On Sunday I made my way down to the Netaudio event at the Roundhouse, a yearly event, conference, broadcast and live music convention for which my commissioned piece, a This Music Wins special outlining my thoughts on the stylistic future of experimental music on the internet, went out at 4.30pm via Roundhouse Radio and Resonance 104.4 FM London. You can listen again to the piece below, grab a zip file of all the compositions, or download them individually via tracklisting. Though trains prevented me from catching the headlining ‘Nurse With Wound’ at KOKO that evening, I did manage to catch an interesting set from abrasively captioned ‘Cuntbucket’ - who played a seemingly improvised and jazz-infused noise piece for around 40 minutes up in the open space. Check them out here.

Listen to / download the broadcast (MP3)

1. Mount Kimbie - Maybes (MP3)

2. Dorian Concept - Forced Laughter Might Save Your Life (MP3)

3. Is And Of The - Sleepless Dream (MP3)

4. Kuhrye-oo - Soul Handsome (MP3)

5. Of Oceans - In Love, Not Limbo (MP3)

6. Joasihno - Von (MP3)

7. Fishing - White Sheet Beach (MP3)

8. Matthew Dear - Slowdance (How To Dress Well Seance) (MP3)

9. Ricky Eat Acid - Anxieties ft. Rachel Levy (MP3)

10. WU LYF - Concrete Gold (MP3)

11. StaG - Tired (MP3)

12. Woodsman - Chants (MP3)

13. Twin Sister - Milk & Honey (MP3)

14. Tamaryn - Sandstone (MP3)

15. Young Prisms - Breathless (MP3)

16. Carnivals - Leeda (MP3)

17. Gold Panda - Quitters Raga (MP3)

18. Mutual Benefit - Piano Experiments In An Abandoned Hospital (MP3)

For Mount Kimbie, the London post-dubstep duo evidently already leaps and bounds ahead of what is very much still an emerging market in the UK, to have returned from a long stretch in America (where that same market is virtually non-existent), is as much as tribute to their ideas and flawless execution as it is to the USA’s increasing propensity for affection towards the recent spate of boundary-pushing, neo-soul electronica-whizzes’ to begin networking out of London and into Brooklyn.

Perhaps it started with The XX, or perhaps that attribution is a little simplistic - but for such a huge genre-encompassing breakthrough to have taken place, it seems clear that there must have been a certain poster-boy bearing the brunt of the hype. In that respect, it seems James Blake is heading a so called second wave, his musically errant charm quickly compiling enough status to sell out Music Hall Of Williamsburgh in Brooklyn and four SXSW shows in March. His sometime collaborations with Mount Kimbie, a Londoner and a Brightonian who graced a half-homecoming crowd with such an intriguingly awkward set of jumbled, half-electronic soundscapes last night, are not the pinnacle of his known activity, though they might just be one which the world shows a little more interest in in the coming months in the aftermath of this lengthy tour schedule. Mount Kimbie look to be occupying that ‘under-study’ to the face of the genre position, from which in the long-term, they might just come out on top.

The support at Brighton Audio came from the Brooklyn girl-duo Creep, who dropped their Romy Madly Croft-featuring 12” via Young Turks at the end of 2010 - a high end endorsement which suggests just how incestuously linked with Brooklyn a certain portion of London is becoming. For an opener, the set was unconvincing, and an ending with the celebrity-endorsed track itself proved a little bland. One couldn’t help get the impression that neither member was actually doing anything other than executing a 4 minute long sample and letting it run its course, at least the end song is actually a decent track - that alone saved them. In this respect, Mount Kimbie couldn’t have been further the opposite - their ‘songs’ a tangled and jumbled mesh of washed out soul, crackling beats and sporadic assemblies of a far-reaching and genuinely unpredictable repertoire of sounds and samples.

The sold out crowd moved to capacity - and certainly wanted to dance. Generations of experimental dance projects will have this exact problem, how to keep rooms moving with a regular beat that anyone can settle in to, but at the same time cut up their live show to the extent that those passive appreciators will still be blown away. Mount Kimbie moved decisively to the middle, running a confusing and anti-dynamic running order designed to keep their audience from losing sight of just how complex their beats and sampling are, but still settling in to a steady 4/4 beat on occasion to keep the audience engaged and absorbed. In no way hesitant to pull out the electric guitar for some unrecognisably distorted strums, or to use the cymbal crash in some twisted time-signatures in their dark-wave interludes, these two looked truly accomplished and intent upon keeping the show flowing onwards in its difficult and rewarding fashion between moments of searing noise, minimalist IDM and loosely-defined jazz samples of early Four Tet stylings. Certainly it seems the endlessly rewarding ‘Crooks & Lovers’ is up there with the great albums of recent years, and could prove more and more influential as dubstep advances, as it undoubtedly will, through contemporary culture.

Mount Kimbie - Bave’s Chords (MP3) from the upcoming Carbonated EP, due June 27 via Hotflush

Creep - Days (MP3)

25. Mount Kimbie - Crooks & Lovers - Field (MP3)

A juxta-positioned and tangled mesh of dubstep beats, shuffling polyrhythms and jazz samples, Crooks & Lovers is the debut LP from Peckham-based University friends Dominic Maker and Kai Campos, more commonly known collectively as Mount Kimbie. Their two EPs released in 2009 set the tone for their successes - emerging talent James Blake remixed ‘Maybes’ that year, and this year’s effort ‘Crooks & Lovers’ picked up decent reviews across the board (including an 8.0 in Pitchfork). These days the band are widely accepted as the original purveyors of ‘post-dubstep’, having remixed the likes of The Big Pink, Foals and The XX with their soulful electronic touch.

24. Teen Daze - Four More Years - Gone For Summer (MP3)

I’ve sat back and watched Teen Daze rise from the obscurities of Tumblr blog music-posting to fully fledged travelling project in just over six months, and its made me pretty happy. I’m yet to catch him in person, but I’m sure it won’t be too long until he’s bringing his chill-wave inspired laptop dance project to the UK. His boundary-pushing EP ‘Four More Years’ dropped on the label his sound is now becoming synonymous with, ‘Arcade Sound’, to a very impressive level of critical acclaim. I’ve included him in my list for taking an emerging genre, and effortlessly merging it with intense and evocative arpeggiating dance music in a way which impressed far more people than anyone would have thought. Listen to the M83 inspired reverbial chant of song ‘Gone For Summer’ above.

23. Avi Buffalo - Avi Buffalo - Truth Sets In (MP3)

Avi Buffalo’s youthful and illustrious debut played host to stand-out track, and my number two song of the year ‘What’s It In For?”, and is also a markedly strong record all round. The vocals are delicate, guitars spontaneous and a little erratic, and the arrangements seemingly a little random - but consistently coloured by twangy, surf inspired clean tones and mellow acoustic touches.

22. Women - Public Strain - Eyesore (MP3)

With a sound far less encompassing than the name, Canadian art rock band ‘Women’ put out their second release earlier this year - the first release on my list which isn’t a debut album. The sound however is very niche indeed, blending elements of dark Velvet Underground weirdness with colourful garage/lo-fi recording tones, scratchy percussion and a low murmur or chant of a vocal dubbed almost inaudibly low in the mix. Eyesore is a harshly executed crashing surf track near epic in length, which takes a euphoric but haunting turn in the latter half. Public Strain is a totally mixed bag, but all songs relate back to the stand-point of reverb-drenched production which sets the band out as a consistently challenging listen.

21. Frightened Rabbit - The Winter Of Mixed Drinks - The Loneliness And The Scream (MP3)

Frightened Rabbit were the creators of the album which went on to top my end of year list in 2008, and the band certainly haven’t got any worse. Their sound has filled out considerably - avenues of noisy post-punk influenced folk rock awash with Peter Katis’ National and Arcade Fire modelled touches make The Winter Of Mixed Drinks at times euphoric, at times desperate, but nevertheless consistently wired with themes and lyrics of love, childhood and emotional torture. ‘Skip The Youth’ for its desperate grandeur, and The Loneliness And The Scream for its rallying intensity and impassioned vocal line, are stand-out tracks.

The rest of the list will drop this week, and if you want to stay updated on its results then follow This Music Wins on Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook and subscribe via email by putting yours in the box in the sidebar.. Tell me how much you disagree with me in the comment box below!

#20 - #16 - Click here!