I feel like Electronic music gets underrepresented here. Maybe I just miss the right weeks for it, but I thought I’d do my own poll as electronic music is hear to stay and is taking over mainstream culture as surely as rock and roll did in the 60s.
So the rules of this poll are basically that the band has to use electronic instrumentation as a staple. Therefore bands like Placebo, Ministry, Radiohead or Pink Floyd are all reasonable even though they are basically rock bands. However, I want to stay away from bands that noodled with electronic instruments once or twice. Or who just throw a little electronics into their songs. I mean something that the electronic instruments really change the sound.
Let’s go with albums, rather than songs and limit it to ten.
Here are my picks.
Hallucinogen - Twisted
Amon Tobin - Out, From Out Where
Snog - Dear Valued Customer
Skinny Puppy - Last Rites
Violet Vision - First Sign of Communication
Speedy J - A Shocking Hobby
Nine Inch Nails - Downward Spiral
Clint Mansell - Requiem for a Dream sdtrk
Pierrepoint - Technoid Beats for a Paradox Movement
Pig - Sinsation
I think I might have an idea why electronic music is “underrepresented” here; if the rest of the board is like me they can only tell the band name from the album name on about 8 of those!
But still, god forbid I read a thread without responding to it:
Popcorn - Hot Butter. (Or is it vice versa? Yes, I know it really doesn’t count in terms of the OP but damn that song is catchy.)
Chemical Bros - Dig Your Own Hole
Art of Noise - In No Sense? Nonsense!
Pizzicato Five - Happy End of the World
Wendy Carlos - Tales of Heaven and Hell
Peter Gabriel - Passion
The Avalanches Since I Left You. Great Aussie album. Perfect for summer listening. One of my all time faves.
Gerling When Young Terrorists Chase The Sun. Gerling are another fantastic Australian act. Unfortunately, this album was planned for release about the same time as the 9-11 attacks, so it never received the publicity it deserved. (Trivia: my version of the album has a (great) song “High Jacker’s Manual”, which is now understandably referred to as “Jack’s Manual”.)
In a similar vein, Saint Germain Tourist. Jazz and electronic music were meant to be together. The “French Touch” movement kicked off by Saint Germain continued with…
…Air’s Moon Safari and Premiers Symptomes. These two albums belong together. Another two of my favourite albums to listen to the whole way through.
Beck Midnite Vultures. Beck isn’t exactly an electronic artist per se, but there’s enough computer wizardry in this one to qualify, I think.
Chemical Brothers Surrender. I can’t get enough of “Let Forever Be”. Some great videos for the singles off this album too.
FatBoy Slim You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby. This album deserves all the publicity it received.
Air, Daft Punk and Pizzicato Five are all excellent groups already mentioned. Red Elvis, Man or Astroman started out as surf rock, I think they have recorded two electronic albums- Eniac and A Spectrum of Infinite Sound. Of those I have A Spectrum of Infinite Sound. If the album you have features a track based on the sound of a dot-matrix printer (the track title is *A Simple Text File) the album you’ve got is A Spectrum of Infinite Sound.
My favorite artist not yet mentioned is Cornelius. His latest stuff is very electronic, but he has worked in many styles.
I’m with Grendel and Narrad. Some of my very favourite music there. I still love “exit planet dust” above the other chemical bros. albums, but that’s probably just because of the associations it has for me.
Bonobo’s animal magic is very good.
Aphex twin must get a mention, one of the most influential electronic music artists ever, whether in ambient, mutant jazz or drill’n’bass mode.
The Orb’s adventures beyond the Ultraworld, total classic.
Future Sound of London - dead cities and Lifeforms.
Plus there are a milion other “electronic” music producers that fall into other genres - DJ Shadow, Dan the Automator, Herbaliser, DJ Krush, Mr Scruff, Portishead, etc. that fit more within the Hip-hop genre, and a load more like Badmarsh and Shri, Roni Size, LTJ Bukem, photek etc. that are more drum and bass.
Coldcut - another pioneer, deserves unlimited praise.
EBN’s Telecommunication Breakdown seems to be interesting, based on the couple songs and samples I’ve heard. My copy hasn’t arrived yet, though; more detail when it does.
Oooh, baby. Occasionally I get on electronic kicks that last for months. Here are some of my favorites:
Air - Moon Safari
Arling & Cameron - All In and We Are A&C
Astral Projection - Dancing Galaxy
Death in Vegas - The Contino Sessions
Electronic - Raise the Pressure
Hooverphonic - pretty much everything they’ve done
Juno Reactor - Shango
Massive Attack - Mezzanine
Orbital - Orbital 2
And hell, I’m also going to throw in:
The Communards - self titled
Yaz - Upstairs at Eric’s
Well, I see that the few people who weighed in on this thread really know their stuff. It warms my heart.
A lot of the stuff mentioned in here is on my playlist on a regular basis for a long period of time such as Astral Projection, I just didn’t feel that they had that little something extra that made the album great.
hehe skot, Autechre is at the top of my list of “Most overrated band of all time”, just above Front Line Assembly. I listened to like five of their albums and I have heard just one song that I actually liked, but people seem to adore them, and I feel like I’m missing out cuz I just honestly think they suck.
I’ve been hearing about Bonobo a lot lately as they are supposed to open for Amon Tobin on this tour, but I’ve never actually heard them. What are they like?
And finally, I have to give credit to Juno Reactor - Shango and Fluke - Risotto, those could very easily make a top ten list with me. I especially like the last track off of Risotto.
You are correct! I’m at my desk at work, no CD’s in front of me…hey, I was close!
I love’em…up until I bought Confield, then they lost me. But Amber, Incunabula and Tri-Repatae plus+ are all classics (that’s what I think, anyway).
Front Line Assembly are formulaic, but I have a soft spot for them and the 20 spin-off bands Bill Leeb has his hand in at any given moment. They were one of the first bands that weaned me off of Death Metal in the late 80’s…
Pretty much everything I listen to is electronic …
My favorites include:
VNV NationEmpires Mesh * Who Watches Over Me?* and The Point At Which It Falls Apart Depeche ModeBlack Celebration and Violator Apoptygma BerzerkWelcome To Earth Icon of CoilThe Soul is in the Software DeleriumKarma Color TheoryPerfect Tears Anything BoxWorth Assemblage 23Failure Skinny PuppyToo Dark Park De/VisionZehn
This is one of my favorite albums ever, if not my favorite. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me to include it in my list up there. Brilliant, brilliant stuff – if you can find their video Commercial Entertainment Product, snatch it up. The music itself isn’t as good as on their album (since the album was heavily remixed by Meat Beat Manifesto and others), but it’s still brilliant.
Also, the version of Telecommunication Breakdown that I have has quicktime videos for three of the tracks, “Electronic Behavior Control System”, “3:7:8”, and “Paranoid Schizophrenic”. I’ve seen versions released later that don’t include the videos. Anyway, look for the videos if you can find them; the one for EBCS in particular is incredible.
damn, when I started this thread I thought I’d see a lot of Tiesto, Sasha, Chemical Brothers, Orbital, DJ Shadow etc… and there certainly has been a bit of that, but with people weighing in with Meat Beat Manifesto, Haus Arafna, Robert Fripp, I’m pretty impressed.
So did anyone in here get any recommendations for albums that they are now checking out based on this thread? Any new favorites?
Heh, as Assemblage 23 and Icon of Coil have been mentioned, I’ll just point out that I’ve met both bands. Andy from Icon of Coil is a REALLY nice guy, and Tom Shear looks like an alien. Heh, I interviewed Assemblage 23 before they put out their first album. It’s kind of cool to tell your editor “This band is gonna be big I’m gonna interview them” and then it turns out you’re right. Odd thing about it, is I don’t like Assemblage 23. ;p
Okay, I don’t see my picks mentioned anywhere here. This makes me wonder if I know what is meant by “Electronic Music”. I would select most anything by Evangelos O. Papathanassiou, Isao Tomita, and Larry Fast of Synergy, with some Tangerine Dream thrown in.
The “French Touch” movement kicked off by Saint Germain continued with…