Christoph de Babalon: If you're into it... (1997)
Digital Hardcore
First off, an impulse buy. The late great John Peel had played one track on his show and I quite liked it, so when I saw this album in the shop I though 'what the hell' and picked up a copy. Well, I certainly wasn't ready for it. "Opium" - the first track - clocks in at over 15 minutes and is incredibly deep, hypnotic and beatless. The following tracks vary from extremely distorted breakbeats to yet more drones but the whole album, despite being an amalgam of tracks spanning several years, is held together with an unsettling ambience that feels gritty, homemade and unpretentious.
Bent: Programmed to Love (2000)
Sport / Ministry of Sound
Occasionally it's the memories attached to an album which make it special, not just the music. At Christmas time in 2000 I had been out with some people from the company I was working for, got ridiculously drunk, stoned and woke up on my colleague's stairs at 4 in the morning. Er... anyway, later (much later) that day I got the bus into Manchester and wandered round in an extremely hung-over daze trying to get some late Christmas prezzies. I ended up in Piccadilly Records staring at the new releases. This was one of their 'Albums of the Year' so I bought it, took it home and put it on the stereo while I had a brew and collapsed. It's beautiful, funny and deeply moving in places, with "Private Road" a particular favourite. It fitted the moment perfectly.
Black Dog: Spanners (1994)
Warp
I didn't know what to make of this when I first acquired it. The weird time signatures and ethnic noises were definitely not what I was used to hearing in electronica. But then, one dark night, whilst listening on headphones with the volume way up and the lights off, it suddenly all made sense and I found myself dancing (I was going to say 'jerking' but - lordy! - the complaints I'd get!). Yes, dancing in that really spazzy way. Heh heh... Er yeah, since then every listen reveals something else; It's an album which really maintains a hypnotic, persistent atmosphere throughout the duration. Hard to believe it came out at the same time as Pink Floyd's "Division Bell", but it did.
Boards of Canada: Music has the Right... (1998)
Warp
What a bizarre and unexpectedly beautiful noise these two Scotsmen make. The first I knew of them was the "Hi Scores" EP which came out on Skam Records in 1996. At the time I just got it because 'it was on Skam', listened to it a few times, thought it was okay and put it with my other CD's. Two years later this album came out and holy sh*t had they honed their sound to perfection or what?! Strange muffled tones, incredibly obscure television samples and almost hip hop sounding beats, all wrapped in a mesmerising production style which could literally be no one except the Boards of Canada.
Kate Bush: Hounds of Love (1985)
EMI
Well, it's Katie. Her with the hair. What can I say about this album then? Genius? Yeah I suppose so, but it's so earthy and vibrates with (stop me if I go OTT here) such a quasi-religious elation that describing it as "genius" seems a bit, well... inappropriate. Kate and her banditos made this album in a very intense way, recording and re-recording solos, dubbing and over-dubbing sections and experimenting with different styles until they ended up with this - an album which dazzles on side A (the "Hounds of Love" section on the CD release) with great swathes of uplifting choir-rock (Spiritualised, eat your heart out) then gives you the in-brain equivalent of being thrown off a cliff on side B ("The Ninth Wave"). That's my favourite section; vague, dream-like blurs of sound merging into tight Irish jigs, until we're finally allowed to hit the water and then... you press play again.
Ceephax: Exidy Tours (2003)
Firstcask
Forever cursed to be known as "Squarepusher's brother", Andy Jenkinson has been making insane acid rave music for quite a few years now. This album however is a very refined, moody collection of tracks with only a few moments aimed at the dancefloor. He has imbued the whole piece with an atmosphere which I think is best described as "northern" - for some reason every listen conjures up images of faded industrial towns, empty shopping precincts and run down estates, all rolling past as if viewed from a train window under a blanket of grey cloud, dull yet weirdly euphoric. Has Ceephax created the ultimate soundtrack for a documentary about Council Houses...?
Ian Dury: New Boots and Panties!! (1977)
Papillon
Ian Dury was a great man. Not great in stature, in fact he was shortened by polio as a youngster, but that didn't stop him from living what you could call an "eventful life." This album is as gobsmacking as Dury's life. It smashes funk against ska, headbutts punk into rock'n'roll. Dury's lyrics are crisp and wordy and clever, yet deal with some of the lowest common denominators imaginable; teenage tearaways, smackheads, junkies, whores and philanderers. The strength of the tracks is such that it could almost be described as a "Greatest Hits" album, the inclusion of Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll on the CD reissue making it complete.
808 State: Ex:El (1991)
ZTT
While it's debatable whether or not they brought techno to the masses, they certainly made it special - they gave it tunes; brilliant ones! At last posties and office workers could whistle their memories of the weekend whilst going about their daily routine...! Okay, I'm romanticising a bit, but hey. This is an album packed with stonking choons. Why am I whittering like this, it's just REALLY GOOD, ALRIGHT?!?! I used to see that Andy Barker almost every day, because I was working in the very same building which housed 808 State's studio. He was always buying Anadin Extra, for some reason...
Eno & Byrne: My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1981)
Editions EG
Good music - most of the time you can't classify it, even if you want to. This is one such example. Brian Eno was finishing production of Talking Heads 'Remain in Light' album when he and David Byrne made this record. It is primarily made up of samples taken from American radio broadcasts, densely layered with more traditional instruments. There are no "vocals" in the traditional sense, instead they used recordings of preachers and radio talk shows. The result is bizarre and magical, and the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end with every listen.
Future Sound of London: Lifeforms (1994)
Virgin / EBV
Hey, it's another skin-tingler! Well, is it? In my experience, people either 'get' Lifeforms or they just don't. Once again I think the problem stems from trying to classify the music instead of accepting it for what it is. In this case it's a stunning 90 minutes of incredible sound textures, rumbling bass (you need a good stereo to get the most from this one!), wildlife samples and gorgeous tunes. Yes, tunes! Something which, in my opinion, most 'dance' producers fail to come up with, but FSOL have always been excellent at. I actually find myself humming bits of this record from time to time. The original sounds better though, obviously...
The Gasman: Grand Electric Palace of Variety (2004)
Planet Mu
Every once in a while, someone comes along with an idiot-proof hit formula. Chris Reeves is one such man. Take a bunch of old albums of choral music, sample the good bits into a cheap PC, create some increasingly random MIDI melodies, slap on as many effects as can safely be processed and retire to a safe distance while it brews. Sound like it should be crap, right? Well you are WRONG. This is an awesome, awesome album. The Gasman creates incredible, joyous, vibrating slabs of noise, from ambient drones to pulsating teen-beat rhythms (as John Peel would say). A classic, my favourite "electronic" album of 2004.
GYBE!: Lift Yr Skinny Fists... (2000)
Kranky
An ex-colleague of mine gave me a copy of this on tape after he went to see Godspeed You Black Emperor! play live. "Uplifting cellos," said Garry, "you'll like it." Well, he was right! It rapidly became my favourite bus travel tape, its double CD length of 90 minutes being ideal for the journey. I soon had to acquire the album proper as I was wearing the tape out... Much has been written about GYBE!, and I get the impression that they wouldn't really give a shit if I liked the album or not. But I do; the whole thing is arranged perfectly, with each part of the extended 'band' having a chance to shine, then reaching a truly spine-tingling crescendo. I reckon it's one of the most 'perfect' albums I've ever heard.
Jean Michel Jarre: Zoolook (1984)
Disques Dreyfus
As discussed on the previous page, this was one of the earliest electronic albums which I owned. I can quite vividly remember reading all the sleeve notes and trying to memorise the names of all the synthesizers he had used! I must've been a strange kid... But the music is excellent; Jarre used his classical roots to arrange vocals spoken in numerous languages - sometimes processed, sometimes not - into a kind of grand scale electronic opera. By turns introverted, occultist, disco infused and finally ambient and drifting, every track is a bizarre yet compulsive listening experience.
LSG: The Black Album (1998)
Black Series / Superstition
Oliver Lieb is a pretty prolific guy, as you can see from this incredibly comprehensive unofficial discography (be warned, that page is huge). I've always been quite impressed with his music, but this album really stood out. It's a collection of tracks that Lieb released as vinyl EP's on the Black Series imprint, which he took back into the studio and remade as a continuous mix for this album. And all of it works, which is not as simple as it sounds since the tracks are somewhat varied in mood and style. It's still the finest, deepest, most soulful trance techno I've ever heard.
Meat Beat Manifesto: Subliminal Sandwich (1996)
Play It Again Sam
This, in my opinion, is Jack Dangers' crowning glory; the best album he's ever done. Nothing before or since balances the same range of elements as well as here. Over the course of two CD's, we are treated to dub, skank, beats, breaks, cut-ups, jazz, booming techno and found sounds, all mushed together (mushed is a VERY good description in the case of this album, as it's almost completely seamless) into 140 glorious minutes. It's carefully produced, but still appears experimental and raw enough to be interesting. Dangers weaves in all manner of meaning to the tunes, mainly on the subjects which were always close to his heart such as governmental corruption, social isolation and conspiracy theories. I think it's a shame that he seems to have lost his edge recently, perhaps due to living "the life" in L.A. for so long, but who knows... maybe he really is taking on the system from the inside?
Joni Mitchell: The Hissing of Summer Lawns (1975)
Elektra / Asylum
Okay, time for some mellow folky jazz! Speaking very generally, I'm not that keen on vocals; I think this is mostly down to the fact that they are usually singing in an utterly inane way about utterly inane things. But then there are those 'songwriters' who have such a way with words that they could sing about housebricks and I would still listen. Joni is one such songwriter, and by my reckoning this is her finest album. It's a beautifully produced concept album of sorts, the concept being that it was "a total work conceived graphically, musically, lyrically and accidentally - as a whole." Over glorious jazz or more minimal, primitive rhythms, Joni waxes lyrical about city life, acutely observed relationships and the more general interactions between man and nature. Full marks!
Orbital: The Middle of Nowhere (1999)
FFRR
Nothing says "Bingo!" quite like several thousand people going completely mental in Manchester Apollo while Orbital kick out the jams from their (then delayed) new album which nobody had at that time heard. Does it? Eh? No, exactly. This is, in my opinion, the Hartnoll brothers' crowning glory. Magnificent, moving and joyous compositions of orchestral magnitude working perfectly with those thundering dancefloor beats that they do so well. It's one of those mood albums, which always puts me in a "Who needs drugs to feel this good?" kind of mood.
Popol Vuh: Aguirre (1974)
OHR / ZYX Music
A mesmerising soundtrack to a mesmerising film which, incase you're not familiar with it, is directed by Werner Herzog and stars Klaus Kinski as a conquistador slowly going insane as he travels up the Amazon river in search of El Dorado. Popol Vuh were the perfect choice for scoring the film, as they conjure up an beautifully subtle, almost ambient backing for Herzogs imagery. You don't need to see the film to enjoy the album (even though I recommend you do!), because the music is solid enough to work on its own.
Position Normal: Goodly Time (2002)
Rum
There was a time, I have to say, when I read the pretentious monthlies. Most were crap, but one (Sleazenation) was actually quite good in that they reviewed music which was truly worthwhile as opposed to just being 'flavour of the month'. That's how I came to know Position Normal's first album, "Stop Your Nonsense" which came out in 1999. There is hardly any information about the person behind PN, be it on the web or elsewhere, but whoever he is he presents a wonderfully skewed version of childhood which this album continues to build on. Kids singing, childrens' musical instruments and other ephemera including answerphone messages and elicit dictaphone recordings are all blended into a rich soup of sound. *burp*
DJ Shadow: Endtroducing (1996)
Mo Wax
This is quite annoying, actually: One of my favourite albums of all time and yet I can't think of any words to describe it's effect. It's certainly the most narcotic of the albums here, more so even than Board of Canada. Josh Davis (Shadow) is a weird guy. Anyone who lives in a place with the same name as them (Davis, CA) is suspicious as far as I'm concerned! He is at once cool, relaxed, good natured, edgy, deep, thoughtful and unreal. Listening to this album, or any of his works for that matter, makes me want to just give up because I know I'll never be that good. He's worked hard, focused and achieved brilliance. Really, he has - the proof's in the plastic...
Luke Slater: Freek Funk (1997)
Nova Mute
After some years of believing that nobody in the UK could make good soulful techno anymore, I heard Luke Slater on what was then Kiss 102. At the time (around 1996) Slater was the 'man of the moment', very in-demand for his remixing and production skills recycling 'old school' sounds and mixing in his own style of electronic atmosphere. With this album he successfully cross-bred hard funky techno and Detroit tinged electro with drifting, swirling ambience. It is a dance album which you can listen to in it's entirety; it all works together.
Speedy J: Public Energy no. 1 (1997)
Nova Mute
This is an utterly inspirational album for me, mainly because the sounds which Jochem Paap coaxes from his studio gear don't sound like anything you hear elsewhere. Although definitely synthetic, the crunching rhythms ("Pure Energy") and ethereal pads ("Melanor", "Tesla") are combined ("Patterns", "In-formation") by the flying Dutchman in such a way as to almost overload them with soul. Upon hearing this album I was filled with an enormous amount of respect for the man which still remains.
Squarepusher: Go Plastic (2001)
Warp
It may be controversial, but I ♥ Squarepusher more than any other electronic artist on the planet. A keen follower of his work since I got "I Was Livid" on Worm Interface records, this is THE Squarepusher album in my opinion. There is not a single second which doesn't do it for me. It's not his most accessible, his most spazzy or his most drilly album; it's just pure unadulterated Squarepusher, scraped off his brain and pasted onto the CD. Absolutely energising, insane and violently attractive.
Steely Dan: Aja (1977)
MCA
This is my dad's fault. Way back when, he had a sort-of "Greatest Hits" compilation of 'Dan stuff, but it seemed to contain most of this album. You can hear why; they play the finest west-coast rock infused with blues, with Donald Fagen's unmistakable vocals peppered with colloquialisms. Yes it's quite MOR, yes it's very polished, but when you've got "Deacon Blues", "Black Cow" and the magnificent (and sampled by De La Soul, fact fans) "Peg" on an album, frankly I don't care. This looks slightly out of place in the list, but there you go. Bonkers...
Mark Stewart: As the veneer of democracy... (1985)
Mute
Yes mate, I had to have some hardcore in here somewhere, and what better than Mark Stewart's indigestible anti-political album from 1985. I can't for the life of me remember where I heard Stewart first - I'm fairly sure it was John Peel again - but whenever it was he made quite an impression as I'd never thought of using music to make a statement before. He makes one hell of statement and one hell of a noise, taking hard dub, distortion and head banging rhythms and smashing them all together, complete with dystopian samples and half-screamed protestations. What it lacks in musicality it makes up for in pure bilious hatred and contempt for the corrupt authorities which rule our world! He was definitely on to something...
Supertramp: Breakfast in America (1979)
A&M
Once again, the influence of my dad's record collection rears it's head. I know it's got bugger all to do with the music, but even the cover on this record is amazing. They just don't DO covers like that anymore; the amount of time and effort it must have taken in those pre-Apple Mac days... Anyway, the music! Ignore the (admittedly quite cheesy) 'hit' they had off this album, in the form of the title track, and instead concentrate on what lies elsewhere. Their falsetto harmonies aren't to everyone's taste, and there have definitely been better lyric writers than Davies and Hodgson, but what a fantastic "California rock" noise they make. Lengthy, upbeat (although they do downbeat and serious just as well) and a cleverly structured, almost progressive sound make for an attention grabbing performance.
Talking Heads: Fear of Music (1979)
Sire
Arguably the crowning achievement of their working relationship with Brian Eno, this album contains the perfect balance of the experimental and the musical. I would've loved to have been in the studio during this albums conception; it sounds like they had loads of fun making it. I can imagine Eno saying "So David, right... pretend you're a big bear..." or David saying "I thought we might sing this one in our own language, which we've made up." And still they manage to pull it off, with every track having its own distinctive mood. This is an album which shape-shifts and wriggles under your skin; there is yet to be a band which connects the brain to the hips so effectively.
Robert Wyatt: The End of an Ear (1970)
Columbia
I ♥ this album. Although I must admit that acquiring it was pretty fortuitous, since I was after "Shipbuilding" and couldn't find it in the rack so I bought this instead. It turned out to be an absolute stunner! This is Bob's first solo album from after he left (read: got chucked out of) Soft Machine. At first I found its experimental nature grated a bit, with the first tracks' speeded up vocal pile up and reversed tape loops. But I kept listening and after a while I just couldn't turn it off. It's gorgeous, hypnotic, quirky and the weird melodies are hellishly addictive.
The Youngsters: Lemonorange (2001)
F Communications
I first bore witness to this pair of lunatics at Barcelona's Sonar Festival 2001 in a huge warehouse on the outskirts of the city at 1.00am in the morning. It was completely... it was absolutely... actually words can't describe how good they were. I thought my head was going to explode, such were the joyous arcing tones they were describing across the vast space. The minute I got home (well, not literally) I sought out this album... and they recreate it perfectly. The biggest, bounciest, lushest tech-house EVER to come out of Montpellier! There is a video of "that" performance on their website (high bandwidth users only).
Notable Omissions...
...because sometimes one album just isn't enough.
Aphex Twin: Selected Ambient Works 85-92 (1993)
Aphex Twin: Selected Ambient Works II (1994)
Aphex Twin: I Care Because You Do (1995)
Aphex Twin: Drukqs (2001)
SAW 85-92 = R&S / others = Warp
First up in the "Impossible to choose" category is Richard James, simply because the range to choose from is so consistently good. I like these four very much, but there are others...
Brian Eno: Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) (1974)
Brian Eno: Another Green World (1975)
Brian Eno: Before and After Science (1977)
Brian Eno: Apollo (1983)
all on Editions EG
Brian Peter George St. Jean le Baptiste de la Salle Eno; philosopher, writer, thinker, producer, editor, programmer, chef, remixer, second-hand car salesman, perfumer, long-name owner, spaniel expert and all-round agony aunt to pop music... is there anything he can't do?! Well, apparently he's rubbish at Cluedo.
People Like Us: Lassie House / Jumble Massive (1995)
People Like Us: A Fistful of Knuckles (2000)
People Like Us: Thermos Explorer (2000)
People Like Us: Abridged Too Far (2004)
Caciocavallo / Hot Air / UbuWeb
Vicky Bennet is People Like Us. Vicky takes her digital scissors and snips away at a billion bytes of detritus culled from a pile-up of pop culture crap. That may not be true but it's a nice bit of alliteration.
Pink Floyd: Meddle (1971)
Pink Floyd: Dark Side of the Moon (1973)
Pink Floyd: Animals (1977)
Pink Floyd: The Wall Live (1981)
Pink Floyd: The Final Cut (1983)
all on EMI
Yes it's true: I can't pick a favourite Floyd album! Oh the agony! So instead here are my favourites. Controversial choices I'm sure, except maybe Dark Side - everybody likes that one. Not pictured here is "The Wall Live" double album, also great and better than the film!
Plaid: Not For Threes (1997)
Plaid: Rest Proof Clockwork (1999)
Plaid: Double Figure (2001)
Plaid: Spokes (2003)
all on Warp
Plaid are another outfit who defy favourite-picking. They seem to get better with each album and they have a fair few releases under their belt, of which these four are my favourites, but there's no way I can pick a 'best' out of these and anyway why should I? I love Plaid. There, I've said it...
Frank Zappa: Lumpy Gravy (1968)
Mothers of Invention: Burnt Weeny Sandwich (1970)
Frank Zappa: Waka/Jawaka (1972)
Frank Zappa: Ship Arriving Too Late To Save A Drowning Witch (1982)
all on Rykodisc
Quite simply, a genius. These are probably not his best works either, but they're the only one's I've got so far. His back catalogue is huge.