"TRUE! — nervous — very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses — not destroyed — not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad?"

Channeling Edgar Allen Poe — via a cleverly flipped Fugees sample, horrorcore sound FX, and the blunt machine brutalism of U.K. techno stalwarts like Regis and Surgeon's British Murder Boys — Blawan turned out the year's most harrowing anthem, hands down. The flanged bass sounded like the Cure's Pornography being stuffed down a garbage disposal; in place of guiros, there was a tightening noose of piano wire. John Carpenter hid his head in terror. No other techno this year sounded so vital — or at least so thrillingly undead.

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