REPORTS OF OUR DEMISE HAVE BEEN GREATLY EXAGGERATED
Or
2003 – THE YEAR IN ELECTRONIC MUSIC
By Tim O’Neil
December 16, 2003
It’s a bit frightening to realize that you have been carried underground, swept beneath the city streets on an imperceptible but persistent tide of public apathy. It’s only when you wake up alone and sopping wet at the mouth of the river that you realize what had seemed irrelevance is actually the bold taste of sweet freedom.
At the risk of overplaying the metaphor, this is exactly the experience of those of us in the electronic music field these past few years. It’s becoming harder and harder to remember the heady days of 1997 – when groups like the PRODIGY made the cover of Rolling Stone and the tag-line “electronica” was hailed as the savior of the music industry. Well, in case you didn’t notice, electronic music was hardly the next grunge, and it didn’t save the music industry – but since the spotlight was dropped, the music itself has gone nowhere but up.
It’s disheartening to realize that most people don’t even know they still make “that kind” of music anymore. You can buy a few CDs down at your local Wal-Mart, but once you buy the token CHEMICAL BROTHERS or old-school PRODIGY CD, you’re left with ALICE DEEJAY and DJ SAMMY as the music’s sole ambassadors to a good two-thirds of the country.
It’s frustrating because there are hundreds of thousands of people across this country to whom electronic music is still very much a living and organic proposition. However, much like superhero comic books, it’s reached a point where the only people who care are the die-hard who live it and breathe it. People who like it love it. They devote their lives to it, gathering in small communities spread across the country and linked to the greater world through the Internet.
It’s a lot like punk in some respects. Just as punk has always (or at least since MINOR THREAT) championed the DIY ethos, so to does electronic music encourage the gradual blurring and shattering of the line between fan and musician. Most fans are or would like to be DJs. Its easier to experiment with genre-bending knob twiddling in the comfort of your home thanks to advances in processor speed and size than it is to buy a decent electric guitar and a Marshal stack (or even, let’s face it, a Randall stack). Of course this doesn’t mean the music itself will be any good, any more than all the legions of Johnny-Rotten-come-latelies were anywhere near as good as Rancid – but, just as in punk, its an empowering force nonetheless that helps to build strong cohesion throughout the musical community.
I’m not a DJ, but I married one. I would never have met my wife if it hadn’t been for the unifying power of music to bring people together. I believe that electronic music is just as vital and energized a genre as punk or emo or screamo or hip-hop or garage rock or whatever the hell NICKELBACK is. The only difference is that no-one cares. The party was declared “over” for electronic music as far back as 1998 – and that’s a damn shame.
It occurred to me a few months back that the current garage rock "revolution" was about as ill fated an industry savior as “electronica.” The music industry has always been a cyclical beast, but the almost-overnight explosion of grunge in the early ‘90s cemented this feast-and-famine business model as an economic necessity for music business CEOs across the nation.
In retrospect, it was a crazy, unprecedented and unique time. Groups like NIRVANA, PEARL JAM, SOUNDGARDEN and ALICE IN CHAINS sprang seemingly full-formed from Zeus’s head – Seattle, WA – and into the public consciousness, crystallizing the Platonic ideal of a mythical “Seattle Scene” in the minds of millions of record buyers. In reality, the “Seattle Scene” as such was no instantaneous flashpoint but the result of decades of underground growth and fermentation. This had been foreshadowed by such diverse bands as THE REPLACEMENTS, REM, THE PIXIES, GREEN RIVER, MUDHONEY and SONIC YOUTH . . . not to mention the roots laid by distant Punk forebears such as the RAMONES, TELEVISION and JOY DIVISION. Almost every group from the Seattle scene that became an “overnight” success in the early ‘90s had been around for years in one form or another, honing their craft and defining their sound.
But try explaining to a music executive that the unique circumstances which created grunge were unlikely to ever be truly recreated or echoed. When grunge started to fade, they wanted another Big Hit -- only this time they wanted the ability to create their own phenomenon, eliminating the messy elements of chance that had enabled grunge to explode without any forewarning. They wanted to be able to control their customers to an unprecedented degree, engineering the rise and fall of their own prefabricated pop crazes.
Of course, they would eventually get this in the form of teen pop – the advent of boy groups and pop tarts such as the BACKSTREET BOYS and BRITNEY SPEARS was an enormous windfall. But in between NIRVANA and CHRISTINA AGUILERA, long before teen pop began to lose its luster and THE STROKES were offered up as an anemic “next big thing,” there was the small matter of electronica.
Electronic music has been around in one shape or another for decades. Almost since the advent of electronics, people have been experimenting with new and different ways to produce melodic noise from machines.
Early inventions such as Thaddeus Cahill’s Teleharmonium, Leon Theramin’s eponymous instrument and Maurice Martenots’ Ondes Martenot were received as little more than oddities. The postwar era ushered in a new school of postmodern composers eager to experiment with the possibilities of new technologies-– composers such as Pierre Schaeffer, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Pierre Henry, to mention just a few. These composers were soon followed by another wave of less didactic modernists such as John Cage and Stephen Reich.
Although credit must be given to these more abstract pioneers, the history of electronic music as pop is a much more catholic exploration than this pedigree would suggest. Electronic experimentation has been a part of the evolution of rock and roll since the very beginning.
Although it should be stressed that their breakthroughs invariably echoed previous advancements, popular artists such as the BEATLES, BRIAN WILSON, PINK FLOYD and THE WHO all contributed significantly to the gradual adoption of electronic paradigms into the pop music blueprint. These artists explored the concept of the production studio as a separate and distinctive musical instrument, and these radical ideas would eventually change the way popular music was created and conceived.
Take for a moment the Beatles. As they made their break from public performance in the mid-1960s, they retreated into the studio to record a series of increasingly complex and technically demanding studio albums. 1966’s Revolver featured one of the most ambitious pop songs of the era: “Tomorrow Never Knows,” an Indian-influenced psychedelic chant marked by the first use of a looped drum pattern in the history of pop music. Here was something new: a three-minute pop song that could not be easily recreated in a live format. The production studio had succeeded in becoming the group’s “fifth” member. This dynamic served them well as they continued on to create Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band the following year, with its extensive use of complicated analog editing techniques (most evident in the pacing and construction of the album’s closing track “A Day In The Life”). 1968’s self-titled White album would contain the most ambitious song of their career, the frightening and vertiginous “Revolution No. 9.” “Revolution” was nothing more than a mash-up of various studio fragments and outtakes, edited together to create a continuous wash of sound. Although it’s worth repeating that none of their experiments were without academic precedence, their singular stature and influence insured such advances would not go unanswered, and that these advances in studio technology would not long remain the province of the postmodernists.
Brian Wilson and THE BEACH BOYS answered the BEATLES’ challenge with 1966’s Pet Sounds, an album that remains almost unrivalled in terms of sheer sonic virtuosity. Here were the BEATLES’ sonic adventurousness and Phil Spector’s holistically combative production techniques rolled into one, and alongside Wilson’s uniquely naïve songwriting these elements combined to remake pop music in their singular image. It would take popular music thirty years to catch up to Pet Sounds.
Special consideration goes to Wendy Carlos. A conservatory-trained classical pianist, she (then William Carlos) became fascinated with the technical possibilities of a recently produced synthetic keyboard, or “synth,” called the Moog (named after its creator, Bob Moog, and pronounced with a hard “O,” as in “boat”). She produced a successful series of albums containing her futuristic interpretations of famous classical pieces, beginning with 1968’s Switched On Bach. Although the albums would be considered slightly novel by the record buying audience at large, those in the classical music establishment were surprisingly receptive to the recordings. No less a Bach authority than Glenn Gould would remark that “Carlos’ realization of the Fourth Brandenburg Concerto is, to put it bluntly, the finest performance of any of the Brandenburg’s – live, canned, or intuited – I have ever heard.” Carlos’ revolutionary recordings would help lend credence to Gould’s own theories: that live performance was slowly becoming an anachronism, and that recorded music would soon become the natural and popular medium for all music.
Carlos’ success presaged a growing understanding of electronic music’s methodology and potential in the minds of the public. Whereas once electronic music had been dismissed as the province of the intellectuals and theorists who composed modern classical music based on the alienating principles of dissonance, dodecaphony and aleatory, Carlos’ music blazed new trails in the public acceptance of synthesized music. Whereas once artificial instruments had appeared inherently harsh and sterile to the listening public, Switched On Bach made the convincing case that electronic instruments were not a special medium unto themselves but merely another tool in a musician’s repertoire. A Moog synthesizer was no more inherently alienating or uninteresting than a guitar or a trumpet. The novelty of these new electronic instruments and processes gradually died out and in its place there was the growing realization that rapidly expanding technological advancements were slowly and inexorably changing the way music was made and perceived.
It’s impossible to overstate KRAFTWERK’S significance and influence. Like no artists after and like few artists before – a rarified company that includes Louis Armstrong, Robert Johnson and Elvis Presley – they defined a sound so unique and incontrovertibly novel that the course of pop music would never be the same.
Strictly speaking, KRAFTWERK were not the first electronic group. Groups such as PINK FLOYD and THE SILVER APPLES had built on the pop foundations laid by the ‘60s pioneers and created daringly new approaches to the standard rock and roll template. But KRAFTWERK represented something entirely different. Instead of merely grafting electronic trappings onto rock, they created a wholly new kind of pop to accommodate their ideas.
Raised among the first generation of postwar Germans, the members of KRAFTWERK dedicated themselves to a remarkably ascetic worldview. Their music wrested easily with the burgeoning paradoxes of the electronically enhanced world, embracing the difficult contradictions of a technology that was simultaneously dehumanizing and empowering. Most importantly, they represented the artistic maturity of postwar Germany – still divided by the Berlin Wall and the inheritors of an incalculable Kriegschuld – “war guilt.” Their machinelike reserve was humble, earnest and just slightly ironic, creating the discomfited blueprint that electronic artists have follow for the last three decades. Every time you see a DJ or producer posed stiffly and somewhat chagrined in a press photo, they are channeling the stoicism of their German forefathers.
KRAFTWERK, while unique, were not without precedent. The Krautrock movement of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s produced many notable bands such as Can, Tangerine Dream, Faust and the twin Amon Duuls – groups that successfully bridged the gap between the heady psychedelia of late ‘60s American and British rock and the emerging electronic instrumentation. The desire for a distinctively German musical identity inspired the groups to explore more abstract and free-form song structure in addition to pushing the extant boundaries of musical technology. They adopted the aforementioned Karlheinz Stockhausen as their spiritual figurehead, and the notoriously hermetic Stockhausen returned the favor by stamping some of the bands, most notably an early KRAFTWERK, with his explicit imprimatur.
KRAFTWERK began their existence as a relatively low-profile group, producing a handful of records during their first early-70s incarnation, in addition to an early album under the name Organization. KRAFTWERK’S two founders, Florian Schneider-Esleben and Ralf Hütter, had met while attending art school together in the late sixties.
One of KRAFTWERK’S earliest and most lasting achievements was the creation of the world famous Kling Klang Studios in their native Düsseldorf. The establishment of Kling Klang could be regarded as the ultimate expression of the music studio as a living, breathing instrument: an immersive environment that shaped the musicians’ perceptions in a much more active fashion than any previous studio with the possible exception of the BEATLES’ Abbey Road complex. As musical technology was increasingly democratized by the spread of cheaper and more powerful computers, it became possible for anyone to create their own studio – creating, in the process, the perfect individualized expression of their musical ideals.
Early in their career, the group shed two members, Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger, who subsequently released three albums under the moniker Neu! (“neu” being German for ‘new’). Neu! were one of the most successful of the early Krautrock pioneers, spawning a host of imitators with their simple, but hardly simplistic, rock sound. In many ways KRAFTWERK’ aesthetic couldn’t have been further apart from Neu!, with their droning guitars, violently machine-like syncopation, and primitive vocals. Their sound almost single-handedly created the template for drone-rock groups as diverse as David Bowie (in his late ‘70s phase), SONIC YOUTH, CABARET VOLTAIRE and MOGWAI. When their third and final album, 1975’s ‘Neu! “75” was imported to the UK in 1976, it served as a strong inspiration for the first wave of punk groups (albeit the more arty punks such as Joy Division and Wire). Neu! accomplished a great deal in the space of three years and three albums, and this accomplishment is even more significant in light of Rother and Dinger’s vocal and deep seated loathing of each other.
The release of 1974’s Autobahn album marked the beginning of the end for the early KRAFTWERK and the end of the beginning for KRAFTWERK as spiritual forefathers to an entirely new musical paradigm. While not yet totally stripped of the group’s Krautrock embellishments, the twenty-minute long title track established the group’s new mission: to strip away Krautrock’s stylistic indulgences and arrive at a new pristine ideal of German melody and reserve through the newly discovered medium of pure electronic music.
KRAFTWERK’s 1977 album Trans-Europe Express was the perfect expression of the group’s burgeoning ethos. The album contained a complete distillation of KRAFTWERK’s paradoxical musical charm: sparse, minimal and strangely warm, influenced by the sublimely pleasant melodies of Franz Schubert and buoyed along by almost expressionless voices.
The title track would go on to have a second career as a surprisingly popular and important cultural artifact in its own right. “Trans Europe Express” was later subsumed into the melting pot of American music after being enthusiastically adopted by a small group of forward-thinking New York disc jockeys. These DJs were experimenting with a new form of production to match a new style of rhyming funk that had arisen in the Bronx during the final days of the 1970s.
The invention of the Technics 1200MK2 turntable would provide stimulus for the last great discovery in the development of electronic music. Released in 1979, the 1200MK2 featured an incredibly durable steel body shell and an improved direct drive motor. Technics had developed the direct drive motor in 1969, and the premiere of the first 1200 model in 1972 marked the first widespread commercial use of the direct drive mechanism.
In the late 19’70s New York City was a powderkeg of musical experimentation. Disco’s sudden and irrevocable crash from widespread popularity forced the popular NYC dance scene underground. Notorious and defunct dancefloors like Club 54 had epitomized the worst excesses of the disco era, but a new breed of dance clubs managed to survive the disco purge. Clubs like New York’s Paradise Garage and Chicago’s Warehouse stepped back from the precipice and put a harder focus on the music while allowing the distinctive disco style to cross-pollinate with other genres.
Hip-hop was born in New York in the late ‘70s, the result of the forced intermingling of funk, rock, disco, soul and reggae. DJ Kool Herc, a Jamaican-born disc jockey from the Bronx, is widely held as the first American DJ to ever juggle two copies of a single record – isolating the funkiest portion of the beat, or the “breakdown,” and looping it for as long as he wanted. (It should be noted, however, that hip-hop historians – a naturally contentious group - do not universally hold to this fact. Some contend that Grandmaster Flash was first). This enabled the DJ, and later the independent MC, to sing or speak over the playing records with a greater alacrity. While MCs – masters of ceremonies – had long officiated over proto-hip-hop parties, speaking over the disco and funk records played by early ‘70s DJ’s such as Pete “DJ” Jones and DJ Hollywood, this marked a clean break with the old styles and the creation of an entirely new dynamic.
Herc had brought this style of party rapping, or “toasting,” from Jamaica where it had been a vital element in the evolution of Dancehall Reggae. Although Bronx crowds hadn’t responded to his Reggae mixing, the incorporation of more familiar sounds such as funk, rock and disco into his performances in the mid-70s represented the birth scream of hip-hop. His technical leaps inspired other DJs and producers to follow in his footsteps - artists like the aforementioned Grandmaster Flash, Kurtis Blow and Afrika Bambaataa took his achievements and further refined them, creating and defining the sound of modern hip-hop.
The 1200MK2’s more durable direct drive system - combined with advances in stylus technology that reduced long-term wear on the records - allowed DJ’s better manipulation of spinning record. Disc jockeys working in the dance formats, primarily funk and disco, had long cultivated the skill of beat-mixing: playing two records back-to-back without any break in the music. This was accomplished by painstakingly matching the record’s beats on primitive monitor systems, blending the two songs together as if they had been recorded together. Although the manufacturer had hardly foreseen this eventuality, the 1200MK2’s stronger motor was able to withstand the pressures of the record being manually sped, slowed or stopped. Suddenly the stolid turntable had become an entirely different instrument. The music on the platter became just another tool for the musician to utilize. Although it would take many years for DJ culture to properly digest the repercussions of this discovery, this was the final piece of the puzzle. The three foundations of electronic music – the invention of the modern production studio, the acceptance of electronic instrumentation and the direct drive turntable – were in place.
Everything finally came together in 1982, with the release of Afika Bambaataa and the Soul Sonic Force’s “Planet Rock.” Set over a souped-up electro beat, “Planet Rock” was a rap song built atop a very prominent KRAFTWERK sample, the hook from 77’s aforementioned “Trans-Europe Express.” Here was the future of music on one round platter of plastic – a hybrid sound cobbled from bits and pieces of separate cultures and musical styles, composed primarily of electronic sounds and rhythms, and produced explicitly for the ultimate extension of postmodern musical theory: the DJ.
Hip-hop would soon explode in popularity, expanding outwards across the country and eventually becoming a worldwide phenomenon. The schisms inside early hip-hop culture reflected the divisions between the middle-class and suburban Disco crowds and the poorer urban Funk crowds (an admittedly simplistic generalization). This schism would come into play later on when House music began to gain popularity across racial lines.
Eventually, hip-hop would double back and influence the disco DJs who had been forced underground – or at least out of the public spotlight – in the late ‘70s. House music was born at the intersections of disco and hip-hop, and influenced by the prevalent post-punk New Wave music of the early-80s as well as the funk and rock of the ‘70s. It was the first truly universal musical movement in that it pulled equally from black and white musical forms, as well as from Latino and gay musical cultures that had survived the fall of disco and had remained mostly ignored by the white mainstream.
House was the crucible for electronic music. Although, ultimately, it was only an accident of history that stapled electronic music so conclusively to the dancefloor, it is a connection that has remained strong and become almost unavoidable for the entirety of the music’s history. House spawned many regional variations, both within America – Philadelphia house, Chicago house, Detroit house (or, simply, Detroit techno) – as well as international variances, such as British Acid and French house. These variances spawned entirely new genres, with new forms being created at a rate of greater than one a year by the mid ‘90s. Acid house spawned Drum & Bass/Jungle and IDM (“intelligent” dance music), hip-hop merged with dub raggae and drone rock to give birth to trip-hop, international house spawned the breakbeat and UK Garage/Two-step genres (differentiated from simple house merely by the placement of the kick drum at every other downbeat, as opposed to house’s basic four/four rhythm), Goa was birthed in the UK and gave birth to trance and progressive house – etc, etc, etc, ad infinitum.
And finally in the late ‘90s, after electronic music had conquered the globe, someone at an American record company noticed it existed.
I’ve got some tips for Jack White. First, save your money. There’s a good chance the crowds you’re playing for now are the biggest crowds you’ll ever play for. Second, brace yourself for the backlash: no one stays on top forever and the critics are going to turn on you just like they turn on everyone else. Elephant was a decent enough -- if slight -- rock album, but a five-star extravaganza in Rolling Stone? Top of every critics’ year-end “best-of” list? You’re riding the crest of a particularly enthusiastic wave and I’d be surprised if this good will lasted much longer. Spin probably won’t live to regret touting Elephant as much as they do TEENAGE FANCLUB’s Bandwagonesque, but that’s a particularly nasty example.
2003 is going to be remembered as the year “electronica” finally died. And that’s a damn good thing. “Electronica” was a catch-phrase invented by some strange amalgamation of rock journalist/music industry mechanism to encapsulate a genre that didn’t’ exist. It was an attempt on the part of some well-meaning individuals to put quite a few square boxes of music into a single round hole, and it didn’t work.
Electronic music isn’t a genre: from the very beginning it’s been too big a neighborhood to be held inside one single genre. Are you telling me that groups as diverse as THE CHEMICAL BROTHERS, APHEX TWIN, MINISTRY, PORTISHEAD and DEPECHE MODE have anything more in common that the fact that they all use electronic means to create their musical ends? Electronic music is a way of life, an attitude and an ideal. It’s a conception of music and sound as essentially elastic things.
Its not that America wasn’t ready for electronica, it’s that they just didn’t want it. It was too hard to pretend that there was any pressing and organic purpose behind the music suddenly storming America’s shores other than marketing fiat. The music had been around in one shape or another for thirty years: it wasn’t something created or recreated by the PRODIGY with 97’s Fat of the Land. The music’s overseas popularity s was the result of decades of growth and expansion, and America, ultimately, has never had any widespread tolerance for alien movements.
The irony, of course, is that despite the fact that electronic music was seen as a primarily British import, it was just as much of an American movement as not. House music was the wellspring from which every subsequent movement was born, and house music is uniquely American. House music spread all across the globe in one form or another, but it never really left the United States. It was pushed deep underground between the death of disco and the rise of grunge, and despite occasional – albeit brief – forays onto the American charts, it was a movement that generally shunned the light of public exposure.
Of course, the further irony here is that, for the most part, the perfectly intact American dance music culture shunned the overseas infusion of “electronica.” This makes sense – if someone tries to tell you that they invented something just last week that you’ve had for two decades, would you be inclined to agree with them? This was a particularly bitter pill for house pioneers in towns like Detroit and Philadelphia, whose primarily black audiences had been sapped and supplanted by hip-hop in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. It’s hard to imagine in an age where hip-hop is the global pop standard, but there was a brief moment where Detroit techno had an equally legitimate claim to the hearts and minds of black urban youth. Of course, that was a long time ago – Detroit techno hardly became the new hip-hop and pioneers like Juan Atkins and Derrick May grew to resent the popularity of white European acts who had stolen their thunder and expanded their sounds.
For all its faults, “Garage Rock” at least has the benefit of being an authentic, if anemic, musical movement. For whatever reason, a number of people actually started playing retro-tinged rock & roll with a garage flavor around the same time, and started to receive concurrent media attention. Electronica was simply the same music that had already been released and proved very popular in the UK and Europe and Japan, re-released in America for the first time. Not a whole lot of compelling momentum there.
Here’s another memo for Mr. White: the backlash is inevitable, but it only gets worse if the critics think you’ve suckered them. Sure enough, electronica was hailed as the “next big thing.” It wasn’t. They released a few high profile electronic albums, maybe two or three of them even went platinum, and the collective record-buying public shrugged their shoulders. The music industry was not remade overnight. Well, “Garage Rock” has been even more hyped than electronica, and has sold even less albums. I think every STROKES and WHITE STRIPES album put together has sold less than MADONNA’s multi-Platinum Ray of Light the unquestioned high-water mark for electronica’s commercial crossover. When the critics wake up and see that THE STROKES and THE WHITE STRIPES, for all the hype, ultimately have amounted to less than a drop in the cultural bucket next to NICKELBACK and AVRIL LAVIGNE, there’s going to be a great deal of vented disillusionment.
It can get pretty mean.
Electronic music isn’t a genre: it’s a way of life.
It doesn’t matter that techno never topped the charts – it doesn’t matter that cultural and critical perception hold that electronic music has passed beyond the pale and into irrelevance. Cultural and critical perception is wrong. Electronic music isn’t a genre: it’s a virus, and its taken over almost the entirety of modern pop music in the 2003.
The most popular producers in hip-hop are Timbaland and the NEPTUNES- producers who set themselves up on the fringes of the former pop mainstream and proceeded through the strength of their convictions to yank the entire system to the left. Strangely, these superproducers seem to be pulling most consciously from the IDM tradition – that is, “intelligent” dance music made without conscious appeal to the dancefloor. Listen to Missy Elliot’s Timbaland-produced “Pass That Dutch” and you hear abstract electronic percussion that could have easily been lifted from an early volume of WARP’s Artificial Intelligence series in the early ‘90s.
RADIOHEAD and OUTKAST, easily the two most “avant garde” Platinum selling artists alive today, both found revitalization from the wellspring of electronic music. You can’t find better proof of electronic music’s ubiquity than OUTKAST’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Below double album. It has less to do with the specific processes used to create the album than with the catholic nature of Big Boi and Andre 3000’s muses: here are two musicians who process everything around them, pulling influences from outside their chosen genre and reprocessing them in new and interesting ways. It’s not about technology but about methodology: the admission that music is and can be found everywhere, and the realizations that you can do anything with the sounds that surround you.
If anything, the rise of the super-producer in hip-hop and pop music underlines just how ubiquitous these concepts are. We’ve long since passed the point where producers like Timbaland, the NEPTUNES, Dr. Dre and the indie-rock DFA crew are the real hit-makers. Able to produce dependably revolutionary pop sounds in four-minute bite-size packages, whilst simultaneously overcoming the limitations of whichever whispy-voiced “diva” or patently uninteresting rapper whose record company is billing today, they are the axis which the record industry revolves around and that the indie music crowds idolizes. It would be crass and predictable if they weren’t so damn good at what they did. I can never forgive them for making me like Justin Timberlake, but by the time it took for “Cry Me a River” to finish playing, there wasn’t a soul in the country who didn’t understand that the nature of artistic credibility had flipped overnight. It doesn’t matter if you’re prefab or premeditatedly homicidal, you’re only as good as your best producer. It’s the music, stupid.
The music is back in the driver’s seat. 50 CENT, by most accounts a mediocre rapper, was propelled into overnight stardom on the strength of one of DR. DRE’s strongest beats, the unapologetically funky “In Da Club.” Sure, EMINEM’s influence didn’t hurt, but look at the universal apathy that greeted his latest protégé, Obie Trice. Sans the postmodern hooks and propulsively catchy bassline, 50 CENT is just another thug-by-the-dozen rapper. With DR. DRE at his side, he’s invincible.
Parts of indie rock establishment seem to have, for the most part, rejected the electronic revolution outright. Hardcore punk and classic rock seem to have been resurrected as emo and garage, respectively, and neither genre particularly wants to be LIMP BIZKIT. But the stylistic revolution in metal guitar that Tom Morello began with RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE has become so fully subsumed into the rock establishment that most younger bands probably don’t even realize that their third-generation KORN and RAGE licks are really sixth-generation PUBLIC ENEMY samples.
Admittedly, no one has been able to properly integrate a turntable or processor into their rock sound without sounding horrible. Just because it hasn’t been done well does not mean that it won’t – it’s an inevitability. And it should be noted that the most popular rock band on the planet today, LINKIN PARK, have gone greater lengths towards integrating hip-hop and IDM textures into their music than anyone else. Although their songwriting remains puerile, their music itself occasionally manages to rise above their self-imposed limitations and reconcile, if only haltingly, the rifts between rock and dance. Their 2002 remix album, Reanimation, was notable for both the absence of the tepid rap-by-numbers tracks that usually prevail in mainstream remixing and the surprising presence of the kind of extremely dense and harried progressive soundscapes one would have expected to find on an APHEX TWIN or NINE INCH NAILS album circa 1994.
What does this leave? This leaves the purists to lead the last march of the anti-digital brigade against the demons of the silicon processor. One last note, Mr. White, if you please: you make a point of recording all your music on decidedly antique equipment, preferring the authentic hum of analog tape to the admittedly sterile playground of digital processors. Your intransigence is charming but useless (but I am certain that MUDDY WATERS and Jimmy Page appreciate your great care with their stolen property). Washington, DC based house duo Deep Dish have been making waves for months by dropping “Seven Nation Army” into the middle of their sets. In the single moment it takes to drop the needle on the record, in the instant that the crowd recognizes that awkwardly funky loping bassline and screams out in the joy of recognition, this bridge is crossed. Despite your best efforts, THE WHITE STRIPES have officially become a part of electronic music. That’s all it takes.
Rock and roll will never die, and hip-hop will live forever . . .but world music has become a mongrel. Global culture is moving too fast, assimilating indigenous cultures at alarming wholesale rates and swallowing up entire musical traditions in the space it takes me to write this sentence. Electronic music is the grease that lubricates modern music, the conceptual bridge that enables modern musicians to reach beyond the limitations of their forefathers and enter wholly undiscovered countries of imagination.
THE YEAR IN RECORDINGS
This has been an extraordinary year for electronic music in terms of recorded output. The final vestiges of mainstream disappointment seem to have fallen away, leaving the majority of independent and subsidiary labels who compose the electronic music community to concentrate on publishing quality music.
2002 was a year of contraction for the industry. A surprisingly large number of domestic electronic labels folded or imposed drastic roster cutbacks – the promised crossover successes of 1997 had not materialized and labels such as Kinetic, Grand Royal and Jive Electro who had invested heavily in electronica were forced to cut back, diversify or cease production altogether.
If the preceding year had been a story of economic disappointment, 2003 saw a vigorous retrenchment on the part of the American electronic scene. The merger of two prominent indie labels, Matador and the Beggars Group, silenced many tongues who had voiced private disconcertment over Matador’s seeming abandonment of their small but potent stable of electronic artists. Astralwerks seemed comfortable with their continually diversifying brand for the first time since beginning the process of branching out into non-electronic artists. The success of mainstream rock acts such as Turin Brakes and the alternative hip-hop act K-oss has granted a degree of stability to the fluctuating juggernaut.
COMPILATIONS
The year saw an unsurprisingly large variety of compilations hit the shelves – the real revelation was the undeniable quality of quite a few of them. Since the dawn of time, i.e. the Early ‘90s, the compilation has been a hallmark of dance music more than any other genre of recorded sound. There are numerous reasons for this, but the main one would have to be that the 12” single is still the primary vehicle for dance music.
It’s tough to be a fan. Every group or artist you could care to mention has had a much longer career than you would initially think, having released a stream of obscure tracks and remixes on an ungodly variety of labels and in a handful of different countries. Most artists, for whatever reason, never even make it past the 12” stage, and their songs are only printed onto compact disc when they are licensed for compilations. There are far more wannabe dance artists than good dance songs in the world today.
Even established artists and labels still fall prey to the urge to compile. They all accrue extensive backlogs of obscure and unreleased b-sides, remixes and collaborations. On the plus side, while the phrase ‘b-side compilation’ usually evokes images of dread and despair in rock and hip-hop fans, sometimes an electronic artist’s most interesting music can be found in their proverbial back pages.
On any given year there are hundreds of them released, and of those hundreds, most are unlistenable. It’s been a good year, though, and there were simply too many good records for this to be an easy list to compile.
Off the bat, I’d like to give kudos to the Verve label, for having succeeded in producing another stellar volume in the Verve Remixed series. The first Verve Remixed was hailed an instant classic upon its release in 2002, and pressure to produce an adequate follow up must have been intense. They succeeded in producing a volume that stands up well against not only its predecessor but the entire legacy of Verve’s classic library of jazz standards. By picking remixers with an unremittingly tasteful yet slightly mischievous approach to the source material, they managed to produce the entirely pleasant sensation of true collaboration with such vaunted vocalists as Sarah Vaughn, Ella Fitzgerald and Nina Simone.
If anything, I’d say that this year’s crop of remixers were almost too respectful towards their “collaborators.” In the almost-certain case that there is a third volume in the Remixed series, I would urge the producers be less afraid to monkey around with their source material. The most inspired remixers in history have been producers unafraid to take their raw materials in wholly new and daring directions. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, true (see APHEX TWIN, below) – but without risk there is no advancement. Who could have dreamed how far the remix would be elevated in the space of these past fifteen years? It used to be that a remix was merely an elongation of an existing single – the song was expanded by a couple minutes for the exclusive use of the niche DJ market. Now a remixer is accorded status as a full collaborator, and they shouldn’t be afraid to act as such.
On a related note, Savoy Jazz released a volume of rewardingly difficult Charlie Parker remixes, entitled Bird Up!: The Charlie Parker Remix Project. The remixers on this disc, including such notables as SYSTEM OF A DOWN’s Serj Tankian and the Wu-Tang Clan’s sonic mastermind RZA, took full advantage of their celestial source material to deliver an uncompromising - albeit scatterbrained - triumph.
Astralwerk’s ongoing collaboration with the smooth house label Naked Music yielded two unqualified gems in 2003. February saw the release of Bare Essential: Volume Two, an engagingly witty aperitif of a disc, perhaps the purest distillation yet released of Naked’s trademark frictionless sound. One of the bigger surprises of the year, however, arrived in June with the first volume in Naked’s Lost on Arrival series. A pointed departure from their almost cliched house sounds, Lost on Arrival featured a wonderfully eclectic blend of modern disco and funky electro. I sincerely hope there are more volumes in this series forthcoming in 2004 – this has the potential to be the best house series since Astralwerk’s defunct Respect Is Burning.
Studio !K7’s trademark DJ Kicks series seemed to lose some of its focus this year. Whereas at one time the DJ Kicks brand was inarguably the most prestigious name in mixed compilations, underwhelming volumes from the likes of Tiga and Chickenlips served to further dilute this once-imposing brand name. Perhaps 2003 will be remembered as the year that DJ Kicks was supplanted by Razor & Tie’s upstart Back To Mine series. This year saw the release of discs compiled and mixed by such luminaries as Underworld, Tricky and the Orb – this on the heels of 2002’s historical releases by New Order and Orbital. It would be nice if 2004 saw a return to greatness from DJ Kicks - the series Mixmag once described as “the most important DJ mix series ever” -but with early 2004 releases already on slate from DEATH IN VEGAS and the AUDIO BULLIES, Back To Mine has definitely reached the head of their class.
San Francisco based Om Records continued their string of excellent downtempo releases with the OM Lounge 7, a series so beloved that it refuses to die (7 was solicited as the series’ last – but the inevitable success of 7 quickly prompted the preparation of an 8). Also excellent - albeit a bit less sleepy - Om released the second volume in their United Nations of Future Music series.
In the realm of world music, Six Degrees continued their winning streak with the release of the Traveller ’03 collection. Six Degrees remains at the forefront of the global music scene, creatively bridging gaps between indigenous music and global dance. Sometimes their approach can seem overtly academic, but their foresight is to be commended.
2003 also saw the release of TIMO MAAS’ third remix compilation, Music For The Maases 2. Is TIMO lying low because he recognizes the fact that he was horribly overexposed the last few years, or is the once-mighty Kinetic in fire-sale mode? The fact that this supposedly high profile release didn’t even get a college radio rollout begs the question.
Moonshine continued in their quest to produce a mix CD for every man, woman and child on the planet. Two stuck out through the din. A new volume in GOLDIE’s vaunted Metalheadz series, the first in six years and aptly titled Metalheadz 3.0, was yet another heart-shaped valentine to the corpse of drum & bass from the man who raped and killed it in 1998. (That’s a joke: GOLDIE didn’t kill drum & bass, but he did release a bloated double album called SaturnzReturn that featured an hour-long song called ‘Mother’, with full orchestral accompaniment. Do I need to explain why that was a bad idea?) The real surprise of the year was LADYTRON’s Softcore Jukebox comp – could these ladies (and gents) be the one group to survive the ongoing elektroclash implosion? With a record collection like this they deserve to be.
One of the year’s biggest stories has been the continued revivification of the GLOBAL UNDERGROUND brand. GU premiered in the late ‘90s just as the initial wave of commercial enthusiasm over “electronica” was waning, and introduced American audiences to the concept of the “superstar DJ.” Charismatically-challenged British DJs such as Paul Oakenfold, John Digweed and Sasha were made household names (in the electronic music industry, that is) overnight, and copies of GU’s trademark double-disc sets routinely shipped hundreds of thousands of copies domestically.
However, both the “superstar DJ” phenomenon and the epic trance sound soon faded from popularity and in the space of only three years GU had returned to the brink of irrelevance. While some credit must be given to DEEP DISH for having begun the process with their great 2001 volume, the superhero responsible for almost single-handedly reviving the oft-derided brand was none other than James Lavelle. His 2002 GU release (number 23, for those keeping score at home) was not only the single best GLOBAL UNDERGROUND ever, but also the single best mix CD of 2002. Lavelle, the founder of famed British hip-hop label Mo’Wax, had finally found a way to step out from longtime collaborator DJ Shadow's imposing - er – shadow, by producing one of the most eclectic and kinetic mixed selections in years.
GLOBAL UNDERGROUND continued their winning streak this year with a decidedly uncharacteristic mix from trance stalwart Nick Warren (featuring such unexpected artists as Boards of Canada) and another excellent set from Washington, DC-based duo DEEP DISH. Amazingly, GU seems to have managed the impossible: swinging from the ill-respected cheese-pop borderline of prefab dance music back into the heart of the literal global underground. Another strong year like 2003 and GU could erase a great deal of stored antipathy from the minds of many critics.
Two great film soundtracks – REQUIEM FOR A DREAM REMIXED and RISE: MUSIC FROM AND INSPIRED BY THE MOTION PICTURE. The former features remixes from that film’s score by notables such as Josh Wink, Ils, the Kronos Quartet and Jagz Kooner, while the latter is the soundtrack to an indie documentary on the rise and fall of the New Orleans rave scene featuring tracks by – oddly enough – Josh Wink and Ils, in addition to luminaries such as the Thievery Corporation and Leftfield.
PAUL OAKENFOLD released yet another two-CD mix album, entitled Great Wall (Reprise/Perfecto). Surprisingly, the first single, Oakenfold’s own Hypnotized, was actually pretty good. Unsurprisingly, however, putting a generic electro breakbeat under BJORK’s “Pagan Poetry” was a stunningly bad idea.
Best party mix of the year? DJ Andy Smith’s The Document II on Illicit Recordings. Starts with Kate Bush, ends with a ‘70s soul cover of JIMI HENDRIX’s “Fire” and in between you get Mr. Lif, Eric B & Rakim and James Brown. So damn funky it should be illegal.
If there was one compilation that made me want to shoehorn six slots in the top five, that compilation would be End 050: End Recordings 1995-2002. Released as an import commemorating seven years of the premiere British tech-house label, this was an indefatigably compelling document of some of the best house music produced the last decade. But there can be only five best compilations for the year, and - notwithstanding an intractable tie for first place - they are as follows:
5. APHEX TWIN – 26 Remixes For Cash – Warp
APHEX TWIN – Richard D. James – is one of the most important figures in the history of electronic music. Throw a dartboard at his catalog and you’re likely to hit something amazingly influential – his Classics compilation, either of his Selected Ambient Works sets, his early trendsetting work under the Polygon Window and AFX monikers or any his just plain freaky solo work from the late ‘90s.
His problem is that he seems to have just stopped caring. After an incredible run in the early to mid ‘90s, he seemed to run out of ideas, openly antagonizing his fanbase and releasing self-indulgent double albums like 2001’s Drukqs. There were rumors that Drukqs had been either a contract fulfilling rush job or a crass scraping of his hard drive’s bottom barrel – or both. Where, everyone seemed to ask, was the Richard D. James who actually enjoyed making music?
Well, that RDJ is still MIA, but this year we got a lovely reminder of just how good he used to be in the form of 26 Mixes For Cash. Just as the title implies, RDJ’s remixes are extremely mercenary in scope – you get the feeling that anyone with a wallet in the ‘90s could have hired RDJ to tweak his or her tracks. Everyone from Saint Etienne to Jesus Jones to Nine Inch Nails makes an appearance, and one wonders for the majority of the album whether or not RDJ ever even heard the originals.
It doesn’t matter. An APHEX TWIN remix doesn’t have to have any relation to the original artist. Is that indulgent? Selfish? Obtuse? Annoying? Ultimately, it would be a problem if the results weren’t so damned compelling. Even when he didn’t care, APHEX TWIN used to be able to slough off casually twisted brilliance in the space of an afternoon. Now that he really doesn’t care, it’s especially painful to behold.
Standout Tracks: Philip Glass & David Bowie – Heroes (Aphex Twin Remix); Aphex Twin – Windowlicker (Acid Edit)
4. Danny Tenaglia – Choice: A Collection of Classics - Ultra
As I said earlier, house music is the grandfather of all modern electronic genres. House is to electronic music as the blues are to rock and roll – absolutely essential to any nuanced comprehension of what the music actually is, where it has been and where its going.
Danny Tenaglia is arguably our greatest living house DJ. Of all the DJs to emerge out of the early haze of the post-disco era, Tenaglia comes the closest to filling the void left by legendary garage forefather Larry Levan’s premature death.
Over the course of these two discs, Tenaglia conducts a guided tour through his personal recollections of house history. Its not exhaustive and it makes no presumption towards being a complete course - but its no less compelling for its proudly subjective nature. Essential.
Standout Tracks: Blaze – Elevation; Cat Stevens – Was Dog A Donut? (Yeah, like you were expecting to see that one)
3. Various Artists – 2 CDs & MP3s – NOVAMUTE
The great thing about this compilation is not the music itself – which is great – but the format. Just as the title indicates, there are sixteen tracks spread across two CDs, in addition to twenty-eight tracks (including the sixteen CD tracks) included as MP3s. Furthermore, the liner notes actively encourage the reader to upload the MP3s onto their hard drive and to disseminate them freely across the Internet.
If it had been anyone but Novamute, someone would have probably said something. As it is, everyone who wasn’t already scared off by their strict adherence to the hardcore minimal techno ethos was undoubtedly nonplussed. Novamute began life as the techno-specific offshoot of the influential European label Mute (home to DEPECHE MODE and MOBY), dedicated specifically to the hardcore sounds which evolved out of early ‘90s New Beat and industrial music. They’ve hewn remarkably close to this template for the entirety of their existence.
Its interesting to note that while as recently as two years ago Novamute was proudly on the fringe of electronic music, the recent popularity of retro-80s electro sounds have rendered formerly abstract artists like S.I. Futures and T. Raumschmiere strangely contemporary.
A compelling alternative history to an already alternative medium.
Standout Tracks: Nitzer Ebb vs. Derrick May – Shame; Plastikman – Afrika (test kut)
2. Various Artists - !K7150 – Studio !K7
Is there a more eclectic label in all of music than Germany’s Studio !K7? I sincerely doubt it. Over the course of 150 releases (hence the title) and eight years, Studio !K7 has made a convincing case for variety as not merely the spice but the stuff of life itself, the grist without which there would be no mill at all.
Although probably most famous for the downtempo sounds of Kruder & Dorfmeister - alongside their assorted offshoot projects Tosca and the Peace Orchestra – they have also provided a home for house (Herbert, Swayzak), IDM (Edition Terranova, Funkstorung) and futuristic R&B (Specek, Ursula Rucker). This is in addition to even more eclectic artists such as drum & bass legend A GUY CALLED GERALD, trip-hop godfathers Smith & Mighty and abstract hip-hoppers Ghostcauldron – the list goes on.
Despite their trademark eclecticism, !K7 has succeeded in making their own distinctive and unmistakable mark on crowded music shelves worldwide. Their cosmopolitan and discretely expansive worldview contrasts favorably against almost every other label in the business. Cultured and urbane without becoming blandly cosmopolitan, vaguely European without the superciliousness - !K7 makes a strong case to be the first truly important music label of the twenty-first century.
Extra kudos for the bonus DVD filled to the brim with exclusive and unreleased !K7 videos. Unfortunately, the videos are almost universally uninteresting in the way that only pretentious low-budget music videos can be – but it’s the thought that counts.
Standout Tracks: Herbert feat. Dani Siciliano – Suddenly; Earl Zinger – Song 2wo
1. Tie – THE CHEMICAL BROTHERS – Singles 93-03
ASTRALWERKS UNDERWORLD – Anthology 1992-2002 – JBO/V2
If there was one single thing that told me that electronica was dead with a capitol “D” in the year 2003, it was the near simultaneous release of these two groundbreaking anthologies. How is it possible to continue propagating the ill-formed fiction that electronica was a limited genre whose time had come and gone, when two of the most creative and influential groups of the last decade had just dropped two unbelievably good “greatest hits” comps?
Producing a “best-of” or greatest hits album is one of the most difficult and thankless tasks in all of music. Many significant artists never quite manage it – there’s something about the shape and texture of a highlights disc that can spotlight a band’s weakest tendencies, drowning their best hooks in between all those other songs you half-remember. It’s additionally difficult to balance the frankly mercenary demands of the record companies who schedule these compilations with most artists’ honest desire to provide a worthwhile package for even their most diehard fans.
Frankly, listening to either of these compilations from beginning to end presents even the casual listener with an embarrassment of riches. Here’s electronic music’s promise and potential in a nutshell: a microcosm of sonic adventurousness and musical exploration that simply stands unparalleled in recent history.
More than anything else, groups Like the Chemical Brothers and Underworld have pointed by their example to a new way of making and understanding music. Since the dawn of electronic instrumentation, progressive advances have brought musicians closer and closer to an idealized realm of pure sound. Here’s a world where tones and melodies are finally stripped of the specificity of their mundane origins and cast alone on the shores of mind. There is nothing here but the synesthetic bliss of pure music.
Of course, their strengths can also become glaring weakness in the minds of the record buying public and the critical establishment. Neither UNDERWORLD or the CHEMICAL BROTHERS are Rock Stars. Sure, onstage either one can muster up enough pure destructive force to shame all but the hardiest rock combos, but offstage they look like anyone. They don’t dress flamboyantly. They don’t date supermodels. They don’t get into shouting matches with paparazzi or wear form-fitting zebra-striped unitards. It looks rather like they’ve all had the same pairs of sneakers on for a few months, not a few hours.
They look like the kind of folks you’d be happy to have as neighbors. Tom Rowlands and Ed Simon – THE CHEMICAL BROTHERS – are perfectly happy to talk about nothing but music – what they like and why they like it – for hours at end. They have an endearingly catholic collection, as evinced during a recent feature in Spin magazine wherein they betrayed a surprising affection for Alex Chilton’s BIG STAR-era songwriting and waxed poetic about the oddball mixing techniques used during the recording of BOB DYLAN’s Blonde on Blonde. They don’t really talk about their personal lives, save to speak of their long-term significant others in the most general and flattering terms.
Karl Hyde of UNDERWORLD is perhaps the most jocular of the bunch, but his favorite subjects aren’t third-world debt relief and supermodel grooming tips but the joys of fatherhood and his newfound sobriety. Rick Smith, UNDERWORLD’s other half, is perhaps the most cheerily bland human being in existence.
THE CHEMICAL BROTHERS collection is the more orthodox and accessible of the two. Its split down the middle, with a disc each of singles and of b-sides, unreleased and live tracks. The first disc shows the clear evolution of their style, from their early syntheses of MEAT BEAT MANIFESTO and PUBLIC ENEMY and on through their progression into something almost totally unclassifiable. Listening to their music is practically a crash course in late twentieth century music, revealing to the dedicated listener endless layers of sonic allegory and allusion.
For most groups, a B-sides disc is the essence of superfluity, but THE CHEMICAL BROTHERS’ b-sides reveal another essential facet of the band’s history. If every critic has played up the BEATLES’ influence on THE CHEMICAL BROTHERS as a singles band, the B-sides reveal their inner ROLLING STONES: stripped of pretension and dedicated solely to the proposition of kicking ass. The live tracks, additionally, reveal their more expansive and experimental sides. When THE CHEMICAL BROTHERS finally overcome their natural modesty and release their long-awaited live album, it promises to be one of the most illuminating experiences of their career. Not without reason are they one of the most enthusiastically bootlegged groups this side of PHISH.
The UNDERWORLD anthology presents a totally different set of challenges than the CHEMICAL BROTHERS’. For one thing, while THE CHEMICAL BROTHERS have long cultivated the art of the pop crossover, Underworld have adhered firmly to their original conception as a deep underground house band. It’s rare for an UNDERWORLD single to clock in at less than eight minutes, and I am referring to the radio edits.
The UNDERWORLD anthology is a smorgasbord of rare tracks for even the most dedicated fan. The large majority of their early singles were released as rare 12-inches, only a few of which were later made available on CD. For instance, the very first song on the collection, “Big Mouth,” was actually first released under the name LEMON INTERRUPT.
However, don’t confuse “rare” with “unessential.” UNDERWORLD have cultivated one of the most sophisticated sounds in modern music, betraying an almost preternatural feel for mood and creative repetition. Additionally, the presence of Hyde’s stream-of-consciousness vocals create a synthesis totally unlike anything else in electronic music, or in any other type of music. Its easy to understand in the comfort of your own home why Underworld routinely play for hundreds of thousands of fans and headline festivals across the globe. Even in America, where UNDERWORLD has never even come close to so much as a gold record, they still headline based solely on the strength of their musical virtuosity and unrivalled dynamism. No-one wants to be the act that has to follow them.
So, here’s to UNDERWORLD and THE CHEMICAL BROTHERS. Long my they wave. I’d like to see the either THE STROKES or THE WHITE STRIPES deliver such a magisterial collection in a decade’s time – but it’s not going to be that easy. UNDERWORLD and THE CHEMICAL BROTHERS were able to surpass and abandon the hype and unfulfilled commercial hope of their ill-fated and brief journeys inside the electronica bubble. It’s nowhere near as easy as they make it look.
Standout Tracks: THE CHEMICAL BROTHERS – Star Guitar; Elektrobank (Live)
UNDERWORLD – Dirty Epic; Moaner
SINGLES
Everybody pop open your browser and warm up your copies of Napster Kazaa Morpheus WinMX iTunes Napster 2.0!
10. T. Raumschmiere – The Game Is Not Over (feat. Miss
Kittin) – Novamute
Just when you thought Miss Kittin had decided to
put the whole “talking like a sexy robot and wearing a vinyl fetish nurse costume” behind her and focus on her DJ’ing, she surprises you.
9. Agent K – Rideaway Getaway – Giant Step
House joint of the year? Perhaps. And if you can’t decided whether to play the DJ Spinna remix or the Blaze remix, jut play them both.
8. Plump DJs – The Gate – Finger Lickin’
Was this even a single? Does it matter? Best song off the best breaks album of the year.
7. Voodoo Child – Light In Your Eyes/ Electronics – V2
It’s Moby. Doing dance music again. Its like the last decade didn’t happen and he’s just a weird little balding dude playing techno records again.
6. Ils – No Soul – Myutopia
In the immortal words of Lucacris: Hard to the core, core to the rotten.
5. Anything with a Gabriel & Dresden Remix
I don’t know what happened, but whatever these guys are smoking I’ll have some too.
4. Missy Elliot – Pass That Dutch – Goldmind/Elektra
The Martians are coming, and they want your ass.
3. The Chemical Brothers with The Flaming Lips – The Golden Path – Astralwerks
The matchup no one predicted yet everyone was secretly longing for – like chocolate and pickles, only a lot better.
2. Basement Jaxx – Good Luck feat. Lisa Kekaula – Astralwerks
No, this wasn’t a single either – but if it doesn’t just devour the universe entire when it is finally released as a single, I’ll eat my hat.
Junior Senior - Move Your Feet – Atlantic
Will I be able to respect myself in the morning? Obviously not – why do you ask?
DISAPPOINTMENTS
Would it be right to call FISCHERSPOONER a disappointment? I don’t think so – it probably crosses over into the realm of farce.
Quick recap for those who came in late: FISCHERSPOONER came from the recent New York disco rock scene. They were signed to a £2,000,000 recording contract in the UK on the strength of one song – a pretty good song, but let me reiterate: one song. “Emerge” was actually a pretty decent song at that, but the problems began when they decided to forego writing more songs in favor of spending the entire advance on their all-singing, all-dancing gonzo performance art gay cabaret stage show.
Their UK label, Ministry of Sound, closed doors soon after. Is there a direct correlation to spending 2 million pounds on a novelty act and going out of business soon after? You decide. Their long-delayed album, the delusionally titled #1, was finally released to collective shrugs. Didn’t change the world.
Here’s some advice for would-be dance acts: it took the PET SHOP BOYS almost a decade to get the guts to stage an all-singing all-dancing gonzo performance art gay cabaret stage show. They were able to pull it off only because they had spent that previous decade writing some of the most heartbreakingly piquant pop songs in history. Back to the drawing board, Messrs. Fischer & Spooner.
I was tempted to include the infamously delayed new PRODIGY album, apocryphally entitled Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned on this list – but honestly, its been almost seven years since Fat Of The Land was released and its getting harder and harder to care. Shit or get off the pot, Liam. Just remember the Stereo MCs’ example: it took them nine years to craft a follow-up to Supernatural. When they finally did release Deep Down & Dirty in 2001, it was actually a pretty good album, but no one even remembered who they were.
It’s a sad fact but even a good year like 2003 has some real misfires, mostly from people who should really know better. Case in point:
5. Plastikman – Closer – Novamute
If you’d have told me at the beginning of the year
that the new Plastikman would be a disappointment, I’d have laughed in your face. But perhaps he should have just left well enough alone.
Plastikman is the alias of Mr. Richie Hawtin, legendary godfather of minimalist techno. His original albums under the Plastikman moniker – a series that culminated in 1998’s Consumed – are still the classics against which all other minimalist techno records are measured against. He retired from the Plastikman name to release a highly successful series of increasingly abstract mix albums – one a year for the past three years.
Unfortunately, when you’ve made your name with the most stark and minimal of music, the only place for you to go is up. Similarly unfortunate, Closer seems only half-baked, with a few classic tracks surrounded by a lot of proggy noodling and the use of some truly uninspired vocal elements. Perhaps he was just getting the kinks out of his system after a five year hiatus, and next year will hold the release of another, much better Plastikman album – I dearly hope so. Because this is just nowhere near a classic, and anything less than that does not deserve to be called a Plastikman album.
4. Hybrid – Morning Sci-Fi – Distinctive
Wherein the rising stars of nu-skool breaks decide that what their music really needed was more of a late-era FILTER sound.
3. Audio Bullys – Ego War – Astralwerks
The British music press would have had you believe that
these guys were the next big thing in dance music. Their American debut was preceded by copious critical raves, proclaiming this duo to be the heirs to the thrones of both the BASEMENT JAXX and THE STREETS . . .
Turns out that it’s just not very good. At all. A bunch of really loud cockney ranting masquerading as rapping. Lots and lots of yelling. And, oh, almost forgot to tell you - Altern8 called from 1992, they want their beats back.
2. BT – Emotional Technology – Nettwerk America
Every time BT comes out with a new album, someone says
Its going to be the biggest crossover hit in the history of electronic music. And invariably it just sort of disappears.
See, the problem is not that BT is untalented – far from it. He’s an extremely talented producer, with a distinctive and likeable style and the kind of attention to detail that would shame many of his peers. The problem is that he has absolutely no ideas of his own. I mean, seriously, sit down and listen to this album all the way through and it just slides off your mind. There’s nothing there but a bunch of beautifully produced squiggles.
When he’s working with other people, he’s great. 2001’s Movement in Still Life worked for one reason and one reason only: SOUL COUGHING’s M. Doughty. His one track with BT, “Never Gonna Come Back Down,” was enough to convince the world he was cool. His collaborations with SARAH MCLACHLAN, TORI AMOS and even N*SYNC were all very good, but on his own and with no-one to tell him what to do he falls into the most gaping idea void I’ve ever seen. He’s the Lionel Richie of electronic music. Not even the presence of former REPLACEMENTS and current GUNS & ROSES bass player Tommy Stinson could save this one.
1. Massive Attack – 100th Window – Virgin
Used to be, Massive Attack could do no wrong.
Their first three albums - Blue Lines, Protection and Mezzanine – were hailed as instant classics and helped to define the entire sound of electronic music for the last decade. They never produced a track that was anything less than a stone classic (well, their cover of THE DOORS’ “Light My Fire” sucked but that was just tempting fate).
Then it took five years to record a follow up to 1998’s Mezzanine. They lost members, listened to too much world music and smoked too much pot. The result is about as bad an album as you could possibly ever stand to hear from one of your favorite artists.
The brooding atmospherics that had marked their early albums just took over the whole show, burying any vestiges of melody and rhythm under an all-consuming fog. Even Sinead O’Connor’s usually sublime vocal talents were no match for the unbearable apathy that seemed to have consumed every fiber of interest on this album.
Lets hope this was just a misfire and not a taste of things to come, because this album just wasn’t any good at all.
RECORDINGS
What happened to Drum & Bass? There were some really good D&B records in 2002, and pretty much nothing to speak of in 2003. Was it something I said?
The two best electronic jazz albums of 2003 were AGENT K’s Feed The Cat on Giant Step and PRAFUL’s One Day Deep on Rendezvous. Praful appears to play both the tenor soprano saxophones, in addition to odd stuff like the Indian Bamboo Flute. I’m guessing AGENT K plays the organ. It doesn’t say exactly what he plays but there’s a large picture of him playing the piano in the liner notes. Of course, there’s a much larger picture of him exhaling thick marijuana smoke.
It was a very good year for abstract hip-hop, with interesting debuts from new from new artists DEADLY AVENGER and GHOST CAULDRON. DEADLY AVENGER’s Deep Red album (released on the newly-invigorated Shadow label) was designed as a tribute to classic ‘70s movie soundtracks. It reeks of slicked-out funk and gets bonus points for naming a track “In Search Of The Pimpmobile.” GHOST CAULDRON’s Invent Modest Fires (on Studio !K7) is the more eclectic of the two, cannily splicing indie hip-hop such as the Anti-Pop Consortium with European techno and folk. Both are worth checking out if you think DJ SHADOW was the “Bee’s Knees.”
Meanwhile, PEPE DELUXE surprised just about everyone by delivering the album of their career, Beatitude (Emperor Norton). I would be lying if I said I had been expecting anything anywhere near this good from these guys. Hell, I could barely remember who Pepe Deluxe were.
URSULA RUCKER delivered the spoken-word album of the year with her follow up to 2001’s Supa Sister, entitled Silver or Lead. It’s the support crew that makes this disc shine – THE ROOTS, JAZZANOVA, KING BRITT and LIL LOUIE VEGA make this album a feast for your ears as well as for your sensitive new-school hip-hop soul.
THE CINEMATIC ORCHESTRA gets their obscurity points for recording a new soundtrack to the 1929 Soviet documentary MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA on Ninja Tune. Speaking of Ninja Tune, KID KOALA’s Some of My Best Friends are DJs album made waves in both the electronic music and comic book communities for including a 52-page self-penned comic book with his album. It’s supposed to be neato-keen but I’m not going to say one way or another because I still haven’t heard the damn thing.
Weirdest album of the year? Probably a tie between FANNY PACK’s So Stylistic (Tommy Boy) and TIKI OBMAR’s High School Confidential (Merck). The latter is weird in a good way, featuring long post-rock/IDM instrumentals about, um, high school. The former is weird in a bad way, because I can’t imagine anyone besides forty-something sex offenders buying it for any reason whatsoever. This was the album with that song about Camel Toe you heard on the radio. Yes, that song.
So, ROB DOUGAN shows up and puts out a big double album, Furious Angels (Reprise), to coincide with his contributions to the MATRIX RELOADED soundtrack. It was actually a pretty good album with some interesting - if not terribly original – moody trip-hop instrumentals. But I have to wonder why it said absolutely nowhere in the promotions material for this album that ROB DOUGAN was really semi-notable remixer Rob D? I think most people just didn’t know who he was. And secondly – the movie just wasn’t very good and considering how good the music could have been, this is the best it got? They could have conceivably gotten anyone to create original music for the film – they picked Rob D and a guy from JUNO REACTOR (not even the whole group?). Note to Mr. Dougan – don’t sing.
Novamute struck gold twice this year with new albums from S.I. BEGGS (formerly S.I. FUTURES) and T. RAUMSCHMIERE. The former, Directors Cut, was strangely violent; while the latter, Radio Blackout, was just violently strange.
Smooth, jazzy house maestro Chris Brann decided to release two albums in very short order - one as P’TAAH (called Staring At The Sun and released on Ubiquity) and another as the Ananda Project (called Morning Light and released on Nite Grooves). For some strange reason both albums sounded very similar . . . but they were both very good.
PAUL VAN DYK surprised a lot of people with a very good solo album, Reflections (Mute). The cheesy trance elements have been toned down in favor of a more measured and progressive approach. There’s actually a couple of funky breakbeat tracks on here as well, which you must believe made our heads explode when we heard them.
Best Om release of the year? RITHMA’s Music Fiction. The front sticker calls it “a dance debut magically translating what jazz, blues and rock have meant to DJ culture.” Sounds pretentious but that’s actually a pretty spot-on description. Best Six Degrees release? Without a doubt, CIBELLE’s self-titled debut. This young Brazilian singer songwriter sounds just like NELLY FURTADO – only much, much better. This might just be that one album people are still talking about in ten years - or not, I’m notoriously bad at these things.
Why does Warp Records have to be so good, and yet so stingy with their promos? If you like their type of intellectually sober yet strangely goofy IDM it was a banner year. There were high-quality releases from PLAID (Spokes), AUTECHRE (Draft 7.30) and new label MVP CHRIS CLARKE (with his insanely cool Ceramics is the Bomb EP and a follow-up LP, Empty the Bones Of You which I haven’t heard yet). Sole Warp female MIRA CALIX, LUKE VIBERT and BEANS also dropped mad science this year (in the forms of Skimsitta, Yoseph and Tomorrow Right Now, respectively), but I haven’t heard them either so I can’t comment. Based on these releases, the APHEX TWIN anthology that I’ve already discussed and a few other albums yet to be seen I’d almost say Warp was the Label of the Year – almost, but not quite.
LABEL OF THE YEAR
The Label of the Year title would instead have to go to that Little Record Label That Could – Ubiquity. Although they haven’t released anywhere near as many albums as other worthy candidates such as the aforementioned Warp, Astralwerks, Novamute or Studio !K7, they have stayed true to their belief that quality easily bests quantity – and pound for pound they had probably the strongest release schedule of any label currently operating. Combined with an aggressive new promotional philosophy that helped in getting their great music in front of more people than ever, they were the label to beat in 2003.
Don’t believe me? I recommend you go pick up the So Far, So Good anthology, celebrating 10 years of KIRK DEGIORGIO’s visionary techno project As One. Or, if you are more interested in smooth house, pick up the aforementioned P’TAAH record or perhaps STATELESS’ Art of No State LP. JOHN ARNOLD’s Neighborhood Science was another winner, definitely a must if you are fond of the European broken beat tech-house sound used by artists such as Herbert and Recloose. Ubiquity also released probably my favorite Euro-Brazilian Samba-house LP of the year with CUICA’s City To City (and yes, before you ask, there was more than one Euro-Brazilian Samba-house LP released in 2003).
Before you ask, I haven’t heard everything that was released this year, so in the spirit of fairness here are the Top Six Significant Releases of 2003 I Have Not Heard Yet:
1. Herbert – Goodbye Swingtime – Accidental
2. Kid Koala – Some Of My Best Friends Are DJ’s – Ninja Tune
3. Autechre – Draft 7.30 –Warp
4. Lamb – What Sound – Koch
5. Manitoba – Up In Flames – Domino
6. Kid 606 - Kill Sound Before Sound Kills You – Ipecac
Don’t take the fact that I haven’t heard them as any
sort of indictment – I’m sure they’re all very good.
But, as they say, there can be only one truly great album of the year. (Or rather, ten, and here they are):
10. Dave Gahan – Paper Monsters – Mute/Reprise
OK, say you’re the lead singer of one of the most influential, commercially successful and critically acclaimed rock/dance crossover groups of all time. You’ve been a Rock Star for over twenty years and you’ve got the scars to prove it – be it the nearly fatal drug overdoses or the many very public intra-band squabbles. You’ve made a living singing other people’s songs – and not just anyone’s songs, but another guy in the band. You’ve never written a single note yourself or recorded a solo project of any kind.
That was the strange position DEPECHE MODE’s Dave Gahan found himself in earlier this year when he released Paper Monsters. Exactly twenty-two years after the release of Speak & Spell, Gahan found himself alone, on self-imposed isolation from his DM bandmates and needing very badly to prove – to himself, if no-one else – that he could sing without having Martin Gore put words in his mouth.
Well, he succeeded, and probably with greater alacrity than even he was expecting. He’s still a novice songwriter, of that there is no doubt, but he’s got two clear and immense advantages over most novice songwriters. First, he’s been around the block a few times and actually has something to write about. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, he’s spent the last two decades watching one of the very best pop songwriters in the world exercise his craft. To be frank, Gore’s songwriting voice is an obvious influence over Gahan’s still-tentative words, but there’s already an easy honesty and candor in Gahan’s lyrics that Gore has rarely approached.
Is it a perfect album? By no means – the production is sometimes bland and Gahan is not yet the master wordsmith that it took Gore perhaps a decade to fully become. But it’s an exciting album. Musicians staring 50 in the face shouldn’t be producing such exciting and candid records, and they shouldn’t’ be singing with an authority and vigor that would shame most artists half their age.
It was a good year to be a DEPECHE MODE fan. Gahan’s solo album was released almost simultaneously with Martin Gore’s new solo project, a covers album entitled Counterfeit 2 (Mute/Reprise). This featured Gore covering the works of similarly edgy artists such as NICK CAVE, THE VELVET UNDERGROUND and IGGY POP - in addition to showcasing his beautifully fragile and almost criminally underutilized falsetto. Even perennial odd-man-out Andy Fletcher released a solo project – sort-of – by executive-producing CLIENT, a bouncy avent-pop act also released on Mute.
Perhaps this has been for the best. While conventional wisdom has it that solo projects invariably detract from a band’s cohesion and focus, perhaps these albums foreshadow DEPECHE MODE’s reinvigoration. If they could settle their differences it wouldn’t be hard – just let Dave write more, let Martin sing more and give Andy more creative sway within the group. It wouldn’t be hard to make up for 2001’s terribly unexciting Exciter. Nothing would make me happier than a return to form from one of electronic music’s greatest bands – if NEW ORDER were able to accomplish the impossible, why can’t they?
Standout tracks: I Need You, Goodbye
9. Prefuse 73 – One Word Extinguisher; Extinguished:
Outtakes – Warp
I mentioned earlier that this had been a banner year for abstract hip-hop – and these two discs are the number one reason for that. This is hip-hop for math nerds.
Prefuse 73 – otherwise known as Scott Herren – is an Atlanta-based studio wiz who makes the kind of hip-hop you’d hear from Def Jux if Def Jux were run by angry German people. The beat is spliced, diced, boiled and fricasseed, and that’s not half as bad as what happens to the vocals. One Word Extinguisher is the more “conventional” hip-hop album, in that it has raps and a few more accessable beats. However, the Extinguished: Outtakes mini-album is actually the more interesting of the two. Its composed of all the fun stuff that didn’t “fit” on the first album, jam-packed into 23 short tracks (it’s only 39 minutes long, so the average song length is about what you’d find on a RAMONES album). It’s an exhilarating listen – a lot more fun than most party hip-hop on the radio these days.
Standout Tracks: Extinguisher – Detchibe; Extinguished - Drum Machine Cello Headwrap
8 ½ . Plump DJs – Eargasm – Finger Lickin’
(Yeah, this is hardcore cheating. The fact is I was halfway through writing the list when I realized I had left out a very important disc that had been in my initial “in my head” list. But, I had already written most of the reviews and I felt like a heel for taking anything out that had already made it “in”. So, the top ten is actually a top eleven – like you need more good music to look out for, I know. What are a few more pages between friends at this point?)
So one of the problems with dance music is that you’re not allowed to have fun anymore. Apparently a bunch of perpetually dour British people decided that you’re not supposed to have fun when you go to the clubs, so FATBOY SLIM was declared Public Enemy Number One. DJs were encouraged to drop the use of old hip-hop samples, fun snippets of movie dialogue and bouncy basslines, in addition to anything else that might cause the audience to actually enjoy themselves.
Nowhere was this more evident than the breaks genre. The “big beat” sound of the late ‘90s was supplanted by a resurgence in Florida-style “new school” breaks. New school breaks were to big beat what progressive house had been to trance – everything stripped away except the barest rhythmical elements. This is progress, I guess. Anyway, there were some interesting records released under the guise of progressive breaks, but all told there were a lot of boring, self-important records released as well (Hybrid’s debut album, Morning Sci-Fi is probably the best example of this dichotomy – a good album but not very sonically diverse or musically adventurous).
The good folks at the Finger Lickin’ label have been fighting the good fight against the tide of progressive breaks for many lonely years now. This is the first significant LP from the stable, and it’s very good. Its still a lot more subtle than I would like, but there’s evidence that the dance community is starting to realize than “fun” isn’t a four letter word.
Suggested Tracks: The Gate, Tilt
8. Matmos – The Civil War – Matador/
Fourtet – Pause – Domino
It seems a little bit strange that two such dissimilar artists would come out with such amazingly similar – not to mention similarly amazing – albums in the space of a single year. Albums like these seem to have been born out of the same impulses and inspirations, the same deeply held convictions and beliefs.
Matmos came to fame a few years back after Bjork basically adopted them off the street and invited her to produce her excellent 2001 album Vespertine. Their previous work had been interesting but strangely ascetic - their most recent album, 2001’s A Chance To Cut Is A Chance To Cure, was composed entirely of audio samples captured during plastic surgeries. An odd and alienating experience, it stretched the boundaries of the nascent glitch-hop genre but confounded most casual listeners.
Fast-forward two years. They seem to have learned a lot from their apprenticeship with Bjork – not least of which the value of organic analog sounds and cohesive songwriting. The Civil War is an almost impossibly confident leap from their early work, abandoning the novelty of their earlier material in favor of longer, more meditative pieces. This album draws extensively from authentic period sounds of both the English and American Civil Wars, as well as the more intimate emotions of interpersonal strife. (Drew Daniel and Marti Schmidt, the two halves of Matmos, are also lovers, which lends their music an additional intimacy.)
FOURTET’s Pause is similarly rustic in its scope. Kieran Hebden, the lone mind behind Fourtet, has produced an album that sounds strangely hand crafted, imbued with the green vibrancy of life. FOURTET was one of the most important names behind the recent popularity of the “folktronica” genre, leading a miniature revolution in electronic sounds that has been embraced by artists as diverse as Lemon Jelly, King of Woolworths, Capitol K and almost everyone on the nascent Mush label.
Both albums have their finger on the pulse of an extremely different kind of organism. They present separate but similar cross-sections of a compelling alternate electronic history, a history where melody and heartbreak, fragility and compassion have supplanted totally the pounding thump of the dancefloor and the alien sounds of the laptop.
Standout Tracks: Matmos – Reconstruction; Fourtet - She Moves She
7. Zero dB – Reconstructed – Ubiquity
Another reason why Ubiquity is our Label of the Year is
that Ubiquity finally put out an album I’d been dying to hear for years.
Zero dB are one of the most unique and interesting production teams in music today. They have the kind of distinctive sound some outfits would kill to have: instantly recognizable, effortlessly funky. Pulling equally from Brazilian tango, hard-bop jazz and German hard techno, they are quite simply the best remixers working today.
This is technically a compilation of their remixes but I put it on the LP list and not the compilation list for a very simple reason: if you hadn’t seen the sleeve you would have no way of knowing these were anything but original tracks - let alone remixes for artists as diverse as Sun Ra, the Ranier Truby Trio and Suba. The eclecticism that marks APHEX TWIN’s 26 Mixes For Cash as very obviously a catch-all compilation is nowhere to be found here – this is as clear and defined an artistic statement as you are likely to find this year.
Big Shot Magazine likened them to “future jazz science fiction” – and that’s about as apt a description as any I’ve yet heard. When Zero dB do finally get around to making their debut “artist” album composed of new material, it has the potential to be big. I mean Dig Your Own Hole, Music For The Jilted Generation, Blue Lines big. That’s not a compliment I throw around lightly – I’ve seen too many promising acts come and go with the wind - but these guys could be huge.
Suggested Tracks: Sun Ra – Satellites Are Spinning; Truby Trio – Galicia
6. LFO – Sheathe – Warp
First off, this is not the LFO you think you know. Yes, there was a boy band called LFO who came and went around the turn of the millenium. They had a couple fairly big songs, notably a tune called “Summer Girls,” and they disappeared without a trace when the boy band market imploded.
This is not they.
LFO stands for LOW FREQUENCY OSCILLATIONS. They released their first album Frequencies in 1991, and in a strange twist of fate they were signed to both the legendary hip-hop label Tommy Boy and the legendary techno/IDM label Warp. Frequencies is widely regarded as one of the most violently bass driven albums of all time. You know those BASS MECHANIX CDs you see in the Wal-Mart, the CDs they make specifically for people with tricked-out car stereos to test their subwoofers? Frequencies has the kind of bass that could eat that bass for dinner. LFO has been known to blow a speaker cone or two in their day.
This is LFO’s first album since 1996 and they haven’t aged a day. If anything, their sound has grown even harder, even less compromising than it was in 1991. They’ve ingested a great deal of the weirdness of fellow Warp artists like AUTECHRE and SQUAREPUSHER – and they’ve got the strength to make abstract techno sound like Armageddon. This ain’t no church picnic. This is a punch in the balls.
Sheathe somehow manages to be funky, hardcore, abstract and beautiful, sometimes all at the same time. A sheathe is something you hold your sword in, and Sheathe is the sound of that sword splitting your eardrum in two. It’s the kind of album that couldn’t exist anywhere but in the realm of pure electronic music. It’s beautiful.
And the best part is – somewhere, some prepubescent girl accidentally bought this album because they thought it was the other LFO. Muhuhahahahaha.
Standout Tracks: Mokeylips, Freak
5. Richard X – Richard X Presents His X-Factor Vol. 1 – Astralwerks
This was the most unexpectedly cool album of the year. One of the good things about working in radio is that you get exposed to things that you wouldn’t otherwise have heard. Now, before I put this in the player I knew nothing about what it was going to sound like. I believe in retrospect that I had read a few reviews and articles regarding RICHARD X but in all honesty I read so much crap about so many different people every week it all starts to blur. There have been more than a few Astralwerks debuts that have left me cold, and this one was greeted with no less skepticism than the others were.
Imagine my absolute surprise and delight to discover the best debut album of the year.
Electronic music is such a swiftly evolving beast that entire new genres and movements are born and die in the time it takes you to read this sentence. One of the more interesting and fun phenomena of the past year has been the proliferation of “mash-up” records. Whereas it used to be the case that anyone who wanted to create a white label (limited pressing) 12” had to have access to a recording studio, these days computer technology enables anyone to produce professional quality bootleg recordings in their own home. It reached a point where people thought it might be fun to play mix & match with their favorite records. This led to the proliferation of the kinds of fun and highly illegal white labels that used to be the sole province of rich and resourceful super DJ’s who could afford to press up their own gag reels.
So – to take a famous example – lets say you take the a capella of a famous, instantly recognizable hit such as Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” and put it over a totally unexpected musical bed – such as KRAFTWERK’s “Numbers.” The result, “I Wanna Dance With Numbers,” is an instant hit because the crowds respond favorably every time they hear something familiar being tweaked. They scream and scream because they know the DJ is putting in something fun and unique that seems just mildly naughty at the same time.
RICHARD X was one of the first of these so-called mash-up artists, and he was the very first to find mainstream success. A British pop group called the SUGABABES heard a version of their single “Freak Like Me” being crossed with the instrumental bed of Gary Numan’s famous “Are Friends Electric?” They liked the bootleg version so much they succeeded in getting Numan’s clearance and released the new version as a legitimate single – which far eclipsed the first version in terms of popularity.
RICHARD X was an overnight sensation. However, the question remained: could a phenomenon that had evolved as –lets be frank - a gag survive and support the full-length album treatment? This was not just mere sampling – this was more like the wholesale transplantation that PUFF DADDY had done in his famous tribute to the NOTORIOUS B.I.G., “I’ll Be Missing you,” which had been built atop the back of THE POLICE’s “Every Breath You Take.” Critics and musicologists had pilloried Puffy back then – how was this phenomenon ultimately any different?
Ultimately? It’s not.
If sampling was modernism, then this style of cut &
paste musicianship is postmodernism. Instead of sampling – where you take bits and pieces from this and that with the intention of mutating them into an altogether new and different creation – this is wholesale thievery, where extremely recognizable bits and pieces are glued together to create a new creation that is exactly the sum of its parts. The listeners’ familiarity is a crucial component behind the success of the song – that mini-epiphany when you realize just what that guitar loop is you’ve been grooving too for the past four minutes is the hook.
The thing that separates RICHARD X from Puff Daddy is the fact that while RICHARD X is still a thief, he is a respectful thief and, at times, a sublimely inspired thief. Take the aforementioned “Freak Like Me.” By putting the Numan bed under their vocals, he creates the type of sexy conflict that the original was almost wholly lacking. By putting two unlike things together, he succeeds in creating a successfully rich dichotomy. It’s calculated and it’s canny, but it works and it works well.
The most successful track on the album is ‘Into U’, a sloping, lush love song built atop the hook from MAZZY STARS’ “Fade Into You.” He places a confidently laconic dirty south hip-hop shuffle underneath and sets Jarvis Cocker of PULP on top like a Maraschino cherry. It shouldn’t work – it sounds like a mess on paper – but it’s a glorious moment, full to the brimming with that strange magic of truly transcendent pop music.
Can he do it again, or is this a trick that only works once? I don’t know. But that fact that it worked once is an amazing feat in and of itself.
Standout Tracks: Richard X vs. Sugababes - Freak Like Me (We Don’t Give A Damn Mix); Into U (featuring Jarvis Cocker of Pulp)
4. Pole – Pole – Mute
For many years, Pole was about as minimal as you could
get without turning the stereo off and listening to silence. German producer Stefan Betke filled POLE’s albums with almost nothing but record hiss and analog pops, with occasional sections of ghostly piano wafting through the ether.
After producing three successful albums in this vein, Betke realized that the only was to avoid becoming a parody of himself was to advance upward. This is very similar to the quandary faced by Richie Hawtin during the creation of this year’s Plastikman album, Closer – only, instead of allowing the addition of vocals and melodic elements to dilute the thrust of his music, Pole manages to not only adapt but thrive.
Whereas previous Pole albums dealt in dark primary colors like deep violets and rich blackened crimsons, this album could almost be said to utilize a pastel palette. By allowing more light and energy to fill his once-stiflingly-hot compositions, he opens his sound up to infinitely pleasing variation. The guest artists, notably Ohio-based rapper Fat Jon The Ample Soul Physician and German upright bassist August Engkilde, provide the perfect foils for Betke’s newfound jocularity.
Those wishing to experience the full range of Pole’s new sound are also encouraged to pick up the two EP’s released before the self-titled POLE album – 45/45 and 90/90. Featuring unadorned versions of tracks that would appear on POLE with vocal accompaniment, they provide interesting comparison and stand up legitimately alone.
Standout Tracks: Arena (feat Fat Jon); Back Home
3. Outkast – Speakerboxxx/ The Love Below – Arista
OK, everyone and their mother has already waxed
poetical – and at length – about how great this album is. At the risk of boring you or sending your eyes rolling back up into your head, I will merely ad to the general chorus by saying, yes, this is a damn good album.
OUTKAST have become quite possibly the most important pop band in America, perhaps even the world. There’s nothing truly new on this album, but like the very best rock and hip-hop and electronic music, it’s the way its put together that makes it move so beautifully. There are sounds and suggestions on this album I would never in a million years would have anticipated hearing on a multi-Platinum American hip-hop album. (Well, almost never – I’ve been a fan of OUTKAST since their absolutely brilliant 1998 album Aquemini. I knew that if anyone in hip-hop was going to bust out and do something truly mind-bending, it was going to be them – but that still doesn’t mean I was expecting it.)
After a disappointing year in general for world pop
music, OUTKAST have succeeded in taking the lead from RADIOHEAD in the race for the official title of Most Adventurous Band Alive. No one else is doing quite what OUTKAST are doing and doing it quite so well: taking influences from everywhere around them in the musical universe and synthesizing them into a totally unique hybrid. After years of forced separation, the realms of hip-hop and electronic music are getting back together. Albums like this remind astute listeners that the kind of intellectual and spiritual rigor at the heart of the very best independent music is not quite dead yet in the mainstream arena.
Standout Tracks: Ghetto Musick (Speakerboxxx); My Favorite Things (The Love Below)
2. Basement Jaxx – Kish Kash – Astralwerks
In a perfect world, the BASEMENT JAXX would be the best
selling pop group in the world. They’ve got this knack – honed to perfection on 2001’s Rooty – for writing the most perfectly delectable songs you’ve ever heard. They’re strangely catchy, superficially breezy but containing hidden depths. Like the very best pop songs throughout history, singles like “Romeo,” “Where’s Your Head At” and “Do Your Thing” succeeded in spelunking their way into the hearts and minds of everyone who heard them. You just couldn’t get them out of your head.
Kish Kash is the sound of a group in full control of their faculties and talents. They almost seem arrogant – any group with the balls to begin their album with a single like “Good Luck” is obviously too talented for their own good. “Good Luck” is the kind of song that some groups go entire careers without realizing – a whooshing roller-coaster of propulsive energy and genuine soul careening atop a reckless rock beat and it’s almost too good to be believed. Its over before you know it and the album is off on to another track, another priceless gem.
If there’s anything wrong with this album, it’s that there’s just too much of it. On more than a few songs the JAXX build the tracks up and beyond the point of sonic cohesion, filling every possible nook and cranny with the type of maddeningly precise detail that drives engineers insane. There’s bells, whistles, horns and handclaps – shuddering synth lines and stuttering vocals. Its almost too much – the album could have conceivably been just a little bit better if they’d been able to back down and let the songs breath more, allowed the melodies more space. One hears perhaps a conscious rejection of the candy-apple shine that made 2001’s Rooty such a confection - an embrace of the rougher, more cluttered sound as a futile appeal to the underground dance culture from which their talent has placed them forever apart.
It is hopeless. The Basement Jaxx are quite possibly the best pop group alive at this moment. If Kish Kash is anything less than perfect it’s no great shame – they tried their best, and it just so happens that their best is better than just about anyone else.
Standout Tracks: Good Luck (feat. Lisa Kekaula); Cish Cash (feat. Siouxsie Sioux)
1. Groove Armada – Lovebox – Jive Electro
Well now, what do we have here? I’ll bet even diehard
electronic music aficionados might have forgotten this album was even released. It was dropped way back in January to little or no fanfare – it was the very last album released on the Jive Electro imprint before that imprint was ignominiously folded.
That’s too bad for a number of reasons. Jive Electro was a pretty decent label, providing a home for some cool bands like HARDKNOX, the DETROIT GRAND PUBAHS and THE NEW DEAL. Unfortunately, I guess it just didn’t sell enough albums to continue existing in the shadow of one of the most successful pop labels in modern music. Another one bites the dust.
But also – this is the best album that GROOVE ARMADA have ever recorded. By a wide margin. This is a capable, competent and compelling album the likes of which some groups would kill to have in their CV . . . and it was popped out in the dead of winter in the middle of the notoriously cranky post Christmas season. It was absorbed with less than a ripple.
GROOVE ARMADA – otherwise known as Tom Findlay and Andy Cato - have been some of the most consistent also-rans in electronic music since they first burst on the scene in the late ‘90s. Their major label debut, 2000’s Vertigo, was notable largely for the fact that FATBOY SLIM’s remix of “I See You Baby” was a much better track than the original song itself. Their follow-up, 2001’s Goodbye Country, Hello Nightclub, was similarly restrained. It was becoming obvious to anyone paying attention that GA were another in a long line of groups with more taste and restraint than inspiration. They obviously have an exceptional record collection but had a marked inability to craft anything that didn’t reek of quiet diffidence.
Certainly, both Vertigo and GC,HN were good albums, but a year ago I would have deemed Findlay and Cato too nice to ever create a truly great album. They had too much respect for music and sound, too much wonky appreciation for the analog crackle of an everlasting bongo solo and not enough willingness to simply cut loose and wallow in the kind of fun that most truly great musicians revel in. There was no spontaneity, no overriding energy compelling their music forward other than their overriding good taste.
Which is why Lovebox was such a total surprise. From the very first moment, this album sounds like a group coming into their own for the very first time. It’s eclectic and unexpected, but also strangely modest. There are only eleven tracks on this album. That may seem like an unimportant factoid, but consider how many hip-hop and rock albums you’ve heard that have outstayed their welcome by more than a few filler tracks. Every track on Lovebox is distinctive, hummable and relatively (by the standards of some dance artists) brief – they display a dazzling variety of styles but don’t leave any of them on the shelf for long enough for you to tire of them. They are careful to juggle slower songs - such as the collaborations with NENEH CHERRY and RICHIE HAVEN– in between the more uptempo numbers. If ever there was a CD designed to combat the urge to fast-forward, it’s this one.
By comparison, even the Basement JAXX’s excellent Kish Kash and RICHARD X’s debut had boring stretches – to say nothing of OUTKAST’s occasionally indulgent double album. To say that an album actually leaves the listener wanting more is the highest possible compliment. Most artists take full advantage of the compact disc’s 80-minute running time, and it’s a rare artists who can actually reign in their natural impulses in order to realize that less might actually be more.
But all this would be worthless if the songs themselves weren’t actually any good. The album starts strong with “Purple Haze” – which, it should be noted, is not a cover of the Hendrix song – a track that brings to mind the hypothetical results of LUDACRIS and BIZ MARKIE jamming with BOOKER T and PHIL SPECTOR. The rock vibe is surprisingly strong throughout the entire album, with even the more club-friendly tracks such as ‘Final Shakedown’ and ‘Easy’ seeming to profit from a looser percussive foundation.
The aforementioned “Final Shakedown” is their most obvious single, easily falling into the same category as 2001’s “Superstylin.” The only difference is that “Final Shakedown” actually succeeds in getting your body in motion whereas the altogether-too-tasteful “Superstylin” only succeeded in provoking a respectful head bob. They’ve finally split the atom and discovered what remixers and producers like FATBOY SLIM have been trying to tell them for years: it takes a lot of smarts to be successfully stupid.
This advice has paid incredible dividends. Lovebox is quite simply an embarrassingly good album. Between future club classics like the title track and “Easy,” the aforementioned slower ballads and the incredibly gnarly rock and ska pastiches which open and close the album (“Purple Haze” and “But I Feel Good”), this is an album guaranteed to put a smile on anyone’s face. Whether or not you’ve been following electronic music for decades or are totally unfamiliar with the genre, this is a perfect encapsulation of everything good in modern club music.
Lovebox unfurls with the kind of maniacal confidence that has previously been the trademark of precious few electronic artists – an elite category that Groove Armada have now succeeded in joining.
Standout Tracks: Lovebox, Purple Haze
Well, that’s the year. It sure seems like a lot in hindsight – and it is – but its nothing if you live it and breath it. My wife and I are responsible for a weekly radio show covering these genres, and despite the fact that it takes an incredible amount of hard work and preparation to pull it off, its worth it every time we get a telephone call or e-mail from someone who truly loves the music and just can’t find it anywhere else.
If this article has successfully communicated anything, please take away the thought that this music is everywhere and the people who love it enough to devote their lives to it are legion. It’s not dead and it never has been – it’s bigger than ever. You just have to look a little, that’s all.
RIP – Wesley Willis - 1963-2003
A gentle soul taken far too soon, and a visionary unafraid to use technology as a conduit for his personal vision.
Rock over London, Rock on Chicago –
Moviepoopshot.com – the only motherfuckers crazy enough to print this whole article [ED. NOTE: And to edit it all, too].
“The Beat Transmission with DJ Muse”
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Anne O'Neil AKA “DJ Muse” - Creator
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Ryan Pruitt - Oklahoma Unit Producer
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