If there's one common thread through our favourite electronic music albums this year, it's dance music producers making pop and R&B, and doing it wonderfully. Whether it was Kelela working with LSDXOXO, DJ Python with Ana Roxane, Caroline Polachek with Danny L. Harle or Fever Ray with Nadía, 2023 was full of albums with incredible songwriting and production. That said, clubland still held its own with plenty of wicked straight-up dance records from the likes of Regal86, Overmono and Ciel, plus some that sat in between, such as Wata Igarashi's Krautrock-techno fusions or Mr. G's arresting downtempo. It was a year of beloved artists expanding their horizons and finding new voices in the process.

Album of the Year

- Warp Records
  Kelela - Raven
  
  At the shows for her new album, Kelela stood alone onstage. This was a deliberate choice, she explained, to have everything stripped back so audiences could see her—and hear her—for all she was. But up there, the blue lights around her dimmed, it was clear that her solitary figure also reflected her more bitter-than-sweet struggles against what she described as "male stoicism." This remark came from the revelations she had while reading The Will to Change, an investigation of men, masculinity and love by the radical Black feminist scholar bell hooks. Her epiphany was painstakingly reflected in the dancehall derivation "On The Run": "You get around enough / Too busy actin' tough / Give me a softer side / I won't wait all night." Patriarchal culture doesn't only hurt women, Kelela discovered—it also restricts the way men are able to explore intimacy and achieve wholeness for themselves.
  
  I saw Kelela perform in Berlin. 13 of Raven's 15 tracks were produced there, and it shows. There's a sorrow and solemnity woven into the city's monochromatic corners that echo through Raven, like a pebble rattling in an empty aluminium can. Even the title track is underpinned by a spacious yearning, as if on the brink of a breaking point—"Took all my labour / Don't tell me that I'm strong," she sings, before gradually trotting into a heaving 4/4 beat, a subtle nod to clubbing as escapism. By the album's conclusion, "Far Away," Kelela finds her deliverance in the form of honeyed ad-libs undulating over sounds of crashing waves, as if signalling that with enough time and perspective, all pain can be alchemised into pure spirit. -Whitney Wei

- Perpetual Novice
  Caroline Polachek - Desire I Want To Turn Into You
  
  Diving headfirst into the delusion and madness that accompanies the all-consuming feeling of romantic and sexual passion, this unapologetically raw album leaves no stone unturned in its portrayal of emotional intensity. Through visceral lyrics that underline the idea of desire as a truly physical sensation, the ex-Chairlift vocalist sings of self-indulgent surrender to a lover without the slightest care of appearing desperate or needy. But it's the production—from Polachek and Danny L. Harle—that truly makes this a multifaceted pop record: feathery drum & bass, flamenco, dreamy rock and bassy R&B bops add to the physicality of Polachek's feelings, pushing her theatrical vocals outside of the shielded realm of inner thoughts and into the material world. -Nyshka Chandran
  
  Listen:
  Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify
- Border Community
  James Holden - Imagine This Is A High Dimensional Space Of All Possibilities
  
  James Holden's music has always been otherworldly. Raised on pirate radio, folktronica, free jazz and everything in between, he conjures up mythical fairy tales where flickers of dance music past meander into pastoral soundscapes. This all culminated with Imagine This Is A High Dimensional Space Of All Possibilities, which marks a welcome return to the club for Holden—or his version of it, anyway. Recognisable dance music tropes (hints of dub techno, echoes of house, microdoses of rave) nestle into the rich and complex instrumentation that gives all of Holden's music its distinctive flair. If Jon Hassell had been born four decades later and became hooked on acid house, this is the album he would've wanted to write. -Henry Ivry
  
  Listen:
  Bandcamp
- Domino
  Tirzah - trip9love...?
  
  Over the past decade, childhood friends Tirzah Maston and Mica Levi have become a quietly formidable power duo (in leftfield music circles, at least). On their latest LP of heart-tugging R&B, Levi's tough 808s and trilling piano sketches hold a steady, unrelenting pace while Tirzah pours her heart into 11 rough-and-ready love songs. All the familiar hallmarks of Tirzah are there—understated vocals and a sound rooted in "disarming simplicity"—but here everything is notched up to a new, more physical intensity. Each track packs a smouldering punch and Levi's distorted piano melodies on tracks like "F22" and "Promises" have Grand Cru earworm qualities. The album turns Tirzah and Levi's often ramshackle songs into a steamrolling train that tugs at the heartstrings all the harder, while still holding onto the lightweight feel that makes all of the project's music so enchanting. -Conor McTernan
  
  Listen:
  Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify
- Self-released
  Regal86 - La Onda
  
  If there was one trend in techno to note this year—aside from "fast"—it was hardgroove, a taut and loopy style originally pioneered in the '90s and making one hell of a comeback on dance floors across the Americas and Europe in 2023. Regal86, a buzzy producer from Monterrey makes all kinds of music, but he's particularly good at hardgroove. His album La Onda landed at the perfect time to take the revival to the next level. With breathless sequencing and expert programming, this is hard, fast dance music that doesn't bludgeon you over the head, but instead invites you to dance and get lost in its intricacies. And with trip-hop breaks and clever interludes, La Onda works as an album through and through, recalling some '90s techno greats with real finesse. -Andrew Ryce
  
  Listen:
  Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify
- XL Recordings
  Overmono - Good Lies
  
  Going from throwing makeshift parties deep in the woods to sold-out global tours, Overmono's ascent is long overdue. After a decade of passionate grinding in the underground, their debut album, Good Lies, makes a well-earned victory lap. Boundless euphoria is the goal and '90s rave and Burial-adjacent techno are the means—including radio-ready vocal chops from the likes of Tirzah, Slowthai and CASISDEAD. Having penned a vibrant love letter to both the past and present of UK dance music, the two brothers from rural Wales establish themselves as authors of its future. -Emeka Okonkwo
  
  Listen:
  Bandcamp
- Columbia
  James Blake - Playing Robots Into Heaven
  
  Don't call it a comeback… but James Blake's latest album kind of feels like a comeback. He's spent years perfecting an electronic singer-songwriter style that has seen him working with everyone from Kendrick Lamar to Frank Ocean. On Playing Robots Into Heaven, he dives head first into club music and delivers some of his canniest fusions yet. The melodrama and introspection is still there, but on tracks like the thrilling "Loading" or the surging house of "Fall Back," his words—and dextrous vocal chopping—gains a whole new power, especially when sandwiched between woozy ballads like "Fire The Editor." In other words, it's the best of both worlds. -Andrew Ryce
  
  Apple Music / Spotify
- Childhood
  Mr. G - Pearls Don't Lay On The Shore
  
  According to Mr. G, Pearls Don't Lay On The Shore is what happens when he makes music from the soul. Over 14 tracks, the funky tech house he built his name on makes room for plaintive New Age delights and darkly tinted downtempo. It's a turbulent, subaquatic voyage that reaches even murkier depths than 2021's The Forced Force Is Not The True Force. Where the sonar-guided ominousness and broad sawtooth basslines on tracks like "No Safe Zones" evoke the ocean floor, the searching keys and trance-inducing hand drums on tracks like "For Those Who Have Lost" still reach for the cosmos. A riveting ode to his mother Sylvia, Pearls Don't Lay On The Shore is Mr G. at his most soul searching and experimental. -Emeka Okonkwo
  
  Listen:
  Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify
- Live From Earth
  DJ Gigola - Fluid Meditations
  
  Aside from being a phenomenal debut album, Fluid Meditations is compelling because it embodies the enduring influence of wellness culture on dance music. The album is a tropical, at times ghostly take on modern New Age electronic music, with vocal techniques that recall Voice Actor's sibilant whispers and the guided meditation of DJ Python's memorable 2020 cut "ADMSDP." The album picks up in its second half, the meditation laid underneath hoover synths and spritely trance, making it a record that travels well from day into night. -Kiana Mickles
  
  Listen:
  Bandcamp
- Step Ball Chain
  Maara - The Ancient Truth
  
  Maara has a preternatural sense for interstellar atmospheres that are also suited to intimate home listening. Her debut album yawns to life with loose breakbeats over a lattice of whispery vocals, and eventually spins out into another realm of glimmering downtempo music. A special kind of self-assured ease in drifting into the unknown exists here. The Ancient Truth feels like a period of focused introspection, full of lush pads and pensive basslines, that reveals an inner world even more vast and mystical than how it first seems (just after the beat drops on the title track, a "wake up, wake up" chirps in the distance). All it takes is a wide-eyed sense of wonder to appreciate Dunbar's gentle yet far-flung exploration. -Whitney Wei
  
  Listen:
  Bandcamp
- Tresor
  Surgeon - Crash Recoil
  
  On Crash Recoil, Surgeon's first album in five years, he said he tried to bring his live improvisational sets to the studio for the first time, "in the same way that bands tour songs before going into the studio to record an album." The Detroit-indebted swing of earlier albums is subdued to a simmering pulse, and Surgeon's longtime influences—experimental rock bands Coil and Faust—take centre stage. Spectral pads elongate over crunchy drums. Abrasive melodies appear and fade into the ether. Songs travel with the meandering, liberated structure of music built through feeling instead of dance floor mania, unlocking a new level of depth and nuance in one of the most legendary catalogues in techno. -Kiana Mickles
  
  Listen:
  Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify
- Kompakt
  Wata Igarashi - Agartha
  
  Techno trends come and go, but Wata Igarashi will never go out of style. Cerebral, psychedelic, Rome school—whatever adjective you choose to describe the Japanese producer's music, so long as clubs are willing to stay open for more than 12 hours at a time, there'll always be DJs digging for Igarashi's style of lean, introverted techno. This makes his debut album, Agartha, such a curveball. The LP fuses Berlin school Krautrock and fourth world ambient with the odd bit of Detroit electro and techno, both unexpected and unbelievably impressive. Igarashi has always been more than "just" a techno producer, but Agartha solidifies his reputation as a true electronic music visionary. -Henry Ivry
  
  Listen:
  Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify
- Warp Records
  Yves Tumor - Praise a Lord Who Chews But Does Not Consume
  
  It's hard to believe Yves Tumor's Praise A Lord Who Chews But Which Does Not Consume; (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds) came out in March—it already feels like one of those timeless cult albums fans know inside-out. In recent years, the US artist has swirled around the smokey, delay-drenched periphery of '90s alt rock. Here, they jump right in, heels first, to riff on alt-rock greats like Jimi Hendrix ("Heaven Surround Us…"), The Strokes ("Operator") and even prime-era Bloc Party ("In Spite of War"), with epic guitar leads and explosive drum patterns as the rushing, technicolour backdrop to Tumor's angsty lyricism. -Sophie McNulty
  
  Listen:
  Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify
- Planet Mu
  Nondi_ - Flood City Trax
  
  Johnstown, Pennsylvania, suffered devastating floods in 1889, 1936 and 1977. What was once a city with a thriving steel mill and coal industry was left in tatters alongside a draining population. According to local producer Nondi_, those who were left behind—like herself—now live in limbo, floating between boredom and a constant fear of when the next flood will strike. On her ambient juke LP Flood City Trax, cutesy, cotton-cloud FX meet frenetic footwork percussion to convey a conflicting and distant depiction of a place that's been left for dead by the rest of the world, yet stubbornly lives on. -Joseph Francis
  
  Listen:
  Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify
- Kynant Records
  Paul St. Hilaire - Tikiman Vol.1
  
  It's been 17 years since his last album, but Paul St. Hilaire remains dub techno incarnate. The OG producer and Basic Channel collaborator resurfaced this March with nine exquisite tracks that show off his mastery of subtle, politically charged grooves. Touching on downtempo, minimal techno, roots reggae and dancehall, Tikiman Vol.1 runs the gamut genre-wise while delivering concise commentary on displacement, education and memory. Fuzzy dub tones on "Keep Safe" and "The Weather Man" give way to chuggier cuts like "In Door," with St. Hilaire's mesmeric vocals and streamlined basslines acting as key transition tools throughout. Still instantly recognisable, the dub techno MC has a way of making dreamy, '90s-style atmospheres feel fresh with carefully leftfield touches. -Nyshka Chandran
  
  Listen:
  Bandcamp
- Awe
  Laurel Halo - Atlas
  
  Laurel Halo never loved playing the piano, but she returned to it just before the pandemic. And then she was kind of stuck with it, until it became her defining instrument of the decade so far. On Atlas, her first so-called ambient album, she takes her piano and the sounds of collaborators on strings and explodes it into sonic dust. Those particles are rearranged into gentle compositions that inhale and exhale like a living respiratory system, with melodies that appear like clouds on the horizon before rolling away and letting the music clear up again. Atlas takes the fearless compositional framework of past albums and her ear for slight-but-dazzling melodies and presents them in a new, almost neoclassical way. It's another excellent entry in one of dance music's most wonderfully unpredictable discographies. -Andrew Ryce
  
  Listen:
  Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify
- Príncipe
  DJ Danifox - Ansiedade
  
  Traditionally, batida is a sound characterised by a lively interplay of emotions and energies: roiling drums, racing tempos and rousing vocals. Lisbon label Príncipe has long documented the genre's many faces, from electro bangers to housey grooves, and this stunning offering from one of its core members reveals a foggier take. The slow-burning LP unravels like a gentle love letter, pairing intuitive, staccato drums with conversational vocals and lush instrumentation (guitar and woodwinds). There are hints of jazz, trap and dub techno—perhaps a reference to batida's own cross-pollination from various Angolan and Portuguese styles—and a thread of tenderness and toughness. Danifox's lilting melodies wrap batida's bounce into a dulcet, romantic daze. -Nyshka Chandran
  
  Listen:
  Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify
- Low Lying Records
  a.s.o. - a.s.o.
  
  Lewie Day and Alia Seror-O'Neill's debut self-titled LP as a.s.o is one of those albums that anyone with a longing for nostalgia could fall in love with—fans of Mazzy Star, Warp Records devotees, trip-hop lovers. Part of the reason why is because the album's palette sounds eerily familiar, like every phenomenal downtempo album released before the turn of the millennium blended into one. But it's not pastiche: the lyrics feel bitingly modern and the production is taken to outer space in ways their predecessors didn't yet have the language for. And to top it off, Seror-O'Neill's frigid, sultry voice reverberates through it all gracefully. -Kiana Mickles
  
  Listen:
  Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify
- Ninja Tune
  Sofia Kourtesis - Madres
  
  There's a track on Madres, the debut album from Berlin-based artist Sofia Kourtesis, named after the neurosurgeon who saved her mother's life. Kourtesis's music has always been connected to familial relationships—2021's Fresia Magalena EP was named after Fresia (her mother) and Magdalena (the district in Lima where she's from) while reflecting on the death of her father—but with each new record her music becomes an even more personal, ecstatic and richly layered collage. Madres deftly combines house music with field recordings from indigenous communities, the Peruvian cajón drum, clips from a protest against homophobia and pan-Latin American rhythms. Kourtesis makes restorative, kaleidoscopic house music that blooms from her heart and tugs at the strings of others, highlighting the power of dance floor healing.
  -Katie Thomas
  
  Listen:
  Bandcamp / Apple Music
- Kalahari Oyster Cult
  Various - Chants Of The Holy Oyster
  
  Chants Of The Holy Oyster celebrates six years of Rey Colino's Kalahari Oyster Cult, documenting the Amsterdam label's increasingly singular footprint on contemporary club music. Connecting the dots between various corners of '90s dance music—from dreamy IDM to spacious electro, squelchy trance to wiggly tech house—Colino's vision updates these sounds, rather than basking in nostalgia. With contributions from best-in-school producers such as Roza Terenzi, Sansibar, Maara, Priori and more, the compilation serves as a great reminder that the fruits of the '90s are still ripe for renovation (and innovation). -Bella Aquilina
  
  Listen:
  Bandcamp
- Live From Earth Klub
  Brutalismus 3000 - ULTRAKUNST
  
  Over the last two years, Brutalismus 3000 have become one of the biggest techno acts in Europe through sheer force of will and attitude. Their music, which they call "anti-techno" or "nu-gabber-post-techno-punk"—and they won't say it, but it's also kind of bloghouse—is confrontational but also funny. They channel the outlandish vibe of early electroclash acts and dress it up in an outfit thrifted from Humana that you might see walking down Warschauer Strasse on a Friday night. Tales of murder, excess and scene-baiting ("Safe Space") are soundtracked by short-circuiting electronics, making for a gleeful LP as giddy as it is confrontational, leaving a path of destruction and laughter in its wake. -Andrew Ryce
  
  Listen:
  Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify
- Planet Mu
  Mun Sing - Inflatable Gravestone
  
  Inflatable Gravestone, the title of Mun Sing's debut album on Planet Mu, neatly summarises the fantastical world the Giant Swan cofounder operates in: a cold, hard symbol of death is turned into something squashy and playful. The music on Inflatable Gravestone folds listeners into that strange and wonderful land, like jumping on a bouncy castle that deflates and re-inflates without warning. The textures are intense ("Squabble"), the rhythms jolting, swerving and sometimes falling off into oblivion ("Gliding"). And it all ties together with an underlying absurdity ("Spider"). It's a place only a truly brilliant and off-kilter mind could conjure up. -Sophie McNulty
  
  Listen:
  Bandcamp
- Mexican Summer
  Natural Wonder Beauty Concept - Natural Wonder Beauty Concept
  
  On their self-titled debut album, Ana Roxanne and DJ Python aim to massage out the beauty in loneliness and alienation. Floating on tides of ambient synths, the duo employ emo rap, synth pop, lucid breakbeat and more to explore the substrates of deep connection and unspoken tenderness. Avant-garde instrumental flourishes seamlessly blend into metropolis-at-night atmospherics. Roxanne's ethereal singing plucks at every fibre of your being, while Python's intricate percussion arrangements are modulated until they begin to trickle like water. These two masters of contemplative, shoegazey electronica come together for a debut that lives up to its name and more. -Emeka Okonkwo
  
  Listen:
  Bandcamp
- Parallel Minds
  Ciel - Homesick
  
  The miracle of globalised contemporary electronic music is how artists have imprinted their own unique cultural identity into their productions. The stylistically and geographically roving debut album from Ciel is one such example, melding downtempo, ambient and electro. Ciel, who was born in Xi'an, China, and came of age in Toronto, based Homesick on eight types of traditional Chinese instruments, each of which correspond to the individual track titles. The most striking among them is the anxious tremble of "Metal," interpolated between syncopated drums, and "Silk," all sly chimes and rotund basslines. Conceptually rich, Homesick embroiders the disparate textures of Ciel's Eastern home and her Western world into one elegant tapestry. -Whitney Wei
  
  Listen:
  Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify
- Hessle Audio
  Pangaea - Changing Channels
  
  Festival FOMO moment of 2023? It's gotta be Ben UFO unleashing Pangaea's "Bad Lines" at Dekmantel. The happy hardcore-inspired anthem was the coda to the UK artist's short but magnificently sweet album, Changing Channels, which nailed the hard-to-wrangle cocktail of silly yet classy. In one fell swoop, Pangaea wrote the tune of the summer, doffed his cap to the hardcore continuum and poked fun at dance music's current obsession with speed and neon sounds—all with a massive smile on his face. -Carlos Hawthorn
  
  Listen:
  Bandcamp
- Wisdom Teeth
  K-Lone - Swells
  
  Swells dropped on July 7th, a few days before I made my annual pilgrimage to Love International festival. In Tisno, the sea sparkles, the air is hot and the buzz of the cicadas in the trees is omnipresent. I listened to the glossy ripples of K-Lone's second album as I lay by the water, felt the sun on my skin and closed my eyes to allow my body to recover from the night before—the setting was just right. There are a couple dance floor-leaning tracks on the LP ("Love Me A Little," "Gel"), but Swells is largely made up of elastic tunes that slip, slide and undulate like the lapping of waves on a shoreline. Eliza Rose's vocal appears in hazy manipulations throughout (most notably on woozy R&B cut "With U"), accompanying colourful tones, melodies that glimmer and chords that melt into each other. -Katie Thomas
  
  Listen:
  Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify
- Infine Music
  Deena Abdelwahed - Jbal Rrsas
  
  Tunisian artist Deena Abdelwahed has a predilection for pulling sonic touchpoints from the MENA region and dissolving them into dense, at times confrontational, productions. Case in point is opener "The Key To The Exit," her interpretation of the EDM-adjacent working class Egyptian genre mahraganat. It's a stunner of jagged synth lines that, in spite of its influences, feels like an electronic cousin to doom metal riffs. "Six As Oil" is just as intrepid. Abdelwahed slings around a fugue of subterranean drones, sustained sirens and tight snares to make for a deliciously anti-authoritarian rallying cry. -Whitney Wei
  
  Listen:
  Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify
- Nous'klaer Audio
  Oceanic - Choral Feeling
  
  Why do we sing? It remains one of the great mysteries of human evolution. But to open your mouth, vibrate your vocal chords and produce musical tones through exalting air is at the core of being human. To do so in unison with others is a tradition that can be traced back time immemorial. On his debut album, Oceanic reimagines choral music for the 21st century, chopping, warping and distorting the voices of 30 friends to create Choral Feeling. Equal parts odd and profound, the vocals are often distorted beyond recognition, whether drawn out into haunting melodies or woven into drum patterns through syncopated rhythms. Oberman stays true to choral music's antiquated roots, producing a capacious vision of human connection, one that is mysterious, kaleidoscopic and fundamentally beautiful. -Bella Aquilina
  
  Listen:
  Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify
- Rabid Records
  Fever Ray - Radical Romantics
  
  Fever Ray's third album is probably the closest that Karin Dreijer's solo project has come to sounding like The Knife, and that's no bad thing. Across ten outré pop tracks that range from the political to the almost hilariously personal (like when they threaten their child's bully on "Even It Out"), Dreijer belts out some of their catchiest hooks over neon-hued production from Trent Reznor, Nídia, Peder Mannerfelt and more. Where Dreijer's past work has revelled in alien unintelligibility, Radical Romantics puts its journey of self-discovery, emotion and passion out there for everyone to see, in all its pseudo-tropical, plastic-palm-tree and artificial beach glory. -Andrew Ryce
  
  Listen:
  Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify
- Peak Oil
  Purelink - Signs
  
  Signs, the stunning debut album from Chicago trio Purelink, occupies a nook all of its own in the broad realm of chill-out music—too feathery to be IDM, yet too alert to be ambient. This dubby netherworld, all gentle donks and silky earworms, evokes masters like Jan Jelinek and Lowtec. There's tension and dialogue. In short, don't be fooled into thinking this is background music—you'll be sitting bolt upright within minutes, marvelling at the wisps, wafts and occasional distant chime. It's all too beautiful to ignore. -Carlos Hawthorn
  
  Listen:
  Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify

Album of the Year

Live From Earth