Shangaan Electro — V/A – Honest Jon’s
Life-affirming electronic dance music from South Africa with a 180 bpm synth-marimba blur that unknowingly refracts current trends in international club music (namely, Chicago juke and UK funky house) back into the global dancefloor ether…amazing YouTube videos to boot.
Florine — Julianna Barwick — Florid
Kickstart-funded a cappella EP of range-defying vocal loops in a cathedral-esque reverb pool (sounds great at both 33 and 45). Quite possibly New Age music in disguise.
Ali and Toumani — Ali Farka Touré and Toumani Diabaté — Nonesuch
Posthumously released (Touré passed in 2006) duet recording of two of the world’s greatest musicians communicating on a near telepathic level.
Classical Music — Family Fodder — The State51 Conspiracy
Kitchen-sink pop from these former associates of This Heat (now based in France and multigenerational), cutting up post-punk, African highlife, French café music, dub and whatever else in order to reassemble it in the same kind of sharp, meta-pop structures they have been making for 30+ years.
Klavierwerke — James Blake — R&S
Completely alien 12″ EP of minimalist post-dubstep musings, arranging shards of transmogrified voice and piano into stark, otherworldly grooves.
Real Life is No Cool — Lindstrom & Christabelle — Smalltown Supersound
Gita Pon Yeik — Su Wai — (self-released in Burma)
Nuojuva Halava — Ous Mai — Preservation/Forced Exposure
Songs — Privacy — Marriage Records
Ullakkopalo — Kemialliset Ystavat — Fonal Records
This article appears in Top 10 Stories.