Top 50 Most Overrated Electronic Albums

endtroducing is not overrated imo

lots of kompakt was overrated

the field especially

yea I never got the fawning over the first Field record. a lot of people's minds were blown that he sampled Lionel Richie, I guess. I feel like people are doing way more interesting stuff in the vaporwave space these days.

this thread is deeply lame

kompakt ughghghugh stop calling dry dance music overrated godammit

they do put out pop stuff like the field sometimes yes

big beat owns

Endtroducing is weird record for me cause I really like it to this day but never got why it caught on like it did and got hailed as a masterpiece.

brimstead otm

also not really an albums genre, Chems and How To Operate With A Blown Mind aside

isolee 'wearemonster' got overrated imo, 'rest' was way better but critical attention was inversely proportionate

Nicolas Jaar, Ricardo Villalobos, Actress, and early Isolee is incredibly overrated. Still really enjoy some stuff from all these guys though.

Oval, Pole, ~scape records, and Clicks'n'Cuts (early 2000's glitch) scene was so overrated I kinda swore off of electronic/IDM for a half decade and listened to a ton of indie rap and electro instead.

I still rep for Pole's 1/2/3 because I had surgery and was laid up for a week and mildly drugged up and I just sat around listening to all of them on a loop and staring at a textured wall and intermittently napping

you know what was good was snd's first album

even the good posts in this thread are marred by the premise of it. i feel like "overrated" is such a one-dimensional concept especially when applied to electronic music where the ratedness is so marginal and in-the-moment in the first place. when it arises it comes from a rock perspective which is just deeply lame. and the less serious variety is like cyclical revulsion/nostalgia, "what were people thinking from 2003-2007" or w/e.

it makes me think of the pipecock era, or when i was just getting into dancier and blacker music and sort of trying to digest the history of it, when it was like there were these gradients of what is and isn't ok to like among different types of fans. i know a little bit more now and have a better sense of what kind of fan i am and i can think of a bunch of more rewarding ways to engage with what people think about electronic music from their past than "overrated" ffs.

this guy, yeah

I love Pole 1,2, 3

I think the problem is that in electronic music overated and dated go hand in hand and it’s almost impossible for electronic-based music not too sound dated a few months after release because it’s one of the first genres to take risks gear-wise and to create production tricks that tend to permeate and influence every other genre when succesful.

Per example a genre like rock is very backwards-thinking and your casual rock listener basically treats classic rock as a noble class. In which every new rock band has to know precisely where they come from and they are expected
to tribute (or shamelessly steal from) the gods that came before them.

electronic music doesn’t have a fetish with influences and roots but with technology. It’s almost designed to keep looking forward, everytime new experimental music software and hardware is created the first genre that is assumed will raise its hand is electronica. This ultimately results in loads of novelty music and effects that sound mindblowing when premiered but sound dated soon when every act (even outside electronica) starts using the same software presets.

a record with a friendly feeling and serene vibes that decrees a bank holiday for the receptors in the brain, that is never dated! especially if there is a miscreant glint in its eye, that is eternal!

Pole 2 is okay, 1 and 3 were just felt like relatively lazy creative efforts with few if any tunes leaving any memorable impact. I will confess more than a few songs on 2 felt interesting and memorable, and blended rhythm and melody better than the others. However, the overall style and quality of the 3 albums could be expressed in an EP to satisfaction. That's all well and good, many artists put out samey albums with minimal creative development among them and rehash ideas in unexciting ways. But damn, the press those records got at the time far exceeded the quality of what was actually on wax for my ears. Which is why I brought them up.

But I will agree that this thread is an unproductive one. Most music could be construed "overrated" regardless of genre. Where's the "underrated" thread?

Also: Their trick to stretch out a song for two or eight more minutes is to add an annoying flanger effect to the loop.

ha, all my failed 90s attempts to make music do this trick too

not sure if I got it from them or if it's just because (unlike many other effects) flanging a drum loop is easy and fun to play with in 90s tracker software

I still rep for Pole's 1/2/3 because I had surgery and was laid up for a week and mildly drugged up and I just sat around listening to all of them on a loop and staring at a textured wall and intermittently napping

this is a v good way to listen to records ime

(not electronic but) my maybe-favourite Oneida record "The Wedding" isn't anyone else's favourite Oneida record iirc, but it is the one that was on the 3-disc changer during my week off after surgery, drifting in and out of awakeness/awareness, dosed up with a big bag of synthetic opiates

even the good posts in this thread are marred by the premise of it. i feel like "overrated" is such a one-dimensional concept especially when applied to electronic music where the ratedness is so marginal and in-the-moment in the first place. when it arises it comes from a rock perspective which is just deeply lame. and the less serious variety is like cyclical revulsion/nostalgia, "what were people thinking from 2003-2007" or w/e.

― you bet, nancy (map)

like i said in the other thread, most of the stuff in this thread, including stuff i've contributed, is stuff i enjoy and think is good. when i talk about "overrated" i do talk about it from a rock perspective because, one, i come from a rock background, and two, most of the "overrating" does seem to come from a rock mindset - favoring albums, etc. you know what it reminds me of, actually? people who will insist with a straight face that frank zappa is the best 20th century composer. most of the people who say that haven't heard very many 20th century composers!

But I will agree that this thread is an unproductive one. Most music could be construed "overrated" regardless of genre. Where's the "underrated" thread?

― octobeard

it's called "house and techno bobbins 2018", it's full of great stuff, check it out

there are others as well, techno/house bobbins of the past, basically anything saer posts

they're not called "underrated" but i think that's probably for the best

you know what was good was snd's first album

― you bet, nancy (map), Wednesday, May 16, 2018 8:21 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

fuck yeah

the worst thing about this thread is people shitting on whole artists for not producing albums that sound like Discovery or something

the thread is for ALBUMS

Clicks and Cuts was and still is great fuiud

That reminds me: Discovery

I saw snd live and man sounded like sandpaper on wax

Mark Fell is God, afaic

it makes me think of the pipecock era, or when i was just getting into dancier and blacker music and sort of trying to digest the history of it, when it was like there were these gradients of what is and isn't ok to like among different types of fans. i know a little bit more now and have a better sense of what kind of fan i am and i can think of a bunch of more rewarding ways to engage with what people think about electronic music from their past than "overrated" ffs.

― you bet, nancy (map), Wednesday, May 16, 2018 11:43 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

even tho i have participated itt in prob dumb ways i think u are otm

also rush otm too when he said itt or maybe the other one that all these albums are worth listening to, imo nothing we are saying here really has to do w/ the music itself anyways. if you love those clark albums then i am ultimately very happy for you

btw i love those pole albums

def think a most underrated albums thread would be more useful

or a "random old electronic music you're loving" one

JIV that is some generic fast fashion bullshit house Herbert and you should know better

― El Tomboto, Tuesday, May 15, 2018 9:34 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

house music is good

i made an album all of samples taken at a mcdonalds and it's a comment on capitalism is less good

eh i like this thread lol even though its full of people being wrong

don't get re albums that supposedly sound dated re electronica.
I mean, I still listen to Kraftwerk/Yello/Cabs/Pedro/Prefuse 73 etc a lot.
if its good upon release, then its good a few years later even if there are new generations of software that may be better now.

More about changing styles/aesthetics imo

but that happens in every genre

isolee 'wearemonster' got overrated imo, 'rest' was way better but critical attention was inversely proportionate

Though production techniques can factor in...some end up sounding 'timeless' or 'classic' because they keep getting re-used, others are popular for a minute and then not so much (like sidechain compressing everything to the kick drum, or glitchy Pro Tools sample chopping all over the place, or putting mid-tempo breakbeats through guitar pedals in a way that sounds very '90s, etc)

xp

but that happens in every genre

Exactly?

ok thought we were saying electronic stuff gets pegged as dated more than other genres and positing theories as to why

that was Moka's post i dont really agree w it either

100% agree w/r/t Isolee. Rest is much better than wearemonster, but perhaps the people who loved wearemonster were new to the genre and so they overvalued the album because they weren't around for the release of Rest.