Electronic has always been a category that comes together at the last minute for us, usually centered around one or two obvious choices from earlier in the year. This is both more and less true this year. More than half of the category comes from before the halfway point of the year: Grimes and her Visions, Laurel Halo’s time in Quarantine, iamamiwhoami’s cohesive and living kin, and funny wordplay involving WIXIW by Liars. Yet, the two albums that made the biggest initial impacts on us came in the last three months of the year in the return of Flying Lotus and the (in my case) literal houseshaking appearance of Raime. As with all of our categories these are all truly excellent records, but I’m sure the winner seems obvious.
OHHHH, SWERVE!
So for this year, since we’re adding more minds to the site, we took yet another different tack in our award process. The first year, we were all equally following the scene. Year two, it was Andrew and I. Since getting five people together in one place to bitch about albums is hard, what we did instead was a larger poll of each category. It seemed like it was going to be Flying Lotus once again, but when the last vote came in, WIXIW squeaked by and wins our award for Best Electronic Album.
The sound of the record isn’t pushing anything forward in terms of the future of electronic music, as our last two winners certainly have. The thing that WIXIW accomplishes is far more subtle. To my mind, the talents that Liars has is in their signature songwriting voice, the astute cultural subversions in their lyrics and songs, and the few pieces of sound profile they keep from record to record. Of course, the progression of Liars is well documented at this point, and after Sisterworld it felt like they were coming closer to the starting point of the circle, and that either they were just going to just close the circle or start on an inward spiral. WIXIW rejects this linear model entirely, jutting out along an axis unseen and unexpected, in just as smooth a motion as the rest of their records. Their combination of found sound sampling, kid-in-a-toy-store synth education and the guiding hands of producer and Warp founder Daniel Miller puts WIXIW in a decidedly awe-inspiring place in the Liars catalog, as well as in music this year.
Fermata over Whole Rest 