

A sprawling 14 tracks which often come close to the 10-minute mark, The TEAC Life was Danny Wolfers’ most engrossing album yet. Released as a free download, he memorably described it as “raw as fuck Detroit unicorn futurism made on cheap ass analog and digital crap synthesizers recorded in a ragtag bedroom studio.” Raw it may have been, but it was also a powerfully emotive listen, navigating the completely idiosyncratic landscape he’s been building up for over a decade. Tracks like “U Can Fly Away from the Hood” and “The Soul of a City” summed up everything that was great about this LP — layer on layer of colorful synth swirls grounded by warm and rounded drum machine funk. But while the obvious influences, both musical and cultural, are writ large, The TEAC Life never sounded contrived — or, worse, twee. Rather, the dual engines of vintage house and electro were twisted further and further away from the club, and into areas that speak of space navigation, lo-fi futurism, and innocent escapism: a real trip, from one of the great journeyman of electronic music. (Harry Sword)

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07. Tim Hecker, Ravedeath, 1972

[Kranky] (buy)

Physicality is something that draws many to dance music, but Ravedeath, 1972 isn’t body music in the same sense as everything else you’ll find on this list. Tim Hecker’s finest hour (not to mention 2011’s best ambient record) does’t set your body in motion so much as it moves you — physically, sure, but its vibrations penetrate deeper, rattling obscure organs and dredging up emotions you maybe weren’t sure you had. While the effect isn’t unheard of in Hecker’s music, some credit must go to Ben Frost, the Australian composer and master of harsh beauty who engineered the sessions in Reykjavik where these almost painfully lush sounds originate. Though it stands shoulder-to-shoulder with any beatless, experimental, or modern classical record you could get your hands on this year, Ravedeath struck a chord with many who might not normally know what to do with this sort of stuff. Perhaps its structure, moving from the bitterness of the “In the Fog” through to the blurry, gossamer sensuality of “In the Air,” helped this abstract music become as seemingly universal as a four-to-the-floor kickdrum. Or maybe it’s just that the album actually delivers on its cover (which is pure class, by the way): you feel like that nearly-alighted piano has slammed straight into your chest, a collision sure to cause more than a bit of internal bleeding.

(Jordan Rothlein)

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06. Roman Flügel, Fatty Folders

[Dial] (buy)

It’s hard to believe Fatty Folders was the very first solo album to bear Roman Flügel’s birth name. After all, he’s been releasing music with his real title since the late 90s. In that respect, the LP’s appearance may have been more of a surprise than its actual contents. Besides featuring previously released tracks “How To Spread Lies” and “Bahia Blues Bootcamp,” Folders continued the steady course Flügel has been plotting for several years, rather than swerving to an unfamiliar vector. As always, however, there was no one on the path but him. Armed with his customary confidence and poise, the Frankfurt-based producer delivered neon-lit electro-funk with “Deo,” idyllic synth noodling via “Krautus” and a touching elegy in “Song With Blue.” It was an album of carefully spread variation, though wherever it went, Flügel’s hand was always audible. And perhaps that’s the simple reason why Fatty Folders was so popular. In one big hit, it delivered more of the celebrated producer than anyone has heard in half a decade.

(Nick Connellan)

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Every once in a while a friend or acquaintance asks me to recommend an album of exemplary house music which they, the uninitiated, might enjoy. Since Jonsson/Alter’s LP Mod landed in October it’s been my go-to recommendation, one that’s been met with more than a few approving head nods and foot taps from said recipients. My reasons for recommending it are the same reasons it’s been so well received: the duo exhibit an absolute mastery of house music’s fundamentals and have excised anything that might detract from them. Listeners get the sense every synth tone and timbre has been labored over for just as long as it took to arrange them into a track, yielding sumptuous melodies that ricochet around the brain for weeks. Their work is obviously indebted to classic house and yet makes no attempts to reanimate the past, preferring to belong to the canon of classic house records because of its quality. And like all the best dance albums, Mod cultivates a series of moods and feelings that justify its existence rather than relying on utilitarian notions to get by. Put succinctly, Mod offered everything I wanted in a house album. Given its inclusion in this list, I suspect I’m not alone in this conclusion. (Anton Kipfel)

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04. Morphosis, What Have We Learned

[Morphine Records/Delsin/M>O>S Recordings] (buy)

Rabih Beaini’s daring and unconventional approach to his album, What Have We Learned, ended with equally audacious results. Using a limited amount of equipment and taking a live jam approach that extended over just two days, he was able to create a work immersed in an exotic atmosphere that is equal parts eerie and thrilling. His penchant for jazz shows itself in many ways, most notably on the abstract side during “Silent Screamer,” “Ascension,” and again with “Gate Of Night” as cosmic synths swirl and xylophonic percussion envelop the listener. Elsewhere jazz tonalities are felt within the melodic strains or within the loose drum programming and spontaneous percussive fills. On “Too Far” we see Beaini combining those jazz idioms with Middle Eastern motifs, an ominous bass line and haunting lyrics from vocalist Kae to create something truly unique. With “Spiral” and “Dirty Matter” Beaini offers up chugging percussive techno that has a primitive, hypnotic quality that is richly textured. That What We Have Learned is considered techno is almost beside the point, as Beaini has masterfully achieved a cohesive atmosphere that seems to transcend the album’s individual components. It’s as if he’s created a mythical sonic world where anything goes and usually does. (Kuri Kondrak)

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It’s impossible to know now if BNJMN would have broken as large as he did if he hadn’t have released his debut on Rush Hour. The most on-point label in the world was the perfect fit for the producer who also turned out to be one of the most compelling finds of 2011 with not just one but two incredible albums. His first, Plastic World, was his introduction; the densely packed, rich rhythms finding a home in ears appreciative of the meeting points between techno and bass music that have been so prevalent this year. In places the pure strains of Dutch and Detroit techno were plastered all over the tracks, such as on the celestial opener, “Blocks,” or the deeply grooving “Tunnel Flight.” Elsewhere, like on “See Thru Stars” or “Miniature Steps” the influence of UK bass music is clearly felt. But Plastic World was much more than simply being a derivative strain of these popular trends. Its force lay in both its sonic architecture and the unique take that the producer had on the ideas contained therein. In the first instance BNJMN intensifying and heightening the frequencies contained in his tracks to the maximum, and in the latter being able to fully realize his ideas and shape them how he saw them, making Plastic World sound unlike anything else that came out this year. (Per Bojsen-Moller)

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02. Andy Stott, Passed Me By

[Modern Love] (buy)

Although Andy Stott experimented with dropped tempos on last year’s Tell Me Anything, this spring’s Passed Me By drastically redefined his career, squashing and dragging his shimmering dub techno to a lurching, lethargic pace. Often a slight drop will add a bit of sex to a rigid rhythm, or as Jochem Peteri says, the “simply dissolves in a more beautiful way.” But on Passed Me By (and its companion, We Stay Together), Stott took his tracks a step further. Any slinkiness is smothered in unrelenting bass weight, creaky industrial ambience, and claustrophobic side-chain compression. The recent trend for slowness — not only in music, but also in movements like slow food — has been widely attributed to the rapidly increasing speed of media and communications, as its proponents attempt to exert some control over their environment. Passed Me By seems much more about being trapped under the weight of that information flow, and its solemn trudge is frequently punctuated by sharp cries ringing out into the graininess, skewed beyond intelligibility. It’s this pervasive unease that makes it such an intoxicating, relevant effort. (Steve Kerr)

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It might have been the tapping of fingers, closely clipped samples, or some nameless drummer going nuts on the kit, but if there’s one sound that defined the year’s best album, it’s percussion. A complete and utter reinvention, Travis Stewart’s nth album as Machinedrum splashed intricate percussive tracks across all sorts of landscapes, beats that click, clack, and bang at incredibly high tempos, speeding ahead of everyone else in “bass music” in 2011 both literally and artistically. While there was no shortage of footwork influence seeping into dance music — especially that made on American shores — Stewart takes what was fast becoming a cliche and flies off with it in a direction that I don’t think anyone could have predicted or even really imagined. Recognizing the music’s compatibility with jungle, with Room(s) Stewart crafts an eminently futurist album that tears and twists bits of footwork — its thrill-seeker pace, its dislocated bass frequency dread politics, and its penchant for hypnotic repetition — and weds it with the uniquely flighty feel of jungle, music that feels like it’s hurtling joyously and unapologetically in any direction it could fling itself toward.

What makes Room(s) so much more than “footwork for white people” is its expansive sonic makeup: while there’s a definite formula here, each does it with completely different sets of ingredients. Forgoing footwork’s roughly hewn, sawed-off vocal aesthetic, every vocal on Room(s) — a mixture of Stewart’s own cooing and the usual array of disembodied sample — sounds shimmering and iridescent, touched just slightly with AutoTune and other processing effects. Its near-convoluted percussive patterns range from soft (“She Died There”) to lusciously tactile (“Youniverse”) to just plain drummer’s abandon (“U Don’t Survive”), and even throws in a few tender moments, like the tender “Lay Me Down,” a slow jam at 150 beats per minute, making the most of the Burial recipe of mallets, makeshift drums, and strangled yelps. The album’s unrelenting breakneck speed might scare off prospective listeners, but even at its most frenzied the elements congeal into something attractively psychedelic and sonically adventurous (the piano-house-on-speed of “Come1” or the Boards of Canada-sampling “Sacred Frequency”) rather than a deafening jackhammer.

Far be it for me to go all “consensus rules,” but maybe the biggest indicator that there was something special happening here was how music like this — music that takes the most extreme elements of “bass music” in terms of sampling, speed, and structure — managed to unite sticklers and scenesters from all over the dance music map. Sometimes critical acclaim really does line up with greatness, and Machinedrum’s Room(s) deserves no less than the uproarious reception it received: there was no other album this year more adventurous, confident, perfectly executed or so damned exciting every single play through. There was no album either as giddily celebratory or celebrated as Room(s) in 2011, he owned this spot since bits and pieces of his masterpiece started trickling earlier out this spring. (Andrew Ryce)

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Staff Charts:

Per Bojsen-Moller

01. BNJMN, Plastic World [Rush Hour Direct Current]

02. Machinedrum, Room(s) [Planet Mu]

03. Rick Wilhite, Analog Aquarium [Music 4 Your Legs]

04. Andy Stott, Passed Me By [Modern Love]

05. Martyn, Ghost People [Brainfeeder]

06. Legowelt, The TEAC Life [Legowelt]

07. James Blake, James Blake [Atlas Recordings]

08. When Saints Go Machine, Konkylie [Studio !K7]

09. Jonsson/Alter, Mod [Kontra-Musik]

10. DJ Qu, Gymnastics [Strength Music Recordings]

Nick Connellan

01. Roman Flügel, Fatty Folders [Dial]

02. Steffi, Yours & Mine [Ostgut Ton]

03. Morphosis, What Have We Learned

[Delsin/Morphine Records/M>O>S Recordings]

04. BNJMN, Plastic World [Rush Hour]

05. Dominik Eulberg, Diorama [Traum Schallplatten]

06. tobias., Leaning Over Backwards [Ostgut Ton]

07. Jonsson/Alter, Mod [Kontra-Musik]

08. Nebraska, Displacement [Rush Hour]

09. Vincenzo, Wherever I Lay My Head [Dessous Recordings]

10. Massimiliano Pagliara, Focus For Infinity [Live At Robert Johnson]

Steve Kerr

01. Julia Holter, Tragedy [Leaving Records]

02. Zomby, Dedication [4AD]

03. Hype Williams, One Nation [Hippos In Tanks]

04. Max B, Vigilante Season [Amalgam Digital]

05. Maria Minerva, Cabaret Cixous [Not Not Fun Records]

06. Afrikan Sciences, Means And Ways [Deepblak]

07. Oneohtrix Point Never, Replica [Software]

08. Andy Stott, Passed Me By/We Stay Together [Modern Love]

09. Niggas With Guitars, Ethnic Frenzy [Digitalis Recordings]

10. LV & Joshua Idehen, Routes [Keysound Recordings]

Anton Kipfel

01. Andy Stott, Passed Me By [Modern Love]

02. Machinedrum, Room(s) [Planet Mu]

03. Portable, Into Infinity [Perlon]

04. BNJMN, Plastic World [Rush Hour Recordings]

05. Maria Minerva, Cabaret Cixou [Not Not Fun Records]

06. Agnès presents Cavalier, A Million Horses [Drumpoet Community]

07. Roman Flügel, Fatty Folders [Dial]

08. Steffi, Yours & Mine [Ostgut Ton]

09. Jonsson/Alter, Mod [Kontra-Musik]

10. tobias., Leaning Over Backwards [Ostgut Ton]

Kuri Kondrak

01. Morphosis, What Have We Learned

[Delsin/Morphine Records/M>O>S Recordings]

02. John Heckle, The Second Son [Mathematics Recordings]

03. Conforce, Escapism [Delsin]

04. Afrikan Sciences, Means And Ways [Deepblak]

05. J.T.C., Creep Acid [Nation]

06. Kuba Sojka, Mysterious Intrigue [Mathematics Recordings]

07. Legowelt, The TEAC Life [self-released]

08. Lerosa, Amanatto [Uzuri]

09. Fudge Fingas, Now About How [Prime Numbers]

10. Fred P, The Incredible Adventures of Captain P [Soul People Music]

Chris Miller

01. Andy Stott, Passed Me By [Modern Love]

02. Morphosis, What Have We Learned

[Morphine Records/Delsin/M>O>S Recordings]

03. Machinedrum, Room(s) [Planet Mu]

04. Fred P, The Incredible Adventures of Captain P [Soul People Music]

05. Tin Man, Perfume [Salon]

06. tobias., Leaning Over Backwards [Ostgut Ton]

07. BNJMN, Black Square [Rush Hour Direct Current]

08. DJ Qu, Gymnastics [Strength Music Recordings]

09. Tim Hecker, Ravedeath 1972 [Kranky]

10. Martyn, Ghost People [Brainfeeder]

Steve Mizek

01. Machinedrum, Room(s) [Planet Mu]

02. Jonsson/Alter, Mod [Kontra-Musik]

03. BNJMN, Plastic World [Rush Hour Recordings]

04. Agnès presents Cavalier, A Million Horses [Drumpoet Community]

05. Tim Hecker, Ravedeath 1972 [Kranky]

06. Andy Stott, Passed Me By [Modern Love]

07. Portable, Into Infinity [Perlon]

08. Morphosis, What Have We Learned [Delsin]

09. James Blake, James Blake [Atlas Recordings]

10. Hercules & Love Affair, Blue Songs [Moshi Moshi Records]

Jordan Rothlein

01. Machinedrum, Room(s) [Planet Mu]

02. Tin Man, Perfume [Salon]

03. BNJMN, Black Square [Rush Hour Direct Current]

04. Africa HiTech, 93 Million Miles [Warp]

05. Tim Hecker, Ravedeath, 1972 [Kranky]

06. Legowelt, The Teac Life [Legowelt]

07. Roman Flügel, Fatty Folders [Dial]

08. Steffi, Yours & Mine [Ostgut Ton]

09. FaltyDL, You Stand Uncertain [Planet Mu]

10. Elektro Guzzi, Parquet [Macro]

Andrew Ryce

01. Machinedrum, Room(s) [Planet Mu]

02. The Weeknd, House Of Balloons [Not On Label]

03. M83, Hurry Up We’re Dreaming [Mute]

04. Andy Stott, Passed Me By [Modern Love]

05. araabMUZIK, Electronic Dream [Not On Label]

06. Instra:mental, Resolution 653 [NonPlus+]

07. Kuedo, Severant [Planet Mu]

08. Salva, Complex Housing [Friends of Friends]

09. Balam Acab, Wander / Wonder [Tri Angle]

10. Lucy, Wordplay For Working Bees [Stroboscopic Artefacts]

Harry Sword

01. Pinch & Shackelton, Pinch & Shackelton [Honest Jon’s]

02. FaltyDL, You Stand Uncertain [Planet Mu]

03. Andy Stott, We Stay Together [Modern Love]

04. Alex Kortex, Kihon [Pomelo]

05. Planetery Assault Systems, The Messenger [Ostgut Ton]

06. Machinedrum, Room(s) [Planet Mu]

07. Omar-S, It Can Be Done But Only I Can Do It [FXHE Records]

08. Legowelt, The TEAC Life [self-released]

09. Surgeon, Breaking the Frame [Dynamic Tension Records]

10. Steffi, Yours & Mine [Ostgut Ton]