When people think of “electronic music,” they often think of vapid techno bobbing the heads of club kids in their Mitsubishis en route to a real life Night at the Roxbury. Others, perhaps those involuntarily exposed to a-melodic drum n’ bass a decade ago, might understandably equate electronica with recordings of merciless robot warfare somehow smuggled back in time. Some folks latch onto the sounds of rock and pop bands that, like a child playing with blocks, foray clumsily into digital realms by salting their tunes with mechanical beeps. And many dismiss all such “music” as mindlessly repetitive beats stitched together by methed-up DJs who steal the credit from composers, who, for such mundanely thumping anthems, rightly deserve little to start with.
However, many true musicians, including those with classical training, have been crafting profoundly surreal melodies with primarily digital components since the Reagan administration. Through the 1990s, electronica composers continued to develop and incorporate into their music myriad “impossible instruments,” synthetic sonic synergies extending beyond the scope of physical instruments. As opposed to songs pieced together from intro-level digital samples—and that are therefore stilted-to-flat-out bad—quality music, electronic or otherwise, starts from an inspired melody, even a pretty loop, the modern equivalent to a rock or pop “hook.” In the case of music featuring “impossible instruments,” the song is then advanced from that melodic starting point by an essentially infinite array of custom aural options. The unlimited melds, as beautiful as the artist’s mind can exhale them, cannot then be lumped together as mere “techno,” relegated to “club only” status, and/or wholly dismissed. Those who commit such fallacies are, like the Dylan-unplugged purists before them, on the wrong side of musical history.
For those of you just joining this conversation, your rewarding homework is to obtain and appreciate Hybrid’s 1999 Wide Angle, one of electronica’s first great works of lasting beauty. Of course, you could reach further back, maybe to BT’s 1997 ESCM, or some early Aphex Twin (Richard D. James). Daft Punk of course merits a mention. But for a sharp snapshot of an electronica all grown up, feel free to skip right to Wide Angle. As you listen to the album(s), open up not only to the instrumentation, but also to the cyclical song structure. Linear progressions are not the only way to convey narratives, and there is much comfort to be found in the illusion of infinite continuity.
For those who are caught up, let’s talk 2000s: Jungle/drum n’ bass yielded dancefloors to dubstep, which better captures today’s urban swagger and sway; stuttering glitch bumped tired squelch; womp and wobble went wild as low-frequency production advances empowered basslines to double as melodies. For an ear-peak at these new trends, listen to Mimosa’s Flux for Life, his most recent EP, which bleeds each of these frontiers.
The next 10 years should bring a complete departure from stereo mixing in favor of 5.1 to 9.1 surround sound blends, adding dimensions of space and movement to more and more music. A notable omission from this top 10 list is BT’s 2006 This Binary Universe, which, following up on his Dolby-optimized score to the 2003 movie Monster, may have been the first electronic LP crafted specifically for surround sound. Yes, BT, the lovely Universe renewed our faith in your integrity, and whet our appetite for your upcoming release, These Hopeful Machines. However, Mr. Transeau, Brian: a significant accomplishment does not necessarily a glorious album make, nor, as your promotional materials suggest, an “entirely new genre” form. Also, please stop putting your face on album covers.
As for what else will arise in the 2010s, look for the non-genre of “world” music to dissipate, as the brick & mortar stores that are the main culprits of such shrug-lumping evaporate and increasingly knowledgeable online listeners eye musical origins like grape sources in wine. The long tail of music, which Pandora nowadays tends to curl up by nudging listeners back to songs with more metadata, will stretch further from the bell curve as broader catalogs of electronica are organized on the web (Beatport.com is leading the way so far). Puritan producers can no longer “underground” their music by confining it to vinyl, which, quite rightly, has resulted in a newfound emphasis on bringing music to the people rather than on perpetuating the mystique of and reliance on DJs. As for the future sounds themselves, yet-to-be-invented “impossible instruments,” those are as difficult to imagine as are new colors¬¬—ah, perhaps synesthesia research will spawn the next dimension of modern musical experience.
Enough gristle; time for the steak. Here are The Beat’s top 10 ‘tronic albums of the past decade. I spread these rankings around various types of emerging “electronica,” as each represented category has evolved and flourished over the last 10 years. Exhausted 4-4 trance and 1-2-1-2 house productions were immediately disqualified, as were, as a matter of arbitrary aesthetic preference, electronic albums with non-dance time signatures: from beat-less ambient to rock-structured Nine Inch Nails releases. “Sub-genre-ing” music is necessary and thoroughly enjoyable (please see techno.org/electronic-music-guide for a fun visual tour of electronic music’s branches), as it helps browsers find what they’re listening for while pissing off priggish purists who don’t want tunes “boxed-in” to any single description. So, with a wink of acknowledgment that classification is playfully inexact, and an elbow (in the ribs) to folks who take umbrage with such subdivision, here’s our list of albums that most advanced the art of electronic music, and further melded the umbrella genre with the broad canons of rock, hip-hop and pop.
Top Electronic Albums of the Decade
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1) Shpongle: Tales of the Inexpressible (psychedelic) 2001
This album exemplifies the importance of reconsidering (or considering for the first time) musica electronica. It even made my analog-centric, flat-earth father open his aural eyes to the magic possibilities that arise when classically trained musicians meet modern sound engineering. Jazz flutist Raja Ram and visionary composer/knob wonk/guitarist Simon Posford team up on Tales, their second of four albums, to romp freely around the globe in this masterful tour de force.
The album begins with a Spanish-inspired track (which Sasha selected for his Involver album, thereby bringing Shpongle to the masses), and three songs later, you’re grooving to what sounds like a Rastafarian oak tree singing. Operatic scores populate the latter part of Tales: lush, epic melodies over rampant beats usher the listener from Turkey to East Asia, the auditory monsoon lifting in time for a serene boat ride home.
Shpongle’s technical wizardry was so far ahead of the field in 2001 that this album would still sound cutting edge were it produced today. No album, since, however, has so melodically merged such vocal grace, complex international rhythms, elegant synthetic and analog instrumentation, psychedelic power and technical prowess. May the 2010s foster many more sweeping synergistic amalgams of musical traditions.
2) Bassnectar: Mesmerizing the Ultra (“freakbeat”) 2005
The word “womp” has become so commonplace that a Bay Area DJ recently threatened to boycott any show using it in promotional materials. But the sub current of sound that the onomatopoeia refers to has been a real game-changer this decade, as producers began pumping up low-frequency throbs with meaty tonal quality. Rather than being limited to lows, mids and highs, digital music creators were now free to double-down on bass and carve-out mids almost entirely without sacrificing melody. The result was a heavy-hitting sound that could sparkle cleaner than anything before it. By 2003, Dubstep had grown out of this advance, as did new evolutions of growly breaks. Bassnectar, who’d been busy since the beginning of the decade concocting “freakbeats” from various ethnic elements, time signatures and anachronistic musical traditions, harnessed low-frequency innovations and ran with them.
Never forgetting his progressive politics, Bassnectar samples in Chomsky as naturally as he does hip-hop, sharp breaths and children’s’ laughter on the double-disk Ultra. And the top-ends glitter miles above the round-toned basslines often carrying the bulk of memorable melodies in this dubhop/wompbreak/freakbeat breakout release.
3) edIT: Certified Air Raid Material (breaks, glitch hop) 2007
“Glitch hop,” swept through electronic music in the second half of the decade, led in large part by the L.A.-based Glitch Mob. The larger genre of “glitch” dates back nearly 20 years, and until fairly recently referred to the incorporation of electronic malfunction sounds (skips, short circuits, hardware audibles) in music. Today, glitch is more generally characterized by truncated sounds, stair-stepped digital textures and/or stuttery beats, effects, samples etc., spliced together in rapid sequences. Rather than emulating analog attacks and decays, glitch embraces digital’s discrete nature by leveraging its binary on/off nature. Sounds don’t arrive and then fade; they abruptly pop into existence and end suddenly. When layered and staggered, glitches can allude to lo-fi hiss and pop, and/or be applied on a broader level to break-up breakbeats¬¬, for example. As redundant as that sounds, remember that “breaks” are essentially syncopations; rhythmic interruptions of/variations on metered beats. When those beats are themselves composed of glitches, a shredded sound emerges, analogous to the basal level of noise and distortion heard in metal¬¬—yet intended, precise and central to the music.
While Kraddy, Ooah (PantyRaid) and Boreta of the Glitch Mob can hold their own, edIT (born Edward Ma) is the true musical mastermind of the bunch. He demonstrates as much in Certified, tearing up tracks with jazzy synths, furious breaks and crushed textures to weld a unique sparking tonal brand.
4) Bluetech: Prima Materia/Elementary Particles (downtempo/psydub) 2003-2004
Psy/chill, ambient dub, downtempo: However a shopkeeper might categorize Bluetech’s sound if required to do so for inventory, there is no mistaking the composer when you hear a song of his. Alert, deep-throated baselines roll in waves beneath bright keyboard splashes deftly fingered by the classically trained pianist (born Evan Bartholomew). Synth organs surge on off beats, and even songs lacking classic reggae accents pulse with dub undercurrents. Throughout this double album (released separately but since packaged together), Bluetech’s customized instrumentation rings melodies from some forgotten ancient land.
5) Younger Brother: Last Days of Gravity (electronic psyrock) 2007
This album represents a major gear shift not only for the band (whose debut disc Flock of Bleeps is an epic psytrance masterpiece; highly recommended), but also for electronic music in general. Younger Brother elongated electronica’s reach into psychedelic rock with Gravity, easily the finest studio psyrock album of the decade. Infected Mushroom also made brave forays into electronic psyrock throughout the decade, but that band’s early full-on approach sounded much more like “metaltrance.” Indeed, Younger Brother is the closest living descendent of, and the heir apparent to, Pink Floyd, as Gravity melds existential depth, loosed guitars, disorienting effects and ambient vocals into potent serenades to far-out souls.
Pals remind me that Tool, Porcupine Tree, The Flaming Lips and Radiohead had already traversed the electronic psyrock trail from the rock side, and my festival-going friends hold up Sound Tribe Sector 9, The Disco Biscuits and String Cheese Incident as live “jamtronic” psyrock flag bearers. Points conceded. Grateful Dead and Phish faithful can start shouting “rabble, rabble” now, but let’s be clear. Musicians and audience members alike—peaking on the best acid they’ve had all week—can play and groove to innovative, complex, playfully heady rock without creating a new, confusing, assumption-altering experience. The threshold of psychedelia is an ever-retreating horizon that cannot be chased, even by tripping out to brilliantly fresh jams. It can only be approached from the other side, from an undiscovered territory. And that’s where Younger Brother kept at least two of its four feet planted while recording a psychedelic rock studio journey the heft of which hasn’t been felt since the days of Floyd. Of note here is that band mates Posford and Benji Vaughan (Prometheus) have recently married their digital precision with exciting analog improvisation by expanding their live act to include members of The Disco Biscuits—so be sure to see Younger Brother on tour in 2010 if possible.
6) Mimosa: Flux for Life and Hostilis (dubstep/glitch hop)** 2008-2009
** I lumped together two complimentary EPs; grab them both and shuffle the tracks together.
Mimosa (realname? Noah Dea!) cracks this list as much for what he’s recorded as for what he represents. He calls his style “crunkstep/dub hop,” and, like ill.gates, Tipper, Kush Arora and PantyRaid—to name some fellow all stars—Mimosa wields complex glitch, breakbeat and ultra high dynamic range techniques to conjure a modern urban sound. But what separates Mimosa from these other acts is melody. Melody is in many ways music itself, and, even in the most experimental genres, it always works. Mimosa manages to keep the “dub” in dubstep, the “hop” in glitch hop, the “beat” in breakbeat. While many of his peers can produce energizing and even moody albums from these elements, Mimosa’s songs surpass their components and to achieve insistent, mean and yet gorgeous synergies. Download both Flux for Life and Hostilis to gain a better understanding of where electronic music is heading this decade.
7) Infected Mushroom: Vicious Delicious (psymetal) 2007
Infected’s 2003 Converting Vegetarians double LP was an inconsistent package with genius heights. The prolific Israeli team of Erez Eisen and Amit Duvdevani assembled another album in 2009, Legend of the Black Shawarma, which some fans may also point to as their best work. But the group’s most polished, melodic, consistent, and accessible album is easily the 2007 Vicious Delicious. Cybernetic cats yowl at a moon bouncing by at 145 b.p.m. (mercifully slower than many of their previous releases), blunt Middle-Eastern sensibilities protrude from power chords and bottled fury, delicacy survives the jagged melee. Even if you’ve previously dismissed Infected Mushroom for their lack of discipline and/or aggression, give Delicious a listen. It’s infected with only the group’s finest strains.
Skream: Skreamism 1 and Skreamism 2: (dubstep)** 2006
** I lumped together two complimentary EPs; grab them both and shuffle the tracks together.
True, Skream! was Skream’s breakout disc, and a landmark for the blossoming dubstep genre. But the infrequently disputed king of dubstep (born Oliver Jones) doesn’t love that album anymore; he’s moved in a more musical direction since. It didn’t take him long to transition, as he launched his Skreamism series shortly after his debut LP—meaning folks who discovered dubstep thanks to Jones were delighted mere months later by a second evolution. The wompy, often “grime” MCed genre could also be pretty. Deeper, more emotional albums from an exploding talent base followed, and the underground dubstep scene gained the soul it needed to sway not only listeners’ bodies, but their minds, as well.
9) The Prodigy: Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned (electrorock/breaks) 2004
This article is about highlighting elements of electronic music and the musicians who advance them to further the art. Therefore, as much as I wanted to feature a lesser known electro-breaks pioneer, such as Rennie Pilgrim, Adam Freeland or The Rogue Element, there was no denying The Prodigy’s 2004 album from its rightful place on this list. No LP better mashed electric rock with hard breaks; almost every track on Never Outgunned is built upon a nasty, memorable hook/loop, and the subdued, girlish vocals are eerily juxtaposed with the bangin’ tunes. While Fat of the Land was a truly revolutionary album (1997), Never Outgunned is also a key milestone in the evolution of electronica into a mature field of music worthy of serious attention.
10) Morphonix (now known as MorphATRIX): Off the Grid (downtempo breaks) 2007
This aptly named gem is a bit hard to find, but is well worth the search. Of the thousands of albums which have crossed my ears in the last 10 years, Off the Grid best captures the “nontradiction” of grit and elegance. The underpinnings of MorphATRIX’s tracks are growly breaks, while dreamy vocals glide above and soothe. The LP is so gracefully balanced that for months I wondered who the heck the artist was and why he/she hadn’t produced more albums. Much like Phutureprimitive’s Sub Conscious, the showcase of talent was too significant for me to understand how it could culminate in a one-and-done. Only upon writing this piece did I learn that the act is now called MorphATRIX, and that the composer (L. Hoffman) also writes under the name Chromatone. Go forth, and explore him with me. Hoffman’s technical mastery of slippery breaks and grinding industrial textures places him in select company—and his musicianship as revealed through diverse-yet-consistently-haunting melodious tunes leaves him in a lonely, elite domain. Plus, you have to love any album with samples from The Warriors: “Can you dig iiiiiiiiit?!”
