So far, Clash has highlighted 20 excellent albums from 2013 (so far) – click here for part one, and here for part two.
Amongst those already selected as standouts: Savages, Foals, Boards Of Canada, Mount Kimbie, Ghostpoet, Young Fathers, Deptford Goth, The Haxan Cloak, James Blake… Oh, just go have a look for yourself.
And here’s our final batch of 10 – all brilliant, all out there to be discovered.
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Bonobo – ‘The North Borders’
Reviewed in issue 84: “‘The North Borders’ is a triumph – each listen is a revelation. It’s a breadth of work that marks a new, exciting era of electronic music. Certainly, its creator is destined to reach higher plateaus.”
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John Grant – ‘Pale Green Ghosts’
Reviewed in issue 83: “Rest assured, Grant’s remarkable voice and grasp of melody remain undimmed. And while this album may not sound exactly as you were expecting, it is a bold, distinctive and genuinely excellent record.”
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Atoms For Peace – ‘Amok’
Reviewed in issue 82: “Another nail in the already rotting coffin of the canonical guitar solo, ‘Amok’ provides a murky and complicated landscape that sounds like very little else – except the scorched testing ground from which we’ll witness Yorke deservedly going atomic once again.”
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inc. – ‘no world’
As covered in issue 81: “Lathered in ‘80s funk, new jack swing and traces of pop, inc. are 2013’s most likely to blend the sanctimonious and the sexual in true Prince form. Expect more sensual smoothness than Curtis Mayfield in a bubble bath.”
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Thundercat (pictured, main)– ‘Apocalypse’
Reviewed online: "While he’ll probably never eclipse the flaming star that is label boss FlyLo’s reputation, Thundercat here shows that he’s both his collaborator and peer, fusing a multi-genre musical mentality with a brilliantly sharp edge of accessibility."
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Youth Lagoon– ‘Wondrous Bughouse’
Reviewed in issue 83: “An album of widescreen magnificence, cinematic in scope, melding dream-pop, neo-psychedelia and gentle electronica with masterful effect. It’s a triumphant achievement – an album for both the heart and mind.”
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Daughter – ‘If You Leave’
So, err, this didn’t get reviewed. Awkward. Trust us, though: it’s really magnificent. Clash’s online ed reviewed it for the BBC, and called it “instantly enchanting”, and “more engaging than many a peer’s offerings”.
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Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds – ‘Push The Sky Away’
Reviewed in issue 82: “Over the course of 15 albums the Bad Seeds have pedalled feral junkyard indignation, heinous crimes and doleful confessionals to arrive at this graceful place. Potent in its masculine restraint, this record has surely always existed, just waiting to be plucked from the surf; a mercurial, magisterial, stick of seaside rock.”
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Lapalux – ‘Nostalchic’
Reviewed in issue 83: “A consolidation of glitch, post-dubstep blues, time-lapsed R&B and hip-hop fragments, crystalised and crushed with the swing of a rickety rope bridge that has Lapalux swaying from endangered to upbeat, over a corkscrew of digital quicksand. He favours foggily upsetting your balance.”
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Cloud Boat – ‘Book Of Hours’
Reviewed in issue 86: “Despite drawing from a variety of genres, ‘Book Of Hours’ is remarkably concise, tied together by Cloud Boat’s focused eye for detail and a chilly but soulful atmosphere that echoes throughout. Consider this amongst 2013’s most accomplished debut efforts.”
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Part one of this, here.
Part two of this, here.
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