10 tracks of eh... musicAug 26 '01 Write an essay on this topic.The Bottom Line 10 electronic tracks I like. Commented and danceability rated. It took me quite a long while for me to find my way into electronic music. Most of the electronic music I heard was dancefloor-oriented and i usually like my music a little more challenging and I really don't like that bassdrum hitting every beat as can be heard in a lot of techno tracks. So anyway I'm going to list 10 of my favorite electronic tracks. Most of the tracks aren't really dance music but I'm going to give them a danceability score as well as other comments. The danceability scale I'm going to use will be from 1 to 10. 10 is the most toe-tapping dance track you can think of and 1 is merzbow(japanese noise artist). So here goes, in no particular order. 1)DJ Shadow - Building Steam With A Grain Of Salt DJ shadow is often labeled as trip-hop but he sees himself as more of a hip-hop artist. His music is 100% sample based. This track uses a melancholy piano melody, an etheral choir and some heavy hip-hop beats. various people talking are also used as well as some funk bass and guitar. Danceability score:5, too slow too really dance away to, but the beats are heavy and fairly groovy, you can sort of sway to it. 2)Squarepusher - Come On My Selector A good friend of the slightly more famous Aphex Twin. Although he his music has been quite varied come on my selector represents the kind of music he is most famous for: really fast drum & bass. This is his most well known track and one of his best in that genre. The drums are just insanely fast and still the drum patterns manage too be both intricate and varied. Squarepusher also shows off the fact that he is an acomplished jazz bassist. Playing progg-jazz bass guitar to hard drum & bass music is something that he's alone in doing. Can't really describe this song it has next to no melody just furious drums. Try listening to this with headphones at maximum volume. It's a total sensory overload, it feels like your heads going to explode. I get a kick out of that... Danceability score:2, the best you could do to this song on a dancefloor is to nervously twitch to it, it's way to fast for dancing. Would be a great song to have an epileptic sesiure to though... 3)Photek - Ni Ten Ichi Ryu Another drum & Bass track. Not as fast as come on my selector. Photek is a perfectionist artist and here he uses various samurai samples to construct a great drum & bass song. A lot of clanging swords and some japanse dialouge. Photek's music isn't really groovy or spontaneous sounding it actually works more like trance music, he pounds the beat far back into your skull. The samurai samples are cool for all lovers of martial-arts movies and the like. Danceability score:7, once you've caught on to the beat you could happily dance away to this. While the beats mutate subtley throughout the song the overall rhythm and feel never changes except for the short breaks with the samurai dialouge. 4)Amon Tobin - Four Ton Mantis more sample based music. A dark, edgy and heavy track. I really have no idea of how to classify or describe this track. Heavy drums and various cool and/or weird sounds. That's the best i can do, it evokes sort of apocalytptic feel while still being groovy and catchy as hell. The fake audience applause at the end cracks me up. If you wan't to know what it sounds like you'r just going to have to give it a listen. I suggest you do, it's really good. Danceability score:5, there's to much going on for this to be a dance song. However since the track is fairly heavy you could sort of jump about, flail your arms and bang your head to it. Don't attempt that at an actual club though, you could hurt yourself or someone else. 5)Dr. Octagon - Blue Flowers Once i actually found some rap music that I actually like I belive I can proudly say that i like pretty much all genres of music. This is sort of creepy and weird hip-hop music. Queasy strings and odd electronic drones mixed with a nice slow beat. Another thing i like is Octagon's rapping style wich manages to avoid most rap klichés, he never say's "yee", "uhh", "come on" or any of those things wich drive me crazy in most normal rap music. The lyrics are sort of a psychedelic, x-rated sci-fi nightmare. Danceability score:4, It's really better suited to sitting in a sofa in some smoky room slowly nodding your head to the music. Still it has a beat... 6)Aphex Twin - Come To Daddy, Little Lord Faulteroy Mix. The pappy mix of this song is the twin's most famous song. Guitar heavy with lots of screaming. This mix is totally different though. mid-tempo breakbeats, trippy keyboards and a childlike voice singing "oh you dirty little boy". Makes you feel kind of nervous in a good way. Danceability score:7, sure, dance slowly, smile and give people odd stares, move your hands and arms in front of your face in intricate patterns. You can't go wrong. 7)Witchman - Amok Witchman is very much a dark and atmospheric techno artist. he mixes breakbeats with various etheral or ghostly sounding instruments. Washes of icy sounding keyboards and the like. Amok however is a bit different from his standard fare because it features at times a really groovy bass-line. At various times the bass drops away to leave place to the keyboard sounds. Nice song because it manages to mix his dark and atmospheric side with something kind of groovy and funky. Danceability score:5, works fine as long as the bass is playing the initial riff. But it becomes a lot less dancefloor-friendly after that. The beats also pause and change way to much for you to figure out any cool moves. 8)Rob Swift - What Would You Do? Rob Swift is sort of a turntable virtuoso. This track is just a fun short piece(just over 2 minutes), that shows what a good turntablist can do with a few goofy vocal bits too scratch around with. A voice asks "what would you do if a vicious enemy suddenly started comming at you. Armed to the teeth and ready to kill you. Various other vocals are then used to suggest various more or less appropriate courses of action. Really funny. Danceability score:3, erhm no, the beat is just there to provide something for swift to scratch over. Fun to play at a party though. 9)Lamb - B-line One electronics department guy and a woman singing with sort of a jazzy femmé fatale voice make up lamb. Often dissmissed as another group in the trip-hop gang. But the music isn't at all as mellow or laid back as portishead or something similar. Lamb is more like a fusion of the classic trip-hop vocals with more energetic drum & bass/jungle music. This is a less than subtle love song. It Starts out slow and jazzy with acoustic bass. Then hell breaks loose in the chorus when the volume knobs are turned up quite a bit and Louise Rhodes voice suddenly grows much louder and more threatening. If you like trip-hop this is still fairly close but more varied music. The video is pretty funny too, though I can't seem to find any place to see it online... Danceability Score:5, Lamb have several songs that wok better on the dance floor, but the sudden changes in tempo in the choruses chan be funny once you know they're comming. 10)Recoil - Jezebel You've Heard that moby song with the sampled gospel singing? This is sort of the darkside version of that song. Samples The Golden Gate Jubilee Quartet singing a really sinister gospel lyric. Sort of shows that it was Ok to sing really nasty and violent stuff even back in the forties as long as it was done in the spirit of the lord. The music is nicely done with subtle beats and various omnious sounds. also features one of my favorite singers Diamanda Galás providing a backing vocal. Hearing her in the BACKGROUND of anything is quite amazing. Normally that woman can't open her mouth without comming to the foreground. All in all a nice and sinister track from former Depeche Mode member Alan Wilder. I like his recoil wok a lot more than Depeche. Danceability score:4, haven't got enough of a beat. People don't like to hear someone singing about damnation on their groove music. That's it! 10 electronic tracks that I generally enjoy listening too. Guess I won't become a DJ anytime soon... If you have any comments, questions or suggestions on other artists I might like please leave a comment.  |
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