nomination and discussion thread for possible top 100 electronic dance tracks of the 00s

"this here right now is my favourite"

how i feel about mixing also..

think moody would be a bit funny about licensing his tracks for comps like that, did everyone see the rbma academy interview? i'm sure he spoke about that stuff in there. also his "hit" albums, kind of function like retrospectives anyway.

anyway, gonna vote in this poll, gonna vote for 50 things i really like.

the 20 Years Metroplex comp is a reasonable overview of Juan Atkins' first 2 decades but nuts to a thorough well-curated etc tbh

good point, missed that. a well-chosen two disc comp is thorough enough for my purposes, and that one looks great. oop though, and seems to have had pretty low visibility outside the established scene?

there are definitely some tracks on this poll that have that "this here right now is my favorite" vibe - particularly a lot of the post-2010 stuff and post-dubstep stuff seems to me like something i may not be into five or six years down the line (cf 2step, most of which, though not all of which, i used to consume w/ a passion but which now mostly sounds badly dated and fluffy to my ears)

i'm mostly voting for things i've been listening to for years and years without getting tired of them, stuff like "live goes on" and "miura" and "poney pt 1" and "r&b drunkie" which just never seem old and never leave my ipod and always put a huge grin on my face even though it's been five or ten years since i first heard them

think moody would be a bit funny about licensing his tracks for comps like that, did everyone see the rbma academy interview? i'm sure he spoke about that stuff in there.

yeah, i wondered about that. just bugs me on "discovering" MM that so many of the tracks that first caught my ear aren't officially available anywhere.

xxp to cntndrsr

snark aside i guess what wd be the point of trying to push Juan Atkins to people outside of the "established scene"? it's a pretty big scene at this point. and Tresor was a big label within those terms.

re: 2step i mean that not all of it sounds dated to me - smokin' beats "dreams" never gets old! but a lot of the stuff i used to really like - like ed case and todd edwards - i basically can't listen to anymore.

weirdly enough speed garage sounds as fresh to me as it ever did.

i find some genres go in and out of sounding dated, depends on contextual stuff in the present? even the most of its moment synth sound sometimes gets reinvigorated by a new unforeseen connection.

^^ <3 that DN

xp to contenderizer

he does super short runs and loads of different versions of the same track afaik. just to fuck with you, haha

man, the first time i heard moodymann i was taking some records over to a friends house in a bit of a shit part of leeds, i got mugged and beat up. records stolen and the dude i was going to see (c0mfy pau1, might post/read here, get in touch) gave me some pain relief and i sat back and closed my eyes and that beat on runaway was pulsing though my swollen face and it was a pretty awesome listening experience tbh

re: 2step i mean that not all of it sounds dated to me - smokin' beats "dreams" never gets old! but a lot of the stuff i used to really like - like ed case and todd edwards - i basically can't listen to anymore.

weirdly enough speed garage sounds as fresh to me as it ever did.

― the late great, Thursday, 26 April 2012

lotta speed garage sounds real fresh right now

also - smokin beats - jazz house is dope as fuck

armand's spin spin sugar mix is definitely going to be high on my 90s poll ballot

actually only heard this for first time recently but so good

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

i actually prefer smokin beats under the zoom + dbx moniker - i like the zoom + dbx remix of jazz house more than the OG, and their mix of "something in your eyes" is kinda all-time for me

those super-ruff square wave basslines they come up with are so addictive to me

snark aside i guess what wd be the point of trying to push Juan Atkins to people outside of the "established scene"? it's a pretty big scene at this point. and Tresor was a big label within those terms.

well, a point made by several in this thread is that EDM is a genre that exists almost entirely in a specific context: dance clubs. the music resides largely on minimally packaged 12" singles produced for DJs, these records often issued in limited quantities by obscure labels and carried by shops that cater almost exclusively to DJs and dedicated fans of the scene. the albums that represent the scene both inside and out are mixtapes more often than not. artists release material under a variety of different names, and even the biggest tracks are as likely to be known as remixes as they are in their original form. this makes the music rather inaccessible to potential fans who aren't part of the scene.

my attitude is that all music deserves to be heard by as many people as might be interested in it. and that outside club culture, "thorough, well-curated" career overview collections are a good way to expose interesting & important artists to curious would-be fans.

all the best records aren't really by name people tho

no, but some of the name people made good records

there's a thread to be had about the pros and cons of inaccessability but i'm not gonna do it here.

given the general tone of this thread, i knew that was coming ;)

okay i sketched out what my objections are here:

should everything be commercially available?

the juan maclean - tito's way (reverso 68 mix)
justus kohncke - elan
rubies - i feel electric (max essa remix)
siobhan donnaghy - don't give it up(c2 remix)
alter ego - gary (c2 remix)
my my - swiss on rye
dj hell - je regrette everything (superpitcher mix)

search function

yeah, i know. no hits, no mainstream visibility. still surprised, cuz this stuff seems very accessible to me.

should also be noted that dude is sort of a recluse and doesn't exactly jump at the opportunity to work with anyone.

search function

― the late great, Thursday, 26 April 2012 19:20 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i ctrl/f'd. sincere apologies if i replicated something, 'tis a big thread.

what did i replicate anyway?

oh whoops my bad it was tiga's remix of gary posted upthread!

:-(

i knew it! apology accepted ;)

feel for you compiling this all btw.

eh i think EDB's going to do that for me

;-)

Heh, I'm definitely willing to, though. And I'll do my best to sort out "questionable" nominations.

Well, we're at 1053 now, though there's dozens of duplicates and "questionable" nominations that need to be taken out.

Having compiled all the nominations, let me say that for all the hand-wringing about house/pop distinction, over-nominating stuff (i.e. adding every track you kind of enjoyed) has made the nomination list way more arbitrary than any fever rays track ever could. Granted, I'm still questionable about LCD soundsystem (surely something like yeah (pretentious mix) would be elegible?)

I added everything to a google spreadsheet that's here

I think the most effective thing to do is have a sort of "flag nomination" system, where if you see something you don't want on, flag it, and it will go to an external review board (i.e. we'll debate it here for 2 days to no conclusion).

EDB you're thinking the same way i am - just scanning the list i see way more random house/techno choices than questionable pop or indie choices

one thing we could do is have everybody nominate 50 tracks they think should make the cut (w/o sorting into a ballot) and then chop out everything that doesn't get any votes

then do a full ballot

thanks again EDB

Good work EDB. There's quite a lot of duplicate entries there, and it's quite amusing that Matt DC's nom is listed with his comment:
Mylo - Drop The Pressure (I don't even want to vote for this but the idea of the Gloria Estefan bootleg being nominated and not the original is horrible)

one thing we could do is have everybody nominate 50 tracks they think should make the cut (w/o sorting into a ballot) and then chop out everything that doesn't get any votes

I've got nothing against that, but I think it will lead to far fewer tracks being eliminated than you suspect.

late great what do you hope to accomplish w/ this???

accomplish w/ pruning down the list?

i don't know - just making it easier to work with the spreadsheet, not overwhelming voter?

just throwing it out there, not really pushing the idea, i think it will lead to far fewer tracks being eliminated than you suspect is correct

does that mark the end of nominations then? even just scanning it there's so many glaring omissions. the ambition deserves some kudos and no doubt the heart's in the right place but jeez... i'm obv still compelled to vote mind.

i thought the point was to cross-reference with that fabuloso best djs list

A further elimination process seems like overkill but I think anyone who wants to nominate more stuff should honestly ask themselves "will this actually make my top 50"?

At this point I doubt that anyone will be obsessively checking everything they haven't heard out of the 1000+ noms so there seems to be little point in expanding the field.

i agree, referring specifically to a couple of personal favourites (have been hovering around this thing aprehensively and jumped in quite late tbh). if that's it tho, then i'm fine with it. p much all my big favourites are there.

accomplish w/ pruning down the list?

no like just in general, with this poll? like do you want something thats quasi-canonical or just a collective 'desert island' mix or do you want some kind of aesthetic soi for ilm

why does anyone do lists?

to make sense of things, to bring order, to commemorate

i don't have any agenda, durr durr durr brought up the idea and i thought it might be fun?

i see a lot of poll threads on ILM and i never click on them because i basically don't give a shit about what they're polling about, thought i'd step in and facilitate this one because i have a lot of past dance-thread sins to make up for. also because i always looked at those threads on new answers and thought "we should do a dance one".

i always thought about doing separate house and techno ones but always figured it'd be hard to draw the line and everyone would get super-frustrated, sort of smh that we're doing a much more inclusive poll and people are still arguing about it

to answer your questions

1) i don't think there's enough critical distance to do something canonical on 00s dance music. it's hard enough coming up w/ a disco canon let alone 00s dance.

2) i am pretty certain that the results are not going to look like 50 tracks i'd want to take to a desert island w/ me ... i'll feel lucky if five of my picks make the top fifty let alone ten

3) not sure what an aesthetic soi is, is that like a soi disant critical theorist of the hardcore continuum?

I think the most effective thing to do is have a sort of "flag nomination" system, where if you see something you don't want on, flag it, and it will go to an external review board (i.e. we'll debate it here for 2 days to no conclusion).

I see that my two Barbara Morgenstern noms were flagged as "pop?". If you really must, you can delete "Gute Nacht", as it is kind of a synth poppy (though everything in it is still electronic beside the vocals), but "37°" is a pure instrumental electronic tune with no singing.

I see two Knife songs have been flagged as "popish". I'm pretty sure they're Lutheran.

No good can come of whittling down the nominations. If you can go through to flag things you want to get rid of, or things you want to keep, you can put a ballot together. Just let people vote and call them a feeb if you don't like their list afterwards.