Top 10 albums of 2011: Martin Turenne

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      In an era when nearly everyone has a digital device soldered to their hands, it’s no surprise that electronic music has gone mainstream. It’s the million-monkeys-writing-Shakespeare theory come true; when we’re all bashing away at keyboards, some of us are bound to make a joyful noise. Let’s call 2011 the year rave broke. Again.

      The Field
      Looping State of Mind
      More a refinement of Axel Willner’s signature style than a breakthrough, the Swedish technoist’s third full-length is a fascinating achievement, a dissertation on what it’s like to be perpetually on the brink of ecstasy.

      Holy Other
      With U
      There’s a druggy haze permeating many records on this list, nowhere more thickly than on the English export With U, a set of postapocalyptic R & B dirges that sound like transmissions from a dying planet in some distant corner of the Milky Way.

      Hyetal
      Broadcast
      This debut album by the U.K.’s David Corney uses lustrous tones to shadowy ends. In his deft deployment of ’80s-era synthetic flourishes, he evokes an episode of Miami Vice as seen on a black-and-white television.

      Jamie Woon
      Mirrorwriting
      As the singer Craig David was to two-step garage, so Woon is to the new beat science. Where David embodied his genre’s bottle-popping effervescence, the latter’s hushed croon channels dubstep’s trademark urban desolation, and gloriously so.

      The Weeknd
      House of Balloons
      Scarborough’s Abel Tesfaye combines computer-made beats with a psychosexual vocal approach that’s part Prince, part R. Kelly. In the process, he creates something startlingly new, a sound with no trace of nostalgia in its DNA.

      Drake
      Take Care
      No mainstream artist captures today’s mood better than Drake, who marries self-doubting lyrics to bleary electronic tones to suggest the malaise in which we’re stuck. For all his despair, the singer-rapper offers solace in the form of “Take Care”, a glorious dose of piano-led house that reminds the listener that life looks better when it’s reflected in a disco ball.

      Jay-Z and Kanye West
      Watch the Throne
      It could have been a crass industry power move, a craven attempt at crossover dominance. Instead, we get two masters going as hard as they have in years, making what few dare to anymore: a straight-up rap record. If Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye had cut an album together in 1973, this is the spirit they’d have made it in.

      The Caretaker
      An Empty Bliss Beyond This World
      A re-edited collection of 78-rpm recordings of spectral waltzes and piano reveries, An Empty Bliss functions as a kind of rickety time machine, transporting the listener back to the parlour rooms of the 1930s, the illusion broken only by the sudden cutting-off of tunes and the ever-present hisses and pops of the source vinyl.

      King Creosote & Jon Hopkins
      Diamond Mine
      A suite of folksongs written and sung by a Scotsman (King Creosote) and embroidered with electronics and field recordings from an Englishman (Hopkins), Diamond Mine is a marvel of pastoral beauty, modern and timeless all at once.

      Paul Simon
      So Beautiful or So What
      For rhythmic intricacy and melodic splendour, the Young Turks can’t match this 70-year-old, who confirms that singer-songwriters needn’t be stodgy folkniks. This album’s exuberance fills a room, commanding even the most inveterate texting addict to put that damn device down, even if only for a moment.

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