First Floor's Favorite Tracks of 2020

a.k.a. The tracks that made an awful year slightly less awful.

Dec 22, 2020

Hello there. I’m Shawn Reynaldo, and welcome to First Floor, a weekly electronic music digest that includes news, my favorite new tracks and some of my thoughts on the issues affecting the larger scene / industry that surrounds the music. This list is part of a special, paid subscriber-only edition of the newsletter that went out on Tuesday, December 22.

As promised in today’s original First Floor mailout, below is a list of my favorite tracks from 2020. (A similarly subjective list of my favorite releases of the year can be found here.) Just FYI, nothing has been ranked, but don’t be dissuaded by the large number of items—the releases with a similar sound / style / vibe have been grouped together, which will hopefully make navigating the list a bit easier.

Also, in the interest of keeping things from becoming too repetitive, please take note that there is no overlap between my separate lists of favorite tracks and favorite releases. (Of course, many of my favorite releases do have individual tracks that are excellent and well worth your time, but they’ve already been highlighted over on that list.)

While scrolling through the selections, click on any song title to hear that track individually, or you can also just head over to this convenient Buy Music Club list, where I’ve compiled them all in one place.

If you have any questions, do feel free to drop me a line. Otherwise, dig in and enjoy. There’s a whole lot to explore.

BIG AND BRIGHT

Remember the dancefloor? These house tunes will undoubtedly help jog your memory, as they’re all full of bright colors and bouncy rhythms. This is big-room fare and festival fodder, tracks that were meant to be enjoyed by large crowds of sun-soaked ravers in search of euphoria. Sadly, very few had the chance to take flight in the real world, but if you’re looking for a quick pick-me-up, they’re more than capable of soundtracking whatever party your imagination can come up with.

Llewellyn “True Stories” (Live at Robert Johnson)

Tiga & Hudson Mohawke “VSOD (Velvet Sky of Dreams)” (Love Minus)

Bicep “Atlas” (Ninja Tune)

Lipelis X AC “Central Store” (Running Back)

Alan Dixon “Acid Drop (Swimming Mix)” (Running Back)

Kiwi “Italian Heat” (Futureboogie)

Eris Drew “Transcendental Access Point” (Interdimensional Transmissions)

Darlyn Vlys “Wuzu” (Duro)

Jayda G “Both of Us” (Ninja Tune)

Borai & Denham Audio “Euphoria” (E-Beamz)

R.Kitt “Ripples from the Edge” (Night Tide)

GROOVERS

More house music here, but these tunes keep it cool, setting aside hands-in-the-air revelry for something deeper and more meaningful. It’s absolutely still dance music, but it’s got soul, and yes, that means that many of these tracks directly pull from the storied legacies of house music’s Black originators in Chicago and Detroit. In a year when most dance music was likely being consumed on headphones, the subtle grooves of songs like these felt just about perfect.

Kush Jones “Earth Note” (Future Times)

Kareem Ali “Night Echoes” (Self-released)

Kareem Ali “Lesser Speeds” (Self-released)

patten “RE-EDIT54D3 (Demo)” (555-5555)

Axel Boman “Eyes of My Mind” (Studio Barnhus)

C. Scott “Leaving U” (Pittsburgh Tracks)

Andrej Laseech “More Than Friends (feat. Javonntte)” (Lumberjacks in Hell)

DJ Qu “Lil’ Freak” (Strength)

Charles Webster “The Spell (Burial Mix)” (Dimensions)

North End Track Authority “I Need (Love Mix)” (Self-released)

TECHNO RIPPERS

2020 didn’t feel like a great year for techno, although it’s hard to tell if the genre actually experienced a creative slump or if I simply lost my appetite for its pounding rhythms during our extended break from the dancefloor. Either way, this section wound up being rather short—although I heard plenty of well constructed, competently produced techno tunes this year, only a couple managed to cut through the pandemic-induced malaise. (It also helps that the Phase Fatale track came out all the way back in January when things were still “normal.”)

Phase Fatale “Splintered Heels” (Ostgut Ton)

Quail + AISHA “Leatherbound” (Soma)

AMBIENT-ISH

In a year without clubs and parties, it often made sense to leave the dancefloor behind altogether, even when it came to my listening selections. As demonstrated by my favorite releases list, ambient and experimental music was a huge part of my musical diet in 2020, and although those genres—and the enveloping listening experiences they provide—rarely lend themselves to standout singles, a handful of songs were still worthy of inclusion here. There are swirling synth excursions, pastoral atmospheres and soft patches of static and reverb, but regardless of what sonic path these tracks go down, they all offer something to get lost in.

Caterina Barbieri “Clessidra” (Enisslab)

Wata Iagarashi “Clear” (WIP)

Gabríel Ólafs “Another Fall, Another Spring (Masayoshi Fujita Rework)” (One Little Independent)

Bruno Bavota “Apartment Loop #3” (Temporary Residence Ltd.)

Kara “Sing” (Leaving)

POPPY FUN

I’m not much of a pop music guy, but even I can’t deny the power of a good vocal hook. All of these tracks are technically electronic, but they also borrow heavily from genres like R&B and dancehall, importing their infectious bounce and sticky melodic sensibilities while offering something that is truly fun. Remember fun? Even during non-pandemic years, it’s something that’s frequently in short supply in electronic music circles, and I’m just as guilty as anyone else of perpetuating that. Although it’s unlikely that there will ever be a day where I’m blindly celebrating the Top 40, I do have to admit that the unmitigated joy that these tracks provided me with this year was priceless.

Any Voice “Do Me So” (Duppy Gun)

Jessy Lanza “Lick in Heaven” (Hyperdub)

Dark0 “U I C” (YEAR0001)

Shanique Marie & Finn “Lifey” (Local Action)

Kingdom “High Enough (feat. Tiara Thomas)” (Fade to Mind)

BASS MUTATIONS

At first glance, the idea of bass music without big soundsystems is very odd indeed. After all, the word “bass” is literally in the genre name, and in 2020, I don’t think most listeners were getting much low end out of their desktop speakers and earbuds. That said, even with the music’s intended target (i.e. the dancefloor) out of reach, its creators continued to be some of the most innovative artists in the entire electronic music eco-system. Every year, new permutations of dubstep, jungle, grime, dancehall and other low end-centric sounds emerge, and in 2020, they were as thrilling as ever, especially as producers continued to push tempos upwards and experiment with broken rhythms once considered too fast to be functional. Given the speed at which this genre moves, it’s possible that many of these tunes will never realize their full potential in the club, but they have an undeniable “wow” factor all the same.

Hudson Mohawke “Solstice Izo” (Warp)

Hudson Mohawke “Monte Fisto” (Warp)

Kush Jones “The Bell” (Self-released)

Mosca “The Optics” (Rent)

Anz “Loos in Twos (NRG)” (Hessle Audio)

Pessimist “Ridge Racer Revolution” (Ilian Tape)

Otik “Seasonal FX” (Keysound)

Josi Devil “The Devil’s Dance” (Homemade Sound System)

Zeki 808 “White Label” (Ilian Tape)

Walton “Steppa” (Self-released)

THE RETURN OF GARAGE

2020 should have been the year of the UK garage revival. The genre’s resurgence has been simmering for years now, and if the pandemic hadn’t turned the world upside down, it’s a safe bet that we all would have been hearing about how bubbling garage rhythms had reconquered dancefloors. In truth, the tracks listed here are just a small sampling of what was released in 2020—a lot of the new garage labels are vinyl-only and their releases sell out almost instantly—but the Time Is Now label (an offshoot of Shall Not Fade) is a good representation of the music’s youthful energy. It’s not only youngsters getting in on the action though—DJ Q is a veteran of the genre, but even after decades in the game, he managed to drop arguably the year’s best garage tune.

DJ Q “All That I Could” (Local Action)

Soul Mass Transit System “Blocked (feat. Killa P)” (Time Is Now)

Bakey “Take It Further” (Time Is Now)

JUNGLE JAMS

Seemingly everyone is making jungle now, and in 2020, the genre was once again a staple of the electronic music landscape. That’s been both good and bad, as its popularity has produced to a lot of killer tunes (not to mention a new wave of appreciation for OGs like Krust), but it’s also led to a glut of paint-by-numbers soundalikes. Here, I’ve focused on the former, putting a spotlight on the fleet-footed rumblers that perked me up the most this year. Although their bassy blasts deserve to be heard on a booming system and devoured by a heaving dancefloor, we’ll have to settle for the single shot of adrenaline they can deliver us in the meantime.