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Posted by Woony on Dec-09-2017 16:14:

TA best of 2017

Since there are no RA lists this year, we're going to have to do this ourselves, no?

I bought relatively little new dancefloor 12"s this year, lots of uninspired mud out there right now in technoland. House is doing better, I like a lot of the newer electro/oldschool tech house influenced stuff, but a lot it is just "nice", nothing I need to have. That said, I thought it was quite a good year for non-dancefloor electronic LPs overall, no defining classics g but lots of nice little ones. I get the feeling that the LP has come back into fashion and lots of people are doing albums now.

Some of my favorites (holy crap, there were a LOT of LPs this year) in no particular order. You guys better contribute, this took me at least half an hour

Kara-Lis Coverdale ‎� Grafts
- This one kinda blew my mind more than anything I've heard in a long time. Incredibly inventive modern classical with great, variyng structures, amazing sound design and intricate harmonies.

3kz - Parallel Reflections
- Best straight up techno LP this year. Super classic sound, very deep, very detroit-y but still manages to sound quite fresh compared to a lot of what's coming out these days.

Deepchord - Auratones
- I'm always ready for more deepchord. Nothing revolutionary but his sound design is continously evolving in little ways. These tracks in particular are quite heavy on electro-acoustic sounds. The LP overall is quite upbeat, which is a nice change of pace.

Nathan - Fake-Providence
- Prime TA material, super melodic, arp-based IDM. A bit noodly in places but some very nice sequences and drum programming is sweet aswell.

Terekke - Plant Age
- Classic Terekke, warm, hazy, pillow-y ambient & dub house.

High Plains - Cinderland
- I'm always a sucker for anything with a cello. Produced by Loscil, quiet modern classical for the cold and dark season.

Shed - The Final Experiment
- This somehow didn't get a lot of critical attention but I think it's one of his best LPs. Very obviously inspired by 90s chill out rooms and various strains of early 90s ambient dance music, almost cheesy sometimes but still tasteful.

Claro - Intelecto-Exhilarator
- Classic Claro Intelecto in various styles and tones, a bit more gritty and harder-edged than his previous LPs.

SW - Untitled
- Super oldschool, super warm, super lo-fi, yet still super inventive. A lot of the tracks combines 90s jungle and classic house in a way that's quite unique.

Varg - Gore-Tex-City
- Varied shades of warm, gritty sounding melancholic ambient techno. Some of the collaborations are quite bizarre, one track features the auto-tuned meme-rapper Yung Lean over a bleak techno track. "Blue Line" is an amazing combination of understated ambient techno and modern R&B, one of my favorite tracks this year.

Franck Kartell- Alaska
- Sweet, melodic, classic electro with some ambient touches.

The Marx Trukker - Peripheral Whiles
- Sweet classic cut&paste IDM, sounds a lot like Jan Jelinek ca. 2000. Lots of nice, warm chords and acoustic sounds.

Posted by AlphaStarred on Dec-10-2017 03:14:

Posted by Woony on Dec-10-2017 10:50:

I'm not into that drone-y atmospheric style at all anymore, by now it's been totally played IMO. I mean, it's not like there aren't ANY good techno 12"s coming out right now, but looking at the hardwax news every week, the rate of fodder has definitely increased compared to 2-3 years ago, and pretty much everyone I talk to (including multiple professional DJs) tends to agree.

Posted by SYSTEM-J on Dec-10-2017 12:16:

I did practically the opposite to you. I don't think I can name more than 10 new LPs I heard in 2017, of any genre, but I must have bought something like 400 tunes for DJing in the last 12 months. Not on vinyl, obviously!

It's been a blinding year for melodic dance music. Prog is back. Even the likes of Mixmag have been pushing upcoming names like Khen and Cristoph, although they feel the need to dress it up in bullshit terms like "slow-burning techno" to convince people it's cool. Patrice Baumel was surely the big star of the year. He remixed everyone and everything, and played about three separate gigs at ADE alone. 2018 is going to be even bigger for this stuff, I can tell from the parties I've already got lined up in February and March. Trends seem to last around 3-4 years in dance music, and I think 2017-19 will be a high watermark for the kind of dance music I love.

Elsewhere, the retro-revival house that was big in previous years seems to have mutated into this new wave of god-awful UK "tech" house - think Patrick Topping, Solardo, CamelPhat and all the other pricks cluttering up the Beatport Top 100. This sound has been massive in the UK over the last year or so. It's like handbag house all over again, but for the snapback bro massive. Fucking gash.

Not entirely sure what's going on in techno, really. Its continual popularity now seems to be having the inevitable dilution effect. There now appears to be a "techno mainstream" that has become colonised by huge breakdowns and post-Drumcode big room shit. The only techno night I went to in 2017 was that Blind Observatory one, and he was admittedly brilliant. I will say, though, that 3kz album is top notch, Woony. Good share.

Posted by Sykonee on Dec-10-2017 14:46:

As always, most of my purchases were of things from the past instead of current items. Was a little more on the ball this year though, in that some of the labels I've grown fond of have ridiculously low roll-outs of physical releases. Still feel like a 'Best Of [Year]' list turns out more accurate a couple years after the fact though. Anyhow...

STUFF I LIKED:
Alphaxone & ProtoU - Stardust
Astral Waves - Genesis
Autumn Of Communion - Metal
Bicep - Bicep
Gorillaz - Humanz (Special Edition)
John Shima - Elements Unknown

STUFF I WILL PROBABLY LIKE, WHEN I PROPERLY SIT DOWN WITH IT:
36 - Black Soma
L.S.G. - Double Vision
Perturbator - New Model
Carbon Based Lifeforms - Derelicts
Cryostatis - Between Static And Distance
Marnie - Strange Words And Weird Wars

Posted by SYSTEM-J on Dec-10-2017 15:20:

I completely forgot about those Bicep and CBL albums. Maybe I have heard more than 10 long players all year, after all. Didn't really rate Bicep - there was a lack of sonic detail for a home-listening record. I've only heard the CBL album once, but I remember it being an uneven meander between the sublime and the ultra-naff.

Posted by trancedanne on Dec-10-2017 15:34:

Pretty much anything from John 00 Fleming, Airwave and You Are My Salvation. Jaytech, Matt Fax and Thrillseekers did some nice stuff as well.

Posted by Woony on Dec-10-2017 16:10:

quote:
Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
Not entirely sure what's going on in techno, really. Its continual popularity now seems to be having the inevitable dilution effect. There now appears to be a "techno mainstream" that has become colonised by huge breakdowns and post-Drumcode big room shit. The only techno night I went to in 2017 was that Blind Observatory one, and he was admittedly brilliant. I will say, though, that 3kz album is top notch, Woony. Good share.

Kaelan from 3Kz is a ridicously talented producer. You'd probably enjoy his 2030 stuff aswell - sounds super first wave. https://www.discogs.com/2030-D%C3%A...P/master/884635 It's a sound 90% of techno producers couldn't even make if they'd tried because they lack a basic understanding of harmony. And in addition, a big reason why so much current techno sucks is because modular synths and desktop monosynths are HUGE right now, everyone under the sun is buying that crap. And since they are monophonic (only one note at a time, ie. no chords), they just lend themselves to this lame atonal sequenced noodling without any advanced harmonic structures. There are so many producers ripping off the riffs from the early Regis records that it's almost become it's own subgenre. Take the first three tracks on this record, a bunch of producers that used to do good stuff in the past and now it's just unsinspired, drone-y bleeps and bloops with absolutely nothing happening. I don't know who this stuff is supposed to appeal to, it's not even going to destroy a dancefloor or anything -
https://hardwax.com/78818/various-artists/nonnative-09/

And yeah, there definitely is a techno "underground-mainstream" now with absolute crap DJs like Charlotte de Witte getting huge out of nowhere. Big kickdrum with reverb, hihat with some reverb, lots of white noise, bit of acid and same cheesy vocal or rave samples. Yawwwwwn.

Posted by SYSTEM-J on Dec-10-2017 17:19:

Heh. I saw about fifteen minutes of Charlotte De Witte in a tiny (maximum 200 capacity) club in Amsterdam and she was actually playing the kind of warm, chunky tech house you like. A little bit Terry Lee Brown Junior. We didn't stick around though, and when I subsequently checked her out on SC it was much as you've described. I suppose those were her most intimate small-room records that I heard.

Posted by Woony on Dec-10-2017 18:21:

I find that hard to believe She seems to have absolutely zero range as a DJ. Even her fans are calling her out on youtube for playing almost the same tracks verbatim every time, including like 50% of her own tracks which I've heard are supposedly ghost produced. EDM seems to have really lowered the bar for what is acceptable DJing since people seem to defend her on the basis that she's really mixing!!, as if chaining linear techno tools on CDJs one after another like a house DJ was some sort of grand achievement.

There is another belgian chick, Amelie Lens, doing kind of the the exact same thing but at least a bit better. I skipped through a 8 hour set of her, it was acceptable but she also has zero range - who the fuck wants to hear almost 8 hours of the exact same kind of techno? There seems to be a whole generation of kids conditioned to identifiy techno with only this one exact sound. I guess the same thing happens every time a certain sound makes it big? It seems emblematic for much of todadays underground-mainstream clubbing culture though, where crowds come to hear one specific thing and aren't willing to take anything else.

Posted by AlphaStarred on Dec-10-2017 20:14:

quote:
Originally posted by Woony
I'm not into that drone-y atmospheric style at all anymore, by now it's been totally played IMO.

Well, I like it, especially when it's done right, much like anything else. To each their own. I do agree, however, that the rate of fodder has definitely seemed to increase, but there are still plenty of new releases coming out with at least one good/decent track, and it's nice when they're available digitally in such cases (Arts and its sublabels come to mind).

There has been some decent stuff from Pinkman, as well, but I don't really like the direction they've been heading in lately (more of the same new wave/ebm, which has been increasingly popular this year).

This one from early 2017 is nice and different:

This relatively obscure release is nice too: https://www.discogs.com/aaaa-Jazz-D/release/10966026

Posted by tranceCDs on Dec-10-2017 20:51:

Airwave - Amber Sky

I can't find that version he plays at clubs though, is it a live edit? It's the one with that insane extended melody towards the end.

Posted by evo8 on Dec-12-2017 12:29:

quote:
Originally posted by Woony
I find that hard to believe She seems to have absolutely zero range as a DJ. Even her fans are calling her out on youtube for playing almost the same tracks verbatim every time, including like 50% of her own tracks which I've heard are supposedly ghost produced. EDM seems to have really lowered the bar for what is acceptable DJing since people seem to defend her on the basis that she's really mixing!!, as if chaining linear techno tools on CDJs one after another like a house DJ was some sort of grand achievement.

There is another belgian chick, Amelie Lens, doing kind of the the exact same thing but at least a bit better. I skipped through a 8 hour set of her, it was acceptable but she also has zero range - who the fuck wants to hear almost 8 hours of the exact same kind of techno? There seems to be a whole generation of kids conditioned to identifiy techno with only this one exact sound. I guess the same thing happens every time a certain sound makes it big? It seems emblematic for much of todadays underground-mainstream clubbing culture though, where crowds come to hear one specific thing and aren't willing to take anything else.

not sure how she has become a "big name", her tracks are really bad

Posted by evo8 on Dec-12-2017 12:30:

quote:
Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
I did practically the opposite to you. I don't think I can name more than 10 new LPs I heard in 2017, of any genre, but I must have bought something like 400 tunes for DJing in the last 12 months. Not on vinyl, obviously!

It's been a blinding year for melodic dance music. Prog is back. Even the likes of Mixmag have been pushing upcoming names like Khen and Cristoph, although they feel the need to dress it up in bullshit terms like "slow-burning techno" to convince people it's cool. Patrice Baumel was surely the big star of the year. He remixed everyone and everything, and played about three separate gigs at ADE alone. 2018 is going to be even bigger for this stuff, I can tell from the parties I've already got lined up in February and March. Trends seem to last around 3-4 years in dance music, and I think 2017-19 will be a high watermark for the kind of dance music I love.

Elsewhere, the retro-revival house that was big in previous years seems to have mutated into this new wave of god-awful UK "tech" house - think Patrick Topping, Solardo, CamelPhat and all the other pricks cluttering up the Beatport Top 100. This sound has been massive in the UK over the last year or so. It's like handbag house all over again, but for the snapback bro massive. Fucking gash.

Not entirely sure what's going on in techno, really. Its continual popularity now seems to be having the inevitable dilution effect. There now appears to be a "techno mainstream" that has become colonised by huge breakdowns and post-Drumcode big room shit. The only techno night I went to in 2017 was that Blind Observatory one, and he was admittedly brilliant. I will say, though, that 3kz album is top notch, Woony. Good share.

interesting what you say about prog being back, any mixes you could recommend? ill check out this Patrice Baumel guy

Posted by SYSTEM-J on Dec-12-2017 13:09:

(Obligatory)

Posted by evo8 on Dec-12-2017 14:01:

thanks ^^^

Posted by Woony on Dec-12-2017 14:44:

Isn't that stuff much more "neotrance" 2.0 rather than "new prog" though? A lot of these records sound like they could've come out on Kompakt in 2007.

Posted by SYSTEM-J on Dec-12-2017 15:50:

I'm going to put it out there that I don't think you've listened to the full 5 hours of music I just posted before making that statement.

Posted by Woony on Dec-12-2017 16:32:

quote:
Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
I'm going to put it out there that I don't think you've listened to the full 5 hours of music I just posted before making that statement.

Obviously not but I did skip through all of them.

Posted by wotyzoid on Dec-12-2017 17:10:

Whenever I hear jack talk about prog

*zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz*

Posted by evo8 on Dec-12-2017 17:16:

quote:
Originally posted by SYSTEM-J

(Obligatory)

Guy J mix is Guy J, reminds me why i never bother with his stuff anymore, Cattaneo/Warren i flicked through didnt really hear anything ear catching but will give it another go
Listened to the whole Khen mix - ok but nothing interesting

your own mix im half way through and by far the most interesting, really like that track that drops with the robotic vocals
too much prog stuff is just a wall of melodies, where are the weird techy basslines and grooves?
Woony i liked some stuff in your list, do you have any recent mixes?

Posted by SYSTEM-J on Dec-12-2017 18:29:

quote:
Originally posted by evo8
Guy J mix is Guy J, reminds me why i never bother with his stuff anymore, Cattaneo/Warren i flicked through didnt really hear anything ear catching but will give it another go
Listened to the whole Khen mix - ok but nothing interesting

Well, I'm glad you like my mix. If you don't like the other stuff, fair enough. My main point was that the style has resurged notably in the last year or so - you're hearing it on Radio 1, you're hearing it pushed by Mixmag, you're hearing big DJs of other styles start to mix it in, you're seeing increased bookings for a lot of the DJs (and not just the capital-L Legends either). I've enjoyed it in the last year and I've really enjoyed the fact I can play a set based on stuff that's only a month old, rather than scraping around the bottom of the barrel for tunes like it was only a few years ago.

quote:
Originally posted by Woony
Obviously not but I did skip through all of them.

I think it's pretty obvious if you listen to the full sets that they're not 2007 neo-trance. Granted, there's definitely a cross-over with contemporary melodic Kompakt stuff, which is one of the reasons why progressive is sneaking back into the sets of people who would never call themselves "prog". And equally, the better prog DJs do mix it up with tech house and techno. However, if you look at where the majority of the tunes are coming from, it's South America and Israel, it's producers being pushed by the likes of Hernan Cattaneo. There's little shared lineage with German neo-trance, which was effectively "arpeggiated minimal". You won't find many of the same producers from that era, and you won't find many people citing that era as an influence.

Posted by Lira on Dec-12-2017 21:47:

quote:
Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
Not entirely sure what's going on in techno, really.

Lazy pretentious people have made it so slow it's no longer dance music, that's what! I mean, if you're going to make music under 125 BPM, at least have the decency of ditching the 4/4 beat and pack some energy into those damn long bars, like this:

5. Rome B! Ft. KNYD - Booyah

It's just above 100 BPM, but this is dance music. The slow phasing in the beginning reminiscent of Big Beat in the 90s. The cheesy vocal sample. The booming bassline. The bitches twerking. Very yes.

4. Above & Beyond - Tightrope

The chord progression is quite interesting in this one. A bit too slow, but not so slow as to be boring. Besides this is a trance music website, so I'm contractually obliged to throw a trancer in the list.

3. Moby - Porcelain (Pola & Bryson Remix)

Drum'n'bass is the last refuge of descent fast-paced dance music, and this remix of Pola & Bryson is proof that classics are supposed to be chopped, remixed, and tinkered with until they get better.

It's usually hit or miss. Mostly miss, sure. But then, there are hits like this one.

2. Delta Heavy - Gargantua

The one good thing to come out of Interstellar, and I'm not even sure this has got bugger all to do with it. It's got all the good bits from the film (the musical goodness) minus Michael Caine and none of the bad ones (everything else). I can only pray someone will do something similar to Arrival, if only I could remember anything about it.

1. Noisia - Get Deaded (Bassnectar Remix)

This is what they should be playing in high schools all over the globe to have those poor drowsy students wake the hell up. This would be the end of the world as we know it. Social cohesion would break down. Confused freshmen and weaklings would have sound speakers mount them and call them daddy. But, isn't it what electronic dance music is supposed to do in the first place?

Incidentally, that's also my TOP 5 for this year.

0. Leo Justi - Swipe It Off

There are three things we Brazilians are good at:

1. Playing football
7. Getting trashed by Germany in football
3. Making the soundtrack for both #1 and #7

This is #3. Also, I couldn't really choose just one track by S.P.Y and Urbandawn and the other Brazilians from Hospital Records, so I had to leave them out, but I'll just add this honourable mention here because I wanted to share a song of my people. And this is it. If you play that blue disc in our flag backwards, that's what you get.

Posted by Salegon on Dec-12-2017 22:52:

Track was re-released in 2017, so I guess that counts

Posted by Mr Game+Watch on Dec-13-2017 01:19:

This year was solid but there wasn't that one tune that I became obsessed with like say "Hideaway" or "Yoohoo" in 2014 or "Hiding" last year... one thing that I noticed is that retro trance and prog sounds are a bit more prominent in recent times, and some of the songs on my list definitely have that feel.

My #1, loving that piano riff:

It's like Wild Arms music meets chill/tropical house:

Dark and techy with a cool melody:

Feels like a throwback to the darker side of 90's trance:

Good to bob your head to, feels fresh and unique:

Some of the best trance I've heard in years, very reminiscent of Ferry's work under the Albion guise:

More quality throwback sounds from Bicep:

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