I thought this would be fun (expect another Mix Roundup shortly, too, by the way), as mixes have brought me in touch with a lot of new music over the past year and there are so many of them out there these days. With­out fur­ther ado, here are Like a Scientist’s favorite ten mixes of 2009.

No. 10

Ter­ror Dan­jah — Glass­glow Mix­tape (Luck­yMe)
Down­load Here

No. 9

Caspa — Essen­tial Mix (BBC)
Down­load Here | Track­list

No. 8

Starkey and Dev79 — Philly Mix (XLR8R)
Down­load Here | Track­list

No. 7

Willie Isz/Dr Who Dat? — Can I Dub Your Tape? No!!
Down­load Here | Track­list

No. 6

Nosaj Thing — LA Mix (XLR8R)
Down­load Here | Track­list

No. 5

Jus Wan — Hot­flush Pod­cast No. 5 (Hot­flush)
Down­load Here | Track­list Discussion

No. 4

Eskmo — Col­or­brain (Brain­feeder)
Down­load Here | Track­list

No. 3

Rustie — FACT Mix 79 (FACT)
Down­load Here | Track­list

No. 2

2tall, Kper and Clock­work — A Boom Bap Con­tin­uum
Down­load Here | Track­list

No. 1

Erwten­peller — Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds: A Dub­step Refit
Down­load Here | Track­list

Your hum­ble music reviewer went on a won­der­ful jour­ney through the world of mod­ern bass music this year and I think I can credit my #1 album of the year, Har­monic 313’s When Machines Exceed Human Intel­li­gence, for this evo­lu­tion of lis­ten­ing habits. No album this year cap­tured my imag­i­na­tion like that one and through it I became more and more inter­ested to hear what was going on in this new cul­ture of music. “Bass Music” is prob­a­bly the best way to describe the the cur­rent world of elec­tronic club beats. It encom­passes the dub­step, hip-hop, elec­tro, wonky, grime, pur­ple, etc., gen­res by dis­till­ing them down to the very foun­da­tion of each: the all-important groove, that bob­bing, bub­bling, slinky, deep bass behind it all. After hear­ing Mark Pritchard’s lat­est turn at the Har­monic guise, I went in search of sim­i­lar peo­ple think­ing along the same wave­length and many of the releases on the below list are the result of that.

Before get­ting to 2009, though, let’s spend a moment look­ing at 2010, the most futuristic-sounding year since cross­ing the thresh­old into the 2000s. I’m fairly cer­tain that 2010 will be the year of Joker, the pur­ple king him­self. After a string of highly pop­u­lar sin­gles, live shows, and remixes, tracks like “Tron” and per­sonal favorite “My Trance Girl” hint at the forth­com­ing full-length album he is work­ing on as we speak. His par­tic­u­lar brand of wonky grimey sounds is going to blow the lid wide open. His synth melodies are infec­tious and should have some pop appeal when the pro­mo­tion kicks in for that album. Else­where, I think Starkey’s album is going to be a game-changer based on the snip­pets that have come out on radio shows and sin­gles. I’m hop­ing against hope for an album by Eskmo, as his recent sin­gle and Col­or­brain mix for Brain­feeder are unbe­liev­ably thick and vibrant. We also have a new Fly­ing Lotus album to look for­ward to, tan­ta­liz­ingly enti­tled A Space Opera. I’m a bit up and down on FlyLo. Some­times I think he is amaz­ing, some­times I don’t get it. How­ever, I’m always inter­ested to see what he’s up to. After Joker, my most antic­i­pated release is def­i­nitely the Glitch Mob album, which feels like it’s been in the works for­ever. The com­bined super­group of edIT, Boreta, and Ooah is a huge steam­roller of glitchy boom­bap and some of the most excit­ing music being made these days. Expect to see reviews of these releases when they come as well stuff from Type (pray­ing for a new Sanso-Xtro album), Mias­mah, Bed­room Com­mu­nity (espe­cially look­ing for­ward to Val­geir Sigurðsson’s sound­track Drau­ma­landið , etc. I’ll con­tinue to be post­ing all the great mixes I find around the web, too. And be on the look­out for a sequel to the Like a Sci­en­tist mix­tape, as well.

With­out fur­ther ado, here’s the Top 10 releases of 2009 as inter­preted by yours truly.

No. 10

Helio­centrics and Mulatu Astatke — Inspi­ra­tion Infor­ma­tion (Strut)
Leg­endary Ethiopian com­poser Mulatu Astatke fol­lows up the his­toric live per­for­mance with Helio­centrics by releas­ing a full album of new com­po­si­tions with this mod­ern psych-funk band. Packed with gor­geous rhythms and trade­mark keys, it’s hard to deny the magic of one of Africa’s great­est musi­cal trea­sures. This album came out towards the end of my over­rid­ing fas­ci­na­tion with African funk music, but it sounds as vital and excit­ing as the best of that music.

No. 9

Silkie — City Lim­its Vol­ume One (Deep Medi Musik)
Orig­i­nal Octo­ber 12, 2009 Review
Young Eng­lish prodigy Silkie lived up to the hype of his sin­gles and live per­for­mances with an album that sounds fresh, seri­ous, and thought­ful all at the same time. Along with burn­ers like “Planet X” (a per­sonal high­light), there are con­tem­pla­tive tracks like “Spark” and “The Hori­zon” that tran­scend club music. For me, this was one of my first expo­sures to full-length dub­step, an album you can put on in your house and enjoy just as much as hear­ing one of his sin­gles boom­ing over a club system.

No. 8

Ley­land Kirby — Sadly, The Future Is No Longer What It Was (His­tory Favours The Win­ners)
Orig­i­nal Novem­ber 25, 2009 Review
Epic, lush, huge. Three full discs of mod­ern clas­si­cal exper­i­ments by the for­mer V/VM com­poser. Snatches of strings, piano, and feed­back float along with a feel­ing of nos­tal­gia and melan­choly per­vad­ing the land­scape. My fol­low­ing of this kind of Type Records/Miasmah sound ebbs and wanes some­times but you can’t deny the majesty of what Kirby has accom­plished with this mam­moth release.

No. 7

Var­i­ous Artists — Tec­tonic Plates: Vol­ume 2 (Tec­tonic)
Dub­step god Pinch’s label con­tin­ues to release deep tracks through­out it’s his­tory and the lat­est com­pi­la­tion deliv­ers big with tracks from Joker, Mar­tyn, 2562, Skream, Benga, and even Fly­ing Lotus. If the indi­vid­ual tracks aren’t enough, the sec­ond disc weaves these tracks plus many more into a huge sprawl­ing mix by Pinch him­self show­cas­ing the purest of 2009’s dub­step sounds.

No. 6

Simon Scott — Nav­i­gare (Mias­mah)
For­mer Slow­dive drum­mer Simon Scott came out of nowhere with this lovely gui­tar, drone, and per­cus­sion album. Mias­mah again shows it has an excep­tional ear for pick­ing out the newest com­posers that are work­ing in this new evo­lu­tion of ambi­ent music.

No. 5

Mary Anne Hobbs — Wild Angels (Planet Mu)
Orig­i­nal Octo­ber 5, 2009 Review
Per­sonal hero and first lady of bass, Mary Anne Hobbs’s third com­pi­la­tion proves to be the best. With Mark Pritchard, Hud­son Mohawke, Starkey, Mono/Poly, Mike Slott, among many other fresh pro­duc­ers, pro­vid­ing beats and bass galore, MAH shows she is a true tastemaker and more impor­tantly, the biggest fan of for­ward­ing think­ing elec­tronic music around these days. A true inspi­ra­tion to music fans and crit­ics alike.

No. 4

Ben Frost — By The Throat (Bed­room Com­mu­nity)
Orig­i­nal Sep­tem­ber 19, 2009 Review
Vis­ceral and detailed, By The Throat had a lot to live up to. And it did it in spades. For some rea­son, I had the feel­ing that it would be a long time before Frost released a new album, so it was sur­pris­ing to get some­thing so good so soon after The­ory of Machines. A wel­come fall treat.

No. 3

Kryp­tic Minds — One of Us (Swamp81)
Orig­i­nal Octo­ber 26, 2009 Review
First hear­ing their stu­dio mix for Blackdown’s blog, I knew this album was going to build and build in my head and I was afraid it wouldn’t live up to what I wanted it to be. I was wrong. Deep flow­ing bass, lush synths and strings, echo­ing per­cus­sion, for me it rep­re­sents the best that dub­step and music can be.

No. 2

Clark — Totems Flare (Warp Records)
Orig­i­nal August 20, 2009 Review
Five albums later, Chris Clark is still con­tin­u­ing to evolve and bring fresh sounds to Warp. After lov­ing his first three (all very dif­fer­ent) albums and being less than thrilled with his fourth, I found Totems Flare to be a remark­able turn. At once recall­ing moments from his entire discog­ra­phy but sound­ing squarely cur­rent and respon­sive to the musi­cal land­scape of his home coun­try, it’s a strik­ing album from an artist that you could swear you had a pretty keen han­dle on already.

No. 1

Har­monic 313 — When Machines Exceed Human Intel­li­gence (Warp Records)
Orig­i­nal March 7, 2009 Review
Why do I love this album? At the time I heard it, it was quite unlike most things I was obsessed with at the time. How­ever, the cover was entic­ing, the title whim­si­cally science-fiction enough for me, and I remem­ber really enjoy­ing the Har­monic 33 library music album. When I took it home and was con­fronted with a bass heavy, electro-ish sound­ing album, I was per­plexed. Soon, though, it became my stan­dard go-to for when I needed to take a car trip. Rolling through the city at night, let­ting a burner like “Cyclotron” rat­tle my poor lit­tle Sat­urn, it was a trans­form­ing expe­ri­ence. Every­thing I love about hip-hop and elec­tronic music is in this album. Sharp snares, thick rhythms, and a sound that feels as if it com­ing back from the future, it’s music like this that puts me in touch with the core of my obses­sion, that link between sound waves and your body, cir­cum­vent­ing your brain, and becom­ing com­pletely about emo­tional response.

End of year lists are funny some­times. I tend to be a fan that is full throt­tle into what I’m lis­ten­ing to at the moment, always search­ing for the next hill to cross over, the next fresh sound. How­ever, good music is good music and it’s no small thing that my favorite album of the year was one of the first released this year. I can’t wait to see what hap­pens after Jan­u­ary 1st, 2010, just a few weeks away. It should be a spec­tac­u­lar year for music.

More mixes holy WTF! Yes, I’ve been lis­ten­ing to a lot of mixes lately, so you’ll be see­ing more of these types of posts.

2Tall, DJ Clock­work, and Kper present: The Boom­bap Con­tin­num
This has been doing the rounds for a week or two. The term “epic” was invented for this mix, I think. 10 years of beat pro­duc­tion, chopped, sliced, and mixed to per­fec­tion. Stop read­ing, just lis­ten to it!

Down­load 320kbps | Info, Art­work, Tracklist

Har­monic 313 — The Fader Mix
An old one, but this mix came out around the same time as When Machines Exceed Human Intel­li­gence, my favorite album of the year, so this is a good time to push it!
Down­load | Info + Tracklist

Nosaj Thing — XLR8R LA Mix
A trip around the LA music scene with one of the biggest stars there.
Down­load | Info + Tracklist

CLP — DJ Set at Mid­som­mar Fes­ti­val 2009, Berlin
Read­ers of this blog know how much I love CLP. This is a fun treat!
Down­load

CLP — Live Set from Blondies, Detroit, May 23rd, 2009
Down­load

Kper — Cas­sette Heads Mix
Kper goes all wonky/dubstep on us, to great results!
Down­load | Info + Tracklist

king slaFF — Recal­ci­trant Mix
A glacial mix done for Echodub Record­ings. Lovely stuff.
Down­load | Track­list

Hatcha — 2002 Mix
Mar­tin “Black­down” Clark cel­e­brates 5 years on the blo­gos­phere with a spe­cial treat from the early days of dub­step.
Down­load | Info + Tracklist

Daddy Kev — Low End The­ory Japan Mix
Low End The­ory is the big club night in LA these days, where GLK, Glitch Mob, Nosaj, etc. all blow the doors out. Daddy Kev is the god­fa­ther of the club and put this fun mix together.
Down­load

DJ Packo — Aquadust
Dub­step meets turntab­lism run amuck. Great fun!
Info + Track­list