The 20 Greatest Electronica Albums Of All-Time

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“Dancers are the athletes of God.” ~ Albert Einstein

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“Electronica” comprises dozens of sub-genres (acid-house, techno, trip-hop, and ambient, to name but a few) and this wicked fragmentation makes it tough to draw either simple or definitive conclusions about the genre. In fact, every time I write the word electronica, my word processing program underlines it with a red squiggle, telling me that it isn’t really a word. And after investigating the many styles and sub-genres, each of which is a musical world unto itself, I’m inclined to believe what the red squiggle is telling me.

For the sake of argument, let’s say electronica is music that uses a click track or drum machine – or in some cases, people recreating this effect with instruments. Where you go from there is down to your taste, and somewhat by where you hail from. The globe is dotted with cities that invented their own brand of electronica. From German krautrock to Detroit’s techno and industrial scenes, to Chicago house, to Manchester’s trip hop, and well beyond, it seems that electronica consists of infinite variations on a theme – all of it music that is better enjoyed than analyzed.

Here then, are 20 of my favorite variations, in no particular order:

Groove Armada – Love Box (2002)

Groove Armada’s second full-length LP Vertigo is a very good electronica album, but it was with Love Box that they hit the ball out of the yard. The first two tracks ‘Purple Haze’ (not the Jimi tune) and ‘Groove Is On’ are stronger than anything the group had previously released. The guest vocal contributions are impeccable, and provide the group with an undeniable hip-hop flavor that fits them like a dope Fila sweatsuit.

Basement Jaxx – Rooty (2001)

AllMusic.com calls Basement Jaxx’ debut Remedy the best dance album of the 90’s, but Felix Burton & Simon Ratcliffe’s sophomore effort gets the pick here, by a nose. ‘Where’s Your Head At’ and ‘Romeo’ contain the gut level adrenaline rush and knee-jerk, gotta dance charge that disco at its best can still induce. But this is disco with the cream filling removed and replaced by a solid core of hooks, grooves, and female belting. Top it off with Prince-style funking and groaning, and you’ve got a monster – albeit a cute fuzzy one that apparently likes eucalyptus leaves.

Metro Area – Metro Area (2002)

Brooklyn’s Metro Area makes music that harkens back to disco while looking directly to the future. Featuring minimal beats and nothing but instrumentals, this album eschews vocals in favor of endless rhythms that are sure to keep any dancefloor lit. Part organic and part synthetic, Metro Area spins grooves out of thin air like a musical cotton candy machine.

Daft Punk – Homework (1996)

Daft Punk has always made interesting albums, but in the last couple of years the group has made a surprising jump to the top of the electronica heap, with a transcendent performance at Coachella in 2006, and an appearance at this year’s Grammys with Kanye West. DJs Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter have a pretty good shtick – wearing motorcycle helmets and pretending to be aliens while spinning albums atop a giant pyramid. With their major label debut Homework, they created dance music was far from a gimmick, and has proved to have a long shelf life.

Leftfield – Leftism (1995)

Leftism was one of the first albums to signal the maturity of electronica as a genre. DJs Paul Daley and Neil Barnes had been creating interesting dance music for some time, and this debut collected their best work from 1992 to 1995. Spanning a wide range of sub-genres, Leftism features ecstatic drum and bass workouts alongside more contemplative instrumental pieces, and serves as a virtual tour of the many places that electronica would eventually call home.

New Order – Substance (1987)

Rising from the ashes of Joy Division after Ian Curtis’ 1980 suicide, New Order took the driving beat of that group and tweaked it into some of the best dance music of the 80’s. The group made a remarkable run of singles during that decade that kept the flame of electronic music alive in alternative circles, and served as the missing (and misunderstood) link between punk music and electronica. This 1987 double-album compilation is filled with songs that still sound fresh as a daisy, making it the definitive place to dig into New Order’s catalog.

Royksopp – Melody A.M. (2001)

Norwegian duo Torbjorn Brundtland and Svein Berge put together an album that alternately floats like a cloud and gallops like a horse. At every speed it hits, Melody A.M. moves with an effortless and awe-inspiring grace that belies an underlying quantum precision. Is it a concept album about the hours from midnight to noon? The magical realism of the melodies and lush freshness throughout make it tempting to think so.

Fila Brazilia – Brazilification (Remixes 95-99) (1999)

Flexing their remixing skillz, Fila Brazilia packaged 18 slices of their work for artists ranging from Radiohead to Simple Minds to DJ Food. Disc 1 rarely hits 35 mph, and rolls along at a laid back clip from one smoove ambiance to the next. Only midway through the second disc does Brazilification come to resemble a dance album. But therein lies its charm – it finds a deep seam of emotion and mines it for all it’s worth. Brazilification is concerned less with beats per minute than it is with the fluttering of the human heart.

Alabama 3 – Exile On Coldharbour Lane (1997)

‘Woke Up This Morning’ served as the soundtrack to the opening credits of The Sopranos, but beyond that bit of good luck, A3 have managed to fly far below popular and critical radars. By blending country honky-tonk attitude with dance beats, quasi-religious lyrics, and bad fake-southern accents, this group was probably built to be best enjoyed by dance music connoisseurs anyway. It might be a tough sell on paper, but Exile On Coldharbour Lane is one of the best – and most overlooked – albums of the 90’s.

dZihan & Kamien * Live In Vienna (2003)

Live In Vienna proves that great electronica needn’t be prepackaged in a sterile lab. Originally planned as a record release party for their Gran Riserva album, Vlado dZihan & Mario Kamien used a grant from the Austrian government to assemble a 22-piece orchestra of strings, horns, percussion, djs and singers – and literally brought their music to life. The glee and gasps from the crowd bear witness to both the authenticity of the recording, and the power of the musicians. You’ve got to hear it to believe it.

Primal Scream – Screamadelica (1991)

“Our attitude was Primal Scream can be anything,” says front man Bobby Gillespie, and Screamadelica delivers on those words. A blues/rock/psychedelic/dance/gospel album should by definition be a total mess, but here it’s a glorious jigsaw puzzle of styles and moods. All the more remarkable, considering that Primal Scream was a rock band crashing into dance music. But this album has lived far beyond the rave culture that spawned it, and remains a lasting testament to both excellent track sequencing and the healing powers of joy and ecstasy.

DJ Shadow – Entroducing… (1996)

The movie Scratch features an amazing scene with DJ Shadow in the basement of his local record store, surrounded by stacks and stacks – literally hundreds of thousands of LPs – that he sifted through to find the samples for Entroducing…. The results rival the craft of patchwork quilting as one of the most beautiful examples of the transformation of scrap into art. Like a thrifty Colonial housewife, Shadow takes bits and pieces of leftover wax and turns them into a remarkable journey beyond the edge of music.

David Holmes – Let’s Get Killed (1997)

Once upon a time, David Holmes took a trip to New York and recorded what he heard on the streets, in the bars, and throughout the boroughs. He used these spoken passages as the backbone of his tracks, and built each song around the mood and energy of its speaker. In most cases, this means a violent, wigged out, menacing groove laid like laurels around the brainpan of some nutjob. Let’s Get Killed is a fantastic – and sometimes downright scary – journey into the heart, psyche and bowels of New York City.

Radiohead – Kid A (2000)

OK Computer was a pretty oddball album, but even that couldn’t have prepared anyone for what Radiohead was cooking up next. There isn’t a normal song structure in sight on Kid A. Thom Yorke’s voice bled through the mix, intermittently and ghostly, like a voice on a crossed telephone wire. By tearing up the rock album playbook, Radiohead decided to let their instruments do the talking. The results are initially perplexing, but repeated listens reveal a world of depth precluded from traditional verse-chorus-verse albums. As it happens, the bleats, blats and electronic sputtering perfectly suit the schizophrenic nature of their music. It may or mat not be the best album of the last 20 years, but it’s certainly the most daring LP made in that time.

The Avalanches – Since I Left You (2000)

Entirely and painstakingly assembled from hundreds upon hundreds of samples (including the first legal clearance Madonna ever gave for ‘Holiday’), Since I Left You is a masterwork of the art of audio collaging. The horse whinnying hit song ‘Frontier Psychiatrist’ leads the way, but the whole album plays as one giant song about taking a trip and leaving your cares far behind.

Nightmares On Wax – Carboot Soul (1999)

Nightmares On Wax is the completely misleading working name for DJ George Evelyn and a host of co-contributors. Far from nightmares, these all-instrumental slices of low-key funk are luxuriously chilled out, but still burn with an inner fire. Call it chill, trip-hop, instrumental hip-hop, or what you will, but Carboot Soul is an album for any occasion.

Kruder & Dorfmeister – The K&D Sessions (1998)

Peter Kruder and Richard Dorfmeister are best known for their remixes, and here they capture 21 of their finest reworkings of artists such as David Holmes, Depeche Mode, Roni Size, and Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. Laid back and spaced out, with deep echoes, distorted vocals and long instrumental passages, The K&D Sessions is dub music for 21st century headphones.

Massive Attack – Mezzanine (1998)

This languid, dreamy album lives at the heart of urban discontent. It’s filled with teardrops and noisy neighbors, and vocal turns by Horace Andy and the Cocteau Twins’ Elizabeth Fraser are breathless, weightless slices of musical sleepwalking. Massive Attack’s early 90’s albums Blue Lines and Protection set the template for what dance music would sound like in the 90’s. With Mezzanine, the group took their sound to the wrong side of the tracks – where no imitators dared to tread – and gave every salon in the world its soundtrack for the next decade.

Air – The Virgin Suicides (2000)

Haunting, eerie, and downright mesmerizing, Air’s score for Sophia Coppala’s 2000 film is a musical Rorschach test. The album opens with ‘Playground Love’, featuring Gordon Tracks on vocals and a sultry saxophone – a sound much closer to lounge than electronica. But Air incorporates enough creepy dialogue from the film with sinister electronica moments to pull the album in two remarkable directions at once. Like a violent thunderstorm on a rainy day, whether The Virgin Suicides sounds beautiful or scary is simply a matter of perspective.

Neu! – Neu! ’75 (1975)

Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger formed Neu! in 1971 after both split from Kraftwerk. After their third album, Neu! ‘75, the two were so at odds over musical direction, and personally disenchanted with one another, that they decided to go their separate ways. But that tension helped them hit their stride here. From the gentle ebb and flow of the first three tracks, to the lockdown groove of the last three, they added enough texture and depth to make the overall sound as interesting as it is unique. Unfortunately, bad feelings over the split spilled over into lawsuits that blocked the rerelease of their catalogue until 2001, by which time the legend of their music preceded them. But more than 30 years on, Neu! ‘75 still sounds like the sneak preview of an album that will be released next Tuesday.

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20 more that go oonce oonce…

808 State – Newbuild
DJ Krush & Toshinori Kondo – Ki-Oku
U.N.K.L.E. – Psyence Fiction
Nine Inch Nails – Pretty Hate Machine
Mazzy Star – So Tonight That I Might See
Mylo – Destroy Rock & Roll
Tosca – Suzuki
Buckethead – Colma
Chemical Brothers – Exit Planet Dust
Moby – Play
Armand Van Helden – Killing Puritans
Various Artists – Verve Remixed
The Orb – Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld
John Digweed – Global Underground 014: Hong Kong
A Guy Called Gerald – Essence
Erlend Oye – Unrest
LCD Soundsystem – LCD Soundsystem
Soul Ascendants – Variations
Prodigy – The Dirtchamber Sessions
Truby Trio – DJ Kicks

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12 Pioneers Of Electronica…

Mike Oldfield – Tubular Bells
Can – Ege Bamyasi
Kraftwerk – Trans Europe Express
Art Of Noise – The Best Of…
Depeche Mode – Catching Up With Depeche Mode
Brian Eno – Another Green World
William Orbit – The Best Of Strange Cargos
Yello – One Second
Miles Davis – In A Silent Way/Jack Johnson
Esquivel – The Genius Of Esquivel
Gary Numan – The Pleasure Principle
John Cage – ‘Imaginary Landscape No. 4′

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What do these artists have in common?

Neil Young
Madonna
Lou Reed
Billy Idol
U2
Todd Rundgren
Billy Corgan
Bob Mould

Tags: Air, Alabama 3, Basement Jaxx, Daft Punk, David Holmes, DJ Shadow, Fila Brazilia, Groove Armada, Kruder & Dorfmeister, Leftfield, Massive Attack, Metro Area, Neu!, New Order, Nightmares On Wax, Primal Scream, Radiohead, Royksopp, The Avalanches, The dZhian & Kamien Orchestra