Tunisian techno, Xitsongan rap and Satanic doo-wop: the best new music of 2019

From cheeky rappers to explosive hardcore punks, we introduce 50 artists sure to make an impact in the coming year

She has already sung backing vocals for Chance the Rapper, guested on Sam Smith’s last album and steals the show on Mark Ronson’s forthcoming LP of “sad bangers” – all because of a truly remarkable voice that marks her out as the coming year’s Adele. Here’s hoping her superhuman vocal control will be put to service on equally strong songs.

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by Ben Beaumont-Thomas, Laura Snapes and Ammar Kalia via Electronic music | The Guardian

Sounds like? The best songs from 2018 ... that you didn't hear

From electro-punk to pop-soul, Guardian writers have picked their favourite underappreciated songs of the year

Check out a Spotify playlist of all the tracks here

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by Jim Farber, Katie Bain, Eve Barlow, Benjamin Lee, Laura Snapes, Jake Nevins, Lanre Bakare and Gwilym Mumford via Electronic music | The Guardian

The best party destinations for backpackers

If pumping bass is your thing, these cities and travellers’ haunts come alive at night, and boast friendly hostels when it’s finally time to hit the pillow

Best for: nights under the stars

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by Will Coldwell via Electronic music | The Guardian

Dom Servini – Netil Radio Show #11

Listen again here!

Intro: Chillin’ on the rooftoop

ThE DiAboLIcaL LibERTieS – biGGeR ThAN yOU

Âme – The Line feat. Matthew Herbert

Penya – Cham Bomb (Photay Remix)

I Gemin and Castanea – Fall In Love

Rude & Mean – Moments in Soul

2000Black – Mononymous Persons

Yta Jourias – Adome Nyueto (Bosq Edit) 

Vaudou Game – Tata Fatigue 

Laraaji – All Of A Sudden (Scrimshire Edit)

Michael Garrick & Shake Keane – Rising Star

The Blackbyrds – Wilfred’s Gone

Stone Foundation – Standing on the Top

Children of Zeus – Kintsugi

Royal Krunk Jazz Orchestra – Fair

Rejoicer – Yesterday’s Forest Magic 

Lagartijeando –  Malandro De Boa

Time Grove – Jungle Bourjois

Chuck Mangione – Land Of Make Believe

Spiral Deluxe – E=MC2

Emma-Jean Thackray – Ley Lines

Mildlife – Magnificent Moon

Flamingo Pier – Find Your Way 

Dowdelin – Eléphants Roses

Kadhja Bonet – Possession

Joanna Newsom – The Sprout and the Bean

Yazmin Lacey – Something My Heart Trusts

Oscar Jerome – Do You Really

Bishop Nehru – Potassium 

Pan Amsterdam – Greek Codfish

John Coltrane – Untitled Original 11383

Elkie Brooks – As 

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Wah Wah Radio – December 2018

Listen again here!

Servini, Scrimshire, Sausage and Swuni select their favourite three tracks of 2018.
Tough decisions are made, people get angry, Santa steps in to settle a fight, elves get hurt, fear and pain ensue, but in the end peace comes to all men and women, a lost and homeless person gets their angel wings, reindeer learn to fly, the essential goodness of human spirit is rediscovered, and balance is restored within the office, just before Christmas Eve, ensuring Santa will return with presents for all. Snow falls. The end.

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Suede, Earl Sweatshirt and the Lovely Eggs: readers on their albums of 2018

Following our critics’ vote, we asked you to tell us what you have been listening to this year and why you think it’s worthy of celebration

• Read our critics’ top 50 albums
  

A stunning reinvention of their sound which nevertheless sticks with the classic crooning tendencies and clever observational lyrics of Alex Turner. Favourite track: Four Out of Five is the obvious contender – a lead-off single with a festival-ready chorus. I also find The Ultracheese to be strangely moving. Guillaume, 35, France

Thank you for all your contributions and comments on our critics’ list – you can continue the conversation below

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by Guardian readers via Electronic music | The Guardian

Rezzett: Rezzett review – distressed dancefloor classics

The Trilogy Tapes

A bit like a pair of jeans that come pre-distressed with frays and scuffs, the debut full-length from dance duo Rezzett sounds like a once-pristine master recording that has been sun-baked, waterlogged, sandpapered and worse. And like the jeans, some might see this as a pointless pose: why resist high fidelity? But the pair – Tapes and an anonymous producer believed to be Lukid – announce the beauty in degradation, perhaps a grimly salutary lesson as our environment and politics are eroded. The album opens with a trio of excellent 4/4 techno tracks, getting huge mileage out of ethereal melody lines that soar as if through the smog generated by the industrial kick drums below them. They might sound like they were made on an eight-track, but they are actually powerfully dense, threaded with imaginative details such as the vocals that roil meaninglessly under Longboat.

But the album then broadens out stylistically, from beatless ambient (Yunus in Ekstasi) to frenetic jungle (Worst Ever Contender). In between there is Wet Bilge, a stretch of dub as dank and glittering as the title suggests; Tarang, a confidently high-speed blur of tabla and hymnal organ; and Gremlinz, a grime instrumental (perhaps a Terror Danjah homage?) with bright video-game tones glinting through the pond-water. Certainly influenced by Actress but more determinedly rooted to the dancefloor, Rezzett’s album shreds the veneered surface of digital dance to find the rich, raw grain beneath.

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by Ben Beaumont-Thomas via Electronic music | The Guardian

Tell us: what was your album of 2018?

We will publish a selection of readers’ favourite albums before the end of the year

• Read about our No 1 album of the year
• The 50 best albums of 2018

After canvassing over 50 of our music writers and totting up their votes, we’ve announced our 50 best albums of the year, topped by Christine and the Queens’ sensual neo-boogie classic Chris.

But a list of 50 – and you can see the whole thing here – inevitably misses out out dozens of brilliant albums, so we’d love to hear from you about the recordings you think were unfairly overlooked by our vote. In love with the latest chapter of Father John Misty’s wry catalogue of self-obsession? Outraged that Guardian critics bucked their stereotype and didn’t reward Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s collaborative album? Did you think great soundtrack recordings – Black Panther, A Star is Born, Phantom Thread – should have been recognised?

If you’re having trouble using the form, click here. Read terms of service here.

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by Guardian readers via Electronic music | The Guardian

Berlin government pledges €1m to soundproof city's nightclubs

Berlin’s club scene makes money for the city – and a lot of noise. A new initiative will soundproof venues, helping to protect clubs from closure

Clubbers of the world rejoice: the techno mecca of Berlin is to receive a €1m (£900,000) boost from the local government to protect its renowned clubbing culture.

The funding will go towards soundproofing projects, with the aim of improving relations between venues and local residents, based on a similar project in Hamburg. The noise protection programme, which was proposed last year and came into effect on 30 November 2018, indicates the importance of Berlin’s nightlife culture and its relevance to the city’s economy, including the tourism industry.

Related: Nightlife reports: clubbing in Berlin

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by Antonia Wilson via Electronic music | The Guardian

The 50 best albums of 2018, No 2: Robyn – Honey

Gorgeous harmonies and unerring emotional intelligence dominate on this looser, clubbier follow-up to Body Talk

• Best albums of 2018
• Best culture of 2018

Eight years ago, Robyn released the three batches of songs that would become the album Body Talk. She had always been at pop’s vanguard: her 1995 debut Robyn Is Here had helped usher in Max Martin’s Cheiron Studios, paving the way for Swedes to go on to rule the charts. Body Talk’s taut, tough electronic pop and keenly feminist lyrics seemed to herald the birth of a new kind of pop star: smart, forward-thinking and in total control.

Related: How Robyn transformed pop

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by Alex Needham via Electronic music | The Guardian

The best DJ mixes of 2018

From Mumdance’s beguiling Shared Meanings to visionary blends from Ziúr and Eris Drew, our mix critics pick their favourites

Eris Drew’s Thundering Goddess Mix

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by Lauren Martin and Tayyab Amin via Electronic music | The Guardian

'This cuts across society': how singeli music went from Tanzania to the world

With up to 300 beats per minute, singeli could be the world’s most frenetic music. In Dar es Salaam, its creators explain how it helps to create a better life

On a neon-lit jetty overlooking the River Nile, a young Tanzanian DJ called Sisso is playing a bracing barrage of blips, bells and breakneck beats that could blast apart a heart-rate monitor. We are at Nyege Nyege, a pan-African festival in Uganda that curates contemporary club music from across the continent, and it’s the first time so many musicians from Tanzania have made it here. Sisso and his peers have taken a 30-hour bus journey and crossed two borders in order to play at the event. Their sets are being streamed live to the world via Boiler Room.

The music these Swahili speed freaks make is a street-level sound known as singeli. It has been ricocheting around the ghettos circling the Tanzanian capital Dar es Salaam for almost 15 years, with unbridled synth lines, percussion pitch-shifted up to alien frequencies and super-speed lyrical flows.

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by Kate Hutchinson in Uganda via Electronic music | The Guardian

The 10 best New Year's Eve nights out in the UK

From disco on rollerskates to ferocious gabber and lo-fi house, here are the best club nights to ring in 2019

Shave your head, pick out some obscure sportswear and prepare for total gabber meltdown at this summit of Europe’s most formidable hipsters. Evian Christ and his strobe-rich Trance Party series is joining forces with Swedish collective Year0001, continuing Christ’s mission to champion some of the most garish corners of dance. Here he recruits Waxweazle, the Dutch DJ whose hardcore productions redefine insistency, and goes back to back with the Justin Bieber of deconstructed club music, Kamixlo. Bladee, Yung Sherman and HVAD are the Scandi guests, playing fearsomely dystopian trap. A bracing start to the year that will either blow down the boundaries of taste or be a bit of a nightmare – most likely both. Oh, and the accompanying Wikipedia page for the event is quite something.

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by Ben Beaumont-Thomas via Electronic music | The Guardian

Orbital review – techno giants still raging against the political machine

Hammersmith Apollo, London
Their sledgehammer polemic is brought up to date in an gloriously overwhelming visual and musical assault on the senses

With their torch-equipped spectacles, Orbital long ago turned the cliche of techno artists’ facelessness to their advantage, creating a brand as unmistakeable as the Ramones or Deadmau5. Tonight, they amplify that facelessness several leagues beyond 11, with a bone-crushing PA and a stage so dominated by the storeys-high video screens that the silhouetted duo – brothers Phil and Paul Hartnoll – appear as glitchy stray pixels in the show.

There is precious little banter. As they have for almost three decades, the pair communicate through their music and images, sound and vision pulsing in often perfect sync. It’s the kind of show where you walk home whistling the video feeds; the visuals don’t so much overwhelm the music as end up an intrinsic, inextricable element of Orbital’s art. Those visuals aren’t always subtle. The pneumatic Impact, for instance, scores images of smoke-belching factories, Hazchem symbols and words such as “garbage” and “pollution”. Satan, their Butthole Surfers-sampling banger, fuses hard-edged industrial throb and imagery suggesting the military industrial complex as the root of all evil. The concept is hardly controversial 28 years on, but the blood-quickening track remains simplistic, powerful and compelling.

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by Stevie Chick via Electronic music | The Guardian

Dom Servini – Unherd Radio Show #23 on Soho Radio

Listen again here!

Best of Unherd Radio 2018

Joe Armon-Jones – Starting Today feat. Oscar Jerome

Idris Ackamoor & The Pyramids – An Angel Fell

The Diabolical Liberties – Grief is a Thing with Feathers

Auntie Flo – Nobody Said It Would Be Easy

Modified Man – Blame’s On You Bruv’

Jazzanova – Everything I Wanted feat. Charlotte OC (Yoruba Soul Mix)

D. Lynnwood – Gospel Discotheque

Anderson Paak feat. Kendrick Lamar – Tints

Kassin – Relax

Cobby & Litten – Man Down

Bishop Nehru – Rooftops

Daniel March – Falling For You (Ashley Beedle’s North Street Remix)

Children of Zeus – All On You ft [KSR] & DRS

Keyon Harrold – Wayfaring Traveler ft. Georgia Ann Muldrow, Jermain Holmes & Robert Glasper

79.5 – I Stay You Stay

Jordan Rakei – Wildfire

Catching Flies – New Gos feat. Jay Prince & Oscar Jerome

The One-O-Ones – Radio Cosmo 101 (Bals Edit)

Prequel – Freedom

Hagan & Gafacci – Yenko feat. Gafacci

Detroit Swindle – Call of the Wild feat. Jungle By Night

The Mauskovic Dance Band – Down in the Basement

Glenn Astro – Discomania (Nelson Of The East Remix)

Peggy Gou – It Makes You Forget (Itgehane)

Retiree – Pumice Stone

Tierra de King Coya – Te Digo Wayno

Madison Washington – Djedet

Medikul – Objects

Yazmin Lacey – Something My Heart Trusts

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GRiZ: the EDM artist using his star power to make a difference

The 28-year-old DJ and producer has been helping to transform parts of Detroit through charity work while standing up as a rare LGBT voice in a mostly heterosexual music scene

The electronic music crowd isn’t famous for getting up early, yet here we are at 11am on a Sunday, rolling our yoga mats onto the marble floor of the most opulent building in downtown Detroit. A hundred people sink into chair pose as deep house, played by the DJ at the front of the room, reverberates off the soaring ceilings of the famous Fisher Building, an art deco palace built with auto industry money in the 1920s. Tourists snap photos of the scene as they pass through a lobby decorated with a dozen glittering Christmas trees. Behind a desk, the security guard nods his head with the beat.

Related: 'It will kill me' – behind the devastating Avicii documentary

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by Katie Bain via Electronic music | The Guardian

'It will kill me' – behind the devastating Avicii documentary

Avicii: True Stories was initially given a small release before the death of the EDM star but now the director discusses its uneasy relevance

The man who got as close as anyone could to the superstar musician Avicii still has no explanation for why he died six months ago. “I have this feeling of unreality,” says Levan Tsikurishvili, who spent four years filming the DJ for a documentary. “I’m still in shock. I don’t have a clear reason.”

But his film offers a startling number of clues. Avicii: True Stories, which will debut on Netflix in the US, UK and Australia on 28 December, presents an unflinching portrait of an artist coming apart. With fly-on-the-wall proximity, the camera shows Avicii repeatedly, and emphatically, telling everyone around him how exhausted, anxious and sick he is. “There was never an end to the shows, even when I hit a wall,” the DJ says early in the film. “My life is all about stress.”

Related: Avicii: the poster boy for EDM who struggled with the spotlight

Avicii: True Stories is released in LA on 14 December, New York on 21 December and on Netflix on 28 December

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by Jim Farber via Electronic music | The Guardian

HQ: (I Feel So Mezzaniney) review – follow the warped French maids!

Second Home, London
Disaffection trumps dynamism in Steven Warwick and Carlos Maria Romero’s site-responsive piece staged in a co-working space

The minimal electro beat ramps up and a gaggle of go-go dancers swivel their hips. Dressed like warped French maids in frilly wetsuits and heels (men and women alike), they are not dancing with joy, nor offering the hard sell of someone trying to persuade you to tuck a bank note in their knickers. But there is effort, no doubt about that. This is the unsexy sweat of work, and these workers are putting in their hours.

Part of the London contemporary music festival, this is a site-responsive piece by composer Steven Warwick and choreographer/dancer Carlos Maria Romero, a London-based Colombian mostly working in live art and queer politics.

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by Lyndsey Winship via Electronic music | The Guardian

Grammy nominations 2019: Cardi B, Kendrick Lamar and Drake lead the pack

Strong showing for female and hip-hop artists suggest renewed focus on diversity – but it’s a mediocre year for British acts

After controversy about the Grammys’ failure to recognise women’s achievements at the 2018 ceremony, female artists dominate key categories in the nominations for the 2019 awards. Country stars Maren Morris and Kacey Musgraves, rapper Cardi B, pop futurist Janelle Monáe and Lady Gaga could all take home major awards at the 61st Grammy award ceremony in Los Angeles next February.

Elsewhere, Kendrick Lamar and Drake dominate proceedings, with eight and seven nominations respectively. Along with Childish Gambino, AKA Donald Glover, they could rectify the other dispute that emerged from this year’s awards – namely the Recording Academy nominating but not awarding major hip-hop artists.

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by Laura Snapes via Electronic music | The Guardian

‘I love a good spanking’: Paloma Faith, Nao, Sleaford Mods and others on 2018’s music controversies

Artists including Kojey Radical, Let’s Eat Grandma and Róisín Murphy discuss the year’s biggest stories, from Childish Gambino’s This Is America to the rise of K-pop and Jessie J’s success in China

April: Kanye West reaffirmed his support for Donald Trump on Twitter, part of a turbulent year in which he claimed slavery was “a choice”, released several albums, visited Trump in the White House, handed out Yeezy shoes in Uganda and announced he was thinking of building a flying-car factory.

Kojey Radical: I feel conflicted. I’ve got Yeezys on right now. The problem is, for all the contribution he’s made to music, he’s gotten to the point now where he just likes the conversation.

I listen to drill from the comfort of my nice home, but it’s bleak. These lads are virtually crying on the microphone

Related: This is America: theories behind Childish Gambino's satirical masterpiece

Surely certain powers will be extremely happy to see the rise of K-pop. It’s cultural warfare, in a way

I get called to talk at Oxford because I’m a black female. Just by existing, I’m political

Related: Why has the UK stopped producing pop superstars?

Related: Has 10 years of Spotify ruined music?

If a young artist came to me now and said: 'Do I need to get signed?’ I’d probably say no

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by Alexis Petridis via Electronic music | The Guardian

The Milk at Chinnerys on 08/12

Details

• Artist:
  The Milk
• Date:
  08/12/18
• Time:
  11:00pm
• Venue:
  Chinnerys
• City:
  Southend
• Address:
  21 Marine Parade
• Country:
  United Kingdom
• Admission:
  £14
• Age restrictions:
  No Minors
• Buy Tickets
• Add to Google Calendar | Download iCal

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The 50 best albums of 2018: 50-41

Our countdown of the year’s most exciting music begins with pithy punk, political soul, pagan gospel and mutated rave. Check in every weekday for more

• See our tracks of the year
• More on the best culture of 2018

Nerds get bogged down in taxonomy when discussing Deafheaven – is it metal or not? – but the rest of us can get on with simply revelling in a gigantically heavy band at the peak of their powers. The solos are virtuosic and uplifting, the blast-beats cleansing, and the post-rock ballads so simple and affecting. Still anyone’s guess what George Clarke is roaring about, mind. Read our full review.

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by via Electronic music | The Guardian

Flohio review – frenzied flows from UK rap's most vital new voice

The Art School, Glasgow
The London-via-Lagos MC is small in stature but a giant on the mic, with an astonishing staccato style set to dystopian beats

It’s 1am when Flohio takes the mic. The decks are in the middle of the floor, and SE16’s brightest rapper is balancing on a block to make her small stature visible. Beckoning the eager crowd even closer, she grins: “I wanna make sure I have someone to catch me.”

Born in Lagos and based in Bermondsey, Funmi Ohiosumah has a crooked smile, androgynous style and a powerful, magnetic presence. She dropped her first EP Nowhere Near in 2016 and chased it with infectious, postcode celebrating collaborations with London producers God Colony. Since then, she’s shown genre-defying dexterity through shrewd producer partnerships, from the skittering, bass-heavy minimalism of west Londoner Cadenza to the monstrous energy of Berlin techno innovators Modeselektor. For this Glasgow stop-off on her first headline tour, the bill is curated by trusted local tastemakers OH141.

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by Katie Hawthorne via Electronic music | The Guardian

Underworld review – pulse-pumping euphoria with dank dance superstars

Village Underground, London
The electronic alchemists serve up rich rave manna with tales of love, lust and squalor in a career-spanning set that shows them still at the height of their galloping powers

Those dirty numb angel boys and mega mega white things who are here on a nostalgic trip to the church of lager are welcomed by Karl Hyde with arms spread wide. The ferrety Underworld singer knows full well that Born Slippy .NUXX – the throwaway 1995 B-side that accidentally made them dank dance superstars – defined the narcotic breakdown of the 90s as distinctly as Parklife encapsulated its winking Britpop high; a feverish alcoholic’s diary entry pounding over the closing scenes of Trainspotting like a crackhead heart attack.

So he presents the track’s iconic space echo to the throng at this low-key club show (Underworld’s last London gig was at Alexandra Palace in 2017) like so much rave manna, worshipping the hook with the trancey pose of a synth-summoning shaman. But only at the end of the night, well into the early hours, once Underworld have proved themselves more pivotal electronic alchemists than the one-hit ponies behind Renton’s theme.

Related: Underworld: ‘It doesn’t matter where music comes from – it’s how it connects’

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by Mark Beaumont via Electronic music | The Guardian

The top 100 tracks of 2018

Guardian music writers have picked their favourite songs of the year – from UK drill breakthroughs to pure pop anthems – and put them all on a giant playlist

Kicking off our roundups of the best music of 2018, polled from votes by more than 50 Guardian music writers, we count down our favourite tracks of the year – topped by a man who managed to unpick US racial politics, launch a thousand thinkpieces and reach No 1 in the US charts, all with a single track. Read about the top 20 below, and hear the whole top 100 in playlists on Spotify and Apple Music. We’ll be counting down the albums of the year throughout the rest of the month, with No 1 announced on 21 December.

Related: This is America: theories behind Childish Gambino's satirical masterpiece

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by Ben Beaumont-Thomas and Laura Snapes via Electronic music | The Guardian