Luke Abbott - Holkham Drones

What’s that they say about the quiet ones....?

When everyone from The BBC to this here website was - quite rightly - tripping over themselves to tip Joy Orbison and Gold Panda for electronic greatness at the start of 2010, Luke Abbott was unassumingly going about his business, recording a debut record. He may already have put out EPs on the influential Border Community, Amazing Sounds and Output imprints, but hailing from the musical outpost of Norwich and, well, being blessed with a bit of a normal ‘Joe Soap’ name, Abbott was never that likely to trouble the Sound Of 2010 poll. Yet despite the aforementioned future stars showing every sign they’ll live up to their billings, and with others like James Blake, Seams and Dam Mantle following close behind, he has stolen a march and raised the bar significantly. “Holkham Drones is incredible,” Gold Panda tweeted last week; by our reckoning, he might actually be underselling it a little.

Abbott’s first full-length isn’t just one of the best debuts of the year. Nor does it merely rank among 2010 best electronic releases. It’s one of the finest, most accomplished and ambitious records we’ve heard for quite some time. It’s blatantly obvious, even when hearing relatively gentle album-opener ‘2nd 5th Heavy’ for the first time, that we’re in the presence of a serious talent here. It’ll take you all thirteen numbers - and perhaps a few goes at them - to appreciate the full scope of Abbott’s ambition though. Holkham Drones is nearly seventy minutes long, the equivalent these days of roughly three Guns ‘n Roses live sets. But it never drags, or even threatens to; it just keeps unfurling one outstanding moment after the next with every listen. The belting ‘Whitebox’ – the only track here lifted from those early EPs - will catch your attention straight away, but ‘Swansong’, just before it, proves every bit as thumping once it starts to motor around the three-minute mark. Elsewhere the truly phenomenal ‘Brazil’ should ideally be added to the curriculum in music appreciation classes, even if it takes slightly longer for its brilliance to fully sink in. Ditto the brief but beautiful ‘Dumb’, the best piece of minimal electronica these ears have heard since Radiohead’s ‘Treefingers’.

Slightly darker, moodier and more primal and organic than the work of any of those mentioned above - or indeed the recent output from old heads like Caribou and Four Tet - Abbott has harnessed a broad palette, one that obviously includes a love of krautrock and jazz, to devastating effect. Recently he told Ragged Words how he wanted his music to “sound old; like it belongs more to the past than the present.” With Holkham Drones, Abbott has created something that already feels utterly timeless. This debut offers the latest proof that the new golden era in UK electronica continues apace. We might even be witnessing the birth of its new leading light.