This is the list of my top 100 musical discoveries of 2013.
2013 feels like the year when the 90s house revival finally broke through with the likes of Bicep, Disclosure, MK's comeback etc - personally I couldn't resist Disclosure's delicious and immaculately produced little garage nuggets. An overlooked, but brilliant 1990 Roger Sanchez production also found its way into my ears and onto place 17 of this chart. In other house news, relative unknown Steve produced such a pitch-perfect late 80s pastiche of an Inner City-esque vocal scorcher that it made it all the way up to place 4, and 3 Channels' deep house recombination of Esbjörn Svensson Trio and Double Exposure transcended the sum of its parts so exquisitely that it landed on place 14.
This year furthermore saw a return to form for old favourites of mine, the Pet Shop Boys and Saint Etienne, both of which I'd more or less given up hope of ever releasing decent material again. Another favourite, Sally Shapiro, who has featured liberally on these charts in the past, released a new album somewhat marred by a muddy production but Johan Agebjörn's song-writing skills are as masterful as ever, the hands-in-the-air choruses of Architectured Love and If It Doesn't Rain displaying devastating mastery of the pop form. Machinedrum, who graced the top spot last year, released a somewhat disappointing follow-up to the glorious Room(s), only two of whose tracks qualified for the lower reaches of this year's rundown.
In the headbanging department, few things put as big a smile on my face and as firm a fist in the air as DJ Clap's mindbending bangers, as well as the Curxes Remix of Chvrches' Recover. Reso, Chrissy Murderbot, Starkey and Slackk supply the remaining adrenaline. And of course, not forgetting a ferociously powerful early I-F hate jam which I had somehow inexplicably overlooked, rocking so hard that it deserves the ninth position.
The let's-pretend-it's-1983 niche is faithfully and rather brilliantly inhabited this year by Black Marble, Light Asylum, Nouvelle Phénomène, Ortrotasce, En Suite Cabinet and to some extent Sweden's female answer to John Maus, Molly Nilsson.
Absolutely hands-down biggest floorfiller goes to Red 7's acid rework of Hugh Masekela's Don't Go Lose It Baby, I don't think I was able to refrain from playing it at any of the monthly Magic Waves nights I've played at since first hearing it this summer.
But the number one spot must go to Trust's Gloryhole. I first encountered their album last year and a couple of tracks from it appeared on 2012's chart, but the songs just kept on growing and growing and in the end, Gloryhole ended up being the track with by far the most plays on my 2013 Last.fm chart. Still after 40 listens there's something wholly irresistible about its arena-filling hooks.