Best 90s electronic music duo

Yeah Chems do amazing credible bangers. I sort of wish they'd turned into anonymous producers after Come With Us. And especially anonymous remixers. Adore their remix of Kylie's "Slow".

orbital is okay but to me pretty whatever. like i have no problem w orbital but to me they blend in with a lot of competent progressive techno from that era, like leftfield, underworld, speedy j, etc

is there anything in that style you're super-into or is it all just competent?

i guess i feel about them the way i do about like pantha du prince - pretty, but ultimately that focus on baroque, uplifting ethereal harmony always makes me feel like its insubstantial

uh, i dunno. that's a good question. what else is like orbital? something like "smokebelch ii"? i'm super into that.

the martian? UR's high tech jazz? derrick may? stacey pullen? kenny larkin? ken ishii?

to me the stuff from orbital i like best ("chime", "belfast", "halcyon") sounds a lot like detroit-derived techno scrubbed of the appealing grit and weirdness

then once you get to "in sides" it turns into kitchen-sink electronica vomit IMO

but yeah, i can listen to and enjoy green and brown, they're quite nice, but i'll always grab one of those aforementioned artists instead, i suppose for somewhat rockist reasons

similarly i always really dug fahrenheit 303 but it just makes me want to listen to voodoo ray or tricky disco or mr fingers instead

etc etc etc

a lot of orbital has that post-industrial drum sound and programming that sounds badly dated too, kinda ends up sounding like meat beat manifesto or belgian new beat or something (speed freak and steel cube come to mind)

a lot of orbital has that post-industrial drum sound and programming that sounds badly dated too, kinda ends up sounding like meat beat manifesto or belgian new beat or something

haha i'd say that's one of its appealing points of distinction!

eh, i can't really hang with that for whatever reason, maybe because my sister and i went through a simultaneous industrial phase in high school that involved lots of KMFDM and thrill kill kult and even worse wax trax stuff than that - i even bought that big wax trax box :-(

i even have deep problems w/ DHS, which everyone else praises to high heaven

at one point in high school i used to tell people my favorite band was 1000 homo djs

no more industrial music for me

i should probably go to a goth club at some point in my life again while i can still pass for late 20s, but i'd have to drive up to LA to do that, i think

roule and crydamoure OTOH never seem to get old, not does their ultra hard ultra tracky early shit

Think I love Crydamoure more, on the whole, than Daft Punk, tho Discovery remains untouchable.

Excluding post-2000 output it's got to be Orbital

Incredibly I've never heard an Orbital album. I'm assuming the earlier stuff is more detroit-y/bleepy? What should I get?

I didn't realize that Plaid wasn't always synonymous with Black Dog Productions... oh well. Mbuki Mvuki is great.

mbuki mvuki is like a sandwich of two parts cheese and one part shit

anything hurts my ears, next two are riple, perplex makes kirk de g sound like herbie hancock but they get points for trying and they're way ahead of him, he still sounded like b12 at this point and wouldn't get to this type of breaks and synth until like 97, so that side on balance is 2/3 cheese 1/3 shit

summit reminds one of "prime united future organization" which is a different sort of ripe, scoobs in columbia i never liked, yak and bouncing checks are awesome, we're 50/50 at this point but we i count the good ones each as x2 cause i'm an optimist, so again 2/3 to 1/3

on bytes the ken downie tracks slaughter everything else, though this was not the case later

the alternate tracks from this period on disc 1 of trainer are uniformly awesome though

I didn't realize that Plaid wasn't always synonymous with Black Dog Productions... oh well. Mbuki Mvuki is great.

This poll was about duos, and The Black Dog/BDP was a trio consisting of Plaid + other guy. When the Plaid guys went back to being duo, I think the third guy kept The Black Dog name, so it's now his solo project.

"post-plaid black dog is execrable and worse than current plaid, which is merely pointless, in a worse way than stereolab, but not much worse"

-- pitchfork magazine

allmusic is nice and says "an interesting blend ... with the free-form structures of film soundtracking" which is a nice way to say sounds like music for viral ads on vimeo

their coup de grace is "the results of which are intriguing although rarely crucial" though i would strike "rarely crucial" in favor of "mostly unlistenable"

I kinda liked the Black Dog album that followed Spanners, Music for Adverts or whatever it was called. It was a collection of short and pretty vignettes, like Satie for the IDM crowd or something. Nothing mindblowing, but pleasant background music. I haven't been paying attention what The Black Dog is doing these days, though.

even their bangers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pm2tRqdchIs

are really twee

tuomas you must be trolling

Huh?

check out this contemporaneous interview where he talks about brian eno, jah wobble and mozart in the same paragraph

http://www.theblackdogma.com/tbd/2008/08/archive-dog-bites-back-interview-with-dj-magazine-28-08-96/

more like music for nerds amirite

As opposed to the trio Black Dog and Plaid?

eh its about degrees

it all gets a little too on the sleeve when a beat poet guests on your album, this album is like just the bongos

i'm talking about the album after the music for adverts one, that has the beat poet talking over bongos and didgeridoo, and i was trying to say the adverts one sounds like just the bongos

it is in "poor taste" if you will

IMO the Music for Adverts album actually sounds less nerdy, because it doesn't have the complexity and IDM tweakery of the Plaid-related stuff. Like I said, just pleasant vignettes.

(xx-post)

Well yeah, like I said, I have no idea what the Black Dog guy did after MfA.

i think that lack of sonic attention just makes the conceptual side of the work jut out at me

anyway i was wondering if anybody had heard dj c's "mad again" and if they thought it was triumphant postdiploism or merely eccentric postjaxxism

http://soundcloud.com/mashit/dj-c-mad-again-du-ting-mix

there's an awkward kind of poseathon section at 1:30 and i don't think they would ever slide that far from actual dancing but its got the same production quality

the term "bouncement" is suspect

this is all a bit too arcane for me, but...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72ZAMCzjxrk

spaghetti western

it's kinda pastiche to my ears

pastiche maybe, but it doesn't sound a damn thing like its inspirations. and the transformation c. 3:40 is one of the most amazing moments the 90s produced, genre notwithstanding

they're kinda like a techno version of tortoise

do not say such terrible things

i mean yeah, w the insistent subtleties, but listen to the way the bounceback echoes complete the melodic phrases in the 2nd half, so nice

and tortise never jammed half as hard, unless remixed by sensible people

negative jamming going on here but still one of my fave ae mixes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkHIVu06Nh8

I really like Plaid, or big chunks of their first three albums at least at least (wildly inconsistent), but I don't think you can deny the tweeness, or at least the playfulness. I mean bits of Not For Threes sound like they're actually trying to make their equipment sound like a petting zoo.

Agreed.

So many fine electronic music duos here! (but not The Crystal Method) - Based on 90s work alone, tho, I think these would be my POV+1

Boards of Canada - my vote; their 90s shit was dope & MHTRTC can't really be topped here imo
Air - early singles + Moon Safari are all-time
Autechre - def the best overall 90s career arc
Daft Punk - Homework, I mean..
Basement Jaxx - not as good as Homework, but nevertheless quite good.
Plaid - if these guys are underrated, they shouldn't be.

I would also have ranked Mouse on Mars & maybe Kruder & Dorfmeister among these prob