Best 90s electronic music duo

No Basic Channel?

yeah it's probably probably a million acts who didn't make it through the highly selective idm filter i was operating at the time.

probably missing

Air or Autechre for me. Chemical Brothers by far the most popular at my school though so let's give them half a point.

rene et gaston

are there any other genres of music, or other art forms even, where two people performing pretty much the same function is a thing?

was kind of upset that Underworld wasn't included until I realized they were actually a trio...as is it's a tossup between the Chems and Orbital, but Orbital made the better albums...

Had anybody heard of Röyksopp in the 90s?

yeah they're a bit of a temporal outlier.

Duos (who supposedly share all the work) in other art forms: Gilbert and George, Jake and Dinos Chapman, The Coen brothers. Seems to be the exception rather than the near-norm it was for this particular genre at this particular time.

Oh, The Everly Brothers, the Righteous Brothers, Simon & Garfunkel, Hall & Oates, there must be a million singing duos.

Air Liquide and Mouse on Mars missing from the list...

I guess I'm gonna vote for 2LS, it's the only of these I really cared about even in the 90s.

Where is Mouse on Mars band?!

But it's already quite cruel making me choose between Autechre and Orbital.

(xp)

twitch and brainstorm!!

MoM omission - I blame wikipedia.

Also, didsn't The Orb and KLF consist of two dudes as well?

Orb had a buncha line-up changes, KLF not solely concerned with knob-twiddling.

But the thread title says nothing about knob-twiddling, it's misleading!

Sorry I got you here under false pretences.

A lot of these would have at least started off using hardware and there are economic and practical reasons why they might have paired up. Nowadays electronic producers tend to go straight to laptops which kind of encourages them to go solo.

A credible hypothesis!

BoC and Plaid are a toss up. The former made better albums, the latter better singles.

listened back to 'double figure' recently and it has not aged well

::head explodes::

I have so much love for FSOL and GC but then like, Orbital and the Chemical Brothers were embarrassingly important to me at the time. I just think BoC are too obvious to vote for. Oh my head hurts. I don't think I can make this decision.

Many of them I love, but only one do I adore.

Orbital ftw.

Had thought either boards of canada or autechre, but global communication have 'The Way' and also that remix of Azymuth, so going to go for them

Keep meaning to give B12 another go but never get round to it....most of the others on the list haven't dated so well or were just plain not good to start with

autechre

I kind of don't "get" Autechre, which is weird considering the 3 years of my life I spent listening to pretty exclusively IDM

Yeah, I've softened on them slightly, but my feelings on Autechre are pretty well documented.

I pull out Tri Repeatae every year or so and get really, really bored by about track 4. Though "Eutow" is still incredible. I wonder what I'm missing.

autechre, of course. this poll is basically my winamp playlist as a teenager, but autechre, unlike most of them, remain one of my favorite... duos.

Frogs, you might like either their earlier, more techno-y stuff or the melodic turn they've taken as of late:

Early:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wraDrKHP0tE

Recent:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WJr3baPOtU

write in for Basic Channel

Mouse on mars for sure but sadface.jpg

Sadly lacking Everything But The Girl. Still. FSOL is best, second only in production skills to possibly the duo of Goldie and Rob Playford.

voting Plaid in lieu of Basic Channel

IMO it's hard to beat Bytes by Black Dog Productions aka Plaid

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JhbXk-suKo

i'm predicting Daft Punk takes this despite lack of stanning in the thread

Also worthy of consideration:

Pan Sonic
Porter Ricks
Burger/Ink

LEFTFIELD

Is this still a thing? ... And was it a thing before the 90s?

I would say that Cluster and Cabaret Voltaire are two obvious forerunners.

clivilles and cole

kruder and dorfmeister?

Yeah, I've softened on them slightly, but my feelings on Autechre are pretty well documented

would be interested to read, where would that be?

plaid out of these but mouse on mars easy pick over any of them

haha none of the ones i was expecting to see are in the list, i automatically thought of male/female trip-hop duos like portishead, moloko etc

of these, b jaxx and it's not even close

Best 90s electronic music duo (non knob-twiddlers edition)

Maybe we can pit the winners of the two polls against each other in an ultimate showdown?

Voted Autechre but Matmos came close.

Got to be Global Communication. On-selon mi-mos and The Way (Secret Ingredients mix) are two of my all times of the 90s.

WOT NO MIKE N RICH but really I couldn't let this stand:

haha none of the ones i was expecting to see are in the list, i automatically thought of male/female trip-hop duos like portishead, moloko etc

― lex pretend, Monday, April 2, 2012 12:23 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Portishead were 3+ people! (Barrows, Gibbons, and Utley, and maybe MacDonald.)

if this poll was done on ilx ten years ago daft punk takes it over basement jaxx w/ autechre maybe not even getting third over boc right?

Sounds about right. I didn't really see this result coming at all, there are one or two Autechre tracks I've liked but generally I find the early stuff pleasant but not particularly interesting whilst not really able to find a way into anything from Tri Repeatae onwards.

whereas i only deeply love the stuff from LP 5 onwards. the problem with the poll is that Ae are some prog/avant crunchy head music for me - "head" isn't the right word, what i love about the later stuff is its physicality of sound - but comparing them to say anybody making genuine dance music is a category mistake really

Yeah, it's not an unexpected result, given the commenting. But still. It feels kind of unfair that people went for the head music over the dance music. (Though despite all the cavilling on the thread, it was about "electronic" acts, not about "dance" acts so there you go.)

there is plenty of "dance" music i wd choose over "head" music depending on what day it is but it didn't appear in this poll really

Well it's a bit stymied by being specifically and only duos.

(And I'm not just saying that because I think Mr Twin would have wiped the floor with Autechre.)

Be an interesting one that - I kinda feel like a lot of aphex records haven't dated so good tho

That's not a poll I would trust myself to make.

Aphex Twin or Autechre pick only one:

o Aphex Twin
o I am stupid and should have rusty nails driven through my eardrums, but I prefer Autechre

perhaps SAWII is timeless but yes, some of his later, more famous records haven't exactly held up

I rest my case.

the aphex twins were the best electronic music duo of the 90s

I still encounter people who still think "they" are two people.

I rest my case.

what is your case, exactly?

the aphex twins were the best electronic music duo of the 90s

Yeah its probably actually the later 90s stuff that hasn't help as well

that was supposed to say "hasn't held up as well"

exactly, I do feel as though Autechre will probably hold up better. with Aphex, I'm hearing a lot of really cool or unique ideas that aren't really that much fun to listen to

I'm probably in the minority in thinking RDJ's post-2005 acid techno turn is the best stuff he's done

I'd agree with that. I enjoy the analord stuff way more than his 90s stuff, which hasn't really aged that well for me.

iow drill n' bass was a bad idea

even though he did it 1000x better than anyone else excepting squarepusher, maybe

aphex twin could've stopped after doing both volumes of the selected ambient works and it would be enough to place him over autechre

Best 90 electronic music duo: THE FINAL BATTLE

re analords, I mean:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2F-GF3Hx7s

the bit around 2:40 is one of my favorite AFX moments

Flim and the Richard D. James Album are still all-time for me.

Flim, yes, but RDJ really hasn't held up for me lately

We played I at record club a few months ago and I loved it, though the two of us who knew it well agreed that it sounded far less radical than we remembered.

I don't give a monkey's if a record sounds radical, I care if it sounds beautiful, or moving, or if it makes my ears sit up and go boy howdy. All of which RDJ does.

wow @ results, really thought one of the bigger names would take it. also the crystal method got a vote, arf.

haha who voted for The Crystal Method

I guess we won't know

I don't give a monkey's if a record sounds radical, I care if it sounds beautiful, or moving, or if it makes my ears sit up and go boy howdy. All of which AE does.

dere u go.

i didn't vote but if i did it would've been chems

lol results

I pull out Tri Repeatae every year or so and get really, really bored by about track 4. Though "Eutow" is still incredible. I wonder what I'm missing.

― Estimate the percent chance that a whale has ever been to the moon? (frogbs), Monday, April 2, 2012 11:56 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Alright, I decided to crank it in my car and I think I figured it out; where do you go from here?

onwards and upwards

envane is a nice lead-in to chiastic slide, if a bit more dancefloor friendly (kinda) than that or tri repetae; if chiastic is too weirdly crunchy then skip on to lp5.

chems really snubbed

Right on - will do. I have their first two as well and generally enjoyed them but now I'm starting to realize why they're spoken of so highly here. The music on TR really feels monolithic at points, especially on headphones, but given more space it's incredible just how much there really is to *hear* on it. My problem is that I'd focus more on the abrasion of it, especially up front (still don't like "Stud", by the way). Besides maybe Aphex Twin I haven't really heard anything like this so yes I'll be on my way to checking those out!

guys guys

i forgot funkstorung

Funkstörung was a German Autechre whose work was at least half remixes of Wu Tang, Bjork, etc...right?

yeah, I think they had like two singles/videos that had some minor hype and some interesting packaging design but all their best work was remixy stuff

Nah I rate their (all original) appetite for disctruction album, autechre esque but with a stronger electro vibe, real rapping n everything.