Favorite Electronic Music

Cafe Society
41

I get to chime in with one glaring oversight in a thread that seems to be very, very well represented:

Squarepusher

Similar in approach and sensibility to Aphex Twin, please go seek him out. He builds his own instruments, plays drums, plays bass, and does everything too well.

Has anyone heard Ponga? As I understand it, it was a one-off assembly of several notable jazz musicians, recorded and released as an album, with the understanding that the album would be turned over to a dozen electronic musicians who would remix it. The two albums are pretty stellar; it’s where I first heard Amon Tobin, whose track is worth the price all by itself. It can be found at Loosegroove records, at www.willrecords.com , I believe.
I have to concur with longjohn, and everyone he concurred with.
How about Cinematic Orchestra? If Tortoise can count, I think these guys should be included. Their new album, Everyday, is fantastic.

How about Euphone? I like their live show better than their albums, but who-wee what a live show…

Also, if you haven’t bought the Siguor Ros album, turn your computer off now and go find it. It’s simply one of my favorite albums ever. I don’t think electronics are really a part of it, so I wouldn’t necessarily put it on my list, but go buy it all the same.

I have a great story about meeting Meat Beat Manifesto, but it’s way, way too long. Spent an afternoon with Jack, he bought me a beer, snuck me into his show, and chatted with me during the set. This was in the Satyricon era, when he was still a band. Jack produces some of the most wicked, twisted drum loops I’ve ever heard.

For some reason I’m still listening to Prodigy Fat of the Land. It’s a great album to run to.

Also, no one’s mentioned DJ Spooky! Travesty!

Am I still making a list? I guess I should include DJ Shadow, LTJ Bukem, Roni Size and Photek.
End it with The Avalanches. A great album you can play during the party and after the party.

Great Thread!

As long as we’re on topic, are any midwest dopers going to Amon Tobin at the Metro in Chicago on October 18th?

42

Wow, only top-of-their-game artists have been mentioned. As message boards go, I’d say we have pretty damn good taste in music.

My Favorites:

DJ Shadow- Entroducing
Dusted- When We Were Young
Prefuse 73- Vocal Studies And Uprock Narratives
Syrup- Different Flavours
Thievery Corporation- The Mirror Conspiracy
Fila Brazilia- Power Clown
Howie B- Music for Babies; …with Sly and Robbie- Drum & Bass Strip To The Bone
Peace Orchestra- Peace Orchestra
Air- Premiers Symptomes
Bobby Hughes Experience- Fusa Riot
Boozoo Bajou- Satta!
Coldcut- Let Us Play
DJ Spooky- Riddim WarfareKid Loco- Jesus Life For Children Under 12 Inches
Kruder & Dorfmeister- The K&D Sessions
Massive Attack- Mezzanine
Nightmares On Wax- Carboot Soul
Tosca- Suzuki]
Up, Bustle & Out- One Colour Just Reflects Another
The Avalanches- Since I Left You
Underworld- Dubnobasswithmyheadman

Narrad- Midnight Vultures is so underrated, “Nicotine and Gravy” was a great track.

43

doh. I even previewed.

44

Oh hey, I forgot about Leftfield – Rhythm & Stealth. And I definitely agree with Ich Bin’s about Siguor Ros.

Lots of good stuff listed here, plus many an artist I’ve never heard of. Feeling the urge to go to a CD store now!

45

I’ve thought of a few others that deserve mention.

Jan Jenlinek - Loop-Finding Jazz Records
A bit of a misleading name, but it’s hard to tell the source material so it may be correct. Very mininal and sparse, has been called essential by a few

To Rococo Rot and I-Pan Music is a Hungry Ghost
The pairing a German blip group and New York DJ, also very ambient with no turntable showiness. A quiet album that has really grown on me

Fog Fog
Yet another Ninja Tune heavy. Minimal turntable showmanship, but heavily layered and modified, this has been called a bit more pop, but don’t let that scare you. A different approach to the turntable than percussive scratching, think Kid Koala.

Farben Textstar
Jelinek’s dance alter ego, a collection of singles and EP’s, but his minimalist sensibility comes through. To his credit is flows like one album. Think of the minimalism of the percussion on Radiohead’s Idioteque (static tones for snare and hi-hat) and you have an idea.

Herbert Bodily Functions
While this swerves once or twice into the poppy region, this is great, understated album, made noticeable by some beautiful female vocals throughout.

Posthuman Don’t Fear the Monkey
Next to avalaches, one of the best IDM records I own. Hard to find but worth it. (Sorry, not to sound snooty, but for those who don’t know, IDM means Intelligent Dance Music, which I guess means that it avoid using those same damn three cords and by-the-book breakdowns you’ve heard once if you’ve heard a thousand times… )

46

bumping this thread to add my two cents.

My personal favorite electronic group is Underworld, hands down. I loved Beaucoup Fish but I am completely hooked on their new one “100 Days Off.” It’s great stuff all around and “two months off” never fails to lift me out of a bad mood.

On a different note, I picked up the Conjure One cd on a bit of a whim and was incredibly pleased with the results. Rhys Fulber’s movement into the ambient genre has worked out well. The cd is solid and I don’ t think there’s a single throwaway track on there.

47

Funny, I was just about to say the same damn thing! That cd is pretty freakin’ good. My favorite tracks are Center of the Sun, Manic Star, and Premonition (reprise). Only thing that kind of annoys me about this cd is that while Marie Claire D’Ubaldo can sing like nobody’s business, a lyricist she is not.

But, overall, a very strong cd and the ltd. edition second disc is pretty good, as well.

48

Can’t name complete albums, mainly because I deal only in singles or mixes but here is my list:

Paul Okenfold: Angel
Pragah Khan: Breakfast In Vegas
Skinny Puppy: Addiction (KMFDM Mix)
My Life With The Thrill Kill Cult: Sex on Wheels my own trance mix)
Tori Amos: Professional Widow (Raspberry Swirl mix)
Book of Love: I Touch Roses (Trance mix)

49

Recent lessons in electronic music:

One, the new Blue States album is rubbish.

Two, the new DJ Shadow album is not a patch on his first one.

Three, a React CD is not automatically good - gah, to think I spent money on a three CD-set that had half a good CD of music on it (I’m not even touching the “Belgian trance” one again).

50

Not a fan of Marie? That’s interesting. Why do you think so? Manic Star is probably one of my favorite tracks on the CD and I thought she did a fantastic job on Sleep as well.

51

One vote for Happy Hardcore one of my all essential beat clutch groups. Personally I cannot get enough of the Who the Fuck is Alice Mix as I work out.

52

would this be a mix of the song I always hear shouted at Irish bars?

alice? alice? who the fuck is alice?

53

OK, here’s mine… should be an interesting mix here. A few I’ve already seen on the list.

Tangerine Dream - Ricochet
Art of Noise - The Seduction of Claude Debussy
Delerium - Semantic Spaces
Crystal Method - Vegas
Dust Brothers - Fight Club soundtrack
Orbital - Orbital 2
Moby - Play
Opus III - Guru Mother
Underworld - Beaucoup Fish
Thomas Dolby - The Golden Age of Wireless

For that last one… can’t be serious all the time, right? :slight_smile:

54

Cult of Xymox
and
Skinny Puppy

55

Oh man! Following the recommendations in this thread I could easily spend five thousand dollars on CDs at HMV or the lamented Sam’s (now, sadly, a shadow of its former self). This is definitely a print-and-save thread.

So much good stuff has already been mentioned, but I’ll add:

Heldon: Stand By
I found this and another Heldon album on vinyl at the Brampton Public Library in '84, and taped them. I’ve only ever found one CD of theirs.

Neu: '75
This album includes “E-Musik”. A great piece of music. More, please.

I’m not sure whether Can would fit in this context…

Another vote for Apoptygma Berzerk. I wandered into Sam’s last year and they were playing it. So I bought it. More, please.

Solotronik. I have their Polimorfia Arkiteknia CD, but apparently their label Vinilkosmo has released more.

Isao Tomita. Kitaro. As others have mentioned, Larry Fast and Synergy, early OMD…

Vangelis! It was The Music of Cosmos that opened my eyes to this music at just the right age. Tangerine Dream (I saw them live at Massey Hall), The Art of Noise…

Delerium. Jam & Spoon. Enigma. And on and on…

And for obscurity: The Copper Plated Integrated Circuit. An experimental compilation disc, vinyl, from 1969, featuring cover versions of things like Hey Jude plus original works. Sounds like it was done a Commodore 64 at times.

Ah for the days when the Toronto radio station The Edge advertised itself as “CFNY 102.1, the spirit of radio” and played all this kind of stuff after midnight… something died a little bit when they started playing the Beastie Boys. sigh

56

Some old school electronic stuff:

M - Official Secrets
Telex - Pretty much any of it
Gardening by Moonlight - any
Gary Numan - Anything (except that crap he put out in the late 80’s early 90’s)
Kraftwerk - Yup. Can’t forget those guys.
Walter/Wendy Carlos - Yup can’t forget him,. Err… Her.
Tangerine Dream - Blinky blinky
Nash the Slash - Blip blip
The Normal - Warm leatherette anyone?
Komputer - any of it
Buggles/Art of Noise/Trevor Horn - Pretty much anything Trevor touched back then was cool. Seal was a Trevor project and his first CD was kind of cool.
Devo - How can we forget these guys?

Some random electronic stuff:

Shriekback - Great stuff, heavy keyboard focus -80’s sound on some tracks.
Killing Joke - This in on the verge of not being electronic, but they used lots of keyboards and FX.
Machines of Loving Grace - any of it
Pop Will Eat Itself - Not so much electronic in genre then by production. Sample-o-rama.
Japan - These guys had some cool, moody, new romantic music.
Laurie Anderson - Her early stuff was cool. Had an interesting look at music.

Those are just a few off the top of my head. I’m sure in a few moments I’ll think of a billion others.

And of course, now is the PERFECT time to say myself and my band The Tic Tok Men. Http://www.ampcast.com/tictok :slight_smile:

57

Well, all you Sigur Ros fans don’t have long to wait, the new album drops on October 28th.

Back to the thread, a pioneer who hasn’t been given his dues yet is Brian Eno. Maybe not music, possibly not even tunes, but one of the giants in the history of electronic music.

Also, in the old school, for the wilful obscurists:

Pierre Henry. Made excellent electronic music way back in the 60s. I don’t know where you’d find his stuff these days, but Fatboy Slim’s remix of Psych Rock is fairly common.

BBC Radiophonic Workshop. These guys were the daddies. Namechecked by Aphex Twin and many others as major influences, they pioneered sound manipulation. Delia Darbyshire produced the Dr Who Theme which is wonderful, fantastic stuff that sounds fresh 30 years after it was written. Orbital have been using this as part of their live set for years, and their version of it is the highlight of their recent “Altogether” live CD.

Karlheinz Stockhausen. Not necessarily my favourite musician, but can probably lay claim to being the composer of the first wholly electronic piece of music. Until, at least someone else comes along in two posts time and proves that this was actually someone playing a theremin recorded onto wax cylinder.

Prince Jammy and King Tubby – along with Scratch Perry, the inventors of dub. I think this counts, although the source material was live instumentation, the music produced was all filtered through studio effects. Anyway, since I got a subwoofer, this stuff is rocking my couch and my world.

Some more modern stuff that deserves a mention –

Banco De Gaia and Transglobal Underground. Trance, but aimed more at the chill out room than the dance floor.

Zero 7 – if you live Thievery Corp. or Air, you’ll love these guys. In fact, if you like well crafted tunes, you’ll love the album.

Atari Teenage Riot / Alec Empire. On a label called Digital Hardcore. Does exactly what it says on the tin.

Talvin Singh and Nitin Sawnhey. Pioneers of the Asian electronic scene. Although both have deep roots in classical Indian music, they produce amazing fusions of tablas, sitars, loops and breaks.

Boards of Canada – actually a couple of Scottish guys who produce intricate, layered soundscapes, that seem to change depending on your mood when you listen.

Have we mentioned Massive Attack? Reading this thread, people seem to have very deep knowledge of this genre, but if somehow anyone missed “Blue Lines”, or indeed “Dummy” by Portishead, do your ears a favour.

58

What great suggestions! Portishead’s “Dummy” is one of my favorite albums of all time.

May I humbly submit Allison Goldfrapp?