Electronica that doesn't suck 20 asses

[Yahweh]

Electronic music has a reputation for being "lame" and "for the gays", but I've been an avid fan of it for years. The trick to enjoying this genre is finding original, interesting artists who don't suck 20 asses.

Here's a few selections of electronic music that I'll categorizing under "favorite female vocals":

Velvet Acid Christ - Slut: long intro, haunting vocals.



Ladytron - Destroy Everything you Touch: sociopathy with a catchy tune. Used to listen to this one everyday to get pumped up before work.


Ladytron - Beauty*2: a gorgeous, slow paced song, one of my all-time favorites.


Portishead - Roads: absolutely beautiful soprano vocals, comes from the trip-hop genre of electronic music.


Tiesto - In My Memory: the existentialist lyrics are hidden behind a rhytmic tempo. Honestly, I don't like 95% of Tiesto's music as he tends to produce a lot of uncreative garbage in the "house/dance" genre, but when he really tries, as in the case of this song, he can produce music with almost timeless quality.


Front Line Assembly - Predator: I wouldn't place this song any best-of list, but its atmospheric, slightly depraved sound and eerily sensual vocals makes my innards tickle.


Laika - Black Cat Bone: another trip-hop artist with a very experimental sound. This song in particular particular gained notoriety when it was used in this Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode.


Here's a few more I'll classify under "random acts of depravity" in the electro-industrial genre:

Aphex Twin - Come to Daddy: this is another song I'm not overly fond of, but my sister loves it.


Prodigy - Firestarter: fantastic fucking video, fantastic fucking song.


Velvet Acid Christ - Behind the Eyes vol 3 (Album): its slightly dated (its a re-release of music written in the early/mid 90s I believe), but every song is excellent. Most of you who are familiar with my music tastes probably already know I've been a longtime fan of Velvet Acid Christ. This is a good album to lose your VAC virginity to if you've never heard of VAC before. Unfortunately I can't find any clips on Youtube (or, the clips I find are "remixes" which mutilate the original feel of the song).

Skinny Puppy - Worlock: one of the first songs from the experimental electro-industrial genre way back in 1990, but still has all of the redeeming quality to it.


There is *very* little "dance/house" music I can stand, but just for completeness, I'll go ahead and list:

Delerium - Truly: this artist regularly has listenable music, likes to couch very existentialist lyrics behind a up-tempo beat.


Delerium - Wisdom: once again, listenable, beautiful vocals, might be worth buying the artists CDs if you like a more mello sound on the road.


Combichrist - Happy Fucking Birthday: makes you say out loud "what the fuck?" when you first hear it. Funny shit.


Combichrist - Get Your Body Beat: awesome song, a good choice to break your Combichrist virginity to.



This should be a good list of music to break anyone of the belief that all electronica is unlistenable and sounds the same. I don't like most music, but I have a soft-spot for the electro-industrial genre which really started to take off during the mid-90s, before it became putrified by the development of "house" music and the dime a dozen artists who prefix their names with "DJ" or "MC".

Feel free to add your own list of electronic music which doesn't suck (and please include a music video link if possible ).

[MozMode]

Total fan of Combichrist, Ladytron, Skinny Puppy and to add to the list, love VNV Nation as well. The song Chrome changed my life. And also, not sure if they qualify, but AndOne is one of my top 5 bands of all time. They can be classified as both Electronic Body Music and Synthpop, though.

[deliciousdemon]

Ladytron and Portishead are fantastic. I listen to a lot of electronic music, I am keen on downtempo and plenty of other genres as well--Goldfrapp, Tricky, Air, Massive Attack, et cetera.

Ladytron are pretty cool, what with all their vintage synths. I think my favourite track off Witching Hour is 'Soft Power' I haven't bought Velocifero yet though.

[MozMode]

Apr 19, 2009 12:47:13 GMT -5 deliciousdemon said:

Ladytron and Portishead are fantastic. I listen to a lot of electronic music, I am keen on downtempo and plenty of other genres as well--Goldfrapp, Tricky, Air, Massive Attack, et cetera.

Ladytron are pretty cool, what with all their vintage synths. I think my favourite track off Witching Hour is 'Soft Power' I haven't bought Velocifero yet though.

I like Witching Hour but my fave album of theirs is Light & Magic. That album produced about 4 of some of my favorite songs of all time.

[POSW]

techno.org/electronic-music-guide

Honestly, I had no idea there were so many kinds of electronic music before I looked at this.

My taste in electronica is pretty much limited to Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk. My problem with most of the genre is that very little of it is music that you're intended to listen to; too much of it is intended to be dancing music.

[darthtoxic]

Fucking exalted, man - I'm a big industrial/EBM/etc. fan, and I honestly wasn't expecting to walk in to find not just Aphex Twin and Skinny Puppy, but mothafatha Velvet Acid Christ. *High Fives*

[captainhooker]

I used to have my own "electronic music" radio show when I was in college - dj'd several parties and gigs back in the day too. My tastes weren't so much dancefloor as much as IDM (intelligent dance music - whatever that means), glitch, and breakcore/jungle. Basically, the 4/4 happy dance shit never really appealed to me. This is the dark corner of electronic music - staying quite clear from industrial territory though.

No thread on electronic music is complete without Venetian Snares - no one can mash up jungle/classical/breakcore like this guy


Venetian Snares - Make Ronnie Rocket


I'm an old dnb head (drum and bass...aka. Jungle) and Ed Rush, Fierce, and Optical's Alien Girl is a stone dancefloor classic


On the darker tip - Enduser - Path of Violence


Repeater - Collision Repair Specialist - a raggacore/glitch classic

[captainhooker]

Also - can't forget my favorite producer ever Amon Tobin.

Much jazzier/funkier/soundtrackier than the chaos I posted above.

[CtraK]

Apr 19, 2009 12:05:09 GMT -5 Yahweh said:

The trick to enjoying this genre is finding original, interesting artists who don't suck 20 asses.

Isn't this true of everything, though?

POSW said:

My problem with most of the genre is that very little of it is music that you're intended to listen to; too much of it is intended to be dancing music.

...and come to think of it, this has been true of all types of music at some point during their history too.

So the key thing here is not to generalise, and hence I offer the fact that there's a quite good bit precisely 361 seconds into Autechre's Tri Repetae album.

Maybe that was too specific.

[mistermuncher]

Squarepusher?

[Bluefinger]

Okay, better insert my selection of electronica that I listen to. I listen to a lot of VGM, aka Chiptune, and also a bit of Goa/Psytrance and a variety of other genres depending on my mood.

Examples of Chiptune I listen to:

The Digital Force by Wiklund


A Girl I know by Sabrepulse


Something else by Sabrepulse: We Are Hi-Speed Tour Remix


Robot Sneakers by Trash80


And now for some Goa/Psytrance to balance things off:

Acid for Nothing by 1200 Micrograms


Heavyweight by Infected Mushroom


Drama by Man Made Man


In general, Chiptune covers my more happy moods, but for when I need something darker more brooding, I go for goa/psytrance and so forth. I have a bit of Industrial, in the form of Laibach, which is pretty good... when nothing else cuts it for that dark feeling. Overall, if I'm in need of new material, I'm often listening in on last.fm or di.fm.

[CtraK]

Apr 28, 2009 6:47:15 GMT -5 mistermuncher said:

Squarepusher?

Why not. That said, I could never quite see the big deal about Aphex Twin. Maybe it's Squarepusher having the better Chris-Cunningham-directed videos.

Also I happen to be advertising myself in this thread; I can only hope that said electronic music on May 18th will only suck 19 asses at most.

[mistermuncher]

I think Aphex is one of those artists who could really use some better editing, but there's certainly some complete gems amongst his work. You just need a big shovel to find it.

[captainhooker]

To me, Squarepusher and Aphex are best when considered in context, rather than practice. In other words, I'm glad they came about, but I'm more impressed with the lineage of work they, along with Autechre, helped to pioneer - guys like Venetian Snares, Tim Exile, Plaid, or anything else on Warp records, for that matter - that whole squelchy, glitchy, drill n' bass thing.

[CtraK]

...well, looking back on this, I'd say my albums do indeed only suck 19 asses. C'mon, opening with Sino-inflected riffage and everything!

OK, enough plugging. Seeing as this thread was winding its way towards working through subgenres: dubstep, which is probably the only reasonably new thing that the whole of Western popular culture has figured out over the last decade or so. Even here, there are difficulties as a lot of it's on vinyl (I mean sheesh, why not limit it to shellac, if we're going down that road. Or phonograph cylinders). Anyway, Ikonika's worth searching for, there is the odd wonky offshoot that's worth listening to (although surely there's only so many swarms of blipping noise anyone can listen to).

Ironically, the closest thing dubstep has to a superstar, Burial:



Would be amiss not to mention Kode9:



Distance, adding guitar distortion:



Rustie, practitioner of the aforementioned wonky:



Skream: