Beats Top 10 Albums of 2006

The Beats Team cast our ears back through 2006 to bring you a selection of the finest albums released, your own refresher course for Skinny Beats! Featuring an exclusive comment from our Album of The Year winner, the mighty Spank Rock. Word!

Feature by Beats Team | 12 Dec 2006
1. Spank Rock - YoYoYoYoYoYo (Big Dada) (5 Skinnys)

In a year of significant triumphs for Big Dada and its parent label Ninja Tunes, there was never really any doubt about The Beats Team's pick for Album of the Year 2006. YoYoYoYoYo was a blast from both past and future at once, xxxChange merrily pilfering samples from old soul cuts, drums from grime and crunk and basslines from techno and electro, while rapper Naeem, AKA Spank Rock, battered and caressed the listeners' ears with a torrent of super-slick cartoon gangster and party rhymes which owed as much to Rick James as Slick Rick. It was a cocaine-dusted, sex-slippery, genre-humping beast, matched and exceeded only by their exuberant live performances at Cabaret Voltaire and Nice n Sleazy's, featuring the Hollertronix DJs cutting and pasting on a baffling array of PCs and decks. We caught up with rapper Naeem for a few brief words, and asked what shows stood out for this year: "The Maccarn Park pool show in Brooklyn was monumental, the whole family was there: Cosmo and DJ Ayres from the Rub, Diplo, Amanda Blank and
Spank Rose, MIA, all we needed was Plasic Little and Low B to come down from the mothership and it would have been official "Tronix Babies Have Conquered New York!" We didn't know how ground breaking the album was. Alex (xxxChange) is a mad man, he pulled out of me some quality shit that no one expected. We are always breaking some kind of rule, but in this case we were just making music we like, and think that is the only time you can find us following the rules. Of course we will come back to the UK: we always have a great time there, and I'm sure the next time we return you motherfuckers will know what to expect." A messianic duo, come to save hip-hop from itself - Spank Rock, The Skinny salutes you!

2. Zero dB - Bongos, Bleeps & Basslines (Ninja Tune) (4 Skinnys)
Another entry for the mighty Ninja Tune, and another act that absolutely destroyed the crowd when they visited Edinburgh (at Departure Lounge). The duo's fusion of Latin rhythms, the heavy percussion of jazz and world music, and dark electro and house basslines proved a remarkably versatile formula. B, B & B is a varied, vibrant album, with flourishes of hip-hop abnd jazz poetry that stick in the mind as long as the jacking beats of the dancefloor cuts.

3. Milanese - Extend (Planet Mu) (4S)
Drill & bass, as some people like to call it, pushes the conventions of d&b to their limit. Extend is a challenging listen, but the intricate polyrhythms, and the sheer fuck-off-ness of the whole approach to sound is exhilarating. Themes of urban decay and apocalypse prevail, and with varied instrumentation and vocal cuts, this is an album with crossover appeal - perhaps the first not made by a certain Mr Jenkinson.

4. Junior Boys - So This Is Goodbye (Domino) (4 Skinnys)
A twenty-first century Pet Shop Boys, this collection of finely wrought electro ballads on love, loss and separation is a stunning example of how intelligent pop music can be reimagined through machines and brought up to contemporary relevance. Like a sad-eyed Justin who has lost his libido and developed a sudden fixation on Fischerspooner, this album crept into our ears and stayed there.

5. Braintax - Panorama (Lowlife) (5 Skinnys)
Lowlife label head Braintax dropped the most lyrically blinding album of the year, cussing doom and gloom hip-hop and urging listeners to bring the soul back in a fantastic and cohesive set of raw hip-hop, straight outta Yorkshire. The witty reflections of pub anthem 'Last Tenner' bounce off the weighty political concerns of 'Syriana Style,' as Beat Butcha drops some great, treble-filled kicks and snares.

6. Penpushers - Poltergeeks (KFM / Incorporeal) (4 Skinnys)
Edinburgh's Penpushers delivered an assured and confident third LP proper this year, and did the Scottish music scene proud. Lyrical concerns ranging from the literary to the surreal and back again, with the mellifluous voice of Jane Gilbert adding a wistful brocade to proceedings, this was a lyrically ambitious album, with production polished to match. Just don't call it hip-hop.

7. Darc Mind - Symptomatic of A Greater Ill (Anticon)(5 Skinnys)
A lost album of sorts: Darc Mind's debut disappeared when Loud folded, only to be resurrected by Anticon. Darc Mind's MC Kevroc became a voice from the Golden Age of hip-hop, chastising bling-laden rap merchants as though from beyond the grave. "Hip-hop is the gap-toothed grin in America's eight-by-ten headshot," he told The Skinny back in October, and if that's true, Kevroc is the twinkle in its eye. Expect big things from him in 2007.

8. Alex Smoke - Paradolia (Soma) (5 Skinnys)
Smoke emerges from the clicking, glitched-out tundras of minimal tech house wielding epic string arrangements, gently smudged electro vocals and a series of epic but understated moments of dancefloor clarity. A vast improvement on his debut, exciting and innovative Scottish techno from our old friends at Soma.

9. Jel - Soft Money (Anticon) (5 Skinnys)
A darkly political hip-hop record from the Anticon founder that explored the sonic edges of the territory uncovered by his own cLOUDDEAD project in a more restrained and cathedral-esque fashion, working vocal contributions from Steffi Bohm and Wise Intelligent among others into a vivid tapestry of found-sounds and stuttering beats. A beautiful piece of work.

10. Squarerpusher - Hello Everything (Warp) (4 Skinnys)
An edifying return to form for the aforementioned Mr Jenkinson, dance music's most experimental beard-wearing recluse. With moments of spastic brilliance in the drum programming to match anything from his twisted back catalogue, and a more orchestral hand controlling the movements of the bass and instrumentation, this was one of his most challenging but rewarding LPs.