The Top 10 Electronic Albums of 2022

2022 was a big year for producers dropping full artist albums that transcend a collection of singles and instead form a cohesive body of work in the form of a studio record - here are our 10 favourites.

10. Shades - From A Vein

A bit of a “super collab”, Shades is the moniker of Alix Perez and EPROM, getting together to make some experimental, bass heavy club music. Following up their 2018 album In Praise of Darkness, From A Vein sees the pair flexing their sound design and production muscles across low slung, wild, hip hop influenced beats, dubstep, half time and even a bit of ambient, resulting in an album of electronic ear candy from start to finish. 

9. Roza Terenzi & D. Tiffany - Edge of Innocence

From one dope collab to the next, Perth-via-Berlin’s Roza Terenzi and Canadian DJ and producer D. Tiffany gave us a taste of their combined powers last year on their Tapestry of Sound EP. Expanding on this with a full length album, Edge of Innocence opens with downtempo, ambient goodness, before pulling you in with a combination of organic house, hip hop inspired tempos and even some drum and bass goodness.

8. Daphni - Cherry

While we wait patiently for a new Caribou full-length, we’ve got something from Dan Snaith’s dance music production alias to tide us over for a bit, with Daphni’s album Cherry proving to be not only his most consistent and cohesive full-length to date, but also one of the most purely fun dance music albums of 2022. Balancing dancefloor destroyers of disco sampling house goodness with more exploratory compositions and interludes, Cherry provides a perfect balance for a full length album of electronic music.

7. TSHA - Capricorn Sun

Speaking of fun dance music albums… London’s TSHA has stepped up for her long awaited debut album and it does not disappoint as she reaslises her vision of combining underground club productions with hook-filled vocal pop music. Deep house, techno and UK Garage are all touched on, while a slew of guest vocalists provide perfect human counterpoints to TSHA’s driving productions.

6. Batu - Opal

Nearly a decade on from his debut single, producer, DJ and influential Timedance label head honcho Batu has readied his debut album… and it was more than worth the wait. Usually tagged with the appropriate yet reductive “leftfield techno” genre, Batu delivers this sound and then some across Opal’s eleven tracks, embracing experimentation and abstract sound design, with ambient soundscapes breaking up the more club oriented tracks that results in a nice sense of progression.

5. Soichi Terada - Asakusa Light

After the 2015 compilation Sounds From The Far East that put him in the underground dance music world’s spotlight, we’ve been waiting for a new record from veteran Japanese producer for a while, with our prayers answered at the start of the year. While Sounds From The Far East was a compilation of unearthed 90s cuts, Asakusa Light saw him head back into the studio for the first time in 25 years but still channelling his unique brand of uplifting 90s house music with a video game compositional twist (Terada worked on video game soundtracks including the Ape Escape series!).

4. Levon Vincent - Silent Cities

Levon Vincent’s fourth album Silent Cities might be his most challenging so far - and also potentially his best. Known for his intricate, analogue cuts of house and techno, Silent Cities sees Vincent lowering the tempo quite a bit, with the starting point for the album being 72 beats per minute. This tempo wasn’t arbitrarily chosen, instead reflects Vincent’s average resting heart rate, resulting in a lot more of a home listening/headphone experience than his more dance oriented prior records. Touching on everything from electro to krautrock, shoegaze to ambient and hip hop across the record’s downtempo productions, Silent Cities is the perfect soundtrack for exploring your city with a pair of headphones firmly in place. 

3. Mall Grab - What I Breathe

One of Australia’s biggest dance music exports of the last decade (and ever), Jordon Alexander AKA Mall Grab’s long awaited debut full-length had high expectations from listeners - which he more than met on his genre-melding album What I Breathe. Emerging from the lo-fi house craze of the mid 2010s, What I Breathe sees Alexander touching on a little bit of everything dance music wise, from housey-garage-electro to UK Garage and peak time ravey techno and drum and bass goodness. 

2. Hudson Mohawke - Cry Sugar 

HudMo’s back! One of the most influential and innovative producers of our generation, Cry Sugar was HudMo’s first album in seven years, and it’s a bit of an epic, weighing in at 19 tracks that seamlessly meld and morph into one another across the album’s journey. From wild gabber-esque rave tunes to overblown trap, ambient compositions to bass heavy beats, Cry Sugar is a culmination of everything we’ve come to know and love from HudMo in his most epic album to date, with the transitions between tracks leaving you scratching your head as to when one song ends the next begins… in the best possible way.

1. Born Under A Rhyming Planet - Diagonals

Our favourite electronic full length of the year wasn’t created in the last few years… or even decade for that matter. Born Under A Rhyming Planet, an alias of 90s/2000s Chicago-based Jamie Hodge, hasn’t been active since the mid-90s - until now. Legendary duo Demdike Stare dug through Hodge’s archives, editing some tracks and leaving others as is, to compile a 14 track “album” that sounds timeless to this very day. From classic detroit electro to minimal techno and deep house, with plenty of twists and turns, Diagonals manages to not only sound innovative but also fresh. For tracks that are 20 - 30 years old, this may say something about some of the derivative dance music released today, but is really more of a testament to their timeless sound, and we’d love to hear more from the archives.

Keep your eyes peeled for the rest of our best of 2022 lists dropping this week!