Top 50 Most Overrated Electronic Albums

That’s when I started listening in. 1999 forwards, of course I listened to their previous record but that scene was nearing its expiry date by the early 00s. Again that’s just my pov. For someone older than me they were probably amazing back in the 90s

re FSOL - I've never listened to anything later than Dead Cities,

FSOL have not released another album of new material since that one (not incl. the various archive releases).
the other albums were released under their AA moniker which is a very different vibe - 60s psych etc.

Looks like The Isness was a Future Sound Of London release in the US?

To everyone to responded to me earlier: thank you - I completely agree! Really getting a kick out of reading this thread.

I started a Top 50 Most Properly Rated TechnoRavers thread if anyone wants to help me. Pretend it's '94, you're working at a record store, and a 14-year-old comes in with a Smashing Pumpkins shirt on talking about the Pavement Cut Your Hair video on MTV and wants to know more about that kind of music. Except, you know, electronic music.

Looks like The Isness was a Future Sound Of London release in the US?

yeah, this was a mess of a release.
they were forced to add the FSOL name to the release I believe in order to get it released.
but its an AA album.

FSOL have not released another album of new material since that one

what are all these "Environments" albums? archival stuff? there's a load of stuff on discogs.

officially they are archive releases.
though I believe one of them was supposedly new material.

some of the early ravey FSOL stuff is awesome. indo tribe, mental cube, "PNG" of course..

papa new guinea is an incredible track, up there w 808 state “pacific”

two things i always get mixed up.

"pacific" is, like, my theme song

FSOL's "Stolen Documents" (I think? It's on Robbie Hardkiss's Mixed Messages mix) is a great early track from them.Accelerator generally is pretty great, though not Frequencies or early Black Dog level.

yeah that’s a good one!

it’s the b side on the png single iirc

If you cut things off at about 1994 so much of the early work of (mostly UK) artists who generally are considered IDM or electronica just sounds like great, smart techno.

yeah true

Jon Hopkins' music does sound like iPhone commercial music (the consonance, tonality and epicness of it), but it does sound good - various rehashing of "Open Eye Signal" - the synthesizer sounds fat/immediate/saturated (filter cutoff gimmick esp.), timbrally sweet. The timbres are sometimes dry and magnified, the rhythms flow easy, and it has that stretching, pulling effect. For the average Radiohead fan, it could be a revelation--roughly the equivalent of somebody beginning to 'recognize' the quality of Autechre's music, but in one shot. It wears thin pretty quickly.

The Campfire Headphase is overrated? I thought that people equated it to Starbucks dining room music.

Kelly Lee Owens
M83
LCD Soundsystem
James Blake

Noooo I love the KLO album

Ricardo Villalobos is shit

DJ Koze too, shit

Ricardo Villalobos is shit

― the article don

the don speaks the truth

agree on koze

villalobos has moments - esp as a dj - but yeah he’s been in a rut and he was overrated to begin with

I mean the heavens didn’t exactly open up for me when I listened to Alcahofa but I’m not going to give anyone flack for having a 10/10 response to it.
Like, what do any of us stand to gain from saying “I like this thing less than the popular consensus” when that stems entirely from personal taste rather than anything inherently hateful about the thing

Other than venting, I suppose. Which I get on some level

we gain satisfaction from trolling u

OVERRATED: The Orb - Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld
UNDERRATED: Irresistible Force - It's Tomorrow Already

mixmaster morris definitely underrated

probably bcz he acts like an ass

my mixmaster morris pick would be global chillage and the one where all the title have the word high in them

Villalobos is awesome listen to some singles for once in your life ffs

Eat some funk

Villalobos himself probably hasn't listened to all the music he's made in the past ten years, and I object on principle to the kind of critical treatment that seeks to elevate him above other dance music producers as some kind of profound rule-breaking genius (though this has receded over about the same period as Villalobos' own output hit total critical mass). But a top twenty productions list (assuming we could all agree on its contents) would be straight fire.

The same is true to varying extents and in different ways for Moodymann, Theo Parrish, Autechre, Aphex Twin, arguably Terre Thaemlitz - all artists who get lauded as iconoclastic auteur geniuses and, well, it's understandable, but it also not my preferred way of thinking about any of them.

DJ Koze in a different category, at least for me: there's a middle stripe of amazing widescreen and inventive dance floor material that he puts out which I think is mindblowing, and then there's the more minimalist material he puts out that I think is fine but not necessarily that distinguishable from other similar producers, and the jokey stuff on the other side which is kind of whatever. I feel like his elevation to near iconoclastic genius category is almost an accident of history, a need to fill a void. It's interesting to imagine an alternate scenario where it wasn't Koze who ended up assuming that role but, I dunno, Kalabrese or someone.

(the obvious actual alternative is Maurice Fulton but I think a lot of people would say "yeah, but he is a genius tho")

middle stripe you mean middle brow

haha sure if you like

i think you are mostly otm except come on theo parrish really is a one of a kind madman

moodymann pretty overrated esp lately

he had his day when he was untouchable but he has been getting worse and worse for a long time now

Behead all Villalobos disbelievers.

Parrish is a bit like Carl Craig in that the critical treatment is still wrong but he almost makes it right (though for different reasons).

i like the comparison because a moody top 20 would indeed tower over 99% of deep house music but he has always also had misses (like any mere mortal) and he is treading water and i hate his lame persona

there is good villalobos for sure - i will rep for the au harem and fizheuer and his taka taka mix until i die

but he should have stopped a while ago

Yep

this here is villalobos at his finest

http://soundcloud.com/vander-funkinhausen/ricardo-villalobos-live-fabric

forever and eternal

tell me more about your views on parrish because i really think there is very little like his work post- american intelligence

actually a lot of his old stuff is really weird too

Look I have no problem with "non dancers" listening to electronica but just slow your roll when it comes to shitting on things because they don't give you emotions when you're half listening to them in your flat

808 Bass Queen is all time

The one that's like an epic hard remix of "computer world" is all time

But yeah the cult of singular genius wrt Villalobos is kinda annoying. He's produced a fair amount of awesome hypnotic tracks and also a few weird full length albums that are very good but of course overfawned upon

The whole Villalobos cult thing is really wild in that he's a good dj when he's really working it, and most of his album-length things are good, but I can't really point to a single album (as opposed to his body of work as a whole) that was really overrated. Long-term, best album lists maybe have Alcachofa on them and not much else? Maybe Achso or something was overrated but there doesn't seem to be much longevity of praise

Jon Hopkins and a few other acts are enjoyable but sound more like a synthesis of other sounds done in a more composer-centric way, or arranged like it's dancefloor-oriented electronic music for non-dance fans. That probably describes a large portion of overrated albums, though, especially when the styles that are being concentrated aren't really casual listening or album-centric.

Alcachofa was the closest Villalobos ever got to bending to the rules of the album as it exists in non-dance formats, but thankfully he never tried to make songs

it’s decent as a trad album, still love the TLS remix (cover!) of Dexter

One of the reasons Villalobos albums subsequent to the Fabric mix aren't specifically overrated is that there's probably only about one hundred people in the world who have listened to them any later than 6 months after their release date.

he’s kind of had three fitting that bill, and I honestly have meant to check out Empirical House but forgot, enjoyed Vasco, and forgot Dependent And Happy

he did the ECM remix thing with Max Loderbauer and it was mildly interesting, and I even saw it done live, but it’s not the fawning-over type of thing