Over at
Cokemachineglow.com we're busy compiling our end of decade lists and features. As a resident electronic music specialist I put a lot of thought (and money) into my nominations for that particular area. Unfortunately for me, few of them look likely to make it into the final reckoning (sucks to be a new writer at an established site when decades come to an end) so I thought I'd share my list, and some thoughts, here instead. If you like what you read, you can find links to my reviews in my Journal updates, or just visit
Cokemachineglow.com.
Although a lot of effort was invested into this list, I have not heard every album released in the past decade. There are many omissions, and I'm sure if I remade this list in five years or even five months it would look different. It is not an objective list: everyone approaches music from a different direction, which influences what they look for and find. My tastes and biases are probably reflected by my profile. Temper your disgust accordingly. A few omissions are quite deliberate. There's no
Discovery, no
Chromophobia and no
From Here We Go Sublime, to name but a few. Sorry; I just don't think they're
that good.
I also apologise for any spelling or grammatical errors. I’ll get round to proof-reading and editing it at some point. Ready to disagree with everything I say? Let’s go.
25.
Long Range -
Madness and Me
Post-
Orbital,
Paul Hartnoll and brother Phil went in very different directions. While Paul ventured off into the leftfield, Phil's Long Range project perfected the very shaky experiment that had been
The Altogether by introducing more vocal and instrumental collaborations to the Orbital equation. The result is that great album
The Chemical Brothers failed to quite make this decade. Long Range find the festival-ready sweet spot between indie rock and energetic breakbeat techno with a little of Orbital's delicate beauty and unlikely rhythm patterns retained for luck.
24.
Carbon Based Lifeforms -
Hydroponic Garden
The first of two entries for French label
Ultimae, who almost single-handedly kept the psy-chill sub-sub-genre alive through the decade. The label is brimming with so many albums it's difficult to pick a winner, but Carbon Based Lifeforms delivered a strong favourite back in 2003. Mixing sci-fi trance textures with challenging moods and superb production, it isn't just a chill-out record or the paper-thin "laptop ambient" popularised by
Kompakt. This is ambient that demands your full attention to catch every layer of nuance and detail.
23.
Vitalic -
OK Cowboy
Vitalic's 2001 "Pony EP" was one of the most important releases of the decade, and Pascal Arbez-Nicolas wisely made it the core of his debut album. In
My Friend Dario he augmented the proven hits with a new floor-slayer and brought together the hard-rocking, acid tweaking French house album
Daft Punk could have made. On
Homework. Yes, I'm that iconoclastic. This is the best of the "maximal techno" records (think
Justice,
Digitalism et al) that got hipsters on the dancefloors in the '00s.
22.
Dusted -
When We Were Young
Rollo has always been a fantastic producer as part of
Faithless, but that band's insistence on throwing in middle-aged MOR acoustic pop into their music prevented them from really making a killer album in the '00s. On his Dusted side-project, Rollo really got a chance to shine. His synaesthesia means he brings a unique texture to music, and there is a distinct Rollo "feel" to this beautiful downtempo album. It has the lushness of Faithless downtempo moments but also a haunting fairytale quality to it, themed around the innocence of children but seen from a darker adult perspective. Sort of the Pan's Labyrinth of electronic albums.
21.
Shinichi Osawa -
The One
Electro house is now one of the most popular styles of dance music around, much to the annoyance of New York b-boys who question exactly what it has to do with the original electro of
Afrika Bambaataa or
Mantronix. The style originally came out of the Daft Punk school of sampling cheesy old records and filtering the fuck out of them. When
Eric Prydz had a monster hit with
Call On Me in 2005, house producers began raiding 80s pop hits for hooks. Because 80s synth pop is often (incorrectly) dubbed "electro", new 80s-influenced house became known as electro house. These days, the term has become a catch-all term for anything that abuses side-chaining or fat saw-wave basslines. Most of it is the worst kind of formulaic trash, but Japanese producer Shinichi Osawa made probably the only genuinely worthwhile electro house album of the decade. Breaking the template with jangly guitars and colourful pop melodies while toning down the production clichés, he delivered a really good commercial house album.
20.
Pole Folder -
Zero Gold
Pole Folder came to widespread attention in progressive house circles with two collaborations with CP:
Apollo Vibes and the brilliant
Dust (check out the
Fretwell remix in particular), creating enough fuss for
Bedrock to give him their first ever LP release. Neither track appears on Zero Gold but it's still a very elegant progressive house album that fuses the darker prog aesthetic of the early '00s with a more melodic edge courtesy of female vocal collaborations and several downtempo moments.
19.
Echospace -
The Coldest Season
Also frequently scrobbled under
Deepchord Presents Echospace. Dub techno is a relatively niche sub-genre dominated almost entirely by the pioneering work of
Basic Channel (one of those acts everyone references but nobody listens to) and it's certainly arguable that Echospace didn't really push this limited sound very far. Despite that, this album was a critical smash and is a superbly executed mood piece that utilises dub techno's analogue white-noise and languid bass pulses to perfect effect. The winter theme suits the style down to the ground, and this is one of those albums that demands to be heard late at night or during a snowfall.
18.
Pendulum -
Hold Your Colour
It's easy to forget, now that Pendulum are stadium-sized cock-rock crossover monsters, that in 2005 drum 'n bass was on the rocks. The 90s commercial and critical heyday of
Goldie,
Adam F and
Roni Size was long gone and the style was falling out of relevance and popularity. It's also easy to forget, now the album is certified gold and its follow-up went in at #2 on the Uk album chart, that Dogs On Acid had a celebratory post on their website when Hold Your Colour charted at #64. Drum 'n bass' renaissance, and the success of acts like
Chase & Status and
Sub Focus amongst sixth formers country-wide, is entirely down to this album. Perhaps most easily forgotten of all, now Pendulum bash through the Spinal Tap routines, is that Hold Your Colour was a supreme pop dance record, the '00s answer to
The Fat of the Land. Pendulum took their undeniably accessible jungle 2-steps and had sex with any number of outside influences: the requisite jazz and ragga hybrids, but also Latin pop, cop thriller funk, alt rock and film score bombast. The junglists howled in derision but even they struggled to deny the superb song-writing and technical confidence that took the album up the charts. I played my part, making more CD-R copies of this than I can remember (in that weird Martian time-slip just before we all plugged into the iPod) and rinsing it dry over the summer of 2005.
17.
The Bug -
London Zoo
An album that reached a wider audience after topping
MetaCritic's albums of 2008. London Zoo is the epitome of the Jamaican influence that has coursed through underground British dance music ever since
Leftfield gave it its own identity. Less a dubstep album than a ferociously danceable roots-and-future record, this is some of the angriest and most anthemic dub of the past few years. Too much peak time dubstep has settled into a predictable pattern of massive sub-bass wobble combined with 2-step rhythms at 140 and extraneous samples scattered across the top. In its own way it's just as predictable as electro house. The Bug shows all the lazy producers out there how to make dubstep sound
big without resorting to the cookie-cutter. The toasting also contains its fair share of political charge, for those who like music they can think about as well as move to.
16.
The Future Sound of London -
ENVIRONMENTS II
Environments II is an album many FSOL fans thought they would never hear. After a five year hiatus, the duo returned in 2002 to reactivate their
Amorphous Androgynous side-project and prove Simon Reynolds right by making cosmic prog-rock. Those of us who preferred the intricate and trippy nightmare samplescapes of old FSOL thought we'd lost them forever. But when they were finally freed of contractual obligations to their label and began to release music direct through their website, the band began to throw out material again.
Environments was the near-mythical blank cover release mentioned in the inlay of
Lifeforms that cropped up on their Essential Mix tracklists and seemed destined to be lost to history. When it finally saw light of day in 2007 it was largely pointless - the duo re-recorded it from scratch (suggesting it had only ever existed as a tracklist placeholder) and the result was a sorry pastiche of the trademark FSOL sound. But then, in 2008, the sequel followed and the FSOL finally,
finally moved their electronic sound forwards again. Environments II is constructed differently to previous FSOL ambient records, with much less sampling and texturalism and more use of conventional musical composition and structures. It's a crystalline widescreen journey across steppes and up mountainsides, helped along the way by Max Richter's minimalist ethos. Worth the wait.
15.
Flying Lotus -
Los Angeles
Although it's coincidence, it's fitting that FlyLo's album should follow the FSOL in this list, because on first listen it reminded me strongly of their near-impenetrable 1995
ISDN sessions, a dark vision of hip-hop's warped future that nobody seemed able to follow. FlyLo could though, 13 years later, with a pitch-black abstract hip-hop mood piece that evokes the film noir darkside of LA in fearless fashion. This isn't always an easy album to listen to, but if you can see through the analogue fuzz you'll find a haunting and brilliant record.
14.
Jaytech -
Everything Is OK
Anjunabeats are rightly held accountable for the steady destruction of everything that was once good about trance music, but their Anjunadeep sub-label has actually played its part in the innovation of the "electro prog" hybrid of trancey house that utilises electro house basslines and synth patches. Out of their stable, Jaytech is by far the best and Everything Is OK is a hugely enjoyable album. His music is uplifting and melodic without being cheesy or trite - a combination that has seemed oxymoronic in the past decade but was once common in the 90s. In that sense it's a throwback album, but one produced using impeccably modern techniques and sounds.
13.
Alex Smoke -
Incommunicado
A few years ago Mixmag ran an article on the rise of "emotional techno", positing (rightly or wrongly) that the techno resurrection of the mid-00s arose because the genre shed its banging robotic image and embraced slower tempos and warmer harmonies. "Emotional techno" isn't a genre and despite the article it never really caught on as a term, but it is probably the best description of Alex Smoke's 2005 album. This is one of the best examples of the minimalist techno approach that was so popular at this time (and I'm sure dozens of techno snobs will rush to the comments sections to point out the invisible difference between minimal techno and tech-house), a sound I personally found to be a gargantuan case of new clothes for the emperor. Alex Smoke succeeds where many others failed because he brings a classical background to the minimal party. There are some lovely string arrangements on Incommunicado and a general ear for deft and evocative melodic sweeps that really make it reward multiple listens.
12.
Orbital -
The Blue Album
I've never heard a satisfactory explanation for why Orbital broke up in 2004. Family issues were cited, but the problem can't have been that serious because they reformed in 2009 for a series of live shows, to the delight of fans everywhere. The Blue Album was their original break-up record, clearly planned in advance. It's a series of homages to previous Orbital sounds and so lacks the cohesion of the truly classic Orbital albums of the 90s. Despite that, it's a heartfelt goodbye to fans and its track-by-track nature means it has a few of the bands finest individual pieces.
Transient in particular is a masterpiece - the last of a long lineage of superb Orbital openers - and in general it's one of the most digestible Orbital records.
11.
Way Out West -
Intensify
When Intensify dropped in 2001 dance music was coming to the end of a decade-plus hedonistic bender and was in the very painful and self-aware process of "growing up" and looking ahead to how it would continue to innovate. The subsequent market crash that would be dubbed the
Death Of Dance Music put a swift end to these thoughts, and club culture spent several years reinventing itself. These days it's perhaps easy to forget those days around the millennium when producers were coming out with sensible artist albums packed full of "proper songs" as they attempted to tidy themselves up and go straight. Intensify is almost certainly the best of those efforts - tracks like
Mindcircus by and large work as mature, song-writerly pieces. The album really shines when it ditches those pretensions and sums up everything best about post-millennium progressive, when the genre was at an all-time peak thanks to its stream of new converts from epic trance. Cuts like
Intensify (Part 1),
Stealth and
The Fall are amongst the best things the group ever did, brilliantly produced and eminently danceable.
10.
Vibrasphere -
Archipelago
At the end of the 90s trance had enjoyed a phenomenal explosion of popularity as the genre was transformed from its hypnotic German origins to ultra-dramatic dancefloor bombast full of enormous melodies and gargantuan breakdowns. The backlash was inevitable: the genre became oversaturated and crammed full of superstar DJs who became bigger than the music or the dancefloor. By 2002 the last creative spark was extinguished, the commercial domination was rapidly receding and the genre spent several long and painful years giving up the ghost. Only after it had been finally usurped by electro house could the genre be quietly reborn in the underground with nobody expecting anything of it beyond deluded stadium show simulacra of popularity from the likes of
Tiësto and
Armin van Buuren. Swedish act Vibrasphere were key names in the genre's underground rebirth and its return to the drawn out, hypnotic bleeds of melody and energy that had originally characterised the genre. Archipelago is generally considered their best work, retaining early-year zest but made with confidence and polish born of experience. Scenesters call the sound "prog psy" (progressive psychedelic trance) but all the uninitiated needs to know is it is trance in the original sense of the word.
Landmark in particular is a pure trance journey, full of feinted build-ups and an acid line that teases the listener endlessly before finally slamming home at the track's conclusion.
09.
Dousk -
Kind Of Human
While progressive house lasted longer than trance, it quickly became another 90s casualty during the Death Of Dance Music. By 2005 the game was up, and the genre's status at the credible end of popular club culture was usurped by the "emotional techno" wave. Prog house DJs turned their sets towards tech house, and started producing tracks full of detuned synths and white noise builds. Greek producer Dousk had been a dark prog staple, and so his conversion to tech house on 2008's Kind Of Human was wearily accepted by the long-suffering prog faithful as another former hero headed for the brighter and trendier lights of tech. They shouldn't have worried though, because if Kind Of Human is no cynical career choice. This is one of the most inventive and playful dance albums of the decade, almost completely devoid of tech house stereotypes. It's packed full of pop influences and genre-mashing hybrid tracks that show off a side to Dousk's music that had been stifled by progressive. Jazz, funk, disco, synth-pop and hip-hop can all be heard, often all at once, adding immeasurable colour to the DJ-friendly tech house cuts.
08.
Trentemoller -
The Last Resort
Danish producer Trentemoller created a huge amount of expectation for this album, with a string of high quality singles and EPs in the first half of the decade. Rarely has an album lived up to the hype so effortlessly. The Last Resort was comfortably everything that had been expected of it, and had the feel of an instant classic. This is an album of supreme confidence, as Trentemoller effortlessly balances the kind of tracks people had come to expect with a healthy dose of experimentation to stop his distinct production sound from becoming over-familiar. I haven't heard a better encapsulation of everything good about the dub-influenced tech house sound that has been so in vogue in the past five years. The production is superb, the music flows well, it drips with ambience and yet it's still danceable. A textbook example of how to make a debut album.
07.
Joris Voorn -
Future History
As we move into 2010, Detroit techno seems more popular now, 25 years on, than it did during the days when it was actually made in Detroit. Post-1988, the British scene had dominated global club culture so strongly that Detroit and Chicago seemed reduced at times to canonical founding fathers devoid of relevance. It was the mid-00s backlash to everything that had become bad and stale about 90s superclub culture that saw producers reach back and reactivate those 80s heroes. Joris Voorn is a Dutchman, and in 2004 the Dutch were probably the last people expected to make ultra-cool, Detroit-influenced techno, such was their reputation for cheesy trance, hooligan gabber and pubescent hardstyle. Mixmag even ran an article around 2005 pointing out the new wave of Dutch producers who
weren't making crap music. "Future History" is the perfect title for this wonderful album, highlighting the relationship between the past and progress the music is predicated on and accurately predicting that the next six years of dance music
would sound like history. What remains distinct about Voorn's album, even after so many people have done the same thing, is the energy. Techno's tempo-drop across the '00s took it down towards a somewhat middle-aged 125bpm, but Voorn's album is much pacier, remembering the days when techno was more hedonistic than self-reflectively cool. It's packed full of dizzying builds and drops, sparkling synth arpeggios and a relentless giddy energy. Detroit's finest would be proud.
06.
Solar Fields -
Earthshine
The second entry from Ultimae is not an ambient album, although it's made by a prolific producer of ambient. EarthShine is a trance album, but one that is imbued with the powerful mood and attention to detail of the best ambient music. It's also nearly universally adored by trance fans. Every track is an epic journey, from the soaring opener
Summer to the climactic
Cruise, and it's utterly devoid of ham-fisted supersaw melodies, patronising breakdowns or any other genre clichés. This is one of those rare albums where just about every track is good enough to be a single, yet it comes together effortlessly as a unified listening experience. To any trance fans who haven't heard it: buy it, play it, rejoice.
05.
Amon Tobin -
Out From Out Where
IDM has always been an electronic genre of choice for hipsters, because it's electronic head music that is almost impossible for any DJ to play on a dancefloor and almost impossible to dance to. Not only does that free the listener from the embarrassing prospect of having to step onto a dancefloor in full view without irony, it also lends the music to the kind of pseudo-intellectual analysis that other electronic genres just don't gel with. Check out any number of cringe-worthy pretentious Pitchfork reviews of techno albums that struggle to put the thought back into the deliberately thoughtless act of impulsive dancing and you'll see exactly why their end-of-decade list differs so far from mine. I mention all this because Out From Out Where is an IDM album that actually makes you want to dance. Sure, it's got all the things that make IDM such an interesting listening experience - technical virtuosity, radical unconventionality and genre-destroying eclecticism, to name but a few - but it presses them into service to construct unlikely yet addictive grooves that'll make you want to hear them on a dancefloor just so you can
try and step to them. The result is an album that is hugely versatile, brilliantly original and devoid of cloying pretension. Everything an IDM album should be, basically.
04.
Trifonic -
Emergence
Beginning with
Kid A the '00s saw an increasing trend of bands blending indie rock with experimental electronic music. The decade ended with
Merriweather Post Pavilion but the trend will probably go on for many years yet. Where these albums lie, and whether they belong on a list like this one is a debate for genre theorists. I include Trifonic's near-flawless debut album here not only because I think it's better than the rest (there's that iconoclasm again) but because every website and blog would have loved it if only it'd been carefully marketed at them.
Radiohead and
Animal Collective have been claimed by the hipsters, and they'll feature on so many end-of-decade lists they don't need my love here. Trifonic, however, deserve to be heard by a wider audience. Emergence isn't a conventional rock album made with electronic methods, nor is it an experimental electronic album that invokes post rock. It's a genuine hybrid that works equally well from both perspectives and yet sits in neither. The lyrics are poignant without straining for profundity, the melodies are razor-sharp and the electronics are an audiophile's dream. The fact this is their debut, and they released it for free on their website in 2007, makes its atom-splitting feats all the more impressive.
03.
Burial -
Untrue
Untrue is perhaps the most important electronic album of the '00s, not because it's the most original and not even because it's the best, but because it played a crucial role in the ascendancy of dubstep. For years, the genre had been one of many fledgling movements cultivating in the rain-lashed petri dish of London's musical underground. Burial was the man who took it off pirate radio and onto the shelves of HMV. He wasn't necessarily the originator or the innovator, although his flavour of euphoric yet melancholic slow-motion dubstep is certainly an evolution in itself, but the one who unlocked the genre's potential and broke it to a worldwide audience. Dubstep is the only genuinely new musical paradigm of the '00s, the scene where the rules are still being written and the alchemy is still being performed. This was the album that made everyone sit up and pay attention. And what an album it is. It barely needs my hyperbole or adjective-spam to do it justice: if you haven't heard this album yet then I shouldn't be convincing you to as much as asking why you haven't already. Dark, beautiful and distinctly British, it's quite simply the
Blue Lines of our generation.
02.
Fluke -
Puppy
Throughout this list I've found myself telling the story of the decade as much as commenting on the specific albums that illustrate that story. Because of this, I'm still struggling to rationalise why Fluke should be here near the summit. Puppy is a '00s misfit - it's a relic of the 1997 big-beat electronica boom that arrived six years too late, the sequel to
Risotto that nobody was waiting for. It should be part of the Death Of Dance Music grand narrative event: 90s British superstar act release out-of-date album that flops and signals the end of an era. As a result, every time I relisten to Puppy I wait for the bubble to burst - for the play through when the album's honeymoon period will finally expire and I'll hear it for what it really is. It hasn't happened. Grand narratives are grand, but great music doesn't need to follow the script. This is a sublime album. You play the first half while getting ready to go out and miss your bus because you're too busy dancing in your bedroom. You play the second half at an after-party and forget what you were saying for 30 minutes straight while you listen. You play it all the way through and are rocked by the tempo changes, the rhythmic switch-ups, the genre-morphing and finally by the utterly unexpected triumphant gospel proclamation of
Blue Sky that full-stops this masterpiece. Wrong decade, but see if I care.
01.
BT -
This Binary Universe
When TBU was released in 2006, IDM purists formed a queue to try and put it down. They dissected every last aspect that had been done before - the plaintive piano notes of
Brian Eno, the glitch textures of
Squarepusher, the childhood nostalgia of
Aphex Twin. While most of their points were valid, this huge backlash proved one thing: noted trance-man and
N*Sync producer Brian Transeau had made an album worthy of their heroes, and they couldn't bear the thought of all those trance kiddies getting their sticky little fingers on it. There's no denying that almost everything on this album has been done before. It's never all been done in one place, though, and BT's magnum opus is a deliberate tribute to all the experimental musicians that have influenced him: from the minimalists to the 70s ambient pioneers through to the IDM figureheads and the circuit benders. What cuts out the debate about whether this is derivative product or original creation is the controlling idea. BT unites all his geek loves, all the grand mathematical and technological concepts, and uses them to express the most intimate and touching subject imaginable: seven lullabies for his baby daughter. That lullaby theme is clearly audible in the melodic style of the album and gives it a unique mood that sets it apart from the many prior records it brings to mind. The result is the album that finally channels the undoubted studio prowess Brian Transeau possesses, and it brought him back from the brink of getting lost in soulless pop collaborations. His next album will probably return to the pop sound, because This Binary Universe was never going to be a sound to appeal to a wide audience. Despite that, it remains the temporary realisation of his flawed talent, a gleaming gem in the middle of his career and in the middle of a decade of electronic music.
Brian Eno
