Best 90s electronic music duo

Orbital out of these.

Röyksopp used to be part of Alania and Those Norwegians in the 90s, and weren't really Röyksopp until the 00s.

in that spirt, what i find odd about this list is why it sort of seems predisposed to the album-selling, indie-friendly acts like chemical bros, basement jaxx etc. but with two/three more serious duos thrown in.

i agree, <3 ledge and don't want to shit on this poll but ... maybe this should be called like "best electronic duo that had a video on mtv"

n/h

Kelpolaris if you think BoC are "more accessible" than Orbital, then you mad doggy.

― Sick Mouthy (Scik Mouthy), Tuesday, April 3, 2012 8:59 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I sort of regret that post as I was typing out, and trying to find, my thoughts and didn't have anything really of substance to say - save for that I typed more than a couple lines and clicking "submit" is so damn easy.

But yeah, as a casual listener these days BoC just demands so much less attention - especially MHTRTC. it's very "chill-out" whereas orbital I feel takes the infrastructure of accessibility and goes to length of convoluting it, which is sometimes disruptive. BoC songs are much more singular in their songs, thematically - each one has it's definitive vibe, whereas Orbital often comes across to me as seeking for, if not variety, a sort of desire to innovate within the confines of the songs themselves.

but i know what you mean - "little fluffy clouds" i bet has outplayed any BoC songs in a lounge/club by ratio of 2827309487:4, with BoC only being really out in the public eye with a soundtrack behind Spaced (Simon Pegg's v. good mid 90s comedy tv) and some episodes of Top Gun, or Top Ride, or whatever the fuck that car show is I'm not familiar with the name of.

I also derive this from fact that a co-worker of mine, in an old after-class job I had assembling iPad accessories, had - apparently - a juggalo friend who deemed BoC "joint music". I thought this was bullshit, thinking privately that the guy probably just liked RoyGBiv and the video for Dayvan Cowboy but turned out I ended up meeting the guy and he was a full-fucking-fledged fan, with the juggalo thing only preceding him in high-school days. yes, this is my testimony.

Orbital's Brown Album, and in particular, the "Lush 3-1/3-2/Impact/Remind" suite, singlehandedly won this indierock kid to the EDM dark side. I spent years scouring psytrance for more "Remind" like thrills. Their first 4 albums are all polished gleaming architecture.

I still have time for Autechre, Boards of Canada, Black Dog/Plaid, Reload/Jedi Knights/Global Communication, but Orbital is where it all started for me.

Oh, Wonky streaming on NME

"little fluffy clouds" is The Orb, not Orbital

fuck.

Tempted to start an "indie/guitar kids - where did electronic music start for you?" to see if Orbital or Chemical Brothers really was the gateway drug ppl claim.

I mean I'd say it was New Order -> 808 State for me after Technique. But that leaves out a lot of the electronic-goth-stomp stuff that I'd happily imbibe in the late 80s. But it's also that thing I've said before where I really didn't feel like there was a polarisation of electronic vs guitar until the mid 90s and, not having "got" IDM in the late 90s, I found myself on the wrong side of the divide when it opened up. For me it's a much more shifting thing than "guitar kids discovered indie friendly dance." I recognise there did become a polarisation but with hindsight it looks imposed rather than organic.

We've been through this before, also the point at which Select Magazine stopped covering St Etienne, Bill Drummond and Aphex Twin to concentrate exclusively on Blur and BritPop, I was too naive to notice the shift moving away but there was definitely a point where it had gone.

what about when j spaceman big upped photek in nme

(sorry, massively off topic now. I'll shut up)

Tempted to start an "indie/guitar kids - where did electronic music start for you?" to see if Orbital or Chemical Brothers really was the gateway drug ppl claim.

what got you into dance music?

It's just a weird question and no longer relevant because it has a rockist assumption as its starting point - that non-electronic dance music is somehow the default in music? Which is not even something we can *pretend* to hold culturally true any more.

As a white male middle class teenager in a small English town non-electronic guitar music was totally the norm. But that was 16+ years ago.

It's just a weird question and no longer relevant because it has a rockist assumption as its starting point - that non-electronic dance music is somehow the default in music? Which is not even something we can *pretend* to hold culturally true any more.

this is why my answer on the original thread was "Prince or Depeche Mode"

it actually should have been "Prince or Men Without Hats"

art of noise, "axel f" and herbie hancock's "rockit"

Yeah, the same with me, except that I was working class. Growing up in the early 90s, with MTV Europe playing club music all the time, and with Eurodance and house and trance and rave tunes being on the charts, there never was a time that I wasn't into dance music. I had an "indie" elitism phase in my late teens, but that was about which type of dance music was the best (i.e. underground techno and drum'n'bass, not the chart stuff).

(x-post to Nick)

yeah i got seriously bullied out of publicly liking electronic music when i moved to a wealthy all-white neighborhood

During my teens I moved to a place where the default music was country & western so listening to any kind of European / British music, guitar based or electronic was considered "faggot music" so YMMV.

it actually should have been "Prince or Men Without Hats"

― THIS TRADE SERVES ZERO FOOTBALL PURPOSE (DJP), Tuesday, April 3, 2012 7:31 PM (48 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

right on

ABSOLUTELY BASEMENT JAXX

Even if we don't include their pre-Remedy parties and DJ sets, which are among the best things EVER

Basement Jaxx were amazing but then they released Scars

also they are not Orbital

basement jaxx easily the most overrated electronic duo of all time, even "remedy" was 50% horrible

i'll admit that i too got sucked up by the poptimist madness of the fin-de-siecle but when you consider the difference between something like "jump n shout" or "samba magic" to "romeo" and "do your thing" it's quite sad

wtf no it's not, all four of those songs are awesome

I actually think all of the above duos are great. well, except for Crystal Method, but none have given me more pleasure or represented the LDN better than Basement Jaxx, so them.

"do your thing" is about as awesome as "cotton eyed joe"

both in terms of sound and concept

I don't think you are defending your point as well as you believe you are

Cotton Eye Joe is pretty crunk, imo

like basically you are being the dance music version of me on R&B threads going "this is terrible, it sounds like Ginuwine"

Late Great otm, who could ever want to listen to more than a tiny few Basement Jaxx tracks again? They've aged terribly. They have some genuinely embarrassing stuff too, lots of it.

voted for autechre, though I actually like their 00s stuff a lot more than their 90s stuff

What's that even worse one, after do your thing, had a novelty video?

i would rather listen to ginuwine than any post-rooty basement jaxx

i say this as someone who used to have the "lucky star" single

who could ever want to listen to more than a tiny few Basement Jaxx tracks again?

indeed, WHO? Clearly nobody here. Hmmm

I listen to them all the time FWIW

air

Who could ever deliberately misunderstand a rhetorical question?

Very UK centric list, this.

Who could ever deliberately misunderstand a rhetorical question?

Who would waste time and space asking one?

Are rhetorical questions?

No

Opinions a waste of time, why even post on a messageboard?

I think the "would you listen to much of it now / has it aged well" rubric is usually problematic but particularly so with electronic music where it seems to reward only stylistic bet-hedging.

Truly Basement Jaxx ended in embarassing territory but so did a lot of such acts and nothing they have ever done is a patch on the awfulness of "The Salmon Dance" - and yet I still think the Chemical Bros were (are) a fantastic act. See also Orbital and that hideous David Grey song.

With seveaal of these acts I think a lot of what made them great at some times is intimately bound up with what made them embarassing at others - not knowing where to draw the line makes you vulnerable to hideous errors of judgement but it also allows you to see possibilites others can't.

In terms of public perception Basement Jaxx now feel overdetermined by the guest star eclecticism of their third to fifth albums (though this is not to take away from the fact that Kish Kash is excellent) - it's very easy to forget that first and foremost they had a vision of house that was pretty singular.

Best exemplified by their 1997 and 1999 Essential Mixes I think.

In terms of public perception Basement Jaxx now feel overdetermined by the guest star eclecticism of their third to fifth albums

On a related note, I can't shake the feel that (bizarrely to me) a lot of people ignore the first two Chemical Bros albums and instead conceive of them as "Setting Sun" + "Block Rocking Beats" + Surrender.

I mostly agree with you, Tim, but I do honestly think the vast majority of Scars is worse than "The Salmon Dance"

also I can't really fathom that view of the Chems, but that's mostly because I hated Surrender and took them off of the trusted list after that album, even though I pretty much love Come With Us and We Own The Night