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

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