This is a dance-oriented take on the whole electronic shoegaze thing happening out there in the world beyond the computer screen.  In places it has that party-of-my-life as the sun’s going down someplace warm, the world and its ways have not yet given you permanent low-back problems related to sitting in a desk chair kind of feel, and in others its pure cold electronics.  The opening track, “Nike”, and the excellent “Fantasy” fall into the first category.  It also roams out of that sense of false nostalgia into homage to the goofy disco eccentricities of someone like Giorgio Moroder, as heard on Cristal D’Acier.  What separates DyE from counterparts such as Small Black or Neon Indian is that his brand of step-sequenced goodness for the most part maintains a compressed, front and center allegiance to the four-on-the-floor dancefloor beat and a melodic structure tied back to Euro disco, while for the aforementioned it’s the shimmer and the atmosphere that get all the loving care.  Dance music’s impression is all over this record – if you listen, Fantasy’s melodic keyboard progression plays like a half-time version of the keys on Black Box’s “Strike it Up”.  Is that not enough pop crossover?  The disturbing body horror of the video for Fantasy gives an interesting take on the Cthulu myth while touching down on Charles Burns Black Hole territory, to boot.  You can get this from Tigersushi, linked above, or iTunes.

The film is not only a reminder of the efforts and achievements of women in the arts, it is a reminder that everyone can, if they take on the responsibility, assert their place as valid and respectful progenitors and guardians of culture and of each other, and  anyone can re-politicize art for social benefit.  The pace of our daily lives increases at a cost to our meaningful participation in society.  It is good to be reminded however that we are society.  We can still be the change we want to see.

When Saints Go Machine, Konkylie [!K7]

A sweet, sweet Danish act of synthetic daring and vocal experimentation, despite the stupid name.  It’s nice when a group knows how to slow things down while still perching on the razor’s edge of production and programming.

Obits, Moody, Standard, and Poor [Sub Pop Records]

Grizzled Brooklynites Obits, fronted by former Drive Like Jehu and Hot Snakes frontman Rick Froberg, deliver the workingman’s doom with beautifully articulated clean, clean Fender tone.  This is the blues for post-bubble America, the debt-slave cynic’s swing low, sweet chariot.  In the song “No Fly List” Froburg urges the listener, whose “daddy’s in hell” and whose “brother’s in jail” not to cry.  Why?  In these chill years when the threat of criminalization lurks as a consequence of everything you do, “These are the things you can’t control.”

Winged Victory for the Sullen, S/T [Kranky]

I heard “Steep Hills of Vicodin Tears” as a promo stream on some website this past summer before this record was released (probably directly via their European label, the excellent Erased Tapes Records), and I loved it.  To my ears, limited as they are by a lack of deep exposure to classical music, it sounds like these guys got up from a crying jag after their 300th time listening to Gorécki’s 3rd and decided to make Tortoise’s Millions Now Living Wlll Never Die.  The background electronics are almost invisible and on some tracks you can hear the piano’s innards creaking, so softly coaxed are the notes from its belly.  It’s chamber music meets ambient music, where the sounds of the real world interact directly with the orchestrated composition, and I can’t recommend it enough.

Bibio, Mind Bokeh [Warp Records]

I first heard Bibio in 2005, when he was being compared to Boards of Canada.  That’s why I got into him.  Six years on, the BoC seem to have stopped convening, and Bibio is thousands of conceptual miles from where early critics first tried to fix and liken him.  It’s equal parts weirdness and optimism.  Particularly amazing is the T.O.Y.S. EP, based around the single “Take Off Your Shirt.”

Junior Boys, It’s All True [Domino]

On this breathy, vocals-centered double-slab of hot wax the production is so subtle you might at first overlook the bed of amazingly restrained dance sequencing and beautifully plastic synthesizers all the resigned musings on love are floating over.  This whole record is a tribute to remixing George Michael’s “I Want Your Sex”, that really endearingly bad “Part 2″ remix inseparable from “Part 1″ on Faith.  It’s lovelorn realization of loss after the glitz of lust has blown over.  It’s that coming to terms with life, the “I Want Your Sex Part 3″ that didn’t make its way onto George Michael’s record back in the day.

Destroyer, Kaputt [Merge]

A stream of consciousness ride over moonlit synthesizer pads with nods to New Order and Roberto Bolaño, this is the record that gave a home to the epic single “Bay of Pigs.”  A jaunt in your summer whites from nothing and back to nothing, a soundtrack to the discovery of the terrible secret youth keeps hidden in the open.

 Cut/Copy, Zonoscope [Modular]

I picked up Cut/Copy’s debut, Bright Like Neon Love back in 2004 when I had just moved to New York.  Their follow-up four years later, though it was capturing lots of attention and acclaim, felt like a retread, and I wrote them off.  They were a really great band that deserved the attention, but, I thought, it was a pity that they hadn’t gotten it with their superior first release.  That made this year’s outing that much more of a surprise.  This is the sound of a band pulling out all the stops and loving it, grabbing hooks from their influences and making them better (Paul Simon and Men at Work evident on “Take me over”), doing everything a pop act has in its power to make the listener dance without hesitation.

Atlas Sound, Parallax [4AD]

I am not so pretentious that I think anything I say will in any way add to the work of Bradford Cox. He’s better than the Beatles and he makes it look effortless.

True Widow, As High As the Highest Heavens and From the Center to the Circumference of the Earth [Kemado]

If Sonic Youth were to have been a murder ballad band played at half the speed.

College, The Northern Council [Valerie Collective]

College breaks out of the confining aesthetic of the idealized ’80s (a schtick they helped to define) and produces an unexpected masterpiece of eerie atmospheric instrumental dance music reminiscent of DMX Krew’s darker catalog.