POSSE! YOU KEEP THE SPIRIT ALIVE! It's the 1990s ELECTRONIC ALBUMS poll results!

It begins...

been looking forward to this. putting on a club night tonight so i'll only get to check i n occasionally today

51.(tie) Mouse on Mars - Autoditacker (1997)
64 points, 4 votes.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/autoditacker.jpg

http://open.spotify.com/album/4Ev3UAEmQeMotvOS6w2CO1

Oops, sorry, that should read: 50. (tie). There are two albums tied for the 50th place.

Play Autoditacker back-to-back with Radical Connector and say that compression doens't effect electronic music.

― Scik Mouthy, 6. kesäkuuta 2007 23:48

I vouch for Vulvaland, one of the great album titles, especially considering it's an album by some German knobtwiddlers, as opposed to something with a Pedro Bell cover or some gaggle of skinny-bearded nu metal idiots. "Frosch" is one of THE slow-dawning pop pleasures of the last decade or so, at least in my book. Likewise, Autoditacker strikes me as the best balance of their receding straight-up IDM roots and their growing organic sound and pop sensibilities.

Don't sleep on Lithops, either. Jan's (I think) solo proj--less beat-oriented, it's all about making machines sing. Very nice.

― Lee G (Lee G), 24. syyskuuta 2002 21:46

50. (tie) Squarepusher - Hard Normal Daddy (Warp Records, 1997)
64 points, 4 votes.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/hardnormaldaddy.jpeg

http://open.spotify.com/album/1CPBXIsx6Km7ZvDmvM0gYS

Hard Normal Daddy is pretty amazing

― you can expect punches, kicks and even worse (frogbs), 30. huhtikuuta 2012 16:33

yeah, hard normal daddy is still the daddy. i keep buying his new records despite the previous ones too, and also despite the fact he was quite annoying at school.

― kieron, 6. lokakuuta 2002 10:49

Squarepusher, to me, cant sound "95" or "drill n bass" or whatever. Even though he uses those classic sounds. His music tears up so much shit and has so much variety, that it actually trancends genres, years, bullshit, alltogether. Today I was listening to Hard Normal Daddy. There are times on that album that his bass playing rivals Jaco at his most frantic. You cant tell me that shit is 95.

― chiznaki, 28. joulukuuta 2001 3:00

48. Carl Craig - Landcruising (Blanco y Negro, 1995)
66 points, 3 votes.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/landcruising.jpeg

PS The guitar solos are exactly why Landcruising is great. They add the perfect touch of slightly dodgy movie soundtrack cheese.

― Ben Williams, 25. helmikuuta 2003 22:10

i really can't say enough about the incredible awesomeness of carl craig's landcruising album. a concept ablum about travel and modern life (hey, it was original then...) that is basically a 90s detroit techno take on kraftwerk. there's one dud on there but the rest is just georgeous, deep mid-tempo techno. some of the best strings ever i've heard.

― equinox, 27. syyskuuta 2004 22:51

Agreed. Just played Landcruising the other day and it has aged really well (probably those 10 years add another layer of melancholy ;) What's the one dud though? 'One Day Soon'?

― Omar (Omar), 27. syyskuuta 2004 22:59

47. Gas - Königsforst (Mille Plateaux, 1999)
67 points, 4 votes.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/konigsforst.jpeg

Yesssss... I LOVE Gas--I played the second track off 'Konigsforst" with the signature low thrum moving from speaker to speaker at Night of the Living Drone, and I must say, Jess, you are WRONG about it verging on the ignorable! ;-) At "appropriate" volume, this music (to borrow an old-school Reynoldsism) evokes the womb, the feeling (not like any of us can remember it, but it's a cool comparison) of immersion in amniotic fluid. I have to seek out his other stuff-- 'Zauberberg' is on my Xmas wish list, and I love the track on 'Modulations and Transformations,' too.

― Clarke B., 13. joulukuuta 2001 3:00

The Gas records were just old laquer copies of Wagner run through a lot of reverb with a submerged kick drum. I have an old laquer of Tristan Und Isolde on RCA that is probably 60 years old or so and I played it on a regular turntable, sampled it on an MPC2000xl and processed it and I had instant Pop/Konigsforst/Zauberberg. The unique texture on the Gas records comes from the interaction between the hisses and crackles of the old laquers and the post-processing of the samples.

Once you figure out Wolfgang's methodology on those records you can crank them out in your sleep.

― Disco Nihilist (mjt), 14. lokakuuta 2003 0:38

Konigsforst, definitely. I love how parts of it are so lo-fi that they sound almost mono.

― NoTimeBeforeTime, 11. tammikuuta 2008 1:23

the last track on konigsforst always makes me think of a sunrise because it sounds like a warped/looped "william tell overture", that waking-up music they use in cartoons

― am0n, 16. tammikuuta 2008 17:37

i've been jamming to Gas' Konigsforst for the last several hours.

― your pain is probably equal (Z S), 15. marraskuuta 2011 23:58

'Landcruising' and the new Robert Hood album 'Motor: Nighttime World 3' make a great double feature.

By the way, even if you have the Nah und Fern box set, I'd still recommend acquiring the original Mille Plateaux version of Königsforst. On the Nah und Fern version of it, the penultimate track (which is the best track on Königsforst IMO, it's so deep and sacred) has been digitally compressed for some reason, it sounds much better on the original album.

46. L.T.J Bukem - Logical Progression (Good Looking Records, 1996)

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/logicalprogression.jpeg

i guess i shouldn't complain. i'm hoping to see that db mix even though i didn't rate it so high. or maybe logical progression vol 1 is conservative enough for an ilm poll.

― it's tricky (disco stu), 18. marraskuuta 2004 22:22

6 am, just driven a minibus through the night, very foggy dawn, bus full of sleeping kids and bits of junk on the way to holland to do a show. pulling into the gate area of the channel tunnel for the first time, the fog clears, the kids are waking up, there's a bank of what seems like 100 gates lined up, all with powerful strobe lights (for no apparent reason) flashing randomly at us, and the tune that starts the tape: pfm and conrad: western, off of logical progression 1. its the first time that these kids have ever heard any real drum and bass, and the effect was significant, to say the least.

― dbini, 5. syyskuuta 2002 19:50

this is probably much softer than the reality of digital's dub+bass style, but now i am imagining a strand of dnb built on the foundation of that magical two minutes of the original "logical progression" mix by LTJ bukem ... the last breaks of seba + lotek's "so long" are echoed into this single huge cosmic pulse, sounds like a thunderclap or something, except huge and soft and pillowy, like a giant falling into a cloudbank, and then photek's "rings around saturn" starts to come in, just that one super-delicate jazz breakbeat, but mastered so hazy and layered so thick that it just sizzles, and with the birdcall in the background the breaks sound like the beginning of the monsoon.

― vahid (vahid), 20. heinäkuuta 2005 9:20

BOOM, it's here.

Feel like doing a 'TOO LOW' for Landcruising but at least it beat Squarepusher.
Been a long time since I listened to Logical Progression but I remember it having some sweet stuff on it.

Sorry, that one got:

68 points, 3 votes.

Logical Progression, that is.

glad i voted for albums now or 'landcruising' woukd've been even more shafted. would still like to know what the one dud is. i've come round to feeling that 'home entertainment' is prob my favourite carl craig track.

<3 hard normal daddy. the 'pusher sadly didn't quite top it.. nearly though/

45. The Future Sound of London - Dead Cities (Virgin, 1996)
69 points, 4 votes.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/deadcities.jpeg

http://open.spotify.com/album/2xHvAxrgMfKrYIicQVT9ay

I think the last time I actually bought an album based solely on the cover with little to no knowledge of what the music would actually be, it was FSOL's Dead Cities back in 1996. Got it on LP, even (I forget if it was double or triple -- I don't have it anymore, stoopid me).

― Nate Patrin, 23. kesäkuuta 2002 3:00

I thought DEAD CITIES was plenty dark & disturbing. Even straight! Then I dosed and it REALLY wigged me but good. I don't play it much (so much more water under the bridge), but stuff like that is best if taken in small but meaningful lumps anyway. cf. Tear Garden's 1st 2 LPs.

― Matt Riedl (veal), 25. kesäkuuta 2002 3:00

God damn but I love me some Dead Cities. If they'd've just gotten day jobs after that, I'd think they were one of the best bands EVAH

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), 30. toukokuuta 2003 4:04

Dead Cities is that point in the night where the stoned wibbling is replaced by earnest discussion of MKULTRA and the number 23.

― Get wolves (DL), 26. heinäkuuta 2012 13:24

44. The Sabres of Paradise - Haunted Dancehall (Warp Records, 1994)
70 points, 3 votes.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/haunteddancehall.jpeg

http://open.spotify.com/album/1fjxW1nWJZbZhni4slSy38

i quite like how Haunted Dancehall is sequenced, starts off nightimeish and seems to get later and spookier as it goes on. also, as time, goes on it goes from being a really good album into a superb album

― gareth, 16. elokuuta 2001 3:00

haunted dancehall seconded - the most underrated stoner album of all time.

― Louis Giomblechett and his kerayzy friends (dog latin), 21. tammikuuta 2006 6:17

also why no more love for the haunted dancehall? pure mashup area stonehead tunes! we love, love.

― the next grozart, 25. toukokuuta 2007 6:31

43. Basic Channel - BCD (Basic Channel, 1995)

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/bcd.jpeg

http://open.spotify.com/album/7uuTGQg4ZPVDHi6k6jk0Ig

Basic Channel - BCD

Not IDM but techno, and absolutely essential.

― Stephen Crane, 13. huhtikuuta 2005 19:26

For me the realisation probably struck when I got into Basic Channel, which is not that long ago. On the other hand there's a lot of music with a scarcity in the tunes department that don't really register as such. Much of jungle is basically breakbeats and bass tones, but the sense of narrative development the deployment of the beats imbues can disguise the lack of a tune. In that sense there's heaps I was already listening to but wasn't aware of in that sense - yes, including acid house.

― Tim, 30. heinäkuuta 2001 3:00

On a desert island, my feeling is that vocals would eventually begin to grate. Basic Channel family, maybe. As a reprieve from nature yet not totally incongruent.

― Tracer Hand, 9. elokuuta 2001 3:00

71 points, 3 votes.

Dead Cities is that point in the night where the stoned wibbling is replaced by earnest discussion of MKULTRA and the number 23.
Never heard the album but this kind of makes me want to check it out!
Plenty of great supporting quotes already.

Logical Progression is pretty great but like all Good Looking stuff, it can err on the lightweight side. Think I prefer his Mixmag Live which has some edgier tunes and choppier mixing.

Oooh this is exciting, even though I (incredibly) didn't even get to vote for albums :(

(lol PhD)

Excellent work with the thread name.

42. The KLF - The White Room (KLF Communications, 1991)
72 points, 4 votes.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/thewhiteroom.jpeg

They were funny and subversive, they made a joyous cultureclash single with Tammy Wynette, a wonderful album in The White Room, and the best chillout album ever, Chill Out. Add the hilarious early sampling extravaganzas and the dumb gesture of burning £1m, and how can you not adore them?

Anyone remember Bill Drummond's great pre-JAMMs reply number, Julian Cope Is Dead?

― Martin Skidmore, 23. helmikuuta 2002 3:00

I just like their *White Room* CD; no interest in their more ambient stuff (or their corny concepts, or their book, though thanks...)

― xhuxk, 30. marraskuuta 2005 17:39

"A ten year old into The KLF? I now believe in God."

hey man, "3am eternal" followed by the tammy wynette version of "justified and ancient", it was pop dance bliss. all those early 90's dance jams were my shit.

― pipecock, 3. lokakuuta 2007 7:48

it was definitely very different even to other pop dance acts around at the time (as i remember, snap, c+c music factory, etc were all pretty big in 90-91...).

-- pipecock, Wednesday, 3 October 2007 14:49 (1 minute ago) Bookmark Link

the beats weren't that different tho, most of the time. and they had a rapper + exciting sounds (sirens or whatever) that should've appealed to kids easily. i loved the Timelords record and was 10 when it hit #1. i think their enthusiasm for big videos, TOTP, crazy costumes and filling the stage with a variety of different characters also really boosted their appeal to us in the 'i wanna be like them' sense.

despite this i never did buy The White Room - probably because i'd read it didn't feature the single mixes. It would've been my 3rd or 4th album if i had bothered tho.

― blueski, 3. lokakuuta 2007 18:00

is there seriously going to be Scooter on here?? please say yes

oh i missed this starting

glad to see Autoditacker made it - i felt like i would be the only person voting for them for some resaon!

I voted for it.

they were getting zero love on the noms thread until i poked in, is what made me think that.
i was surprised that squarepusher hadn't been mentioned much also, by the time i nominated albums/tracks.

Some albums that I didn't think were gonna rate high on this poll did do surprisingly well. For example, I think there's gonna be some controversy once we get to #3.

Anyway...

41. Susumu Yokota - Sakura (Skintone, 1999)
75 points, 3 votes.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/sakura.jpeg

http://open.spotify.com/album/6daHGcQra17Pvgnp5gEzJm

We're playing Sakura by Susumu Yokota in the office this morning, and whilst Billy & I both love it, Julie (who's 15 years or so older than us and an punk/Velvets/Hendrix/Joni Mitchell/Janis Joplin fan) hates it and can't see the attraction in it at all. She says "computers and music don't go together- 'electronic music' is an oxymoron to me". She says she cannot hear any melody in it nor understand why anyone else would enjoy it.

― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), 24. heinäkuuta 2003 13:00

sakura > all albums ever, except maybe 4 or 5 really great ones.

― weasel diesel (K1l14n), 13. huhtikuuta 2004 1:45

susumu yokota - sakura

this record is so amazing! when i got it, i must've listened to it 20 times in a row. i did an ilm search on it not too long ago, but didn't find anything. the aural equivalent of a wong kar wai film.

― prada robot (disco stu), 13. huhtikuuta 2005 6:06

Tuomas, in your honour I just bought Autoditacker (which, up until 15 minutes ago I thought was called Audiotacker), despite my great dislike of Iahora Tahiti

Truth was spoken on 13. huhtikuuta 2004 at 1:45.

I, on my half, just ended up buying Sakura. I've liked Susumu Yokota's dancier 90s stuff, but never really gone deeper to his more ambient stuff, even though I remember hearing people play those albums in the 00s. But checking Sakura out on Spotify, it does still sound quite lovely.

EDB, I've never been a big fan of Iaora Tahiti either, but Autoditacker is my favourite MoM album. Compared to IT, it's less bleepy and faux-naive, and has a more detailed and deep sound. IMO Autoditacker is the record where they really found their own voice.

"even though I remember hearing people play those albums a lot in the 00s"

I don't know why, but for some reason Yokota's albums seemed to be really popular back then among artier types, who otherwise didn't listen to much electronic music (and certainly not to Yokota's earlier techno and house records). It's funny how things like that can happen; after a couple years he stopped being trendy again, and I've never heard any of my friends play his records ever since.

Yeah he definitely receded in popularity didn't he, I think quite a few of those millennial ambient (also clicks & cuts / post-dub-techno) types found their level of exposure plummeting sharply as the 00s shifted back towards a dancefloor focus.

Funny enough, I bought Clicks and Cuts along with Autoditacker today.

Xpost: yes, it was on the strength of your explanation (elsewhere on ILM) of Autoditacker's superiority that I'm giving MoM another try.

40. Plaid - Rest Proof Clockwork (Warp Records, 1999)
76 points, 3 votes.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/restproofclockwork.jpg

Most iambic title: Rest Proof Clockwork.

― Lee, 28. maaliskuuta 2002 3:00

Rest Proof Clockwork is one of the most beautiful albums evah. Beats BoC / Autechre etc. hands down.

― phil, 27. toukokuuta 2002 3:00

one thing about black dog is that they're actually quite "functional" - even plaid's most "out there" compositions (around the time of "rest proof clockwork" and the "trainer" set) are built around straightforward electro/hiphop beats. there's not much to rhythmically differentiate "bytes"-era black dog and something like, dunno, jaydee's "plastic dreams" - it's all about stuff like sound palette and those microtonal drones + harmonizings between the drums and synths and so on that gives it the alien feeling.

― vahid (vahid), 23. maaliskuuta 2006 1:13

I don't have Spotify available at the moment, but if anyone else wants to post the Spotify link to that album, that'd be nice.

39. The Black Dog - Spanners (Warp Records, 1995)
81 points, 5 votes.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/spanners.jpg

i still listen to spanners and bytes often and still love them both. especially spanners.

― jed (jed_e_3), 8. joulukuuta 2003 4:40

Was listening to Spanners this morning. It's a curiously underrated album, I think, or maybe just not talked about as much as I would expect given all the early-IDM love that everyone but ILM has in spades. So full of ideas! Tracks veer from rickety detroit techno to acid house to tribal house to trip hop to etc. etc. etc. I also love the way they really think about the interplay between the off-kilter melodies and the off-kilter rhythms; reminds me a bit of current dancehall actually (think the French Vanilla riddim for example).

― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), 11. kesäkuuta 2004 4:28

I find Spanners overlong to be brutally honest.

It's like they knew they were going to split so filled the CD with everything they had. It's the only one that drags a bit for me. I could happily lose a couple of the tracks near the end of the disc.

― fandango (fandango), 15. lokakuuta 2005 5:23

Hmm, I LOVE Spanners. "Psil-Cosyin" is sometimes my favourite Black Dog track. So kaleidoscopic.

What don't you like, mehlt? Is it the allusions to Orb/Ultramarine-style "atmosphere" ("Chase The Manhattan" etc.)?

The early stuff is awesome too obv, but for me the whole trajectory up to Spanners feels like the trio learning how to push and push and push at the wiredness of their grooves. I guess a counter-argument is that Spanners introduces stuff that sounds like a lot "straighter" and rather like a lot of the other IDM from the era (and Plaid Mk II continued to push that more syncretist sound), but I think they get the balance right on that album - a whole disc of "Psil-Cosyin"-style tracks would be exhausting...

― Tim F, 18. lokakuuta 2008 7:36

I've always had a very ambivalent opinion of that album, and of The Black Dog/Plaid in general. On the one hand, TBD came up with some of the most idiosyncratic and attractive sounds of that era, but on the other hand they constantly undermined the sheer beauty those sounds had with the alienating (see Vahid's post in the Plaid comments above) textural and rhythmic U-turns they favoured. Take "Psil-Cosyin", for example: it starts with a really gorgeous synth riff, one you could build a whole tune around... And then, after less than a minute, the riff is gone, and the tune descends to some boring, serpentine faux-exotic percussion jam. After several minutes, the beautiful riff makes one more tantalizing entry, only to disappear again after 20 seconds or so, never returning again. It feels like they had a really good idea for a tune, but didn't trust that one idea to carry the tune, so they needed to add a kazillion more things to it.

I think that, in a nutshell, was the biggest problem with so many of the 90s IDM musicians: they took the prog rock idea that "more is better", that "intelligent" music needed to be complex, that every tune needed more riffs! more textures! more rhythmic changes! and as a result the individual good things they might've had has were buried under this barrage of sound.

I think that's why Black Dog are so great - there's so much detail in the music, I'm always discovering new textures / subtleties. Spanners is a wicked album, think it made my top 10 (along with Bytes). I love the way Psil-Cosyin develops over 10 minutes - absolutely massive tune.

38. The Orb - U.F.Orb (Big Life, 1992)
83 points, 4 votes, 1 first place vote.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/uforb.jpg

The splintering of dance music meant that not only were there separate dancefloor stories to tell, but that there were different comedown stories to tell - the fast music that U.F.Orb was an alternative to ceased to be a monolith after '92, and maybe stay-at-home dance music followed suit.

Also maybe trip-hop played a big role here - at least in being the first music that an enormous amount of dance fans embraced in a big way that was totally outside the scene. This is what has led to "chill-out" becoming so vague and amorphous that both full-on house tracks and rock bands get a look-in; in fact the 'Back To Mine' and 'Another Late Night' franchises seem to now be in competition to be the least dance-related and the least relaxed.

Oddly, Orb-style ambient-dub is one stripe of chill-out music that might actually sound quite weird being played in a cafe/bar.

― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), 10. lokakuuta 2002 15:52

i want to stick up for The Orb a bit - U.F.Orb is DEFINITELY superior to In Sides, Snivilisation and any other Orbital album, as much as i love the Hartnolls as much as the next guy. i havent lived with Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld much and maybe its a better album than U.F.Orb but i dunno - U.F.Orb and In Sides are not actually that different in terms of structure - i see similarities in some ways. In Sides, like a lot of Boards Of Canada, as beautiful and enchanting as it is, just ends up creeping me out most of the time (Out There Somewhere and Adnans both seem to end on quite 'downer' moods to my ears) whereas UFOrb is just dubbed up blissed out brilliance

― stevem (blueski), 4. huhtikuuta 2003 12:12

i can't remember if i voted for in this, but u.f.orb ends with the sound of an elephant shitting which has to count for something.

― tricky, 27. joulukuuta 2007 3:32

The Orb - U.F.Orb is pretty straightforward if you see Towers of Dub as either an intermission or that the aliens smoke you out w/ Venusian Ganja.

― shugazi (herb albert), 4. kesäkuuta 2010 18:26

first two Orb albums are timeless

no, that was by goldie

lol

the orb is hippy music for hippies.

Landcruising is great though. I wish I'd heard it at the time, I saw myself as an IDM kinda guy who didn't really care about regular techno but surely those chill beats would have appealed.

37. A Guy Called Gerald - Black Secret Technology (Juice Box, 1995; with a remastered reissue in 1996)
84 points, 5 votes.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/blacksecrettechnology.jpg

Another thing that happened that I only really noticed today listening to CD2 of Roots From The Jungle is that drum'n'bass tunes used to be so pretty sometimes - not elegant or jazzy or ambient but full of these little trills and curlicues of keyboard. Black Secret Technology (still my favourite d'n'b record) was full of that stuff and it all vanished - maybe it's come back on the recent stuff, it feels very tied in with the intricate breaks though.

― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), 29. tammikuuta 2004 1:48

I noticed that Steve said this upthread re Black Secret Technology:

"there was an old thread where i basically said in not quite so much detail: BST: good concept, radical alien sound signature exciting on paper. radical alien sound signature frustrating in practice generally sounds so strained and distant and kinda cheap, like radio signals in space - but i would prefer it if he'd been able to combine that with better actual drum and esp. bass sounds, would've been even more powerful imo."

If anything the remastered version goes too far in the other direction - on "Finlay's Rainbow" for example the bass is so loud that it totally swamps the beats. The cleanness of the remastered sound reveals what was obscured on the earlier versions by the crappy production, which is that Gerald evidently never really intended for the beats to be danced to, more to be admired.

I do love the bass sound on the record though, that boomy system-failure bassdrop sound i always associate with Back 2 Basics' "Horns For '94".

― Tim F, 29. lokakuuta 2008 0:33

Had BST on this morning for the bus ride to work, apart from it being a more consistent listen than Timeless (there aren't any outright clunkers) I think it wins out for its sense of space - the arranging (if that's the best word for it) has so much depth and detail, just really great sonics.

― Gavin, Leeds, 6. syyskuuta 2012 13:31

Rstproof Clockwork - what a vibrant, imaginative, colourful record that is. Plaid at their very peak. One of my favourite records of all time. So glad it made it in this countdown.

It's kinda frustrating that there are now 3 different masters of BST around: the original 1995 one, the 1996 reissue, and the 2008 re-reissue. I have the 1996 version and I like it just fine: it's true that the vocal bits and samples feel kinda silent and unspatial compared to other jungle records of the era, but on the other hand this is compensated by the tremendous depth in the bass. I wonder if/how the 1995 or 2008 versions change that dynamic? Are they worth tracking down?

always had a very ambivalent opinion of that album, and of The Black Dog/Plaid in general. On the one hand, TBD came up with some of the most idiosyncratic and attractive sounds of that era, but on the other hand they constantly undermined the sheer beauty those sounds had with the alienating (see Vahid's post in the Plaid comments above) textural and rhythmic U-turns they favoured. Take "Psil-Cosyin", for example: it starts with a really gorgeous synth riff, one you could build a whole tune around... And then, after less than a minute, the riff is gone, and the tune descends to some boring, serpentine faux-exotic percussion jam. After several minutes, the beautiful riff makes one more tantalizing entry, only to disappear again after 20 seconds or so, never returning again. It feels like they had a really good idea for a tune, but didn't trust that one idea to carry the tune, so they needed to add a kazillion more things to it.

100% OTM and describes my exact frustration with Spanners.

It must have been lousy to have to remaster it the following year.

I do agree with Tim comment's above, though, that for a supposed dance album a lot of the beats on BST feel more like display of skills rather than something's that's functional on the dancefloor. I wasn't yet old enough to get in clubs in 1995, but maybe some of the British ILXors can tell whether this stuff was actually played a lot by club DJs?

(xx-post)

I met A Guy Call Gerald in a club once and didn't realise who he was until after he'd gone. Had a long conversation and gave him a CD of stuff I'd produced which he literally put under his hat.

I did a lot of clubbing in 1995 but had no idea what I was listening to 99% of the time.

36. Black Dog Productions - Bytes (Warp Records, 1993)
85 points, 5 votes.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/bytes.jpg

fucking listen to "bytes" already goddamit, you son of a !#$KO!$%JKO

― amon (eman), 15. lokakuuta 2005 6:20

so i've never heard bytes, until now. close up over! wow! lovely

― lfam, 7. toukokuuta 2007 0:2

as far as actual albums that you listen to, even though it's near the beginning of IDM and not something great for dance party time, I think Black Dog Production's Bytes is the best techno album of all time. It's diversity, it's consistency, it's flow, everything.

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), 6. toukokuuta 2005 19:09

So I'm listening to Bytes by Black Dog Productions, and the pads sound distorted on a lot of the tracks. Also, during "The Clan (Mongol Hordes)" theres a whispy, very high pitched sound throughout.

What the hell is up with this? Is my CD fucked up (it's not my computer or speakers), is this on others copies/the re-released version?

― mehlt, 21. kesäkuuta 2008 17:57

no, they all sound like that. IIRC a lot of it was done on fucked-up hand-me-down equipment, dubbed to cassette tape, mastered from vinyl and on top of that mastered to be murky on purpose.

― moonship journey to baja, 21. kesäkuuta 2008 23:41

Ahh that sucks, don't know why I didn't notice it 'till now. Reminds me of reading that original tapes for Selected Ambient Works were mangled by a cat.

― mehlt, 22. kesäkuuta 2008 3:40

35. Paperclip People - The Secret Tapes of Dr. Eich (Planet E, 1996)
86 points, 4 votes.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/thesecrettapesofdreich.jpg

Well, there were actually three of us, but after hitting the bars in Nashville over the holidays we headed back to the apartment of a friend and proceeded thus:

1. Programmed the two Sony mega-changers to crossfade between 'Secret Tapes of Dr. Eich' by Paperclip People and 'Analog Worms Attack' by Mr. Oizo, one track after another in order

2. Watched 'The Neverending Story' muted with English subtitles on while listening to the results of 1, above

3. Occasionally read the dialogue off the screen to the beat of the music as if it were a freestyle

It was FUCKING WICKED, YEAH

― Millar (Millar), 24. tammikuuta 2003 2:08

Paperclip People - The Secret Tapes Of Dr. Eich

Earthlings, I will not be troubled by your pointless headlines and silly love stories, I will not be moved by your trite summaries of miracles, I will not sully my consciousness with ruminations on the fate of the ozone layer or the impossible questions of justice. I will not be fooled by advertising, I will not be distracted by politics, and I will not weep into a bottled beer over some smile I'll never see again.

What I will do is think about what it would be like to be a flawless being from the future where none of this shit matters anymore because the beats are so perfect and unstoppable and people and machines are a seamless fusion in constant motion as far as the eye can see and even the sirens on the ambulances play the refrain from "The Climax."

Then I will take my headphones off because someone is talking at me and everything will suck again. Just for a little while.

― TOMBOT, 26. heinäkuuta 2004 18:57

Screw Songs About Food. Get that Paperclip People disc first.

― Roy Williams Highlight (diamond), 27. syyskuuta 2004 22:00

think the Paperclip People album is still my favourite.

― millmeister, 3. toukokuuta 2012 18:34

never 'eard of it. what is it?

Carl Craig in world destroying house mode.

cool.

That was my #4. Back in 1994, my 15-year old brain was blown by "Throw". Before that, I'd never considered a track so minimal could be so fulfilling. I was disappointed that I couldn't find any other tunes by PP in the local record stores, but I learned the guy behind the name was Carl Craig, and he'd done some other cool stuff too. Still, PP remained my first true love among his pseudonyms. Then, a couple of years later, I spotted the album at a store, and and bought it immediately. I do think it loses some steam after "Steam", but tracks from "Oscillator" to that one are among the best house music ever made: so much space and emotion in those simple grooves. And the bassline of "Paperclip Man" is still the roughest I've ever come across; not even techstep drum'n'bass topped it, IMO.

Yay Paperclip People.

p sure Rest Proof Clockwork is 2 spondees (spondaic?) not iambic

had an English friend back when who insisted on pronouncing Plaid as "played" instead of "pladd". is that a British thing or was he just confused?

34. Goldie - Timeless (FFRR, 1995)
89 points, 5 votes.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/timeless.jpeg

http://open.spotify.com/album/0MbeekWXeO9BFjImhNH5gf

Yeah the beats themselves on Timeless are super super memorable, they're like hooks in a way that just wasn't the case on Parallel Universe (or, if I'm honest, BST).

― Tim F, 5. syyskuuta 2012 12:25

As a stand alone cut, I could see how Sea of Tears would underwhelm, maybe sound too watered down in the context of its genre. But I do love how spacious the beatless sections are. And I think it fits well as a deep cut in the album.

― azaera, 7. syyskuuta 2012 0:02

mystique is like the perfect goldie tune title too. i've never really been able to get past the sludgy sound of BST. Jah the seventh seal is the best thing for me on either record. can't believe someone called goldie's production flat upthread, that track sounds like it's coming from another dimension.

― jed_, 11. syyskuuta 2012 3:14

"Jah The Seventh Seal" is great but I think I would always have to go with "Angel" or (possibly)
"Kemistry" as best - the incongruous mixture of light and dark that Goldie managed on those tunes seems like his greatest contribution IMO.

― Tim F, 11. syyskuuta 2012 3:16

yeah what as it bjork said about jungle? "exploding with fierce joy" or something. describes a lot of timeless, imo

― blank, 11. syyskuuta 2012 3:21

I think the mispronunciation of plaid is because most people use the words tartan or tweed instead, so it's just unfamiliarity.

Whoops, actually Timeless is supposed to be #33, and this is the real #34:

34. The Future Sound of London - Lifeforms (Virgin, 1994)
89 points, 4 votes.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/lifeforms.jpeg

http://open.spotify.com/album/0UcHfoo7KMso767JwePBMh

I hate to be the fucker to point this out, but 'alpha'-state = AWAKE. Methinks (if I can remember anything from my brief college years) that the deep-sleep-state brainwave patterns are referred to as "theta" waves.

And, as for the thread question, put on that Bill Laswell/Talvin Singh ambient album or Future Sound of London's Lifeforms or Buckethead's Electric Tears, and you. are. gone.

― nickalicious (nickalicious), 2. toukokuuta 2003 14:51

future sound of london's "lifeforms". disc 1 is the most indescribably beautiful piece of musical lushness evah. disc 2 is OK.

― weasel diesel (K1l14n), 28. elokuuta 2003 0:58

I would have voted for dead cities a few years back but since reinvesting in these dudes I would have to agree Lifeforms is definitely the best album

― TOMBOT, 4. joulukuuta 2008 20:49

Since 76:14 is getting most of the (deserved) love, I'll come to Lifeforms' defense... Agree with f.hazel. It's a pretty adventurous ambient album; it doesn't coast on a pretty melody or atmosphere, the way many ambient albums do. Which is both one of its strengths and weaknesses. I find 76:14 easier to listen to; Lifeforms requires a sharper attention to keep up with all the microscopic activity.

While some tracks work better than others (though the quality is pretty consistent), and there are plenty of 90s touchstones, I would argue that 76:14's synths sound more dated - both in terms of texture and composition. And while 76:14's compositions are beautifully crafted with just the right amount of discipline, to these ears, the techniques employed throughout Lifeforms - in which they build vast, ever-changing organic structures through the layering of samples - are nothing short of virtuoso.

― azaera, 26. heinäkuuta 2012 5:28

But I will rep for Lifeforms some more. In addition to being playful, it also very much has the feeling of happening in a city, or some place full of people, and that makes it delightful to me... I get this same thrill from the KLF's Chill Out. Although like WCC, I usually want my ambient albums to knock me out of time and space, or take me to some natural landscape bereft of people... but Lifeforms doesn't do that and still works.

― the girl from spirea x (f. hazel), 26. heinäkuuta 2012 19:27

Didn't 4hero program most of the beats on Timeless? Anyway, great album.

32. Autechre - EP7 (Warp Records, 1999)
92 points, 4 votes.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/ep7.jpeg

http://open.spotify.com/album/1KaTIdAepIJDxbSEEL3M2z

I've always found them strangely dissapointing. I do like most of Tri Repeate, but I find Amber dull (hard for me to imagine how so many consider that classic) and the post-Tri stuff I've heard generally just slides by me. I ADMIRE what they're doing with the thick sounds on EP7 -- it sounds very complicated and new -- but it's just not enjoyable listening for me. I keep it around, though, because I figure some day it just might click.

― Mark, 23. huhtikuuta 2001 3:00

mom are the flaming lips, ae are james brown, ep7 is cold sweat, DEATH TO MELODY

― simon trife (simon_tr), 24. syyskuuta 2002 9:15

Definitely EP7 by Autechre. Get mashed, headphones on, lie down - and prepare to "feel" sound in a very physical way.

― dog latin (dog latin), 23. huhtikuuta 2004 1:53

Incunabula - Your typical sci-fi aliens exploring space
Amber - Aliens touch down in an isolated desert and mess shit up.
Tri Repetae - They send their findings back to the spacecraft
Chiastic Slide - Alien leaders hear word of things going on on Earth but there's a lot of crap going on over there.
LP5 - Essential maintenance and alien army going to war
EP7 - the epic battle that ensues between aliens and earthlings
Confield - Recolonising the Earth

and everything after is the aliens going about their daily business.

― dog latin (dog latin), 27. kesäkuuta 2006 13:23

Didn't 4hero program most of the beats on Timeless? Anyway, great album.

― millmeister, Monday, 29 October 2012 21:25 (41 minutes ago) Permalink

Both 4 Hero and Rob Playford (formerly of 2 Bad Mice) worked on it, while Dillinja worked on a few tracks as well ("This Is A Bad"; "Jah The Seventh Seal").

The best, most memorable beats ("Timeless", "Saint Angel", "Angel", "Kemistry") were either Playford or Playford reworks of original Metalheads tunes (Goldie/Mark Rutherford).

But obviously if you took the best most memorable 4 Hero beats generally (rather than on Parallel Universe specifically) then you'd match them - thinking of stuff like "London Sum'Ting" etc. here.

Breathed a sigh of relief when it turned out that Timeless finishing below Lifeforms was actually a mistake.

I never knew Dillinja was involved. Are you sure about 'Angel' though Tim? Discogs credits Dego & Marc Mac exclusively and it seems to have the trademark 4hero beats to my ears. Not to be pedantic or anything.

No you're right - "Angel" is 4 Hero though curious "Saint Angel" (which has the better version of the same beat) is not. I was meaning to write "Sensual" above.

I feel really bad about not participating now. So many great albums.

31. Coldcut - Journeys by DJ: 70 Minutes of Madness (Music Unites, 1995)
94 points, 5 votes, 1 first place vote.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/journeysbydj.jpg

I've got to admit that Coldcut's "Journeys By DJ" is a fave, I'm a bit of a sucker for pointless eclecticism.

― Mike Ratford, 21. elokuuta 2002 22:19

I still reckon that its decent - I've noticed that since the re-release their seems to have been a bit of a backlash against it that I don't quite understand. I find it strange that people who heap praise upon 2 many DJs + DJ Rupture criticize this for being eclectic for eclectics sake, or a bit of a gimmick. Still, I guess that it ultimately comes down to taste - I love the coldcut and DJ Rupture, but find the 2 many DJs a bit grating for the novelty aspect!

― Robin Goad (rgoad), 7. tammikuuta 2003 13:34

also, whereas 'as heard on radio soulwax' is unquestionably designed as a great party mix, '70 minutes of madness' is not - its designed as a general listening experience and exploration - granted this leaves it harder to pidgeonhole and its even frustrating that as Matt says, the first 15-20 minutes are probably the most full-on part of it with the dub and drum n bass followe by techno mixing, and you could definitely dance to that as much as Vitalic or whatever else...but then yeh an enforced lull sets in, everything goes weird - the direction of the mix is totally shifted and you're somewhere else...i dont really see that as a flaw as such - as long as you remember that its strictly not a dance mix

― stevem (blueski), 7. tammikuuta 2003 13:50

i think eclecticism for eclecticism's sake as a criticism is rubbish because in these cynical times it seems to be applicable to anything that features several genres/styles together, which has always been for me a fundamental advantage to any performance, whether on an album, a dj mix, a party soundtrack, movie soundtrack...so its very natural and intuitive for me to want to hear that eclecticism and want to practise it myself. its not about saying 'oh i want everyone to know i like a bit of everything' (then again, whats wrong with that?) - for many people (most in fact) its an HONEST reflection of their musical outlook...i find it far more annoying when these people restrict themselves too much to one thing (e.g. checked out 45 minutes of Tom Middleton at Glasto last yaer but got totally bored because the 4/4 beat and tempo didnt seem to change at all for that entire time)...but i guess what that boils down to is i'm just not cut out for clubbing

― stevem (blueski), 7. tammikuuta 2003 14:22

Yeah this is what I meant by 'too vague'. I think you're completely right steve in that most people do listen to lots of stuff - what I was criticising was the kind of eclecticism that would only work by assuming that they *didn't*. Mixes where you get the idea that the DJs are sitting there thinking "hey I bet you never thought this would go with THIS" and obviously you did think that cos that's how you listen to stuff.

Now obviously 2ManyDJs does exactly this and that's not what I like about it, but for me they go to places Coldcut didn't - with Coldcut I found myself thinking in the second half of the mix, well if you're so fucking eclectic put on some handbag or rock or gabba or, I don't know, hip-hop with actual vocals in it then. So maybe what I'm criticising is acts who seem to make a virtue of their eclecticism when they're less 'eclectic' than most of the people I know.

― Tom (Groke), 7. tammikuuta 2003 14:31

i got the reissue and missed it the first time round, but it does have that feeling of being of its time. so i agree that it's prob unfair to compare this with 2mdjs (or yr dj yodas). we're now interested in different things -- not that we're listening differently (perhaps we are), but that we've moved on and embedded the attitude of the time and built on it. it's certainly not a dud for its content.

― Alan (Alan), 7. tammikuuta 2003 15:56

30. Aphex Twin - Richard D. James Album (Warp Records, 1996)
94 points, 6 votes.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/richarddjamesalbum.jpg

Aphex is classic, of course. I actually used to see him as a model for making a virtue of geographical isolation as a means of artistically refining yourself, so it's appropriate that K-reg said that. I think "Richard D. James Album" is his best work, as well, whereas FWIW I think "Bryter Layter" is Drake's weakest.

― Robin Carmody, 8. toukokuuta 2001 3:00

someone said aphex had cold landscapes, this is only partially true for me. richard d james album conjures a nick drake-esque sun rising oxfordshire landscape to me (and i've only been to oxfordshire maybe twice...)

― gareth, 28. toukokuuta 2001 3:00

The Richard D James album is more happy, wacky, ultra-caffeinated beat seizures with bonky, funky video-game melodies zinging around the place. (Seriously- sometimes they're on a lead synth, but just as often the melody passes to the tuned drum hits or the unidentifiable chunks of noise)

― rob geary (rgeary), 18. lokakuuta 2003 8:09

after listening to the richard d. james album for the first time, i'm a lot less hostile towards the notion of drum machines.

― lieutenant jimmy john (kelpolaris), 15. syyskuuta 2010 20:47

ban kelpolaris

EP7 and RDJ Album = two of my very favourite albums of all time - certainly had an enormous impact on me at the time. EP7 is probably the closest I've ever come to having a transcendental musical experience. Those last four tracks are the electronic equivalent of something like Scott Walker's The Drift - freeform, beautiful and terrifying.

RDJ Album isn't his very best, but it's nevertheless wonderful. RDJ at the time said he wanted to fit as many ideas into the shortest space possible without sounding messy, and he pulled it off.

Was EP7 your intro to autechre or had you heard their previous stuff?

Coming late to this… I placed Haunted Dancehall very high. I don't know another record like it. I love the evening-to-dawn trajectory. It's one of my favourite London albums.

Was EP7 your intro to autechre or had you heard their previous stuff?

― itt: 'splaining men (ledge), Tuesday, 30 October 2012 11:51 (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm almost certain LP5 (which I also love) was the first one I heard. Maybe EP7 came second? LP5 is a bit more listenable, but I've never had such a visceral, almost tangible musical experience as listening to EP7 in the dark on headphones.

Haunted Dancehall is incredible, has it appeared yet?

http://letmectrl-fthatforyou.com

Yes. Too low. Only three votes.

I'm trying to track down an alternative version of Wilmot with a different bassline. I used to own it, but I can't find it.

I must have forgotten to vote for HAunted Dancehall. Somehow Weatherall completely skipped my mind while voting and I'm kicking myself for it.

oh wait, no i did vote for it - my number 6

no two lone swordsmen though :-(

29. David Holmes - Let's Get Killed (Go! Beat, 1997)
95 points, 6 votes.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/letsgetkilled.jpg

Interesting point made by James Murphy recently. I'd always heard that he and Tim Goldsworthy despised Holmes's lack of musical chops while making Bow Down to the Exit Sign but Murphy now says that he actually admired it:

"David was this guy who wasn’t really an engineer, he wasn’t a musician, he was just an ideas guy. I was flabbergasted. Here he was calling people like Richard Maguire from Liquid Liquid and getting that done. I was dumbfounded! You just called? And he was like yeah. It was really an eye-opener: why am I not just doing these things I want to do? Why am I sitting around moaning about how things aren't the way I want them to be when I should just fucking do it? It just seems easy. David was a real role model in a way. He just does things. He’s got balls. He was like, fuck it, I’ll do it. I was like, 'I’ll practice with my band for 6 months before we’ll play a show and you don’t even play an instrument and you’re making your third album! I’m an idiot.’"

Like James Lavelle, Holmes just went "Well I like all this cool shit and I'm pretty personable so I'll just corral a load of talent and get them to make the record while I sit there directing it." Obviously that can only go so far - it strikes me as a very late 90s dance-scenester approach to recordmaking that doesn't really happen now. At least, I can't think of an example off the top of my head. But I like the idea that Holmes's chutzpah was one of the springboards for the DFA, LCD, etc.

Re: Let's Get Killed, the remix album had some great stuff on it: Arab Strap's Don't Die Just Yet (aka The Holiday Girl) and Fridge's Head Rush on Lafayette, which sounded like Orbital. Both reissued on the recent best of.

― Haunted Clocks For Sale (Dorianlynskey), 16. toukokuuta 2010 19:31

listening to it for the first time since 2000 except for one time when it was on at a friend's place and I said "oh, what is this" and he showed me it and I sheepishly admitted to myself that for all I used to love it I could probably only recognise one or two tracks off it

I wish I'd been slightly proactive regarding sending out demos in the late 90s - seems like the golden age of labels going "oh shit, we need some electronica, stat" and throwing money at people who have a vague knowledge of electronic music and a slightly cool record collection and (possibly) nothing else. If this really is a case of that, then it's a case where it's worked pretty well.

― xylyl syzygy (a passing spacecadet), 16. toukokuuta 2010 21:00

I met the guy who is sampled saying 'i don't mosh...release this energy'. He moved to New Orleans from NYC after this album. He was coming to our night at Cafe Brazil and I recognized his voice. Crazy coincidence.

I love this album. David Holmes is still underrated.

― brotherlovesdub, 17. toukokuuta 2010 2:00

v illuminating post by dorian upthread

an extremely late-90s kind of bro, david holmes

wonder who actually produced this lp. some of it's right good, like 'my mate paul'

he was obviously a hustler, getting the 'out of sight' soundtrack and stuff, but i reckon he was more adept than james lavelle. lavelle got terrible reviews as a dj: holmes i saw, and he was good. not that i had that much to compare him against.

― all i wanna do is poll poll poll poll and zing and discuss mia (history mayne), 17. toukokuuta 2010 13:00

EP7 was my #3 and highest placed Autechre. Definitely one of their more varied and adventurous efforts, and not at the cost of consistency, there really isn't a skippable track on it.

Sorry if the discussion quoted sounds a bit negative, but those pretty much the only in-depth comments I could find on the subject. FWIW, in dance music there have always been records released under the name of DJs who were mostly "ideas men", where the bulk of the technical production work was done by others: examples of this include Afrika Bambaataa, Westbam, Goldie, etc. I don't think there's anything wrong with it (ideas are pretty important!), as long as they properly credit their collaborators.

(xpost)

28. Saint Etienne - So Tough (Heavenly, 1993)
97 points, 4 votes.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/sotough.jpg

I voted for So Tough in the end, but that was without going home and listening to it first. It was the first St. Etienne album I bought and it brings back so many good memories. I like all the samples; one of the joys was finding out where they all came from (some I knew already, like the Lord of the Flies excerpt and Rush's Spirit of Radio).

― Grandpont Genie, 15. toukokuuta 2007 11:44

'so tough' is their masterpiece for certain, it is perfect in it's idle observations and at the same time it's ability to move in different ways.

― keith (keithmcl), 1. joulukuuta 2002 22:47

It's weird how Foxbase Alpha seems to be regarded as A Classic London Album cause surely So Tough is SO MUCH MORE so? London Belongs To Me, point taken, but she sounds almost touristy and adventuring on that whereas on Mario's Cafe it is their routine and she/they are absolutely living it and it is glory.

― Alex in Doncaster (Alex in Doncaster), 30. tammikuuta 2004 0:36

"So Tough" is my personal favourite; those spoken samples... the whole gloriously *placed* ambience.

― Tom May (Tom May), 16. toukokuuta 2004 4:58

I'm familiar with the name, but I don't think I've ever heard anything by Saint Etienne. For some reason I thought they were an indie rock band or something, but apparently not...?

Indie by nature, but not really indie rock. Definitely song-based music, but more an assimilation of references from disco to sixties British cinema. St Etienne are/were their own little universe of a particular kind of cool that hadn't really been done quite like that before or after. They do get lumped in with indie rock of the time, but it was largely sample-based music. Tuomas, you might remember "He's On The Phone" from the mid-'90s which was almost euro-dance in its execution.

Let's Get Killed is one of my all time fav album names, by the way.

One think that struck me while compiling the results for the album poll was how utterly Brit-centric they were. I guess American producers didn't release a lot of albums in the 90s, and as for albums from other major electronic music countries (Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Japan, etc), it seems ILXors don't much care or know about them.

Wow, two albums I own and would have voted for.

That "mosh" guy, is his band called "ICU" (over-used name there) or "I See You" (not so much) ?

Mark, you did vote for those two albums, have you forgotten?

I love the story of Let's Get Killed - how Holmes and his mate (possibly Paul) took acid and wandered around New York shouting "Let's get killed!" and it got quite dark and fucked up and then they stumbled across a piece of graffiti on a wall that said "Don't die just yet," which turned the trip around, hence the name of the last track (which I thought was one of the greatest things ever until I heard Melodie Nelson).

Oh, yeah, it was 'tracks' I didn't vote for, yeah?

the last track (which I thought was one of the greatest things ever until I heard Melodie Nelson).

ditto, there.

Right, checked up:

It was 'nominating' I didn't do.

Fair enough, you guys know what qualifies and what doesn't, and I'm here to pick the ones I likes.

I expected there to be a fair bit of Warp in this poll but not for it to dominate to this extent.

higher echelons though Matt. Orbital/Prodigy etc will dominate.

and ..

Burger/Ink - Las Vegas (Harvest, 1996)
101 points, 5 votes, 1 first place vote.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/lasvegas.jpeg

http://open.spotify.com/album/2e9288yxNdFTCKO6MitcDy

Burger/Ink's Las Vegas is unstoppable, easily one of the best dance full-lengths ever release.

― Bill in Chicago, 28. huhtikuuta 2007 1:06

[las vegas]by Burger/Ink, one of the best albums of the 90's and still sounds so fresh. I think Kompakt could release it now and it would still seem brand new.

― jed_ (jed), 21. marraskuuta 2004 17:51

there's a palpable difference between wolfgang voigt being lazy (gas) and burger/ink: las vegas

the main difference being laziness, which tends to plague a lot of ambient music. just because it doesn't have beats and lyrics doesn't mean you can get away with being boring on purpose, or that all concepts hold water (TOMBOT: granular synthesis ate my balls, coming out in 2007)

― TOMBOT (TOMBOT), 18. heinäkuuta 2006 17:27

Burger/Ink is essential. For a few years I was buying used copies and giving them to friends. It's that kind of record.

― brotherlovesdub, 27. huhtikuuta 2010 20:02

gotta go home but Gas AND Burger/Ink = I love you guyz <3 <3

― xylyl syzygy (a passing spacecadet), 29. huhtikuuta 2010 18:53

Sorry, that's 27., obviously.

That was my #2, such a timeless, beautiful album... If you were listening to German techno/house/trance around the time, the sounds they're using are actually pretty familiar (both of them had been producing banging dance music before, and Burger kept on doing that for years afterwards, though Ink veered towards more experimental stuff), but what they are doing with those sounds is totally unique and sublime, and I'm not sure if anyone, not even Burger and Ink themselves, has done anything quite like it ever since. Their second duo album that came out this year was certainly a bit of a disappointment.

Burger, btw, co-mixed the new Gudrun Gut album.

absolutely love the burger/ink. so pulsing, and fluid. just masterful.

willing to bet that more or less everything that places above [las vegas] is inferior to it

If I had voted, I think Burger/Ink's Las Vegas may have been my #1--certainly in my top 3.

I just found a pristine vinyl pressing of it a few months back, and it sounds absolutely gorgeous. It's such an expansive record.

I didn't have time to think about voting (sorry Tuomas) but since Las Vegas and Autoditacker placed without me I shall die happy, etc. (Especially if xxxxxxx and xxxxxxxxxxx place.)

It's definitely more electronic than dance per se. I guess that was in the brief.

Can't believe, for instance, Basic Channel was so low, and ranked below 2 (!) FSOL records. Weird.

Proud of myself for not freaking out about where RDJ placed - actually, wait, there are some good tracks there but it's not really a front-to-back essential album is it? *explodes*

Now I wish I had voted more strategically.

Plus already regretting not voting for Model 500's Deep Space, not that it would have placed.

26. The Chemical Brothers - Exit Planet Dust (Junior Boy's Own, 1995)
106 points, 7 votes.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/exitplanetdust.jpeg

'Exit Planet Dust'. Bringing club culture to the masses who thought 'Screamadelica' too indie/arty, creating 'lad culture'.

― tarden, 19. kesäkuuta 2001 3:00

De elpee Exit Planet Dust van Chemical Brothers, dankzij alles wat ze daarna uitbrachten.

― Maurice, 15. marraskuuta 2004 18:18

it's evidently the mid 90s stuff that is now deemed irrelevant and has been re-evaluated in the process. 'Exit Planet Dust' is the prime example (along with 'Leftism' I suppose, Underworld having escaped the expiry date trend gun with more intact). In 1995, a dynamic sonic tour de force with the Chems amalgamating love of JB breaks, European techno, bone-crunching NY electro, psychey/droney folk etc. to excellent effect. In 2005 it's widely seen as a stodgy, amateurish forerunner to better things. Though it's relevancy depends on whether you still see the Chems as influential today. They've moved on from it somewhat (though their album template does remain more or less the same) thus it's hard for me to berate their first effort because as lumpy as it may sound now it's also got the spunk the latter work naturally lacks due to repetition of formulae).

― Sociah T Azzahole (blueski), 16. elokuuta 2005 15:33

Also I'd say go so far as to say that of the big 90s acts the ones who most successfully made the "dance album" feel like a brilliant idea did so by making the whole record feel like a really awesome DJ mix or live set - Exit Planet Dust, Orbital's Brown album, etc. Obviously the Chemical Brothers went on to make the idea of a "dance album" feel like a terrible idea but hey.

― Homosexual Satan Wasp (Matt DC), 13. toukokuuta 2012 14:50

"Creating lad culture" is a bit harsh but this and Leftism did create the template that produced a few good dance albums and many bad ones - the self-consciously eclectic ones where you call in a variety of guest vocalists. If anything, the bad ones highlight how successfully this hangs together. This sounds somewhat rudimentary next to DYOH but I love it - some gorgeous downtempo tracks here like One Too Many Mornings, Chico's Groove and Alive Alone. So many good memories of the summer of 95.

I have literally never heard of Burger/Ink but clearly I should.

I wish the EP tracks and remixes were easier to find digitally because they were tearing through ideas at a tremendous rate in the couple of years preceding this album. It seemed like there was something from them every month. I saw one of their first ever live dates, supporting Underworld at the Astoria.

>I wish the EP tracks and remixes were easier to find digitally

it's all about this one for me: http://www.discogs.com/Dust-Brothers-Loops-Of-Fury/release/178392

when this came out I was all amped because I thought they were the -real- Dust Brothers. punked!

I can't remember if I voted for Exit Planet Dust or Dig Your Own Hole but the former is a much stronger, much heavier album than I ever remember it as being when I haven't listened to it in a while. Matt is right that it works like a really great DJ set.

This was how I discovered them. Perfect EP - four great songs, each different from the last.

http://www.discogs.com/Dust-Brothers-Fourteenth-Century-Sky-EP/master/274987

I kind of want to say the Chems are underrated? Or maybe just taken for granted? First two albums are classic, next two are not classic but mostly great, not heard anything after that.

Has Skrillex or any of those types repped for the Chems or are they more into "OG HACKAH"?

his and Leftism did create the template that produced a few good dance albums and many bad ones - the self-consciously eclectic ones where you call in a variety of guest vocalists.

Original and Open Up had already been singles, the other vocalists just feel like integral parts of the band/album to me

Nice to see EP7 get some credit (it was also my #3 album, Ledge). I had heard a good deal of Autechre/Gescom at friends' places throughout the mid/late 90s (and loved it), but EP7 was the first thing of theirs that I actually purchased. I'm sure that colors my perspective, but I find it to be the pinnacle of their experimentalism, surpassing the better known LP5, Chiastic Slide, etc. It's not as stately and iconic as say, Tri Repetae, but the sound design on it is just jaw-dropping (the barely audible fade out on 'Squeller', the hyper-caffeinated insectoid shuffling rhythmns on 'Liccflii', etc.). It's just a marvel to dive into with headphones.

Given it's inexplicable status as an EP, it seems destined to remain an underappreciated part of the Autechre canon.

Skrillex is fairly obviously more of a Prodigy man I think. The odds on him appearing on the next Prodigy album must be pretty much zero.

Exit Planet Dust has aged better than most of Dig Your Own Hole, I reckon.

I love a lot of the later stuff that Jorg Burger on Kompakt and as The Modernist but I've never actually heard of Las Vegas. Will be rectifying that as soon as possible. German techno from the 90s has been a bit of a historical blind spot for me.

xp Yes they are integral on Leftism and Planet Dust (although actually Original didn't pre-date the album). I didn't mean those albums weren't good - they're great. But like most templates it starts off as a natural organic thing and then gets travestied by less talented imitators.

love this thread, felt like i wasn't knowledgeable enough to vote and i'm enjoying discovering to the albums i'd never heard before. really loving burger/ink on first listen, right up my alley, can't believe i had never heard this before. it's fantastic !

Put on Exit Planet Dust last night after not hearing it for probably well over 10 years and WOW, it's LOADS more energetic than I remember it. In my mind I'd had it pegged as a downtempo, kind of smokey-pop album with lots of triphop beats, but on the whole it's BANGERS!

Yeah the guest vocalists on Leftism work because the production feels so of-a-piece throughout and it has that DJ set flow throughout as well, by and large. Later attempts by various 90s acts to rope in guest vocalists tended to focus on getting an indie singer in to to the psychedelic one, an undie rapper in to do the vaguely hip-hop one, Hope Sandoval in to do the dreamy one etc etc. But because Leftism is rooted in dub and reggae none of the vocalists feel out of place or shoehorned in, even Lydon.

(Should probably save this discussion for later really)

This ^^^ Fat Of The Land was probably the worst example of it letting an album down.

At least The Fat Of The Land sounded broadly coherent, there are some later Chemical Brothers albums that are all over the place, to the extent you wondered why they were even bothering.

what's up, Fatlip?

It would make me so happy to see Dettinger's amazing Intershop (1999) make this list... It was Kompakt's first single-artist release, and it's still one of the highlights of that entire catalog for me.

Skrillex posted Flim to Facebook, mentioned it was a favorite, his fans were uh nonplussed.

STILL W8IN 4 DA DROP~~WTF SKRIL??

http://fakewalls.com/storage/Skrillex-Aphex-Twin-Facebook.jpeg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1326799659144

I hope Skrillex put Tuan Sy Dau down humanely.

i'm going to take the url literally on that being fake

I've been super busy today, I'm not sure if I have the time to post anything. But if not, I'll continue tomorrow and try to finish these results by Friday, so we can get to tracks poll results next week.

It would make me so happy to see Dettinger's amazing Intershop (1999) make this list... It was Kompakt's first single-artist release, and it's still one of the highlights of that entire catalog for me.

Sorry to disappoint you, but this wasn't even nominated.

Really keen on the singles results.

But agree with everything about the Chems here, I felt the same way looking over their records for this.

25. Autechre - LP5 (Warp Records, 1998)
107 points, 4 votes, 1 first place vote.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/lp5.jpeg

http://open.spotify.com/album/7zlbMdBS3J2YQRDuMMT9u4

mindless crap is what my dad said after listening to a bit of LP5 but for me it's great background music and also when your fucked up...

― Kevin Enas, 23. huhtikuuta 2001 3:00

With Autechre, they are still Warp's mainstay tendril in the future of sound, but sort of by default. Booth/Brown's fascination with the "science fiction" aspect of creating music will always throw them forward . Sure, it's hyper-math, but so is the symmetry of the fucking cosmos, you know? The major complaint that I hear most is that their newer stuff is "difficult to listen to," as compared to earlier music. I think that specific major complaint sort of lets us perceive the fact that there is something going on with them...a type of progression, a deliberate evolution of sorts. I know people who couldn't even begin to try to relate to the opening track of LP5 who , (what? how many years later?) , now bop their head to it rhythmically. Maybe the are lost in their maths, maybe we are behind in our adaption to the future of sound. ok, babble babble.

― Gage-o, 24. joulukuuta 2001 3:00

My favorite Autechre is LP5 without a doubt. There's something especially alien about the sounds on that album, but at the same time it has this strange accessibility. When those melodies and beats get in your head, it's hard to get them out. The repetition is never too much as it can be on some other Autechre albums.

― lou, 15. huhtikuuta 2002 3:00

autechre would've been godhead if they retired after LP5.
LP5 would've been pristine if not for the hidden track.

― Sir Leee (Leee), 30. syyskuuta 2003 0:48

24. Autechre - Amber (Warp Records, 1994)
109 points, 6 votes.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/amber.jpeg

http://open.spotify.com/album/7EfhvG3RwdhzXrFlkDVxg4

Well, technically it's not about the city, but Autechre named one of their earlier songs Montreal. (This was on Amber when the songs had melodies and their titles were pronounceable) Someone told me it's because they first tried ecstasy when they played here in '93 or '94 ....interesting.

― Elliot, 11. helmikuuta 2002 3:00

That's what I always hear about Amber, but that never struck me as a melodic record. More of a drifting kind of thing.

― Mark (MarkR), 24. syyskuuta 2002 22:35

Autechre's 'Amber' album would sound good with some hip hop lyrics over it here and there

― stevem (blueski), 11. huhtikuuta 2003 13:13

that's how i feel about autechre's "amber" which is another album that i've spent an unhealthy amount of time with.

i think to myself, now this is a declaration of intent if i've ever heard one. simply massive...

i think my favorite thing about "sawII" and "amber" is the way they reference nature.

― tricky disco (disco stu), 7. huhtikuuta 2004 4:11

23. Autechre - Tri Repetae (Warp Records, 1995)
114 points, 7 votes, 1 first place vote.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/trirepetae.jpeg

http://open.spotify.com/album/0ioIXXMV89w0qC39FpxYnL

personally, subjectively, they were brilliant on _tri repetae_. almost a perfect piece of work, i think, with all of the more traditionalist melodic bits of their first two albums clashing with the beginnings of the DSP shitstorm that was to come on later releases.

― your null fame, 23. huhtikuuta 2001 3:00

I guess you might call them "anal", but I don't think that makes them dull by any means. Tri Repetae in headphones while drowsy is the absolute juice. Their music somehow makes so much sense; I won't use the word "architectural", but it's very visual, like slowly moving your eyes across a complex surface and suddenly noticing that the surface isn't just a pattern - it has *depth*, a depth that reveals even more intricacies, relationships between sounds, varieties of grain, than you noticed at first. No matter how close you look, there are always more - little soundworms wriggling around, burrowing and digging, eating each other, multiplying. You go from imagining what the surface feels like to imagining what it's like to be inside the lattice itself - I swear you can almost *feel* this happen on certain tracks (especially on Tri Repetae).

― Clarke B., 18. huhtikuuta 2002 3:00

I read two books, wrote an essay, went out, got high, got sat on by the same drunk girl twice, cooked a huge spinach/garlic lasagne, saw Pirates of the Caribbean, and hurt my flatmate's feelings by listening to Tri Repetae on full blast while she was playing guitar.

Would have been one book and half an essay if ILX hadn't been down.

― Herbstmute (Wintermute), 5. syyskuuta 2003 21:41

Listened to Tri Repetae last night for the first time in ages. Ten perfect little steam-punk sonatas. Is it really ten years since that came out?

― NickB (NickB), 15. helmikuuta 2005 13:32

Thought that would be much higher

Sorry about the quick succession of posts, but that's all I have the time to post today. I guess you can see why I posted those three results back to back, though...

I thought Tri Repetae would have been top-ten for sure...

Autechre fans be splitting votes.

more like Snoretechre fans be voting for the wrong albums

Nice to see Exit Planet Dust show up, after all this time Leave Home is still one of my fave Chems tunes.

SERIOUSLY GUYS DO YOU LISTEN TO ANYTHING OTHER THAN AUTECHRE

LOL

I srsly feel like Pipecock right now.

NO; THERE IS ONLY AUTECHRE

I did vote for Amber, have to admit.

This poll...

Blimey....and we haven't had Incunabula yet.

Didn't vote in this, was it kinda hidden? BUT yeah, I've been listening to Autechre tonight.

Autechre isn't even the most popular artist in this poll, I think there are two or three acts with more overall votes...

Bomfunk MCs better be one of them

Motorbass aren't even going to get into the top 50, are they? :-(

ILX overrating the shit out of Autechre as per.

And rightly so!

How can you rightly overrate something?

Pretty sure the only Autechre record I've heard in full is Incunabula and it wasn't really that interesting to me, moving away from melody was probably a good move because they weren't really that great at it.

Their melodies are gorgeous and they didn't really move away from them till Confield.

LP5 was my number 1. The first time I heard it I thought they were taking the piss - a track like Fold4,Wrap5 felt like pure cockwaving: "look what we can do" etc... But the fact this track sounds like it's speeding up and slowing down at the same time is only a superficial gimmick that belies how beautiful it is. That's why LP5 is their very best album - it's that perfect biting point between techgeek indulgence and aesthetic indulgence. There are so many moments on this album that make the hairs on my neck rise, my eyes prickle a little: The musical-box coda on Rae; the way Vose In sounds like someone rapidly fading a radio in and out; 'Is it washable?'; the fucking strings on 'Arch Carrier' (possibly my favourite bit of electronic music in the world). There isn't a moment on that album that isn't fascinating, thrilling. The whole thing is a puzzle to be unravelled and I'm still hearing new details in it some 13 years after the fact.

Pretty sure the only Autechre record I've heard in full is Incunabula and it wasn't really that interesting to me, moving away from melody was probably a good move because they weren't really that great at it.

― Matt DC, Thursday, 1 November 2012 09:56 (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Incunabula isn't really representative of Autechre's main body of work. It's very much a warm-up album in the vein of Artificial Intelligence-era Warp. Good for nostalgia's sake, with several cool, almost jazzy, spaced-out moments. Their evolution from Amber through to Confield is one of my favourite career-runs from any act pretty much.

Oh, and saying they weren't good at melody = madness

We need geirbot to arbitrate this melody dispute.

I'm basically going solely on Incunabula here. I do like Clipper and Arch Carrier but I've had 15 years or so to explore further and I haven't been motivated to do so.

I don't dislike Autechre but the number of amazing albums that will not make the cut because every fucking 90s autechre album will be on here is pretty ridic.

There are 22 albums to go...

While it's quiet..

I did get Squarepusher's "Feed me weird things" album as a 'freebie' back whenever (it was old by then too), didn't get it at all.

Anyone know if it's supposed to be a 'wow' album or not? etc?

There are no 'wow' Squarepusher albums. 'Hard Normal Daddy' is probably the best but none of them belong anywhere near this list.

that's a bit harsh, I think. He can be a bit free jazz noodly, but Hard Normal Daddy is p great. Vic Acid EP is the single best thing he did though, IMO.

Fair enough, thanks.

At his best he's pretty good but not 'best of the 90s' good (and he won't be in the list given that things like 'Bytes' and 'The Richard D James' album have already placed).

Hard Normal Daddy was joint 50th, but yeah, he won't place again I shouldn't think. He's also very good live.

While it's quiet..

I did get Squarepusher's "Feed me weird things" album as a 'freebie' back whenever (it was old by then too), didn't get it at all.

Anyone know if it's supposed to be a 'wow' album or not? etc?

― Mark G, Thursday, 1 November 2012 11:13 (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There are no 'wow' Squarepusher albums. 'Hard Normal Daddy' is probably the best but none of them belong anywhere near this list.

― Matt DC, Thursday, 1 November 2012 11:14 (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

He is a real hit'n'miss artist and I agree there's no such thing as a consistently brilliant Squarepusher album (and yeah, HND is the closest he ever came to one). That said, there's probably only one or two SP releases that I'd say have no redeemable features, it's just he eschews quality control for prolificism. I'd happily compile a career-spanning best-of. 'Feed Me Weird' things is like a lesser HND basically.

Squarepusher, 21 tracks 1996-present

Theme From Ernest Borgnine
Cooper's World
Chin Hippy
Fat Controller
A Journey to Reedham (7.am Mix)
Full Rinse (featuring MC Twin Tub)
Come On My Selector
My Sound
Ruin
Shin Triad
Iambic 5 Poetry
Tomorrow World
Mind Rubbers
My Red Hot Car
Do You Know Squarepusher
Menelec
Welcome to Europe
The Modern Bass Guitar
Open Society
Square Window
Unreal Square

I'd guess that most of the Warp is out of the way now, except Incunabula, Frequencies, Music Has The Right To Children and the Aphex Twin records? I mean the shadow cast by Warp over 90s albums-based electronic music is massive but there's a shitload of other stuff I want to see place more.

Well, I fully expect a few Underworld albums to place yet.

and orbital of course ..

I don't expect Incunabula to place somehow.

If Incunabula places it would be absurd. (I think I only listened to it once or twice, but it seemed like easily the weakest Autechre album.)

Yeah it's not really considered a classic by anyone other than early-Warp/AI fans.

What about Mo'Wax? Will anything place from that?

What about Mo'Wax? Will anything place from that?

― make like a steak and beef (dog latin), Thursday, November 1, 2012 12:05 PM

Entroducing maybe? Or is that too hip-hop and not electronic enough?

Incunabula is one of their best and should place Top 10.

I wouldn't think it's as popular here. Incunabula is a great training wheels Autechre album and it has held up better than I thought it would but I wouldn't put it ahead of their other 90's albums (besides maybe Chiastic Slide?)

Guessing dubnobass/Second Toughest/Beacoup Fish all put up a strong showing here? Good job ILX

I think it's a shame to dismiss Incunabula because its sound design is less sophisticated than some of their later albums. Anyway, I'm a complete sucker for pretty much all early-to-mid 90's Warp back catalogue. No sign of the Boards yet. No doubt they'll have at least one entry in the Top 10 ('Music for Children' I'm hoping...)

one of the most redeeming features of ILX (in my opinion) is that they don't rank BoC very highly

then again, who am I kidding :(

One think that struck me while compiling the results for the album poll was how utterly Brit-centric they were. I guess American producers didn't release a lot of albums in the 90s, and as for albums from other major electronic music countries (Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Japan, etc), it seems ILXors don't much care or know about them.

― Tuomas

This is an interesting point. Hawtin, Derrick Carter (both dj mixes) and Kenny Larkin were about the only non-Brits on my list which is crazy really (stupidly forgot the Paperclip People album...doh!) Were there no Detroit albums of note during this period?? Would be nice to see Nightime World Vol 1 get a place.

No Seefeel?

I have my own list of excellent Japanese albums for this but it seems a little self-defeating to vote for them knowing that no one else knows of them

you could start a thread?

I'd love to see some Seefeel place. I agree that Autechre is a little overrepresented here and a little overpraised in general. I'm sad that Dettinger's Intershop wasn't even nominated (though it's my own damn fault for totally missing the leadup to this poll). Does anybody else know that record? Some of the most elegant, gorgeous "ambient techno" (and some just straight-up ambient) ever made, IMHO. Very much in the vein of Las Vegas by Burger/Ink in spots. I'd be floored if Hong Kong and Biokinetics weren't in the top ten.

I could never get into Squarepusher, not even a little.

I'd also like to see Consumed by Plastikman.

And Every Man and Woman is a Star by Ultramarine.

(Ha, sorry, I know this is annoying; I'm just bummed I didn't vote!)

you could start a thread?

― make like a steak and beef (dog latin), Thursday, November 1, 2012 10:09 AM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I already have!

linky?

Japanese New Wave listening club - new albums every Monday

S/D: Japanese Techno

I only started one of those and a lot of it is outside the 90's but it's not the kind of thing I'd bother voting for here. I kind of subconsciously assumed that really only UK-centric albums were going to be represented here. Not that the UK really ISN'T the center of this in the 90's but still.

22. Aphex Twin - I Care Because You Do (Warp Recors, 1995)
116 points, 6 votes.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/icarebecauseyoudo.jpeg

http://open.spotify.com/album/0VG7XLJ8gSynEQDVnpHNNU

I Care Because You Do is my favorite, because it's got a good balance of pretty, soothing tracks with the noisy/chaotic/
goofball ones.

― latebloomer (latebloomer), 8. joulukuuta 2003 15:22

...I care because you do is the nostalgic choice because i bought it when i was 14 and it was quite an experience to hear it at that age with almost no context at all (it was mentioned ina small sidebar in SPIN).

― Aaron Grossman (aajjgg), 9. joulukuuta 2003 1:18

my cats seem to appreciate Dillinger Escape Plan and I Care Because You Do. Meaning they open their eyes for a few seconds to look around and then go back to sleep.

― superultramega (superultramarinated), 9. maaliskuuta 2004 3:35

So there didn't seem to be an "IDM" thing till about 1995/6 when albums like I Care Because You Do and Tri Repetae came out - before that it was probably just seen as another brand of ambient of techno or whatnot.

And even by this point, it was about playing with dance's parameters. I used to love ICBYD because it was like a collection of speculative short stories with a twist in the tale - the best IDM stuff for me worked like a collection of "What ifs?" - "What if I make a techno tune that sounds like an asthma attack?" "What if I change the time signature?" "What if I slow it right down?" "What if I make it sound like Bjork" "What if I make a whole album out of a bird cage" etc.

― Post-Manpat Music (dog latin), 1. elokuuta 2011 18:25

i often feel like there was a general focal shift, not just in electronic music but in pop music as a whole, from the UK to Europe and the US come the end of the 90s.

If you were living in the UK maybe, not in the rest of the world.

I didn't vote because I only signed up to this site last week I think. If I had I would have gone for 'Neptune's Lair' by Drexciya

Drrexciya>>>>>

When it comes to techno, it seems German techno didn't get popular in the UK and USA before the turn of the millennium...? I was listening to a lot of German electronic music in the 90s, and it was pretty popular here in Finland (people like Westbam or Sven Väth were in the top 10 on Finnish charts), but whenever I try to discuss it on ILX, I get only a handful of comments (and they're usually from non-Anglo posters).

If you were living in the UK maybe, not in the rest of the world.

― Matt DC, Thursday, 1 November 2012 15:34 (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Sure, sure. I probably didn't explain myself that well TBH, but these days I find myself pleasantly surprised when a producer I like comes from the UK, whereas in the nineties it felt more like the norm, with the UK holding fort with its Prodigys and Orbitals and Underworlds and Chems, and before that the entire M25 acid house scene etc. A lot of European dance felt cheesy and commercial, and the US didn't seem to know what to make of electronic music a lot of the time. I associate dance music in the 2000s as being much more Euro (and to a lesser extent US)-lead.

(save for things like dubstep/grime of course)

No I agree with you in dance music terms, probably not in wider terms.

21. Various - Metalheadz presents Platinum Breakz (FFRR, 1996)
118 points, 5 votes.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/platinumbreakz.jpeg

what does this cd sound like today? i would assume horribly dated?

― cutty (mcutt), 25. helmikuuta 2004 21:27

"rider's ghost", innit and no, it sounds remarkably un-dated, really.

― strongo hulkington (dubplatestyle), 25. helmikuuta 2004 21:27

Rufige Kru's VIP Rider's Ghost opens the set. And in no way is this dated. Sounds superwow, to my ears.

Lemon D's In My Life is simultaneously tender and brutal.

― paul c (paul c), 25. helmikuuta 2004 21:32

well now

i had wanted at first to vote for "unofficial ghost", which might now be my favorite drum and bass track of all time. repeated listening to "unofficial ghost" in 1996 turned me on to the mind-warping possibilities of techstep. i love how doc chops the hell out of the synth swells, so that they just keep billowing out eternally into space. the finer doc chops the synths the more they fill the room, like chopping a little strip of paper into a chain of dolls. having perked our ears, he teases us with all sorts of sound effects occupying different little corners of sound: method man sounds like he's speaking from deep in a tomb, then the sample is suddenly drenched in echo so we're in the tomb with method man. at the same time the establishing beat: a rigid stepper that sounds like the exhausted breakbeats that idm-leaning techno dudes were pushing at the time (subhead, landstrumm, swordsmen, beltram).

all this time we're sitting still while he's setting up the soundstage. out of nowhere, he hits us with a flat, thick wall of impossibly dense, warped bass. this bass fucks with you on two levels. first of all it's smeared so thickly over those rigid, static breakbeats that it really challenges your perception of time. second of all it's right up in the mix, sort of dry compared to everything else. at this range, it sounds like the bass is coming out of your body, pushing you along to the beat. now that you're moving he switches up the beat, alternating between an impossibly "hot"-sounding sample and a more traditional sounding amen break. the "hot" cymbal and snare hits sound impossibly cramped against the rest of the sound; alternating with the reverb-y amen sets up areas of pressure and release. for a while he plays with cramming the hot sample into the same space as two or three simultaneous bass bombs, then he alternates that by setting the amen break against the ghost of a rave siren.

for awhile these two (three?) strategies rub up against each other. then the bass drops out and it's just those rushy noises, like rave sirens from mount olympus, up against the dubby amen break, which is given a little more space to breathe, and it's like racing out of hot, dark tunnels and onto vast and starlit peaks.

it's a masterful track.

― moonship journey to baja, 10. elokuuta 2010 5:40

it's ridiculous that i've never heard these big nineties d'n'b albums. i should correct that.

20. The Prodigy - Experience
127 points, 6 votes.

http://open.spotify.com/album/3LYrQ4Pr2CMbQl3nWxXItR

Jilted was their vertical album - stately rhythms to show off their sound effects (and Liam's pretty haircut). This one was their horizontal album - furious forward motion with only tangential consideration for what's up top. But since the songs and the album are shorter, they wind (it) up highlighting what's up top as well anyway. Hence this one's my favorite.

― Kevin John Bozelka, 4. huhtikuuta 2009 20:54

The big criticism with original 'Experience' remains that it doesn't feature the versions of the singles bar 'Out Of Space' but I do love the album versions and it all still sounds good today.

― Sororah T Massacre (blueski), 4. tammikuuta 2006 18:11

The fact that the hits from 'Experience' still get young kids on the floor at the club pretty much sums Howlett's skills up for me.

― Alacrán, 18. lokakuuta 2001 3:00

They were playing early Prodge in Fopp this lunchtime. GOD it sounded great. GOD did I ever drop the ball in the early 1990s, what with my stuck-up soulboy snobbery and my Galliano singles.

― mike t-diva (mike t-diva), 18. lokakuuta 2005 15:26

I prefer Experience to Jilted - the latter is more well-constructed and purposeful, but nothing beats the seratonin rush of the early tunes.

― chap, 11. heinäkuuta 2008 18:19

Whoops, the cover image is missing, here it is:

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/experience.jpeg

Also, the album was relesed by XL Recordings in 1992.

Enjoying the Finnish months in the c&ped comments.

Experience is the first album I remember really, really loving as a young teenager. (Before that I mostly just listened to multi artist comps.) Me and my friends used to just play it again and again, day after day. I was really envious of a friend who had it on CD; I didn't even get a CD player until two years later in 1994, so I had to listen to the album from a cassette I'd copied from him.

I received Experience for Christmas when I was 11. I remember being incredibly disappointed it didn't feature the single versions, but I warmed to it and they remained my favourite band for years.

I prefer the album version of Your Love and Fire.

Single versions of Charley and Everybody in the Place are waaaay better, otoh.

I think I've only gained appreciation for prime-era d&b as I've gotten older.

That came out wrong... I liked it when I was younger, and if anything, my esteem has only grown. That's what I meant.

"Armoured D" by Dillinja is one of the sickest tracks of all time.

Single versions of Charley and Everybody in the Place are waaaay better, otoh.

Yes. Also, it's noticeable just how different they sound. Somebody said upthread (I think Ismael, but I'm on a phone and it's too much hassle to check) about how St Etienne in 1990 fitted in with a definition of dance music of that time (the slower tempo and Italo piano sounds) but by 1991 things had become more rave-oriented and they sounded nothing like that. Well, by the same token things got cranked up massively during 1992 (harder, darker, faster) to the extent that those two singles sound strikingly different (slower, softer, friendlier) to the album versions just 9-18 months later.

Disclaimer: I don't have access to any of these tunes right now and may have misremembered

19. The Chemical Brothers - Dig Your Own Hole (Freestyle Dust, 1997)
128 points, 7 votes, 1 first place vote.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/digyourownhole.jpeg

http://open.spotify.com/album/2DYl4Z5qrQrQvEbMj4Alle

Ah, well, I still think Dig Your Own Hole is one of the finest rekkids evah.

― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), 19. kesäkuuta 2003 11:18

Both of these songs sound really dated now but as an album Dig Your Own Hole still sounds really good.

― BYE! GOOD (latebloomer), 4. marraskuuta 2008 0:09

Dig Your Own Hole for me. Sounds equally wonderful on the dancefloor as through headphones. Also excellent to do housework to. And particularly useful as a background motivational soundtrack for demolishing an old broken bed, thoroughly reducing a worthless box-spring mattress to an even more useless pile of broken springs, rusty nails, rotting wood and soiled canvas. (A true story.)

― Myonga Vön Bontee, 2. lokakuuta 2007 23:19

The Chemical Brothers Dig Your Own Hole

Pro Social Elemnts: None

A woman wakes up in the company of a stranger, the implication being that they've had sex ("Sunday morning I'm waking up/Can't even focus on a coffee cup/Don't even know whose bed I'm in"). A lover is referred to as "the devil in me" ("Setting Sun"). Behind the computer-driven sounds of "Electrobank," a fuzzy, yet audible f-word appears. Even the all-instrumental tracks serve up annoyingly hypnotic sensory overload. This band's incessant barrage of nonsense, set to a dizzying repetition of the same eight or ten notes, is inherently nerve-wracking.

Explosive musical chemistry. It's a shame the unrelenting, intoxicating dance beats don't subside long enough for young listeners to clear their heads. Lyrics offer more tangible evidence that The Chemical Brothers are experimenting with unstable elements.

― M1chael Ph1lip Ph1lip Ph1lip Ph1lip Ph1lip Ann0yman (Ferg), 18. marraskuuta 2004 22:35

(The last comment is from Creepy christian music reviews - it's not the Ferg's own text.)

When it comes to techno, it seems German techno didn't get popular in the UK and USA before the turn of the millennium...? I was listening to a lot of German electronic music in the 90s, and it was pretty popular here in Finland (people like Westbam or Sven Väth were in the top 10 on Finnish charts), but whenever I try to discuss it on ILX, I get only a handful of comments (and they're usually from non-Anglo posters).

Sven Väth and Hardfloor were big in Britain.

I'd love to see some Seefeel place.
I don't think quique was nominated

Well, by the same token things got cranked up massively during 1992 (harder, darker, faster) to the extent that those two singles sound strikingly different (slower, softer, friendlier) to the album versions just 9-18 months later.

Shame they didn't think to adapt in this way with FOTL which felt really tired by the time it had come out several months after Firestarter and Breathe had been played to death.

They were part of a scene in 1992 though and were quickly absorbing what was happening around them. By 1997 they were miles away from the rest of dance music and ploughing their own furrow with very mixed results.

Sven Väth and Hardfloor were big in Britain.

They were? For some reason people seem to rarely discuss them here, though, and they never place in polls like this one.

I never felt a big affinity with Dig Your Own Hole and never listened to the Chems after. It just didn't feel as "of a piece" as Exit Planet Dust to me. Maybe I ought to dig it out again. I did used to adore Electrobank - maybe my favourite track by them? Block Rockin Beats was good too, if a bit Fatboy Slim-y. They made tremendous use of the 23 Skiddoo sample if anything.

A woman wakes up in the company of a stranger, the implication being that they've had sex ("Sunday morning I'm waking up/Can't even focus on a coffee cup/Don't even know whose bed I'm in"). A lover is referred to as "the devil in me" ("Setting Sun"). Behind the computer-driven sounds of "Electrobank," a fuzzy, yet audible f-word appears. Even the all-instrumental tracks serve up annoyingly hypnotic sensory overload. This band's incessant barrage of nonsense, set to a dizzying repetition of the same eight or ten notes, is inherently nerve-wracking.

Explosive musical chemistry. It's a shame the unrelenting, intoxicating dance beats don't subside long enough for young listeners to clear their heads. Lyrics offer more tangible evidence that The Chemical Brothers are experimenting with unstable elements.

For a 'creepy christian review', that's not bad going...

Dig definitely sounds dated now, but you listen to Justice or Skrillex these days and it's not like that aesthetic of "loud and annoying as possible" has really gone away. Just the monster bass riffs and airraid sirens.

18. Leftfield - Leftism (Hard Hands, 1995)
129 points, 7 votes, 1 first place vote.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/leftism.jpeg

http://open.spotify.com/album/6Hh2XrY2Yuse8omAzSabdp

Agree with Dan - Leftism is fun but not nearly as ephocal as you'd expect from all the hype. That said, it's a very open-minded release (hints of dub, hip hop, jungle etc.) which is more than can be said for a lot of house artists circa '95.

― Tim, 10. elokuuta 2001 3:00

Leftism is FAR from overrated imo - it is certainly one of the most seminal dance albums to released in the 90's, and off the top of my head, cannot think of a more perfect example of the coming of age of electronic music and the death of rock.

― Jarrod, 2. heinäkuuta 2002 3:00

And anyway, well, sometime around 96-97, I discovered I didn't really hate all techno. There was even a lot of techno without melodies (although not without harmonies, which is even more important to me) that I liked.

Orbital's "In Sides" was the album that really turned me into techno, but I liked "Leftism" even before that.

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), 19. huhtikuuta 2003 0:22

My #1

Whatever happened to Leftfield, btw? It seems they haven't released any new music since 1999, neither as Leftfield nor under any other aliases.

17. Basement Jaxx - Remedy (XL Recordings, 1999)
148 points, 9 votes.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/remedy.jpeg

http://open.spotify.com/album/6G9fHYDCoyEErUkHrFYfs4

Not too long ago I picked up "Remedy" by the Basmeent Jaxx and I could have kicked myself for waiting this long.

― Brenya, 14. lokakuuta 2002 17:28

I picked up "Remedy" the other day knowing the 4 singles and "Same Old Show". It really is one of the best albums I've ever heard. It's smooth and flowing, suprising and unpredictable, bouncy and fun, hooky and spiky. It just sounds so easy.

― Nick H, 10. toukokuuta 2003 17:38

basement jaxx are the bomb squad of house

― vahid (vahid), 19. elokuuta 2003 7:08 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i mean more in the wall-of-sound sense. i am closing the bookstore and i'm going to put remedy on RIGHT THIS MINUTE.

― vahid (vahid), 19. elokuuta 2003 7:11

The Prodigy - Music for the Jilted Generation (XL Recordings, 1994)
155 points, 9 votes.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/musicforthejiltedgeneration.jpg

http://open.spotify.com/album/04moHShgS3I0ErPt2mTAtd

summer of 94 i was 9 going on 10 and I remember hearing some older kids listening to this on their boom box in their garden and thinking, wow.

― Blackout Crew are the Beatles of donk (jim), 4. huhtikuuta 2009 2:06

When I was 14, I went to France on holiday with my best mate and his family - we had a tape of this which we listened to on headphones pretty much anytime we went anywhere by car throughout the whole two weeks. 'No Good', 'One Love', 'Break and Enter', all great but I'd have to pick 'Poison', it's just so hard.

― Gavin in Leeds, 4. huhtikuuta 2009 16:41

I think I've told this story before, but around the time this album came out, one day my cousin was sitting in his car at a parking lot and blasting it on his car stereo. When "One Love" started to play, some random dude came knocking on his window. My cousin opened the window, and the dude was like, "Yeah! Yeah! I love this track!", and proceeded to dance and sing the vocal sample along the tune.

― Tuomas, 5. huhtikuuta 2009 2:22

Shit, I love them, esp Music For The Jilted Generation which brought my rawking arse closer to dance.

― nathalie (nathalie), 28. elokuuta 2003 17:17

1990-1994 - The Prodigy - Dance music was my first and most natural love. I was given a radio for Christmas and hearing all the early (kiddy) rave stuff was amazing... So fast and sugary with comical noises etc. I got the first album the following Christmas and was disappointed with how the original single versions had been replaced with slightly drier, more serious remixes, but it didn't matter. A few years later, a lad came round with Music For A Jilted Generation and my mind was blown again - this wasn't kiddy rave pop, it was laced with evilous intent - references to drugs, swearing and loads of stuff I had NO IDEA about but knew my parents wouldn't like it.

― Why'd You Wanna Tweet Me So Bad? (dog latin), 22. elokuuta 2011 17:47

That's 16., obviously.

There will never be a better inner sleeve than that.

Yup, I'd forgotten about that cover. Brilliant.

so far the list is only 45% IDM, nice!

only artist of color not a junglist is carl craig, who of course invented jungle

Boo to Leftism but yay to everything else that's shown up today.

the top 10 is going to be all detroit techno

waiting for the lardossen takeover

top 10: all Orbital.

15. Underworld - Second Toughest in the Infants (Junior Boy's Own, 1996)
158 points, 8 votes.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/secondtoughestintheinfants.jpeg

http://open.spotify.com/album/3UfnrvOQRJUgLevE5l4nVF

juanita/kiteless/to dream of love

one of the best openings of any album.

― jed_, 25. toukokuuta 2008 3:30

wow guys, I used to really like this album but now I really LOVE it, had heard it 25+ times without hearing ANY of the crazy sounds that go on during "Banstyle" or "Confusion"

― frogbs, 4. lokakuuta 2012 23:15

second toughest was one of those leave it in the CD player and play it over and over again cds. it is ace. i think it's common to resent the born slippy cultural thing, but that does not debase the fact that it is a fucking great tune to dance off yr nuts to. esp v long mix.

― Alan Trewartha, 24. tammikuuta 2002 3:00

I owe it al to STITI. It's the record that got me into electronic music, house music, DANCE music even.

― roxymuzak (roxymuzak), 28. kesäkuuta 2004 17:49

that monochrome pall is part of what i find really absorbing about second toughest. i find it difficult to explain how that is different from merely "boring" or "featureless" but somehow the songs are distinct, yet flow naturally one into the other without any giant leaps or gaps.

partly i think the danceability of second toughest is subtle yet powerful- the repetitive figures of the "juanita/kiteless" opening block at first just make you bounce around a little bit, jiggle a leg in your seat or whatever, but by later you're humming along with the vocoder and it picks up speed. this is opposed to the danceability of, say, "push upstairs," which just starts bashing down the door and forcing you to dance with the detroit-ness of it all and builds even more on that.

― .rob (rgeary), 29. kesäkuuta 2004 8:30

14. Global Communication - 76:14 (Dedicated, 1994)
165 points, 8 votes, 1 first place vote.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/7614.jpeg

http://open.spotify.com/album/4b1iSPXfaGmOgKmec1wk7X

Ho ho. It's a very nice album, in a sort of mid 70s Tangerine Dream kind of way, and is an ideal record to fall asleep to and have strange but happy dreams. It's lovely.

― Rob M (Rob M), 21. helmikuuta 2003 18:51

76:14 is an album of true beauty.

― The conflicts, the craziness, and the sound of credenzas falling (Stevie D), 11. joulukuuta 2009 6:02

can someone tell me about more moments in music like the moment 10:02 into 14:31, that might be the most sonorous moment i've heard in all my ambient listenings

― dyao know what i mean (acoleuthic), 19. joulukuuta 2009 3:31

that track has healing properties for real

― jabba hands, 19. joulukuuta 2009 3:45

the proverbial cloud of titties

― dyao know what i mean (acoleuthic), 19. joulukuuta 2009 3:57

I have this album and U.F.Orb on the headphones and a new prescription for beta blockers. I think I can survive the next few weeks. Yeah.

― Karen D. Tregaskin, 18. elokuuta 2010 12:41

I'm a bit perplexed by that Louis comment, what sort proverb talks about "cloud of titties"?

Second Toughest should be top 5 :( But hey. You keep the spirit alive.

i was playing the GC album the other day and my bf remarked "this is kind of bad." i don't agree with him but i see what he means: the general turn away from sampled-sounds to generative sounds has caused it not to age v well.

yeah.

That's a weird opinion, you'd think ambient music was one of the genres where the sound being fully synthetic would matter the least? Why would lack of samples hurt an ambient album?

it has less to do with the merits of the album and more with the general trend electronic music has taken since the late 00's

'second toughest in the infants' is in the running for my favorite album of all time.

U.F.ORB is just so much more interesting sonically and ideas wise than 76:14.

well i guess Ultraworld would be a fairer comparison chronologically and is yet to place.

I only got around to listening to the GC album last year and was underwhelmed to be honest. And I have mates who swear by it. Presumably if I'd lived with it through the 90's I'd think differently. Personally find 'Adventures beyond the Ultraworld' more sonically interesting than both U.F.Orb and 76:14. Now I wonder if that album will turn up - was No. 8 on my list.

xp:

Alas, those values are a bit irrelevant to ambient music's ideal of being "as ignorable as it is interesting" (Eno)

only things I remember off 76:14 are the first and last track, which are both breathtaking. outside of that I dunno where the "good parts" are

well i guess Ultraworld would be a fairer comparison chronologically and is yet to place.

too much wine.

originally read that as 'ultrasound' which would have been a weird twist, even for ILM standards ...

I much prefer their Chapterhouse remodelling entitled Pentamerous Metamorphosis. But as the listmaker for the first internet poll that enshrined 76:14 as an all-time ambient album, I can't deny 76:14's staying power.

I much prefer their Chapterhouse remodelling entitled Pentamerous Metamorphosis.

ringo bingo.

that deserves a big OTM from me ..

:D at using the inner gatefold of Jilted instead of the cover

Whatever happened to Leftfield, btw? It seems they haven't released any new music since 1999, neither as Leftfield nor under any other aliases.

they split up, apparently largely due to touring- and stimulant-related stresses on their personal relationship. Neil Barnes reformed to tour in 2010 with most of the original singers and a new drummer, with Daley's blessing but continued lack of interest in being involved.

Ah, thanks for the info. It doesn't look like either has done any solo releases either.

13. Underworld - Dubnobasswithmyheadman (Junior Boy's Own, 1994)
167 points, 7 votes.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/dubnobasswithmyheadman.jpg

Classic for sure. I ignored it for a few years as people were telling me how great it was and then was smitten around 96 and it struck me as sounding kinda old fashioned too, an almost 80's synth pop influence. I dug it out recently and it still sounds great.

― Winkelmann, 28. elokuuta 2002 12:19

dubnobasswithmyheadman eliminated the barriers between dance's escapism and modern life. it is the Velvet Underground & Nico of dance - a little clumsy, dated, known better for 2 or 3 songs - nonetheless forcing dance kids to listen to their own music with new ears and rock fans to revamp their notions of how popular music can be "soundtrack of life."

dubno is Bernard Summer discovering Fool's Gold on a 4/4 skyscraper in a city of balkanized thoughts. so classic Christ was on crutches.

― slippyepic, 29. elokuuta 2002 17:54

I don't understand all those comments above about it sounding a bit dated!!!! Er, how can I put this, it's a decade old dance music album, of course it's going to sound dated!!!!! And as for that "Awful, soulless, funk-free British knotted-hankie-on-yer-head techno shitness", that's a bit like saying The Eagles would have been decent if they shaved their beards off and didn't play guitars ie it's kind of missing the point in a massive way!!!! At the time most of the decent techno was soul-less, funk-free British knotted-hankie-on-yer-head, (or alternatively soul-less, funk-free and from Johnny Foreigner in Euroland!!!!!) and that's why it was bloody ace!!!! If you wanted "funky" and "soulful", you could go for progessive house, "garage", retreads of late-80s Detroit, "ambient dub" and millions of other dreary bollox that have dated so badly that they make "Dubnobass..." sounds like it was recorded in the year 3759!!!! (And before anyone mentions jungle, let remind you that at the time of the release "Dubnobass..." it was still underground and generally regarded as an extreme 'like gabber with breakbeats' offspring of hardcore rave- at least it was before some berks let go of their "progessive" records for long enough to put "jazz" chords over the beats, although the end results was usually about as "jazzy" as Val Doonican!!!!!)

― Old Fart!!! (oldfart_sd), 7. tammikuuta 2004 12:16

Wasn't Underworlds Dubnobass etc over 55 minutes. For me that constantly evolved and never once felt like a filler track plugging a musical gap anywhere on it

― Sonicred, 3. joulukuuta 2001 3:00

i mean the thing about underworld in general, and dubnobass in particular, is that you're guaranteed a few shit tracks per album. but when they're good, they're really, really good. and you can't knock cowgirl, or skyscraper. dark, moody, euphoric, utterly fucked lyrics. and superb production.

propellorheads? generic, going-through-the-motions big beat. dull at the time and they haven't dated well.

― drasticman, 13. tammikuuta 2006 18:57

Holy hell this Paperclip People album is amazing. Why did no one tell me about this before?

12. Underworld - Beaucoup Fish (Junior Boy's Own, 1999)
168 points, 7 votes, 1 first place vote.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/beaucoupfish.jpg

I think one of the things that draws me back to Beaucoup Fish most frequently of all the Underworld albums is that it's really such an unusual proposition. I love Dubnobass... to death and totally understand why it's the favourite of many listeners, but I think if you described Underworld to someone who hadn't heard them before but knew dance music, they would imagine Dubnobass... and be spot on! Of all their albums it most closely lives up to the idea of Underworld as being Massive Attack with the hip hop basis replaced by dance music. Second Toughest... is a more inscrutable and enigmatic album (and the proper ballad moments are their best ever in that vein) but again it follows in the same general vein apart from some surface level stylistic modification (the occasional breakbeat etc.).

Whereas Beacoup Fish I think really plays around with one's assumption as to what Underworld are by just being so brutally uncompromising and tracky so frequently, and because Karl is so often very aggressive. Like, I find the first four tracks to be a totally emotional suite, but not emotional in the sense that the group inject "rock" emotion into a dance setting - the ebb and flow of intensity is much closer to a DJ set. And I perversely enjoy the fact that the slower tracks are just really odd and unwelcoming - it's like the group want to avoid people finding any sort of "relief" in them. Instead, the slow tracks are the uncomfortably, unsettling moments and the hard-edged tracks are the heart and soul of the album.

― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), 13. marraskuuta 2004 6:08

All this talk of the new Underworld single led me to look for it on WinMX (NO JOY). What I ended up with instead was track 8 from _Beaucoup Fish_, a track I find to be stunning, surreal, ominous, uplifting, oppressive and all-around fucking marvelous. I would even go as far as saying that it's far and away the best thing Underworld has ever recorded, narrowly beating out "Pearl's Girl", "Dirty Epic", "MMM Skyscraper I Love You" and "Tongue". That lovely bliss-out part at 4:25 that just drones and swirls on for a minute is truly breath-taking, making a perfect counterpoint to the dirty drum cadence at the beginning of the song.

Why wasn't this a single instead of "Bruce Lee" (aka "That Fucking Embarrassing Song Which Is The Only Thing Keeping Me From Buying _Beaucoup Fish_")?

― Dan Perry, 17. kesäkuuta 2002 3:00

Second Toughest is sooo much worse than Beaucoup Fish it's ridiculous. I phoned Derrick May and he agreed.

― RickyT (RickyT), 1. marraskuuta 2004 1:54

I agree with everyone who's said Beaucoup Fish is Underworld's best album. Those HUGE lush chords in jumbo! And that syncopated synth riff in the closing minuts of Cups! Amazing. And many other bits too.

― JimD (JimD), 2. marraskuuta 2004 15:19

So yeah, Beaucoup Fish beat Dubnobass... by just one point.

lots of vote splitting it feels like? How many people voted in this? I'd have thought it would be insanely popular given this board's demographic.

All in all about 40 people voted in the poll, but I think only 25-30 of them voted for albums, the rest were tracks-only ballots.

No no no.

Dubno > STITI > BF

No Orbital or Daft Punk yet either

The Underworld albums are the right way round I think. Never liked Second Toughest but Beaucoup Fish is by far their best. It sags in the middle a bit but those first four tracks are just wow.

no way. how is BF higher than the other 2? Crazy!

11. LFO - Frequencies (Warp Records, 1991)
169 points, 8 votes.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/frequencies.jpg

Why is it after all this time I still think this is the best "Techno" record ever? I just can not find fault in anything about it. I have listened to electronic based music for years here as well so I am not some naive kid... DM/Kraftwerk/Soft Cell/HL/etc... to Juan Atkins/Derrick May/Armando etc... to Hawtin/Beltram/Tresor/R&S etc... now onto (too many to list) I just think that after 14 years of listening to this record and still thinking it is a masterpiece deserves some mention. It was hard for me to say this as I love sooooo much from this time period... but this one still throws one up me.

― benoit, 6. toukokuuta 2005 15:26

One of my all-time favorites. Completely sublime and still offering rewards each time I listen to it.

― chris breitenbach (Chris808), 6. toukokuuta 2005 18:55

Frequencies = still dope beyond all reason

― Music should never have changed anymore after my mid 80s (Noodle Vague), 15. lokakuuta 2009 11:37

"Frequencies" is probably my favourite warp album ever. The 5 track - We are back/Tan ta ha/you have to understand/el ef oh/ love is the message - sequence of the album makes me almost explode with joy. The sounds are so basic; the result is so rich. Gorgeous.

― jed_ (jed), 4. syyskuuta 2004 4:01

I have to take a break from posting now, but I'll try to post the final results later today.

Go on with the top 10 speculation then, you know you wanna!

More Aphex, the two Boards albums, a couple from Orbital, Photek and Incunabula of course ;)

I'm surprised Jilted Generation ranked so low. Overexposure maybe?

Frequencies is just amazing. I saw Mark Bell play live as LFO last year and the set was still largely drawn from that album and he took the room and shook it.

Do people actually listen to Jilted Generation that much? I haven't touched it in years.

Does anyone listen to anything on this list that much any more? I don't exactly dig out Jilted on a regular basis, but it was massively important to me throughout the nineties - got played pretty much any social occasion because of its wide appeal.

10. Super Discount
9. The White Rooms
8. Selected Ambient Works II
7. Endtroducing
6. In Sides
5. Music Has The Right To Children
4. Orbital II - The Brown Album
3. Homework
2. Selected Ambient Works 88-92
1. Bentley Rhythm Ace - Bentley Rhythm Ace

Played Jilted to death the year it came out and occasionally for the next couple of years. Honestly don't think I've listened to it once in the last 10.

Dubno still gets a couple of airings a year.

I listened to the whole of Exit Planet Dust yesterday. If anything it's improved with age (for me at least) totally thrilling, and you can really hear the Dust Brothers influence in there which I never noticed the first time round.

I've never heard Super Discount! Christ on crutches, there's so many records on this list I always thought I'd get round to checking out and never got to.

I've actually been listening to Super Discount again the last couple of weeks. Great record and much better than Super Discount 2.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4biQDLz_uwI

1. Bentley Rhythm Ace - Bentley Rhythm Ace

― Matt DC,

ouch!

i was actually half expecting them to turn up. for some reason, and despite being wilfully crap, they're sort of the first band i think of when i hear the phrase "nineties dance music".

Being an old bastard who doesn't keep up with new releases as much as I did, I listen to stuff on this list / era quite regularly.

I think the only album among these I still play regularly is Las Vegas... But I do occasionally give Music for the Jilted Generation a spin, and it never sounds dated (unlike many other mid-90s breakbeat/d&b records), and I have such fond memories of that album and that era (I was 15 when it came out, the perfect age for something like MftJG; I can't remember ever having expected - and subsequently, played - any album as much as I did that one) that it would've been impossible not to put it in my top 10.

I liked that Bentley Rhythm Ace album at the time. LOOK I WAS 18 OKAY???

I remember some friends playing BRA a lot back in the day, but now I can't quite recall what they sounded like...? Were they like a big beat version of Mouse on Mars?

I've seen Bentley Rhythm Ace live (they were on a Radio 1 Sound City double bill with DJ Shadow. We stood at the back and talked through their set.)

I don't know what a big beat version of MoM would be like but iirc they were utterly artless, music for the lads mag set.

This was probably the best thing they did. And it's still pretty shit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IWl77o3l50

more like a big beat version of Pop Will Eat Itself, and if I remember (I try to block the memories TBH) they had some greebo-type connections?

members of PWEI and EMF

Members of Pop Will Eat Itself were actually in Bentley Rhythm Ace so yeah that's yr connection. (xpost)

Dubno > STITI > BF
This is correct ==> this poll is wrong.

my prediction is that mr fingers-introduction is not gonna make it and i can think of no sadder indictment.

the youtube comments on BRA songs are super unfathomable:

"these were way ahead of their time and because of that people thought they were too obscure and cast them aside.."

in what universe could BRA have been ignored for being ahead of their time? they were the most 1997 of all acts who released records in 1997.

i saw BRA dj when i was 18, they played the coronation st theme tune

lol 90s

I remember some friends playing BRA a lot back in the day, but now I can't quite recall what they sounded like...? Were they like a big beat version of Mouse on Mars?

― Tuomas, Friday, 2 November 2012 11:03 (20 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Heinously in-jokey big beat act mixing lightweight Skint Records beats with comedy whistle-and-bell samples. They were going for a "British indie-dance played out the back of a Morris Minor at a carboot sale" vibe and represented much of what was wrong with the mid-90s IMO.

Yeah the 90s album dance canon has felt really ossified for, what, 10 years now? I'd expect the tracks list to be a LOT more vibrant and surprising.

no Nightmares on Wax on this poll? I'd have liked to have seen their second album in the lower echelons. I'm just surprised this didn't get a bigger response.

Sure it's shit but I still quite like "Bentley's Gonna Sort You Out". Considerably less after watching the video (for the first time, today) though.

Can dog latin or anyone else tell me why BRA are "heinously in-jokey" but the goofier moments of his new 80s thread (which btw I've enjoyed the youtubes on and will be watching with interest), Nightmares on Wax or Aphex Twin are "mutant/offbeat/catchy nonsense", in ways more specific/descriptive than asserting that BRA are shit? I mean "BRA are shit because they're jokey" but clearly being jokey isn't enough to be shit and it all gets a bit circular "they're shit because their jokes are shit and their jokes are shit because they're shit", not that I disagree.

(btw I do like the three other things I mentioned in the previous post, and can't remember a single Bentleys track apart from "...Sort You Out". I think I bought the album for £1 from a charity shop and listened to it all of once. Let us not talk of how I also spent money on reduced-to-clear promo bin singles by Bentleys/PWEI drummer Fuzz Townshend.)

Suppose it's that fine line between humorous music and comedy music.

Air - Moon Safari (Source, 1998)
170 points, 9 votes.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/moonsafari.jpg

wht a fkn GREAT album

I hear loads in it now I'd never have heard back when I first listened

― cozen (Cozen), 3. joulukuuta 2005 18:39

this record goes out of its way to sound nice. makes it great fodder for shoe stores and thai restaurants. it is a sweet thing to listen to though.

― Charlie Howard, 13. maaliskuuta 2008 18:32

This album reminds me of good times. Although I bought it in fall '99, a year after its release, it took nearly that long for it to make an impact in my little group. It played at a lot of parties. "Kelly Watch The Stars!" I listen to most fondly.

― Filmmaker, Author, Radio Host Stephen Baldwin (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), 26. toukokuuta 2010 3:07

La Femme D'Argent is quintessential Air to me, closest to what I liked about early singles like Casanova 70, Modular, Le Soleil est Pres de Moi, etc. I like the pop stuff just fine but this is where I think they introduced a whole new vocabulary to downtempo instrumental music.

― Haunted Clocks For Sale (Dorianlynskey), 28. toukokuuta 2010 17:15

I knew there was one I'd forgotten.

Lol, I've never noticed the album cover says "French band" next to "Air". Were they often confused with some other, non-French Air?

That was number 10.

I liked Moon Safari but I can't ever see myself wanting to put it on again because 13 years on you still hear these tracks pretty much everywhere. Switchboard hold music level of ubiquity.

I've actually been listening to Premiers Symptomes this week. I think it holds up better simply because it wasn't as ubiquitous as Moon Safari. La Femme D'Argent still sounds amazing though.

Good album but yeah, kind of ruined by its ubiquity.

Shit, I guess that means the Moby album might be a contender.

xposts it's a good question, a passing spacecadet.

I guess the music on that thread I started is lighthearted, humorous etc but not as knowingly jokey as BRA. BRA seemed to think that pasting lots of zany "boioioing" noises over their flimsy beats constituted something people actually wanted to hear. I'm not saying there's no place for humour in music because Aphex has always used humour in his work, but BRA weren't actually funny, they were just wacky in the most forced way.

Then again I never really enjoyed that whole Skint Records/Wall of Sound/Mary Anne Hobbes thing. It always sounded neither here-nor-there, not quite dance, not quite indie, breaks for the Jools Holland set - that "ho ho look at us we're on a bus to Brighton with a bass guitar and some second-hand vinyl, who cares if we're a bit shit, yay football!"... Something shite must have happened to me in '96/'97 cos I have horrible memories of a lot of that era of music.

It was the unsatisfactory nature of the beats and samples that got me. Those breaks never seemed to deliver the required oomph for me and I kind of see it as a precursor to all that Grand Central downtempo vibe that was pervasive throughout the late-'90s.

It's probably why my perception of the Chemical Brothers (who were described as Big Beat in the first part of their career) came to get so skewed over the years. Compare Exit Planet Dust to, say, something by Lo-Fi Allstars and there's no competition.

I'm probably alone in being more partial to Air's proggy epic '10,000Hz The Legend' but Moon Safari is a pleasant (often TOO pleasant in places) listen.

9. Orbital - Orbital (Internal, 1993)
185 points, 10 votes.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/orbital.jpg

Back in the day, for years actually, I would have said InSides but I played that and the Brown album in the run-up to the gigs a few months ago and the latter was like WOW. It still feels like the perfect example of how to make dancefloor-orientated house and techno work in the album format.

― Space Battle Rothko (Matt DC), 6. marraskuuta 2009 12:26

When I first bought Brown (on casette!) I only played side (Lush to Remind as continous mix on the tape) for a whole week, refusing to accept that side 2 could be any better.

Largely true bar Halcyon.

― Tannenbaum Schmidt, 20. marraskuuta 2009 13:38

i always felt the orbial 2 (the brown album) hung together much beter than all the others. and while in sides> was complete brilliance end to end - it was much shorter; so the brown album always won out becuase of it quantity. obviously the quality was there too, but that same quality is on all the others too.

― dyson (dyson), 29. huhtikuuta 2003 17:32

but still...Orbital 2 had the cohesion, the consistency. To maintain that over an entire album's length is pretty rare.

― bimble (bimble), 21. huhtikuuta 2004 6:06

Thought that would place higher actually - Halcyon is the one that gets all the attention but the seamless run from Lush to Remind is nearly flawless.

8. The KLF - Chill Out (KLF Communications, 1990)
188 points, 10 votes, 1 first place vote.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/chillout.jpg

Is it a good starting point? Well for post rave chill out music, Yes. So much which followed on uses the techniques on chill out, but as usual without the wit and wry inventiveness.

Is it a good starting point for the KLF? A qualified yes, as it's rather atypical of their work which tends to be rather more frenetic.

― Billy Dods, 7. maaliskuuta 2002 3:00

I so love The White Room but I've never been able to get through all of Chill Out without....well...falling asleep. Maybe that's the idea.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), 22. lokakuuta 2005 7:28

i heard this album was recorded in less time than it lasts.

― jed_ (jed), 26. elokuuta 2006 3:51

listening to this album is like having a staring contest with god.

― andi, 24. elokuuta 2007 14:49

Oh God, Chill out is so wonderful. I remember downloading Madrugada Eterna out on a whim back when I was 16 in my solemn days of late summer, having never heard of, and being quite ignorant of the KLF. Either way, I was just blown away by it, listened to that song like 8 times in a row. I seem to remember saying "when the sun goes down tuesday night, you gonna have so much money you gonna be scared, cause I got it" a lot after that.

― mehlt, 25. elokuuta 2007 3:42

i heard this album was recorded in less time than it lasts.

― jed_ (jed), 26. elokuuta 2006 3:51

that is a fucking beautiful comment

I wish that was true so much.

7. Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works Volume II (Warp Records, 1994)
214 points, 10 votes, 2 first place votes.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/sawii.jpg

Induces insanity is right. This album is little Richie's big practical joke on the chill-out room crowd. I think RDJ laughs whenever he hears someone taking it seriously.

― Dan I., 27. lokakuuta 2001 3:00

It's scary in the way so many of the pieces on the album just sort of sit and lurk there and in so doing start to tear at my sanity (like the second-to-last song on CD2),and subversive the way it turns out something really gentle and melodic,like the aforementioned third song on disc one,and that one on the second disc that sounds like Discreet Music.

― Damian, 28. lokakuuta 2001 3:00

I listened to the album for the first time in a long while the other day, and I realized how utterly fantastic it was all over again. Scrape away all the dull as ditchwater clot accrued to it over the years thanks to so many indifferent IDM releases and it's all the more lovely to appreciate, a glorious one-off from him in that nothing (much) was spiked with the humor or freneticism or any of that from elsewhere.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), 6. huhtikuuta 2004 4:47

SAW II is one of my favourite albums. It is simultaneously frightening, uplifting, confusing, and enlightening. There are some tracks that never fail to give me goosebumps, even in hot weather. While reading some of the posts in this thread I was brought almost to tears thinking about some of the feelings these tracks have evoked in me. Definitely one of the most powerful pieces of music ever recorded.

To play favourites, I absolutely adore 'Stone In Focus' and 'Blue Calx'. The latter makes me think of water, godly celestial beings of scifi, slow peaceful death (relief) through suffocation, drowning, peacefulness. 'Curtains' will always bring me back to the halcyon days of my school years, where friends and I would go to the nearby botanical gardens and smoke dope and tell each other what the music made us think about - one of the happiest times of my life thus far.

There have been very few other artists who've been able to even approach James' attention to texture as exhibited on this release. The subtle distortions and (aforementioned) microtonal deviations are what makes this album so effective. In the three weeks before my end-of-highschool exams I listened to this whole album every morning before getting out of bed. I maintain that it was more than somewhat responsible for my excellent marks.

― Andrew (enneff), 18. toukokuuta 2004 7:57

This is such a nice album to paint to, it's really good for doing lots of detailed textural work. Especially late at night, when you actually have the time to get a block of a few hours to listen to it all in sequence.

Apparently he played some of the tracks from it at the gig in Dublin last weekend. But I've no idea how that would work at a festival, quite hard to yell for songs which don't have names.

― Karen D. Tregaskin, 13. kesäkuuta 2011 12:38

Love the Brown album. Still gets a regular airing on the car stereo. It's all about that Lush, Impact, Remind run though.

Also must have worn out my CD single with Underworld's Lush 3.3 on it.

Wasn't there some sort of story where he lucid dreamt the album or something? Not sure how much truth there was in that.

Also where did the track titles come from? I remember them not having any but it seems things like Rhubarb and Cliffs are accepted as the the titles these days. Is that something to do with the little picture that accompanied each track?

How well does SAWII hold up today? Such a big important album. So many different moods and vibes and jarring bits and interesting bits and frightening bits, it's hard to define exactly how one should appreciate a record like this because, well, it's actually very hard to chill out to it.

My main memory of this record is reading books to it. That works best.

Wasn't there some sort of story where he lucid dreamt the album or something? Not sure how much truth there was in that.

He claims a lot of his melodies come to him in dreams and he can induce lucid dreaming through thinking about melodies etc.

Also where did the track titles come from? I remember them not having any but it seems things like Rhubarb and Cliffs are accepted as the the titles these days. Is that something to do with the little picture that accompanied each track?

― groovypanda, Friday, 2 November 2012 12:55 (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Made up by fans online. They're rather tenuous descriptions of the images on the inner sleeve.

6. Daft Punk - Homework (Virgin, 1997)
216 points, 12 votes.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/homework.jpg

I liked Homework better. Not because it is a better album per se, just because it is a bit more raw and tracky. It is the difference between a mid-90's underground 12" act vibe, or a more mature "musical" dance act.

At the end of the day nothing will beat hearing Mike Dearborn or Robert Armani play Rolling and Scratching or Rock and Roll right along with the hard tracky Chicago stuff through 10' tall bassbins at midwest raves in the mid-90's.

Your playing Daft Punk for the Rock Kids at CBGB's mileage may vary.

― Disco Nihilist (mjt), 17. tammikuuta 2005 7:27

Exactly, l like Homework for it's immediacy and intensity.

― supercub, 17. tammikuuta 2005 7:35

Loved it at the time and think it's a perfect distillation of 20 years of dance music up to that point. It's hard to forget now how by '96 a lot of electronic and club stuff was getting a really cheesy pseudo-spiritual vibe: from "underground" PLUR raves to drippy chart house and trance. This record put a harder, more streamlined perspective on things. Pedestrian it aint!

― Bodrick III, 2. maaliskuuta 2008 23:12

it was like a pop version of 20 years of Detroit and Chicago rolled into one, mixed with love, and while giving props to the artists they loved.

― pipecock, 3. maaliskuuta 2008 4:55

I only heard 'Homework' within the last month.

God only knows why I'd avoided them for so long. The suspicion of them being a major label act in the boom-time of dance popularity? I got it cheap and expected dissapointment, ace couple of singles, probably overlong filler.

fuck ................. me

16 tracks and I'd maybe lose only 3 or 4 if I had to and tbh nothing drags as much as I'd expected at all.

It's astounding. So simple in excecution, yet so innovative. All within the confines of a totally recognisable house/techno/disco blueprint (I mean it isn't 'prog'-anything).

And it rocks like a bastard.

― fandango (fandango), 31. toukokuuta 2005 2:08

REALLY didn't expect that to miss the top five.

I hope Tuomas fiddled the results to get Utah Saints in the top three or something.

Ah cheers.

So six to go and I'm thinking more Orbital, Homework and Boards Of Canada to come?

And would Massive Attack qualify?

I'm also guessing there'll be no place for Gargantuan in the Top 50 which is a shame.

No Massive Attack albums were nominated for this poll.

ugh Homework :(

those three Underworld albums wipe the floor with anything Daft Punk's done, come on people

I don't know about, but this poll is making me sad. Sorry :/

phew, for a minute i was worried there might be some dance music in the top 5

For them to wipe Daft Punk they'd have to get rid of the vocals first...

I actually love the original, instrumental version of "Dirty" (the one which samples the creepy toy sounds from Akira) more than any Daft Punk song; back in the day I was under the impression Underworld was some kind of a trance/ambient act, based on hearing only that track and "Why Why Why", so you can imagine my disappointment when I bought Dubnobass and found out every tune had rock singing on them. Only later did I find out Underworld were a indie band gone techno.

(xx-post)

Jabba, dance music is, by definition, more about tracks than albums, so it shouldn't be too surprising that the albums poll is less focused on dance than the tracks poll.

oh i'm not surprised :)

i saw BRA dj when i was 18, they played the coronation st theme tune

their 2CD (!) mix for FSUK was gr8 iirc

shan't be checking any time soon though

jed's Chill Out comment is beautiful

I wonder if there's any electronic music albums where that would true, though? I guess Vladislav Delay's Anima could theoretically be an example (though I don't really think it is): I can imagine him starting to record the track, then going to a nearby tea house while some random number generator runs the changes, then coming back after 50 minutes to add the vocal sample to the end.

Tuomas - have you heard "Thing in a Book"?

It's a joke about the actual recording process of the album, combined with its deliberately hypnagogic affect, but mainly lovely in its poetry

There's a Finnish rock musician who claims to have actually recorded an album in less time than its length. He says every song on it was a first take, and the band played everything non-stop in the studio, but on the album there are a few seconds of silence between the tracks, so the extra length comes from that.

ha

I don't know about, but this poll is making me sad. Sorry :/

I'm curious, what's missing that's making you sad?

"In Sides"

My money's on In Sides winning

SAW I is what my money's on.

SAW is good, for sure, but it never pulled me into a hypnotic state the way SAWII always does. Not sure why people rate it higher, except that it came first.

Pleased that dubnobass placed above Second Toughest, that feels like the right way round to me.

Can't really remember much about Beaucoup Fish though.

Beaucoup Fish is amazing

I wonder if there's any electronic music albums where that would true, though?

― Tuomas, Friday, November 2, 2012 2:06 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Fairly sure that side one of Discreet Music is played back at half speed. Don't quote me though.

i just love the sound of everything on it (SAW I). you can pull out almost any track from that album and hear a blueprint for a decade's worth of electronic music.

xposts

I'd rate dubno slightly above STITI, Beacoup Fish slightly below, but all three would probably make my top ten

I'm guessing SAW I and In Sides will be 1 and 2, SAW I just seems to have so many fans on here. #3 is probably gonna be Music has the Right to Children. *shudder* Also we haven't had Snivilisation yet as I would expect good things there

Snivilisation was always forgettable for me. and what's wrong with "Music Has the Right..."???

SAW1? Seriously? It's okay, it's got some lovely moments but it's not even in the top 3 Aphex albums let alone best electronic album of the '90s. The second side drags along quite a lot and it's a really inconsistent record compared to SAWII.

what's wrong with "Music Has the Right..."???

for me it'll always be one of those "four star albums given five star status by indie rock P4k worshippers who don't really know better" (see also: In an Aeroplane Over the Sea), I support its inclusion in the top 50, but if it makes top 5, you must be joking

SAW1 is a better record and one I think tends to represent the genre in a primordial way, as Thermo says "you can pull out almost any track from that album and hear a blueprint for a decade's worth of electronic music". I mean I get it. It doesn't really hold up so well today; I'd say even Dig Your Own Hole feels more relevant now. I would put it in the top 20, but thats it. But ILX really, really loves this record.

I like BF and dubno... equally. I've gone on at length with the issues I have with 2nd Toughest... and won't repeat them hear

every Orbital album from Brown through The Middle of Nowhere is amazing

Music Has a Right... is fucking great and I fully support it hitting top 5 if it does

where is artists of color

down at the bottom of the results, right where I expected they would be

Frogbs offtm. As if people are pretending they like BoC cos of some indie agenda. Pfork didn't even exist when this came out anyway. I do prefer Geogaddi slightly, but MHTRTC set the stage. It's too easy to look back and say it wasn't all that, especially in the light of hauntology and chillwave, but other than a few ghostbox releases, nothing like it had really come out before.

Pitchfork has been around since... 1995? 1996?

also, I love Music Has... to death but the entire Ninja Tune roster had been mining that territory for years, only with fewer samples of children

The special thing about MHTRTC is the muffled sound, a bit like magnetic remanence decay. Like the film deterioration on the cover, it pretty directly presses the nostalgia button in a lot of brains.

Eh I dunno, the main reason I liked it so much was because it was like a more cohesive version of the DJ Krush mix disc on Cold Krush Cuts, plus "Turquoise Hexagon Sun"; innovation/being something NEW never even crossed my mind, rather it hit me like a refinement of something I'd already been enjoying for the past two to three years

MHTRTC is a beautiful album, at the time the nostalgic public broadcast theme sampling thing really sounded quite different from what anyone else in the field was doing

wow i was listening to that dj krush thing - and dj vadim and wagon christ and lots of other sleepytime trip hop - but when it came out it really felt to me like BoC were coming from somewhere else

part of it is probably that THS was on the Bento Box compilation I'd been playing to death circa 97-98 so I was already tying it to stuff like "Mod You" in my mind back then, years before the album came out:

http://www.discogs.com/Various-Bento-Box/release/44028

I've always said 310 were doing a similar thing as BoC (sepia-toned, breakbeat-based headphones music where nostalgia mixes with underlying creepiness) in the late 90s/early 00s, except that they had a more unique sound (BoC still owns a lot to the 90s Warp sound, besides the nostalgia thing there's nothing particularly original in their production), but few people were paying attention to them.

5. Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works 85-92 (Apollo, 1992)
232 points, 10 votes, 2 first place votes.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/saw8592.jpeg

this is such a special album, could conceivably vote for at least half the tracks

another album i didn't srsly take an interest in for years despite liking most of the rest of afx, but i'm mystified in retrospect because this is such a transparently brilliant record

the gossamer synths and electro insistency create a lighter-than-air driftiness that's really unplaceable, not kosmische but not of this world (whereas the second selected ambient works is very much a chthonic creature)

nothing gets close

― The Managing Director of Being (nakhchivan), 29. syyskuuta 2010 15:02

SAW2 is a classic piece of canonical garbage. everybody owns a copy but nobody listens to it.

― TOMBOT,

Nicely put. I did have a few months of intense listening and it was very special, but 85-92 was a little more outgoing, and somehow connected meaningfully with the rave experience, if I may be so silly as to say it.

― moley, 29. lokakuuta 2008 7:24

i love how scratchy, old and weird 85-92 sounds

― the sir weeze, 29. lokakuuta 2008 15:28

SAW1 makes me immensely happy and brings make too many good memories of being in London and my conversion from serious student to clubber; SAW2 is rewarding, but not immediate in the same way as SAW1.

I listened to both this week, and SAW1 wins.

― Nik (Nik), 9. huhtikuuta 2004 23:29

you have to love that one track that is a complete rip off of Discreet Music by Brain Eno. I really lived in the record for a while a year or two ago. amazing what you can do with a matrix 6 and ms20 and a sampler.

― Disco Nihilist (mjt), 6. marraskuuta 2006 2:51

to my knowledge, I've still never heard this

prob more accurate: I've probably heard it twice way after the fact and don't remember a thing about it

Hi Scores is still my favorite ever BoC release.

And the Brown Album is SO freaking good, so amazing. It's my favorite Orbital by a margin.

In Sides
Brown
Snivilization
Middle of Nowhere
Wonky
Green
Blue
The Altogether

IMO

4. The Orb - The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld (Big Life, 1991)
237 points, 10 votes.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/adventures.jpeg

Would still be CLASSIC even if it hadn't been totally imprinted on my head by so many nights of spiritual/psychic voyage in high school and college. One of the ultimate soundtracks to any extracirricular activites you may be up to. Also, sounds strangely undated to my ears, but again, I'm probably not the best judge of those things.

CLASSICK, CLASSIQUE, PURE CLASS

Also, amazingly after all these years I'm still not the slightest bit tired of Rickie Lee's mantras. "they ran on forever...."

― rentboy (rentboy), 1. toukokuuta 2006 14:35

Again The Orb's 'Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld' has *all* these sounds: crickets/birds/insects/churchbells/spaceships/lawnmowers/rain, you name it, it's there. So any thematic tape should have a track off that album.

― Omar, 30. heinäkuuta 2001 3:00

The Orb, even if only for Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld, even if only for disc two of that. An album to convince you that it's better to be half-asleep at 6am than rolling your tits off on two pills at 3am.

― Lukas (lukas), 4. huhtikuuta 2003 21:53

I have always loved this album, but it took the oxycontin haze of post- operative convalescence to discover exactly how much. It was at that point that the second half of the first disc became my favorite stretch.

― Tim F, 30. huhtikuuta 2011 0:50

i only ever had the one-disc but so classic, awesome gateway drug for stoner teens in the early '90s

― s1ocki (slutsky), 1. toukokuuta 2006 22:08

oh shit I forgot about ultraworld, totally deserved

I think I just can't resist Brown's momentum and focus. In Sides probably has more "moments" for me, and higher highs, but it's a real sprawl compared to Brown, which I feel like I could listen to over and over.

I predict MHTRTC at #1.

Wait, what about Carl Craig's More Songs About Food and Revolutionary Art???

Happy about the last two. Both worthy top ten's.

Now, since I didn't disqualify any nominations, I think the next entry might be a bit controversial...

3. DJ Shadow - Endtroducing..... (Mo Wax, 1996)
276 points, 13 votes.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/endtroducing.jpeg

I do like Endtroducing like you do. Great album. I've never thought of Endtroducting as a hip-hop album, though. Or trip-hop. Always seemed to me to belong more in the tradition of something like Godspeed You Black Emperor, this kind of grand, symphonic mood music.

― Mark, 14. lokakuuta 2001 3:00

From beginning to end it's genius. Best played at 2.00 in the morning, lights low. I find it a really emotional listen, there's a almost ghostly atmosphere around some of the tracks (Stem, Midnight, Steam). The Tangerine Dream sample is just beautiful.

― Dr. C, 14. lokakuuta 2001 3:00

I think the thing to remember about DJ Shadow is that he's a goth. He just uses turntables, is all.

― Ned Raggett, 15. lokakuuta 2001 3:00

i just realized that i should have given a bit of my own opinion when i asked. i think that shadow's legitimacy is a matter of context. 'turntablism' as a whole makes for rather boring rap music, but for rather interesting 'electronic' music (and that's how it's classified in most record stores, whether shadow likes it or not, and his non-pop album aesthetic stakes him decidedly out of the rap camp). i hate the critics who insist on revering turntablism for bringing the oh-so-essential 'live' element back into black music, because 1) it's just playing records, and live rapping is much more 'live' than that, regardless of how much you scratch, because the rapping is created entirely by the rapper and 2) black people don't listen to 'turntablism' anyway.

another point against him is that he falls into the 'only-thing-with-a-beat-at-an- indie-kids-house' camp that tom put the beastie boys in, and he's become the default torch-bearer of the dj element in 'real hiphop' beloved by jurassic 5 fan. mention grandmixer d.st and you'll get a blank stare, but mention shadow and you're sure to find someone to let you in on the secret that 'all the good rap is underground'. blech.

of course i can't blame shadow for that, and taken for what it is, his output is mostly fantastic. if this was a search and destroy, my verdict would be to search 'endtroducing' and early singles (and i still maintain that the unkle album is asorely underrated pop album, but i wouldn't advise one to 'search' for it) and to destroy his stereotypical indie production on solesides cuts. but this is classic or dud, so i have to say he's classic.

oh and ned, re: the goth connection, i think there's a good bit of truth to that, although the 'wasn't he famous once' comment is a bit harsh considering there hasn't been a new album with the man's name on it in five years. wait and see.

― ethan, 18. helmikuuta 2001 3:00

'Endtroducing...DJ Shadow' is the greatest album of all time in my worthless opinion. I love it because it strips so much away from what the definitions of music and albums is/are seen as but this does not result in a lack of imagination, creativity or provocation of an emotional response from the listener. Its an intense, deep and thoughtful piece of work that runs the spectrum of moods with a surreal yet dark edge juxtaposed with the occasional humourous quirk.

― , 23. heinäkuuta 2002 3:00

Nothing controversial about that

Maybe not, I guess the real controversy will come with #1.

new order hit #1?

It is Bentley Rhythm Ace, isn't it?

it must be scooter

So far, all of the Top 10 are records I played over and over at the time and loved dearly.

Still listen to some of them now in fact.

Chill Out???

Ah, whoops; missed it there at #8.

Very surprised Biokinetics hasn't made it.

have a strong emotional response to scanning the album covers in this thread

2. Orbital - In Sides (Internal, 1996)
290 points, 12 votes, 2 first place votes.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/insides.jpeg

If there is one dance/electronica act that is undeniably classic, then Orbital is it. "In Sides" is the best album of the entire genre.

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), 23. lokakuuta 2006 23:13

InSides for pretty INCREDIBLE MAJESTIC 'OMG IT'S THE RAPTURE AND I'M FLOATING UP TO HEAVEN' living room listening

― ledge, 13. kesäkuuta 2008 15:03

Glad you lot inspired me to get In Sides yesterday, I've listened to it three times today and it's fucking great. I love how lots of the tracks don't really reveal themselves till several minutes in. Both parts of Out There Somewhere make me feel like I've bosched two or three incredibly mongy pills, with the ketamine coming out a couple of minutes before the end of part two.

― chap, 14. kesäkuuta 2008 3:01

i recall 'In Sides' being described as their darkest album at the time of its release, in reviews...possibly by the Hartnolls themselves - the 'alien abduction' concept behind OTS fits there - and there's 'P.E.T.R.O.L.' (does anyone know what it actually stands for? a nice acronym would be Polluting Environments That Rely On Love) - i just find the whole album incredibly melancholic, sinister...even morbid at times, but still a very beautiful thing - obviously there are unbridled euphoric 'sunshine' moments such as the kick off bit in 'The Girl With The Sun In Her Head', the satisfying plod of 'Adnans' generally and certain parts of 'Out There Somewhere' but i still get an overall vibe of intense broodiness from the Hartnolls on this one more than any other album they've done.

― stevem (blueski), 30. huhtikuuta 2003 14:13

yeah that's no surprise

bosched two or three incredibly mongy pills

Frogbs offtm. As if people are pretending they like BoC cos of some indie agenda. Pfork didn't even exist when this came out anyway. I do prefer Geogaddi slightly, but MHTRTC set the stage. It's too easy to look back and say it wasn't all that, especially in the light of hauntology and chillwave, but other than a few ghostbox releases, nothing like it had really come out before.

I'm not saying it's part of an indie agenda nor that people are "pretending", I just think it ticks enough boxes of what the indie/p4k crowd likes and has a status that kind of transcends its genre and therefore a lot of people who consider it one of the very greatest likely have no clue that say, Radio-Activity was doing this kind of thing twenty years prior.

I didn't even vote for 'In Sides'. Need to dig it out and re-access.

yes, yes you do.

can we just see #1 so that we can finally unveil the full list? it'll be great to see what this list looks like without any idm or air/dj shadow/st. etienne obvious '90s canon stuff (not that i hate all idm or air or etienne or w/e)

Okay, here's the number 1:

1. U2 - Zooropa (Island Records, 1993)
322 points, 15 votes, 1 first place vote.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/zooropa.jpeg

U2, Zooropa. I bought it the day it came out while on my lunch break (I was working at a mall then), and listened to it on headphones. That night I went on my first-ever date; I'm a late bloomer--I was 18, it was the summer after I graduated high school. Nothing particularly sexual happened that night but driving to a movie theater in outer St. Paul on a beautiful clear day with the sky spread out and that album playing on her car stereo is something I'll carry with me to my grave.

― M. Matos, 26. heinäkuuta 2001 3:00

I agree, for once, with what Jason said--Zooropa is the place to look if one wishes to hear the most clear-cut influence Eno has exerted on U2 to date. Listen to "The First Time," "Lemon," and "Dirty Day" for the best examples of this (and the title track for a glimpse of what Joshua Tree would have sounded like if Eno had more actively stepped in, as he did on this album).

I think the key to understanding their relationship is understanding that Eno involves himself with U2 (as with any band he's produced) as much or as little as he sees fit.

― matthew m., 9. syyskuuta 2001 3:00

I remember being really excited in middle school when Bono said he'd continue to "fuck up the mainstream" after winning the Best Alternative Album for Zooropa.

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), 18. tammikuuta 2004 19:21

There's a real cold mekanik quality to a lot of this stuff, Zooropa esp, which I like. I hear both the Berlin/Bowie/Eno influence and the influence on Radiohead now.

― sund4r subramanian (sund4r), 24. lokakuuta 2004 23:50

Bono of course, he killed the pope by playing zooropa backwards on loop to him so he could get his job.

― cavern (cavern1), 7. huhtikuuta 2005 14:48

laaaaame

That is f'cking ridiculous, sorry.

lol

but you were right, that was totally unexpected

Ok actual lol

And it's a joke, right?

yeah unfortunately, this would actually be better than BoC taking it

Tuomas doesn't tell jokes!

one of my favorite ILX posts:

I threw my vote behind In Sides as well - and it would have been even if the album was nothing but "The Girl With the Sun in Her Head" followed by 30 minutes of the band taunting me by name.

I smell a rat. According to the album nom list I have, U2 ain't even on there...

I'm terribly sorry, seems I have accidentally posted the #1 of another poll! I apologize for that, here's the actual number one for this poll...

1. Boards of Canada - Music Has the Right to Children (Warp Records, 1998)
323 points, 16 votes, 1 first place vote.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/mhtrtc-1.jpeg

One of my oldest friends became furious when I politely disagreed with him that "Music Has the Right to Children" was the best album of all time. He gave me a condescending fifteen minute lecture on how BoC was where "all art should be focusing at the moment." He smokes a lot of weed.
As for myself, I like MHTRTC. It's background music, but it's lovely background music all the same.

― Toby, 7. toukokuuta 2001 3:00

boards of canada are really good. i'd say classic, for distilling the one ambient track that's on every idm album and basing a career around it. that's usually the best song anyway.

― ethan, 7. toukokuuta 2001 3:00

Half the fun (not to mention the point) of Boards of Canada are the secret messages and hidden references that have been deliberately stashed within their material, and then wondering exactly how serious Mark and Marcus are about trepanning/WACO/chakras/numerology/Sesame Street. There's a wilful the aural equivalent of reading the Illuminatus! Trilogy I suppose, which of course isn't everyone's cup of tea; but it's their aesthetic statement - one of intrigue, information overload with a naiive facade - the wolf in sheep's clothing, the friendly stranger. The music is beautifully uneasy, simple yet complex. It's a bit like when I was a kid, listening to the news on the radio and being terrified that everyone I knew would die of AIDS or pollution or drugs or anything else I didn't quite understand yet; but also being very much attracted to novel or magical things.

― village idiot (dog latin), 9. elokuuta 2010 17:54

Whether or not you buy the album as a whole there's no denying how emotionally engaging it is for 'electronica', or how evocative of times and spaces. Whereas other Hard-Drive output fails, BOC succeed in conveying the sensation of presence (being somewhere/sometime) without resorting to the specifics. We don't even know where the sentiments are taking us, to a distant past, memories, regrets; or is it a muted anxiety about the future we haven't arrived at yet. For me the originality comes from their evocation of rural spaces, but this is not soley due to their analogue set-ups or hazy samples. They really express what it's like to be out doors through a love of the countryside, it's some of the only music I know that can compliment nature and fill the sky. So if you think it's background, fine but maybe you've not sat in a field for long enough. I formed my own opinions and loved it like nothing else for months before the Hype came down and everyone started scratching their chins, so for me, a classic, though it's not fair to assess them now. Personally I doubt they have anything else to say, the other non- album material (Happy Cycling excepted) confirms this, and their music doesn't deviate from it's singular trajectory, suggesting that perhaps they spent the whole of their lives until MHTRTC defining this sound. Surely they deserve Classic status for dabbling in nostalgia without an ironic excuse

― K-reg, 8. toukokuuta 2001 3:00

laaame