Futureproofing #8: The Best Of 2024

A non-exhaustive list of my favorite songs and albums of 2024.

Edited by Tom Gledhill.

It’s finally time to do this thing. Below are some of—not all—my favourite releases of the year, in no particular order, except for Regularfantasy very purposefully at #1. It’s mostly electronic music, since that’s what you come here for, and if I dipped too much into other worlds the list would be even more unwieldy and rambling. Also, Cindy Lee, Jessica Pratt and Loidis would be near the top here also, but I already wrote about them recently.

Without further ado:

Regularfantasy - “So Sweet” (Spriitzz Remix) [Self-released]

I don’t care that this is a remix of a two year-old track, or that the remix was floating around in 2023 before its official release. This is probably my track of the year—I don’t know what else it would be, at least in terms of dance music. Regularfantasy’s original was a sweet bedroom dance-pop love song, like what a house track might sound like if released on K Records. In Spray’s hands (under his Ibiza-friendly Spriitzz alias) it becomes a Eurodance monster, taking the vocal cut-ups of the original as a launch pad for a glittering track that captures the torturous heart-in-mouth surge of an intense crush. Regularfantasy’s vocals are simple and plain, with cute lyrical images—”still wearing those worn out gym shoes,” “Are you made out of glue? Because I’m chemically bonded to you”—buoyed by a syncopated bassline and an ecstatic synth riff that sounds like it can barely contain itself. The radio edit makes for a good pop song, but the Club Mix is well-paced through peaks and valleys, bringing to mind a perfect, loved-up dance floor that doesn’t actually exist. “So Sweet” makes me wish it did.

Jack J - Blue Desert [Mood Hut]

This album wins the award for the fastest, most intense, "what is this?" reaction of any record I heard this year. (It worked on my friends, too—I remember playing it at a loud, chatty party and someone asked me what was playing within the first 30 seconds.) The lazy breakbeat groove of “Wrong Again” has an irresistible laid-back coolness, coasting on its own downward momentum like it’s tumbling down the stairs in slow motion. It’s a bit of a sad song, but it grooves hard, which is true of most of Blue Desert, particularly the “Nowhere Man”-isms of “Foolish Man” to the ‘80s Alan Parsons strut of “At Last.” The album is quintessentially ‘80s, and some of the touches are startlingly vintage (check that weird guitar-vocal-synth riff on “Red Cloud”), but it also sounds very Jack J, the logical conclusion of tracks like “Thirstin,” which were just steps away from being pop. Sure, his last album Opening The Door was the first big step in this direction, but where that one worshipped Arthur Russell in meek bedroom pop form, Blue Desert says everything with its chest, clothed in the funk-soul-disco-lounge grooves that have inspired Mood Hut since the very beginning. The difference is now they’re making the kind of records that used to be their influences.

Midland - Fragments Of Us [GRADED]

Structured like a rock opera that actually works—and isn’t rock at all—Fragments Of Us might be the year’s most poignant concept album. After years of churning out club tracks, and through club gigs,, Midland’s debut LP brings him back to the crossover electronica he started out with. (Remember that 2010 FACT Mix that launched his career?) The result is a thoughtful interrogation of queer history, including the good moments and the bad—there are monologues from David Wojnarowicz, Stereogamous’s Jonny Seymour, Horse Meat Disco’s Luke Howard and more, which tell happy and sad stories of queer people present and past. These spoken word moments sit beside house tracks sticky with the sweat of a club basement, and pregnant with the tension of furtive looks across the room. There’s even an Arthur Russell-sampling track, done both respectfully and beautifully (and with permission from Russell’s estate). But the real key to Fragments Of Us is how it acknowledges the tragedy of our people’s history, but also the happiness, mirth and, yes, sexuality, that makes it a living, enduring triumph.

Beatrice M. - “Take A Sip” / Carré - “Air Sign” [SPE:C]

I’m only grouping these because they’re on the same label. Both are from emerging dubstep artists who have different takes on the genre revival. With “Take A Sip,” French producer Beatrice M. makes cavernous dubstep that leaves space for unexpected little touches—wispy flicks of synth touch the far ends of the stereo spectrum and the bass growls land at unexpected times, with a twitchy drum pattern that sounds borrowed from drum & bass rather than the staggered stomp of DMZ. Carré (full disclosure: she came to my Thanksgiving dinner) also makes spacious dubstep, but in a sexier, Apple Pips-y way, with chrome-plated techno chords smearing the soundscape over a ridiculous pulsating bassline that powers forward like the Energizer Bunny. It’s the kind of dubstep that elicits hilarious moves on the dance floor, all crooked arms and claw hands.

Sabrina Carpenter - Short n’ Sweet [Island]

I tried to leave pop music out of this list for the most part, but I think this album deserves special mention. First, Carpenter is a sharp and witty lyricist—her insults are hilarious, her come-ons both clever and lewd—and the production is gorgeous. It sounds like a late ‘70s California pop rock album, both in style and in sonics. This is uncommonly lush, rich pop music that ranges from country to faux-bluegrass to raunchy rock. Almost every song is a highlight, but special moments include the totally random key change in the second verse of “Please Please Please” the evil smile that lurks behind every word of “Taste,” the gleeful “Big Yellow Taxi” ripoff “Coincidence,” and the way she eviscerates her lovers in “Sharpest Tool” and “Slim Pickins.” It’s the opposite of brain rot, and there’s not a moment wasted across its refreshingly brief 36 minutes.

Kim Gordon - The Collective [Matador]

The first time I heard “BYE BYE,” I thought it was terrible. Worse than a joke. Even Kim Gordon’s eternal cool couldn’t make it cool. I gave up and wrote it off as late-career desperation. Then, about a month later, on my honeymoon in Tokyo, I heard it at Bar Nightingale, sandwiched between noise tracks. The flicker of recognition and that ultra-heavy kick drum made me think, “Oh yeah, I love this song.” Then Kim Gordon started with her travel checklist and I was shocked—wait, I actually did love this song! In some ways, “Bye Bye” is both the weakest and the strongest track on the album, because it’s both absurd and quotidian. There are weirder tracks on The Collective, like “I’m A Man” (“So what if I like the big truck / Giddy up”) or the bonus track “Bangin’ On The Freeway” (self-explanatory), but all of it holds together thanks to Gordon’s one-of-a-kind swagger. The best SoundCloud rap album of the year is from a 71 year-old rock star. And “BYE BYE” rules in spite of itself.

Bolis Pupul - Letter To Yu [DEEWEE/Because Music]

An album I wish got more attention this year, Letter To Yu is a solo effort from an artist best known for his collaborations with Charlotte Adigéry. Where those records leave me a little cold, Letter To Yu is coursing with warmth, the EBM rhythms rippling like a heartbeat through an artery. The album is something of a love letter to his late grandmother and an attempt to connect to his Hong Kong roots, it’s full of references to his childhood and field recordings of Hong Kong that somehow don’t come off as hackneyed. It’s half vintage and half ultra-modern, and 100 percent captivating. 

Nilufer Yanya - My Method Actor [Ninja Tune]

A quantum leap that turns the ongoing ‘90s indie rock revival on its head by shooting straight for FM radio. Nearly every song here is great—huge hooks, sung laconically, with just the hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth—but I’ll just zero in on one. “Like I Say (I Runaway)” switches from bouncy acoustic guitar to fuzz-rock explosion before snapping back into its taut, lilting rhythm. Yanya sounds cool as a cucumber throughout, even when she’s angry or sad, and her voice is percussive, subdued and cutting all at once, and each track is a storm in a teacup building towards a climax that never splashes over the side of the glass. The slide guitar that blooms around the chorus of “Binding?” The Frippertronics buzz that momentarily blankets the underwater ballad “Call It Love?” Incredible.

Tristan Arp - a pool, a portal [Wisdom Teeth]

Tristan Arp occupies an in-between space in dance music that might be precarious if he wasn’t so damn good at it. His work, both club-oriented and downtempo, revolves around biomimicry—o.e. making nature sounds from electronic synthesis. a pool, a portal sits firmly in ambient territory, and features some of his most beautiful work in this regard, meant to imagine a world where nature and technology live in harmony instead of conflict. There are two ten-minute long slabs of beatless beauty, but the record’s best track is “Invisible Cities.” Imagine if Erased Tapes was actually good, and you’re close—beatific, beat-driven music that mixes bright synth sounds with icy piano and heartwarming melodies. It does almost sound like a world where everything is in its right place.

Clara La San - Made Mistakes [CLS Music]

Clara La San surfaces every once in a while like a prized fish poking its head up to the surface just to disappear back into the inky depths again, but this year it seems like she’s back for good. In addition to the redone Good Mourning mixtape, this year she dropped Made Mistakes, a smouldering mini-album that combines the sultry side of Kelela with the darksided sing-songy lilt of early Drake. Highlights include the breathy mecha sex-jam “All I Wanna Do” and the mad as hell but still delicately floating “Upset With Ya.”

T. Williams - Raves Of Future Past [Purple City]

T. Williams is a legend, and I try not to use that word lightly. An OG grime producer and a pioneer of the UK dubstep scene’s move towards house—with tracks like “Heartbeat”—he’s been everywhere in the London scene and done it all. Raves of Future Past is his way of looking back at it all with hindsight—if hindsight could be even stronger than 20/20 vision. Armed with an Elektron Digitakt, he delivers a rough, tumble and no-nonsense journey through grime, garage, UK funky and Afro house. I wrote about it here.

Kim Ann Foxman - "We Are Rhythm (Spray Remix)" [SELF:TIMER]

Kim Ann Foxman had a banner year musically, marred only by a homophobic attack that makes her style of house—sexy, flamboyant, head-over-heels—feel all the more powerful. Her We Are Rhythm EP featured two cuts of springy ‘90s house, bolstered by a Spray remix that, as with Regularfantasy’s song, blasts the original into the stratosphere. The Berlin producer pushes “We Are Rhythm” from '93 to '99 with a pacey kick-snare pattern and burping bassline that could have fit on John Digweed’s Los Angeles mix CD. With Foxman’s insistent vocal hook and a sunglasses-on-the-dancefloor synth lead that comes in after two minutes, it’s a decadent embarrassment of riches. (Also check out the debut album from her band Pleasure Planet, which blends late-’70s electronic funk with trancey touches, including a blatant and lovely Kraftwerk homage.) 

Sarah Davachi - The Head As Form’d in The Crier’s Choir [Late Music]

It feels like Sarah Davachi is in an arms race with herself, and at some point it’s gotta end. How much longer, deeper, and more process-based can you go before you lose sight of the music entirely? Thankfully, she hasn’t. The Head As Form’d in The Crier’s Choir, which she describes as merely a “supplement” to her last two albums, is actually as rich as any of her other records, and continues her incremental steps away from single instrument drone pieces. “Possente Spirto” is a mesmerizing blur of brass and violas, or the way three (four?) different players intertwine and unfurl on “Trio For A Ground,” or the unsettling microtones of “Res Sub Rosa.” And it wouldn’t be a Davachi record without some pipe organ, which shows up on “Prologo”—practically gabber by Davachi standards, moving through notes every few bars and creating a distinct, if mournful, chord progression. Every time Sarah Davachi drops a new hour-and-a-half-plus album of drone music, she finds new niches in a sound that, to most people, might seem obdurate and opaque.

Kali Malone - All Life Long [Ideologic Organ]

Speaking of pipe organ, another artist who can’t seem to stop expanding her oeuvre with new, massive slabs of drone is Swedish composer Kali Malone, who generally works on a more, erm, epic scale than Davachi. All Life Long features plenty of pipe organ, an instrument that Malone has a preternatural knack for—it’s as if you can hear her lifeblood coursing through those pipes, from her fingers and through the keys—but it also boasts denser arrangements for voice and brass, which, like Davachi’s record, see her moving more towards straight-up melodies and something approaching early music. All Life Long is emotional but keeps you at arm’s length, chilly but never ice-cold. 

Wrecked Lightship - Antiposition [Peak Oil]

How do you make dub techno interesting in 2024? Ask Appleblim, who teams up Adam Wedge as Wrecked Lightship for dubby electronic music that splits the difference between hypnagogia and the kind of hi-def textures that Los Angeles label Peak Oil has made its name on. The music has a live, improvised feel that lends hints of chaos—like how the choppy breakbeat on “Sunken Skies” sounds like it’s about to break from behind the fourth wall and into your living room. Touching on downtempo, drum & bass, and uh, “bass music,” Antiposition isn’t exactly techno, but it’s dub techno in spirit.

Ghost Dubs - Damaged [Pressure]

While we’re on the subject of dub techno—why are Germans so good at it? Here’s a guy whose other alias is “Jah Schulz” making an incredible album of dub experiments with depth and, dare I say, soul. Just listen to “Hot Wired”: a vaguely exotic, Augustus Pablo-style melody twirls through the hulking dub rhythm, with a bassline that almost walks away from the track but instead endows it with some serious funk as it slouches towards catharsis. Now imagine a whole album of that. Paired with techno-leaning tracks like the lumbering “The Regulator,” it makes for an album that explores the outer reaches of dub with respect, reverence and a lot of bassweight.

Yatta - PALM WINE [PTP]

A tribute to the Sierra Leonean music the artist grew up on, PALM WINE is a religious journey, collection of torch songs and experimental opus all in one. I wrote about it—and interviewed YATTA—here.

Nia Archives - Silence Is Loud [HIJINXX]

Nia Archives had an incredible 2024, and deservedly so. More than any artist, even PinkPantheress, she embodies modern drum & bass’s crossover success and pop-adjacent TikTok popularity, and she does it with artful finesse. Silence Is Loud is impressive because it’s straight-up enough for a mainstream crowd but weird and dense enough for the junglists.

Drummy - “Steep” [Kindergarten Records]

In what might have been the best year for dubstep since 2010, Drummy’s “Steep” stood out alongside the aforementioned highlights from Carré and Beatrice M. It’s a a fairly straightforward swung-out banger, but it's the textures that make it: a lead bass synth that wobbles like a soap bubble, and a low-end churn that might make you feel queasy on a real good system. And us old dubstep heads know that the best of this music makes you physically sick.

Autre Ne Veut - Love, Guess Who?? [Self-released]

This album completes a trilogy about the effect of time on close relationships, with Arthur Ashin’s nervous-tic R&B in finer form than ever. Where past songs had a spiderweb-like structure, Love, Guess Who?? takes its R&B influences seriously, both the ‘60s variety and the '00s variety. These songs are tight and succinct, with the hooks landing right in time, driven home via good old-fashioned repetition, with some uncomfortably honest—some might say real—lyrics about dissolving relationships cutting through the glitzy production.

Leonce - System Of Objects [Morph Tracks]

Sometimes things just fall into place at the very right time, and that was Leonce’s debut album this year. Put short: this is 2024-style techno with swagger and groove, informed by East Coast club music and other American regional styles—one of those fusions so seamless you don’t really hear the constituent ingredients unless you really look for them. I wrote about it here.

Carrier - Neither Curve Nor Edge / In Spectra [Carrier]

I’ve always felt an affinity for Guy Brewer’s work, from the emotional drum & bass and stone-faced techno to the straight-up noise tapes, but something about his newest project Carrier tickles my fancy in a very specific way. It’s a mix of drum & bass, dub techno, and fussy electronics that manages to be funky while also completely nerdy and weird. I wrote about it here.

CCL - Plot Twist [!K7]

Freewheeling, careening out-of-control prog and drum & bass that feels as expansive and full of potential as CCL’s DJ sets. I wrote about it here.

Heavee - Unleash [Hyperdub]

An RPG-inspired footwork album that actually comes with a real videogame. Visionary and fun. I wrote about it here.

Blood Incantation - Absolute Elsewhere [Century Media]

I didn’t keep up with metal as well as I wanted to this year, though this album barely deserves the genre segregation that tag implies. This music is bursting at the seams with inspiration and excitement, two side-long epics that mixes ‘70s prog with death metal in an utterly perfect way. I wrote about it here.

Perc - The Cut Off [Perc Trax]

If Dozzy is good at making techno albums that reach outside the form for inspiration, Perc is great at just making a fucking racket and pummeling your head in, but doing so in a way that stands up for over an hour without getting boring. The Cut Off is hard techno at its best, and angriest, ignoring the sugar rush speed that’s fast going out of fashion in more mainstream techno circles to focus on the EBM and industrial-influenced, black-leather style that will never actually go out of fashion. Hi-hats sharp enough to cut your head off, corrosive acid leads, eerie Throbbing Gristle-esque downtempo—it’s Perc, and it’s spectacular. I wrote more about it here.

Priori - This but More [NAFF]

Priori has been one of my favourite producers since he ditched the name “Francis Oak,” with a blend of trance, prog and breakbeat that very specifically appeals to my sensibilities. He’s an ace at dance music—just check out his incredible Dekmantel Podcast, also from this year—but you can tell he’s been itching for something more expansive, and This but More is his step into capital-E electronica. It even has a spiritual sequel to “Little Fluffy Clouds.” With a cast of collaborators who were often on a million other records this year, James K and Ben Bondy among them, This But More expanded Priori’s universe into something richer, almost tactile. I wrote about it here.

naemi - Dust Devil [3XL]

Definitely a contender for the album I listened to the most this year. I wrote about it here.

ZULI - Lambda [Subtext]

One of the best club producers in the world goes kinda-ambient, and it rules. (It’s also haunting). I wrote about it here.

Rrose x Polygonia - Dermatology [EAUX]

Classic headfuck techno of the highest order. I wrote about it here

Dr. Rubinstein - Rubi's Acid Spa [Uppers and Downers]

Bold, colourful and dynamic acid tunes that color outside the lines of techno. I wrote about it here.

Taylor Swift - “Guilty as Sin?” [Republic]

Remember when I said that “So Sweet” was probably my favorite track of the year? Surprise! If you’ve made it this far, congratulations for reaching my innermost thoughts. I don’t write about Taylor very much because I find her hard to place on the overall musical spectrum—she’s bigger than Jesus, her music is both amazing and cringe at the same time, and I love it too much to be objective in a way that would be interesting to most of you. Her 2024 album, The Tortured Poets Department, is not her best, but “Guilty As Sin?” is easily one of her finest tracks of all time.

With its deliciously Catholic title (and question mark!), “Guilty As Sin?" has all of the Taylor trademarks: a trail of breadcrumbs leading to a specific ex, outside musical references, a small but incredible vocal inflection change on the third and final chorus.It’s one of her greatest opening lines ever: “Drowning in the Blue Nile / He sent me ‘Downtown Lights’ / I hadn’t heard it in a while” is the kind of everyday deadpan lyric that makes you turn your head—and not just because she says she was already familiar with the Blue Nile. (Fun fact: Taylor Swift is a god-tier music nerd.) It’s the beginning of a track that captures temptation in a bottle and then sits with it, letting the intrusive thoughts win until she’s making herself feel bad for an affair that hasn’t even happened and then trying to justify it anyway: “Somebody told me there’s no such thing as bad thoughts / Only your actions talk.”

Her voice is clear and commanding, and the melodramatic lyrics of throwing her own body into the ocean, feeding it to the wolves, come off believable—because if anyone is going to work themselves into a tizzy over an imaginary affair, it’s Taylor Swift. The chorus is an inscrutable montage of strange images (writing “mine” on an upper thigh (what?), “messy top lip kiss”) with the kind of specificity that defines the best Taylor Swift songs. “Guilty As Sin?” nosedives into a capella breakdown that references both Sisyphus and “long-suffering propriety” before coming back up for air with a roar of the “UPPER THIGH” in the last chorus. By the time you reach the outro, with its repeated “Downtown Lights” reference, you might be as sweaty and worked-up as Taylor is with her fantasies. The Blue Nile would be proud.