Best of 2013: Top 100 Tracks, EPs and Singles

You couldn’t move for grimy hardware house exponents in 2013 but few of them sounded quite like Greg Beato. The young Miami-based producer was one of this year’s best musical discoveries, gracing the Apron, L.I.E.S and Russian Torrent Versions labels with excellent material, and his debut for Apron remains one of this year’s most captivating 12”s. The superbly named Respect The 78 fizzed with kinetic energy, with Beato seemingly able to marry grit and melody in a manner that few others can. A thirteen minute title track was downright weird in its execution, with a point some eight minutes in where the preceding menace turns into a wonderful passage of tipsy chords that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Theo Parrish record. What Beato does in the coming months should be treated with a sense of anticipation by all.

All hail Joe. The 43rd producer on Discogs listed as Joe returned late into 2013 with a pair of records for regular outlets Hessle Audio and Hemlock Recordings which seemed to do their utmost to out-weird each other. How to decide between the two for this list? Well, Slope combined with that immense Pev and Kowton record and a confectionary-obsessed Pearson Sound drop to demonstrate that Hessle Audio might not be engaging in as prolific a release schedule as a few years ago, but their quality control remains as high as ever. The title track and “Maximum Body Muscle” seemed to present Joe in two differing moods, one was calmness embodied and the other hellish to the extreme. Like every other thing Joe has put his name to, Slope could not feasibly have come from anyone else, with the B-side a particular highlight; stray hardcore horns and ramshackle drums the dominant elements on a production that felt like it was held together with masking tape.

2013 saw Manny ‘MGUN’ Gonzales continue to build on his impressive releases for Wild Oats, The Trilogy Tapes and Don’t Be Afraid last year, with a track licensed for Pangaea’s upcoming Fabric mix, and 12”s for Berceuse Heroique, Third Ear complementing his fine return to Semtek’s label with If You’re Reading This. The six track EP was the highlight of Don’t Be Afraid’s best year of business so far and deftly demonstrated Gonzales’s production versatility. Demented moments such as the opening track “Hand Over Fifth” and the unpronounceable exercise in tape screeching boom bap that is “Jijijijij$ijijijiji” sat next to clubbier arrangements that bore comparisons with MGUN’s collaboration with Kyle Hall from a few years ago, albeit moistened with wet reverb, dribbling acid and washy synths.

If there is one track that was to define Marco Shuttle it was his 2011 hit “The Vox Attitude”. It was that EP of the same name, released on fast rolling Swedish imprint Färden, that saw the London-based Italian draw some much warranted attention to his music following the three 12”s he released after his 2007 debut. For Shuttle, however, “The Vox Attitude” was only the tip of the iceberg. He’s since made outroads from his self-described sound of ‘warehouse stompy 808–909 and vocals’ and moved into new and uncharted territory, combining bleepy science-fiction motifs with his own roughly hewn sound design. Admittedly it’s the sound of “The Vox Attitude” he says he is trying to shake, but the Eerie boss opened his 2013 account with a re-release of that famed production on his own imprint which arguably featured some of 2013’s best remixes thanks to Pangaea’s instantly recognisable club hit and Joey Anderson’s deeper variation.

One of Aardvarck’s finest moments last year was his sublime and unique contribution to the irregular No ‘Label’ series operated by Rush Hour’s distribution branch, with Nubian’s unique take on techno more than holding its own against other No ‘Label’ offerings from Heatsick, Dean Blunt and Stellar OM Source. 2013 saw Mr Kivits grace No ‘Label’ once more and true to form it was the best thing they issued this year, though releases from Ed DMX, Black Deer, APC and Jonas Frederiksen were not far behind. Both “1990”and “Ok.o” were drenched in early rave, yet set apart by Aardvarck’s singular production nuances; put simply: they sound like Aardvarck and no-one else.

Brandishing a head of peppery grey hair despite his youth, the Brooklyn-based Terekke looks as distinctive as the music he makes, a sticky and extended take on electronic production described in more vivid terms by L.I.E.S. label boss Ron Morelli as “crazy, lo-fi, fucked-up, weird house music.” Coupled with an enigmatic nature and a lack of tangible output since his emergence with the debut L.I.E.S. white label in the summer of 2011, it’s understandable why there’s was such a level of expectation for Terekke’s Yyyyyyyyyy. The three tracks within more than lived up to this level of expectation and demonstrated few other producers this year were capable of executing the lucid brand of barely rhythmic electronics that Terekke does so well.

Itinerant Dubs may have been one of many anonymous artists to arrive with a self-released record of raw, hardware produced club music this year, but nobody did it quite like them. Information on the project was scarce beyond the fact that it was apparently comprised of one artist based in London and one from Berlin, both with a background in house and techno, but that didn’t feel important to the music. Taking influence from dub, grime and jungle, the three tracks on their debut crossed over into other territories like the output of the Livity Sound camp, but with the kind of manic, amphetamine-fuelled energy of classic Nubian Mindz and Aardvarck productions. Quite simply some of this year’s most rhythmically satisfying – and criminally underappreciated – music of a dubwise persuasion.

Although they’ve been issuing limited release cassette tapes since last year, Vancouver crew Mood Hut stepped it up this year with a trio of 12”s (not to mention crew appearances on Going Good, Proibito, 100% Silk and Future Times) that really established their distinct identity. It’s one of playful projections linked to their hometown and a defined visual aesthetic that takes subtle influence from Dance Music history. Of the three Mood Hut records issued this year, it was the debut of Ttam Renat that impressed us most. Described as ‘the Rivera’s premiere stepper’ by Mood Hut, it’s less important to try and configure the exact identity of Renat (though the usage of a reflective surface might hold some clue) and more important to let yours senses bask in the ‘mind bath’ of On The Inner Plains.

One of Morphine’s most welcome additions this year was Container, whose two albums of noise-influenced techno on Spectrum Spools have arguably paved the way for a slew of similar artists to do similar things. Slotting in neatly with similarly brain-melting releases from Hieroglyphic Being and Metasplice in the past year, the Treatment EP is Container’s most concise release to date, and a format that suits his music well, especially given his two previous LPs can be somewhat exhausting to listen to in their entirety. It’s Schofield wiry sense of funk that really shines through on Treatment, with the frenetic elastic band bassline of “Saturated” and rhythms of the title track, which bounce like a lead ping pong ball, showing that noise techno doesn’t necessarily have to mean swathing everything in sub-gothic atmospheres and ear-splitting white noise.

It feels like Joey Anderson’s daring and intricate house assemblages and Latency’s musical bravado were fated to meet for a short, but utterly sweet twenty-five minutes in 2013. It’s been a watershed year for the New Jersey native whose ability to elicit feelings of amazement and surprise with each new production flourished. This, we feel, was best displayed throughout From One Mind To The Other, with the B-side’s “Mind Set” a hidden example of Anderson’s eccentric approach to house music. It was the centrepiece of a breakthrough year for Anderson, whose music graced Syncrophone, Avenue 66 (Above The Cherry Moon another 2013 highlight), Inimeg, Anunnaki Cartel and Dekmantel with the latter debut offering a hint at what’s to come from the producer’s debut album for the Amsterdam label next year.

Mute sub-label Liberation Technologies found its voice in 2013 after an impressive launch that took in King Felix material from Laurel Halo and the return of British Murder Boys. Paying more attention to presentation certainly helped (those sleeves done in the vein of early 2000’s era DnB were a bad look) Lib Tec stand out, but more importantly it was the artists they chose to work with that left a mark; releases from Powell, Vessel, Mark Fell and Container demonstrated the label were on point with current trends. Our favourite release on the label however was the Caustic View EP from Bandshell, which matched his Hessle Audio debut in the striking stakes and saw three slabs of jutting, ragged electronic productions countered by a moment of musical serenity in “Perc”.

Although he started releasing music in 2010, it took JR Seaton a while to fully find his feet as a producer. The Present Tense was the realisation of the potential that had began to crystallise over records for Throne Of Blood and Five Easy Pieces, taking techno as a starting point and using its structure to weave an intricate matrix of subtly shifting textures and melodies. But it was the pictures Seaton managed to create with his sound that astounded: the sun seeping through the cracks of an electrical storm in “Threshing Floor”, the floral time lapse of “Leosengor”, the towering glass structures in “Siglo Gray Vision”. Comparisons to Actress were well deserved, but Seaton’s vision of dance music is a much less murky, and at times more a much revelatory one. The Present Tense was the inaugural release for Fabric’s Houndstooth label, and it set the bar high.

You have to hand it to Joy Orbison – there’s simply nobody else capable of making consistently great bangers that don’t feel like they’re pandering to the lowest common denominator. While the brilliantly named “Big Room Tech House DJ Tool – TIP!” is probably the most unashamedly big room production he’s done, rivalling “Swims” for sheer show stopping power when deployed in a DJ set, it’s still got all the clever touches that make his tracks so consistently exciting, and although it’s the huge rubbery bassline and vocal sample from Tevin Campbell’s “I Got It Bad” are what stick out, its stuttering rhythmic backbone is low-key enough to stop things from ever going into the tech house territory he references in the title. Joy Orbison’s output has always been sporadic, but if he puts out only one track like this a year he’ll always be ahead of almost everyone else in his class.

Gesloten Cirkel seems perfectly matched for the Berceuse Heroique label, with both sharing an enigmatic nature that stands out amid a sea of producers and labels intent on flooding the channels with content. Hole was the supposedly Russian-based producer’s first of two releases for BH, plundering considerably darker electro territory than previous Gesloten Cirkel releases and coming with an excellent remix from the lesser spotted Transportation AAD project from Boddika and drkstr. Taking the notion of grotty electro techno to the extreme, “Hole” is the sort of track that can cause cheap soundsystems to malfunction thanks to that pumped up synth line and its punishing bass undercurrent. The Transportation AAD remix wisely took a more abstracted approach, reining in the forward momentum in favour of dense, dissociative Metalheadz-inspired low-end and mind warping atmospherics. In terms of proper club records, few others matched this in 2013.

As well as being involved in one of this year’s most breathlessly energetic albums, Beau Wanzer also scored one of 2013’s definitive tracks. Not bad for a producer whose solo productions have been decidedly thin on the ground since his emergence five years ago. Aside from a few solo tracks on Nation and a contribution to the L.I.E.S. American Noise compilation last year, this year’s self-titled EP on L.I.E.S. is Wanzer’s most significant solo release to date. Fans of Wanzer’s work with Traxx as part of Mutant Beat Dance will no doubt have appreciated “Two Orders” and “Outside Auto” but Wanzer’s self titled EP ranks this highly due to “Balls Of Steel”. Those who have heard his work as part of Streetwalker will know that Wanzer is at his best when his productions are at their most self-consciously bizarre, and it’s doubtful there’s been a track on a L.I.E.S. release with its tongue so firmly in cheek. Over the course of five minutes it chugs along with a dry motorik death rattle, a distended voice uttering: “I should stop smoking/It’s killing my body/I’ve got balls of steel/Everybody should try it”. Is it male? Female? Wanzer? Or just a sample from an exploitation B-movie? Whatever it was, it defined this release.

RP Boo’s Legacy was easily the best footwork album this year, but DJ Rashad delivered its finest track with “I Don’t Give A Fuck”. “Brighter Dayz”, “Everybody” and “Way I Feel” which also featured on the EP of the same name would have stood out on their own, but “I Don’t Give A Fuck” must rank as a contender for the hands down most enjoyable footwork track since Addison Groove’s “Footcrab”. Footwork doesn’t usually trade in such huge drops, but this track is full of them, descending down from its chord-driven, spoken word intro into a succession of rapid-fire morse code bleeps that just seem to keep plateauing, regularly winding down each section and kicking straight back at full tempo like a stock car going up through the gears. Of all the tracks on the list, nothing sounded quite as exhilarating as this one.

The Trilogy Tapes put out so many records this year that picking out a favourite is a particularly difficult task. However, one record quietly stood out as the most robust TTT release of the year, Tuff Sherm’s Burglar Loops. Although Eugene Hector initially made his name making footwork-inspired oddities as Dro Carey, its been the Tuff Sherm alias where he seems to have hit his stride, constructing creaky house and techno tunes whose scorched surface is illuminated by flashes of vivid energy from within, something most obvious here on “Cleric”. But it’s the deeply unsettling weirdness that’s really apparent; “Groin Boils” sways was certain queasiness, while “Drakkhen & Bley” has the sunken bassline and drunken sway of hip hop infused in its DNA. It’s something most apparent in the deeply affecting codeine rap soaked chords and vocal of the title track, which pitches its euphoria down like a chopped and screwed Billboard Top 40 track.

If there’s one thing we weren’t short of in 2013, it was raw, one-take analogue techno. This isn’t the place to discuss the relative merits of such material, but one thing we can agree on here is that but Black Sites’ Prototype EP was easily the best example of that particular electronic form this year. Formed of Helena Hauff and F#x, two residents of Hamburg’s famed Golden Pudel club, there’s a sense of lively, frenetic energy in these tracks that seem to be so often missing from much of this material; indeed, getting that sense of a DJ set’s spontaneous energy into her music is something Hauff admitted to this site earlier in the year. The title track thumps, trundles and squeals through 9 minutes of gurgling acid and floppy chords which continue to reach new crescendos. ”N313P” was a little less relentless, but no less forceful, with the kind of kicks you’d expect from Kassem Mosse. Like Stellar OM Source’s Joy One Mile album, the Prototype EP revelled in the limitations, happy accidents and freakish textures that jamming with hardware can provide.

Hessle Audio might only have put out a few releases this year, but the quality level was as high as ever. Although Peverelist appeared on the label in 2011 with the brilliant “Dance Til The Police Come”, a Hessle Audio appearance for Kowton was long overdue given the obvious similarities between his productions and that of Pearson Sound and Pangaea, and on Raw Code the pair delivered one of their finest tracks. Although slow moving broken techno B-side “Junked” contained all the ominous dread you’d expect from the pairing, it was “Raw Code” that people have been rightly getting excited about since it appeared on Ben UFO’s Fabriclive mix at the beginning of the year. As anyone who heard it deployed in a club will know, its beauty lies in its simple ability to pull you in several different directions at once, with baroque grime-inspired strings that stick out in any transition like a call to arms, and a sticky bassline that floats like an air bubble in crude oil.

Ed Russell could have continued to make the kind of swung breakbeat-filled material he excelled at on Punch Drunk and 2nd Drop last year, and happily still have found a slot in this list, but he completely surpassed himself on “Hackney Parrot”. Although the likes of Special Request, Mumdance & Logos and Mark Pritchard all did similar things to contemporise jungle this year, nobody did it like Russell did on this track. Taking the concept of a sampled break to ridiculous extremes, Russell put the diva vocal and drum loop in discrete chunks which divided and skipped to the point where it became almost impossible to keep your footing. Other examples of jungle revivalism this year rolled, “Hackney Parrot” squawked, and it did so with wide-eyed breakdowns that made those rude subs all the more satisfying.

Since his emergence in late 2011, Powell has become something of a cult figure; his two records on his own Diagonal Records straddled the divide between industrial, post-punk and techno and demonstrated there are few other current musicians that sound like him. 2013 saw Powell take more of a curatorial role at Diagonal, helping the label to establish its own place on the sonic landscape with releases from Blood Music, Shit And Shine, and Prostitutes. Of his own releases, this Untitled EP for Death Of Rave just nudged out the Liberation Technologies record and was one of this year’s most distinctive 12”s. Lead track “A Band” was the hit that shouldn’t have been, a chugging punk-funk stomper daubed in Powell’s own distinct ramshackle rhythmics and it was complemented by wobbling drone, no-wave rock and ambient background buzz.

Although Laurel Halo’s Chance Of Rain LP made it to number 2 in our best albums list, there was never any question whether the Behind The Green Door EP would be making it into this list as well. It’s rare for an artist to put out an EP and an album so close together that end up being so strikingly different and so flawlessly executed. Both records trade in the kind of angular structures that could be considered more or less techno, but where Chance Of Rain is gritty and Autumnal in its approach, Behind The Green Door is the more vivid of the two. Whether its in the gorgeously plaintive piano chords of “Throw”, which places gorgeous piano chords on top of a bassline that feels like it’s travelling backwards, the firm heartbeat of “UHF F/O” floating on a synthetic ocean, the minimalist tendencies of “Noyfb” emboldened by sinewy bass pulses, or the high resolution hi-hats and subdued steam whistle chord of “Sex Mission”, this is an EP that marries the abstract and the sublime in equal measure. If you’d have told us last year that Laurel Halo would have become the most imaginative techno producer since Actress appeared with Hazyville, we probably wouldn’t have believed you, but on Behind The Green Door that’s exactly what happened.

It’s wholly representative of the L.I.E.S. ethos that’s been in place since its emergence back in late 2010 that the label’s definitive record of this year should come from a previously unknown German producer. That the record would be one with boundless crossover potential thanks to a B-side based around a warped vocal is pretty much par for the course with L.I.E.S. too. The internet still seems a sparse place when you try and research Florian Kupfer; apparently moved to make house music after a visit to the Frankfurt church known as Robert Johnson, it evidently had a profound effect as his debut on the L.I.E.S. white label series, which seems to be the one record this year that everyone had or desired at whatever cost. Finn Johansson espoused on how quickly the Lifetrax 12” was selling out at Hardwax in a mid year roundtable with RA, and the record joined Terekke’s debut in being reissued on the L.I.E.S. main label due to popular demand. If there was an award for B-side of the year, then surely Kupfer would win it for “Feelin”. A warped, warbling vocal that coos ‘I can’t stop this feeling’ like Minnie Mouse on helium over a timeless accompaniment of pounding bass drums and mellow Rhodes, “Feelin” was divisive in the manner all good club tracks should be.

It might seem like cheating to put the entirety of Demdike Stare’s Testpressing series in the number two slot, but the simple fact is that choosing one would prove impossible. On the strength of attention to detail alone these records deserve a place on this list, with test pressing disguises that featured opaque coloured vinyl and art inserts from the brilliant Alex Solman, but the music – even by the standards of Miles Whittaker and Sean Canty – had to be heard to be believed. In the year in which jungle proved the overriding narrative of the year, Whittaker and Canty slayed the competition with the jaw dropping euphoria and grimy breaks of “Primitive Equations”, the savage noise breaks of “Collision” and “Misappropriation”, and the teeth clenching breaks of “Null Result”. In the year when it seemed like all house had to come with added tape hiss, the pair made the clean and blissful “Eulogy”, the best track Fingers Inc never made. In a year in which noise techno was everywhere, the pair made “Dyslogy”, which did the same thing better than most with the rhythm of UK funky instead. The idea of dressing these records up like test pressings was not just an aesthetic consideration – it felt that these tracks were designed by Demdike Stare to test the boundaries of what could be considered acceptable in a club, and those who chose to embrace them were its willing participants.

When we awarded the top spot in this list to Andres’ “New For U” last year, it was an easy decision to make. No track felt so right, or had transmuted itself across the world of underground club music in such a way as “New For U” did, captivating everyone who heard it in the process. It’s something that was shared by our friends at Resident Advisor and FACT, who put the track at number one in their respective lists. Truth be told, no anthem really felt like it stuck out in the same way, or struck the same collective chord this year, but this year’s choice was just as unanimous for different reasons.

In terms of word of mouth appeal, nobody has propagated more across the world of underground club music than White Material’s Galcher Lustwerk. His ascent has been gradual rather than meteoric, but has swiftly picked up in the second half of the year thanks to enthusiasm for his excellent all-originals mix for Blowing Up The Workshop, a listening experience so complete it could easily be considered one of the year’s best albums depending on your criteria. It has also helped to make his debut release proper Tape 22 one of the year’s most sought after records, but hype or no hype, it’s still a shining example of the year’s best house music.

It’s the kind of genuine deep house stripped back to the barest musical elements – a beat and some sparing chords are really all that make them up musically. “Tape 22” is strong for just this reason, recalling Levon Vincent or Fred P in its stark simplicity. But it’s the way his spoken word vocals – which almost move into rap territory – tell stories to capture the imagination that make his music so incredible. “Leisure” for instance might only be about riding in a car, but Lustwerk’s vocals carry such emotional gravitas it’s hard not to be completely absorbed into his world. This year saw a lot of exciting new artists come to the fore, but nobody appeared with four tracks as quietly enthralling as these.