Let's talk 90's electronic music
 

I was heavy into electro stuff in the mid-90's. I'd say the two compilations that would best sum up this period would be MTV's AMP compilation, and the first volume of Urbal Beats.

let's chat -- why not?

UR. Do you need anything more? I'd argue probably not.

a lot of people hate Moby for whatever reason(s).

I personally think that Everything Is Wrong is a complete masterpiece.

His Play-era stuff is fucking abysmal; I like to score was alright. He was certainly someone who was a lot more interesting before he was famous, clichéd though it is to say that.

no that is true. I still have a soft spot for him. And I actually did (and do) like Play as well as the Play B-Sides. HOWEVER, I Like To Score, Ambient, Early Underground, etc were all really interesting records far before anyone really "knew" who he was. Yes.

whatchoo think of Lords Of Acids? I think they were fun for some party singles. Really Greatest T*ts is all you need. Fun acid stuff. Brainless but whatever.

I had to remind myself of who they were. The answer is not much, though it did remind me of Sheep on Drugs, who I still have a bit of a soft spot for.

Do you mean techno or noise-shit wanko stuff?

I have somewhere a couple tapes I made at like 2am when Joey Beltram was djing on this small Bronx radio station, his show was the 78th Street Project, circa 1988 or 89.

I find a lot of that stuff sounds dated to me, due to the tech they used. Cab Voltaire did a bunch of dance oriented stuff, I had to get rid of it because it just sounded like fake casio. I do like the Colors ep still.

If they ever finish repairing my apt and I can move back in and unpack, I've got a couple cool comps I could refer you to. How about Adamski? 808 State? There seem to have been a lot of cool one-off tracks by other producers.

I loved Depeche Mode's first album when it came out, but I was like 17 so you can excuse me, there was nothing else like it then. (I also liked Black Flag at the same time)

Underground Resistance and Unit Moebius are pretty much all you need. There are torrents on demonoid with the complete discographies of both labels, and both are pretty much the sound of awesome electronic music. A lot of detroit stuff, especially Jeff Mills, is worth getting.

In my opinion, DREXCIYA is the best electronic musician to come out of the 90's, get all of his (by "His", I mean Stinson's) stuff and his side projects.

And of course, one of my favorite albums of all time is the 90's classic Photek's "Modus Operandi".

As for Amp, I love it, nostalgically.. WipEout XL, mainstream rave culture, whee! Anyway I have 21 episodes of AMP (47 minutes each) on dvd now. There's a torrent for it on kickasstorrents. Fluke - Atom Bomb pretty much sums up 90's electronic music for me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11Nq6PzY0xA

A lot of genres, like d'n'b, seemed to have peaked in the 90's. I remember when I first got into MP3's, there'd just be folder after folder of awesome electronic stuff. Modus Operandi took like 3 hours to complete back in 1999! But it was worth it.

Anyway, I am in the process of getting rid of all my cd's/tapes/etc, except for a few J-Indie bands and some discographies (Jandek, Sun City Girls), some modern classical... and I'm keeping all my electronic stuff (this includes electroacoustic improv). 95% of what I've listened to in the past year is electronic-based. So, yeah, I'm pretty much going to exclusively devote my listening to electronic music, probably for the rest of my life... occasionally popping in a Fall or Captain Beefheart album, of course, for old time's sake.

I'm listening to a compilation that was part of a series called ''Miscellaneous''. I have a few of these which I found all over the place when sorting out some records recently. They are a mixed bag, and personally I find they got more interesting around the time you had all these ambient people (you ought to hear the sort of crap David Toop submitted to a few of them) got more influenced by jungle or drum and bass. It was around 1995, I think. My personal favourites on this one in particular are Endemic Void's ''Subether'', particularly because rhythmically it kind of reminds me of a lighter, noise-free version of Witchman crossed with the ''poppier'' trip hop that went into the charts, and Tao's ''Jinn'', which is this repetitive electro mantra influenced by raga.*
*as bad as that reads, it's enjoyable to listen to.

I think I still have a record of theirs somewhere.

I've been listening to lots of Speedy J lately. The problem with 90's electronic music is that there's just too much of it that is amazing. That's the thing I can't get over, there are just too many fucking amazing albums.

Techno anthem/mixtape staple:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9zSiA8jmXs

Teste - the Wipe (this is the remix, can't find the original on youtube). Richie Hawtin recalls it as,“still the only track that sounds like it’s physically ripping through a sound system.”

Can anyone reccomend some Wolfgang Voigt stuff? I mean, he has literally 60 or so side projects, so... uh... yeah. And each one has a million singles/eps/double albums. The only one I'm familiar with is GAS, which sounds like ambient tracks than someone sped up 3 times and then slowed down 3 times, to the normal speed, so everything has this weird computerized decaying sound where the songs sound like they were rebuilt with shimmering but somewhat ugly synthetic harmonics.

My bandmate (an audiophile in his 50s) still carries a torch for that first Global Communication album, and uses it to demo the astronomically-expensive home audio systems he designs and builds.

GAS is the only one that's really worth listening to, in my experience. Are you up to speed with all the old Tresor stuff? You probably should be.

And I think the reason people are embarrassed by Depeche Mode is because everyone knows that Erasure were the better band. Or, at least, they never made lyrics as bad as Enjoy the Silence.

I saw Depeche Mode in 1986. It was the first time I had the experience of going to a show making me into less of a fan than I was going in.

did you listen to "Pussy"? If not, listen to "Pussy." :)

You owe me approximately 95 seconds of my life now. I'm going to find you and make a necklace of your eyeballs if you recommend anything that shite to me again.

hahahahahaha

I have a friend who's apparently got some 30-odd tapes of Happy Hardcore that she wants me to digitise for her. Which I'm quite looking forward to. The golden age of Helter Skelter. I'll up some of it when I do it (which will be about a million years from now because I am one lazy motherfucker).

Depche Mode with and after Black VCelebration became a different beast altogether though. Before that album the focus was heavy on dancable discotech tracks. then they got into S+M and heroin! two things that always makes bands better!

Interpol's ANTICS-era show did that to me.

seeing tortoise (circa 2002) and dino jr (2005 i think) did that to me

How have the chemical brothers not been mentioned in this thread already? They released some of the best electronic music for the 90s and even made it big without sacrificing their creativity.

They (Chems) seemed to be really popular back then. I picked up Further but it just doesn't do it for me.

They were also on the MTV sister station, Much Musics compliation
"R U Recieving?"

Very close to AMP in artist selection.

This comp was also very exciting at the time to me. It had a continuity.

http://www.discogs.com/Various-Futur...release/453220

with this track being the standout...

Chem Bros were awesome back then. A String of fantastic singles.

Spring Heel Jack were the best and most "live" show of this type I saw in that decade.

Got some aphrodite and dj soulslinger and coldcut and some goa trance queued up right now.

Absolutely. This used to be (and still is) by far my favourite electronic album of that era. Brings back so many memories, like going to university, spending the first month on a campus with new found friends, drinking lots of cheap liqour and listening to this album until the sun was coming out in the morning. Yeah, this album is pure class.

Another one that had equal power, though a lot less known, was "Free-D" by Ecstasy of st. Theresa. For those of you not familiar with this genuine Czech band, please sacrifice the 30 minutes and search for this album, you'll be rewarded for your effort.

coldcut!

oh oh and DJ Spooky was MAJOR MAJOR MAJOR to me. Still follow him. Not as closely though. But f off if RIDDIM WARFARE isn't a total must-own kids.

how bout The Prodigy? Their single "Poison" was such a favorite of mine.

Too bad Greenlight will most likely not check out this thread. I remember sitting next to him when we drove from London to Minehead on our way to ATP last year and he just kept talking about The Orb for like 45 minutes straight.

this always confused me, is The Orb related to Orbital at all?

No, they're not.

Orbital are sometimes confused with The Orb, a similarly-named band that has also been very influential in the realm of electronic music. In its early days, The Orb (and William Orbit) often did remixes of other artists' songs and called the result an "Orbital Mix", but these remixes have nothing to do with the band Orbital. The Orb stopped this practice after Orbital became popular, in order to prevent any further confusion.

I've heard 3 albums by the Orb and didn't really get the fuss.

ooh Orbital Remix, yeah. Okay.

There was Orbital and there was The Orb. Orbital are the Hartnoll brothers and The Orb was Alex Paterson and former KLF member Jimmy Cauty

you guys know this tortoise song "glass museum" or whatever (renamed as "ice" for the video)?...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7mgw3He57I

doesn't it sound like they're about to go into "idea of north" by shellac at times? That "dun dun DUn dun dun" thing. Which would be perfect, since that came out in 1996, and At Action Park -- with "Tortoise style packaging" as it says on the inside -- came out in 1994.

Anyway...

glass museum and the whole Tortoise album "Milions now living will never die" was awesome, though it hardly belongs to this thread.

another classic that comes to my mind:

The "Ice" video was on MTV's Amp back in the day, which is how I discovered Tortoise to begin with.

...Anyway, I'm listening to Ethnica - Alien Protein, anyone have any other badass GOA reccomendations?

please get that alien protein album.. glice, you'd dig it.. completely mind melting epic dark trance shit.. http://www.megaupload.com/?d=FFDN0XPN

Listening as we speak - well worth a download. Generic as a generic thing, but no worse for it. Well worth it for anyone who's ever enjoyed pills. I'd argue that generic Happy Hardcore compilations are more worth it though. But that's me.