POLL: Mojo's 50 Greatest Electronic Records

We've already established that Kid A was this generation's Screamadelica. No need to include both.

if you're not picking mix CDs (or, latterly, online mixes) you're just not doing a list like this right

Possibly, but then if the caveat is "records" or tracks as they are now, surely this could be done.

Influential? translates as "I did a hit with this one" towards "ooh, well he did that, we can do similar.."

I'd choose Murk "Amame (when you're ready)" but that's just me right?

I'm glad Lennie de Ice is in there, even if I didn't actually hear that record until about 1997. There are 16 different mixes on Spotify!

I had a look at the covers gallery on the Mojo website to see if there had been a Roxy cover (no) and it's very telling who their big sellers are. In order of frequency:

The Beatles (21 times!)
Pink Floyd
Oasis
Bob Dylan
Led Zeppelin
Rolling Stones
The Who
Nirvana
Sex Pistols
Bob Marley
Neil Young
Radiohead
Paul Weller
New Order/Joy Division
The Smiths
The Stooges/Iggy
Bruce Springsteen
The Clash
REM

In summary, this ain't no Booka Shade crowd.

Only other cover stars on the electronic list: Massive Attack, Kraftwerk (twice), Bowie (three times).

Once I got past the idea that this should be electronic dance records, I voted Stevie, just like I should.

We've already established that Kid A was this generation's Screamadelica. No need to include both.

Given what I know of Mojo, isn't that actually the argument for including them both?

KLF albums, just don't even feel that those are the best of that artist

nah this is the right choice, both in excellence and influence

(and yeah Losing My Edge is one bloke, a sequencer, and a drum machine that he's playing while he sings)

(and yeah Losing My Edge is one bloke, a sequencer, and a drum machine that he's playing while he sings)

He's not playing it, he just presses a button and it does it all for him, LOL!

OK, under those conditions, by the Mojo definition, LCD Soundsystem isn't even an electronic artist, he's a "rapper" so he still shouldn't be on the poll.

i can imagine a better list where i wld still be inclined to vote for rainbow in curved air

M/A/R/R/S, Pump Up the Volume 12-inch, 1987
OK I'll rep for a good novelty record any day, but really?

Also: no Tiesto, no credibility.

Yeah I don't know what "electronic" really means in this context. Like I've heard Neu! called electronic, but I just don't see why they are considered as such. The record listed here is quite organic, actually! So I can't vote for that. Also, KLF's Chill Out is incredible, but I don't really consider that electronic, it's just samples! Also why list Numan's 7" when his albums in this period were so much better? I'd probably have voted for Replicas or The Pleasure Principle here had they been options.

In the end, I voted YMO because it's an album that's *actually* electronic and it's better than the Kraftwerk album listed, so there.

As far as I know samplers are electronic

True but I feel like that album could have been made with a bunch of tape decks, you know? The more I remember Chill Out the more I feel it probably does handidly fit in the "electronic" category, it juts feels weird to me

I guess it's such a fuzzy category. I think sample-based records fit but in that case why no Bomb Squad/Prince Paul/Dust Brothers productions? And on it goes.

In general to me "electronic" means stuff like Kraftwerk, YMO, Orbital, Autechre, Underworld, etc. Mojo seems to be, "anything that uses a synthesizer" ?? I'm still trying to figure out why Neu! is on there.

I have no problem with a Mojo list being 90% pre-2000 albums in 2012. Seeing as I was the biggest repper for electronic music in the 1950s poll I have a fair amount invested in the history (particularly early history) of this stuff. Having said that, I'm totally on-side with everyone being WTF about the post-2000 choices. Hell, I like Animal Collective a lot, but I totally boggled at MPP being on this list. And there is a *lot* of choice for great iconic electronic music over the last 12 years, ffs.

With Neu!, I see their connection to the rhythms and innovations of electronic music, but it's not an 'electronic album' by a long stretch.

I think I'm probably voting White Noise, though Louis & Bebe come close, and I feel like Silver Apples should definitely get some props even if only for the invention of the Simeon (also, they are awesome).

Stevie Wonder is another. I mean, Stevie's great and he plays the keyboard, but electronic?

stevie's classic 70s albs were all made w/ the Tonto's Expanding Head Band guys = electronic music pioneers

xp Because if Mojo adopted a strict machines-only definition that excluded Bowie, New Order and Radiohead then this whole feature wouldn't exist, basically.

dog latin, do you know about TONTO and how important those Steve albums were to popularising synths? Definitely a milestone for electronic music.

no i didn't know that. colour me foolish.

This is such an amazing piece of work for 1959

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SHJ6CcML80

Oh wait, my preceding post disappeared - I was thanking emil.y for introducing me to stuff like this on the 50s poll thread.

Aww, thanks DL.

True but I feel like that album could have been made with a bunch of tape decks, you know? The more I remember Chill Out the more I feel it probably does handidly fit in the "electronic" category, it juts feels weird to me

So is analogue tape music, e.g. early musique concrete, also not electronic?

I'd probably be more interested in this list if it stopped at 1979 and so I'd imagine would most of Mojo's readership.

If you look at it in regards to influence, the list makes more sense, but again putting Animal Collective on there seems like, uhhh hey dude

So is analogue tape music, e.g. early musique concrete, also not electronic?

I guess I don't really know, "electronic" doesn't really seem like a real genre because it kind of begs the question of "how many electronics do you have to use"

it fails, because you may as well have tried to fit the greatest songs to ever feature guitar into a 50-slot article.

Julia Holter, Ekstasis LP, 2012

LOOOOOL Get the fuck out of here with this

actually everything after 1994 is suspect as fuck and that should be like the easiest part to get get right!

xpost that's one of the more credible recent choices, no?

snake oil iirc

I guess I don't really know, "electronic" doesn't really seem like a real genre because it kind of begs the question of "how many electronics do you have to use"

I've been wondering the same thing throughout this discussion. ("Strings of Life" is almost entirely based on samples of acoutsic classical music, for example. Should it not count?) "Electronic" is not really a musical style. I'm not saying that this list is brilliant but it also does not seem insane to me to describe Kid A or Merriweather Post Pavillion or, for that matter, Sgt Pepper, as electronic albums. (What makes "Idioteque" less electronic than an Aphex Twin track?) I've never thought of Chill Out as anything other than electronic.

it fails, because you may as well have tried to fit the greatest songs to ever feature guitar into a 50-slot article.

This does make sense to me (although lists like that exist, surely!).

*acoustic

WGW - I haven't really listened to Ekstasis, but the earlier album from last year is very nice in my book.

The Julia Holter album is great, but... she plays to her strengths and innovations a lot more on Tragedy.

snake oil iirc

― Fareed Zaireeka (Whiney G. Weingarten), Monday, August 13, 2012 4:07 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You do not rc

Yeah from what I heard of Ekstasis it was more song-based, more solid, but I kind of like her murky/ambient sound sketches (like The Falling Ages for instance).

not heard the Holter album but I think Mojo have already repped for it this year

moreover lists like this nearly always have a "record from this year that's far too new to canonise but we just went ahead and did it anyway check us out" entry

No Detroit? What a joke!

Model 500?

Model 500, No UFO's 12-inch, 1985 xpost

That's actually the only redeeming thing abt this list, no outsized Detroit fetish. But these days, most of that died down a bit anyway I guess? Still, Jaguar?

can't fetishize Detroit enough but it's fair not to overload the whole history of electronic music with it. anyway, this is a list for Mojo readers, big surp it's kinda conservative and ob(li)vious. gonna vote for the most contrary option when i've decided what that is

gonna vote for the most contrary option when i've decided what that is

that oval album is not good. It's got vocals.

Damn, this poll was difficult. There's a lot of great records here that I've played the shit out of. I ultimately went with Violator.

Mine too - I could have tossed one to Neu!, Chill Out, Violator, Autobahn, Planet Rock, or Low, but Solid State is probably the most *fun* listen of all those, so what are you going to do about that

OK Model 500 I missed it. But that is a little like having "This Charming Man" represent thirty years of Manchester guitar groups