1. Track unavailable No Surrender



This poll is decided by the votes of RA staff members and current contributors.

"Clap your hands, clap your hands" Andy Stott's vocalist Alison Skidmore sneered over the tense throb of "Violence," the first full cut on. The track soon spiralled into near-disorder, its pretty pianos and sizzling drums gnashing at a dirge-like tempo that let each beat cut as deeply as it could. Some dance music album of the year, huh?Stott was already edging away from the dance floor during his last run of releases in 2012, butwas the furthest out he'd gone yet. And in shedding the dub techno and house he'd drawn on, in varying degrees, for all of his productions so far, he'd made the most arresting, unnerving and uncommonly beautiful music of his career. Stott pushed himself stylistically, taking in pinches of hardcore, electro, metal, maybe even southern rap. But his now-inimitable aesthetic—dank atmospheres, knobs to 11, sounds distorted to oblivion—made every flourish his own.