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End of the decade lists (pg. 2)
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| Lews |
Well, there's a big difference between 'most popular,' 'most influential,' 'most publicised,' and 'best,' of course.
'Most influential' will always be impossible to agree upon; it strikes me that many publications settle for 'most popular,' which often is related to 'most publicised.' |
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| Woony |
| quote: | Originally posted by Lews
Well, there's a big difference between 'most popular,' 'most influential,' 'most publicised,' and 'best,' of course.
'Most influential' will always be impossible to agree upon; it strikes me that many publications settle for 'most popular,' which often is related to 'most publicised.' |
Sure enough, although I think that the first three (influential, popular, publicized) are strongly related. E.g. musically I don't think neither My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy nor Yeezus are nearly as groundbreaking as they have been played up to. But with Kanyes fame and PR machine they came just at the right time to introduce an entire generation of rappers and producers to more out there synthetic sounds, which made them incredibly influential across the board. Maybe the difference with dance music in that respect is that no one except a few legacy acts (AFX, Daft Punk, Boards of Canada etc.) holds enough star power anymore to not have their record drowned out by new releases within two weeks. |
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| Woony |
Oh by the way, if anyone wants to find their favorites from years back - I went through my post history to find our yearly "best of" lists back to 2011. Fun trip down the memory lane (also kinda sad, since you can see the forum gradually dying lol :()
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018 |
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| SYSTEM-J |
So what do you want? For us to just name the most popular "underground" electronic albums of the decade?
I'd have thought the likes of Caribou, Actress, Jon Hopkins, Moderat, Bonobo, George Fitzgerald, Stephan Bodzin and Nils Frahm (off the top of my head) all released pretty big albums in the last ten years that didn't get "drowned out" in two weeks. None of those were "legacy" acts.
Basically, you just don't seem happy with any answers given that don't confirm your narrative that there are no landmark electronic music albums anymore.
| quote: | Originally posted by Sykonee
What I wonder is if J' was still writing for Cokemachineglow (no, stop laughing, bear with me...!), and was tasked to provide a write-up on another four (4) albums that would have made that website's Best Of 2010s list, What Would Those Four Albums Be? |
I would have been given four albums that made the Top 100 from the overall staff's votes. They might not necessarily have been my own picks. Apart from the fact the site folded sometime around 2015, I really have no idea what that bunch of pretentious wits would have been listening to for the last decade. I was talking to a friend recently about how the "blogosphere" doesn't seem nearly as relevant to electronic music anymore. 2010-2011 were probably the pinnacle of the "dance music you don't dance to" era, when getting picked up by Pitchfork and co would be how big new acts broke out. It seems in the last ten years things have become more club-oriented again, thank God. |
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| Woony |
My quickly cobbled together personal list based off what was mentioned in the previous I linked (in no particular order). If I did a comprehensive one from scratch, there'd probably be a lot more straight up ambient / modern classical / shoegaze on there, based on my current listening habits.
Sandwell District - Sandwell District
Atheus - Compile
Skudge - Phantom
Francis Harris - Leland
Voices From The Lake - Voices From The Lake
Donato Dozzy/Nuel - Aquaplano Sessions
Acronym - June
Minilogue - Blomma
Studio OST - Scenes 2012-2015
Steve Hauschildt - Dissolvi
Space Afrika - Somewhere Decent To Live
Skee Mask - Compro
Deepchord - Sommer
Kara-Lis Coverdale – Grafts
Varg - Gore-Tex-City |
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| Sykonee |
| quote: | Originally posted by Woony
2011
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LOL, I see AarabMuzik (or whatever) in there.
Remember when THAT album was gonna' be hailed as one of the best of the decade?
EDIT: While making lists of what albums were the movers and shakers of an era are fun and all, I'm honestly far more fascinated in the Next Big Nothings of the decade. Those records everyone, at the time, was so certain to lead revolutionary change in how things would progress forever after. |
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| Sykonee |
Decided to fire up some Last.fm stats to see what my Top Scrobbled Albums were this past decade, and filtered out the ones that were only released within that time frame. The results are... probably not that surprising, really.
1. Vector Lovers - iPHonica
2. Sabled Sun - 2145
3. Sync24 - Comfortable Void
4. Boards Of Canada - Tomorrow's Harvest
5. Solar Fields - Until We Meet The Sky
6. Connect.Ohm - 9980
7. The Future Sound Of London - Environment Five
8. The Future Sound Of London - Environments 4
9. Adham Shaikh - Resonance (Selected Ambient Works)
10. Arpatle - The Day After |
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| Woony |
| quote: | Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
So what do you want? For us to just name the most popular "underground" electronic albums of the decade?
I'd have thought the likes of Caribou, Actress, Jon Hopkins, Moderat, Bonobo, George Fitzgerald, Stephan Bodzin and Nils Frahm (off the top of my head) all released pretty big albums in the last ten years that didn't get "drowned out" in two weeks. None of those were "legacy" acts.
Basically, you just don't seem happy with any answers given that don't confirm your narrative that there are no landmark electronic music albums anymore. |
I don't know, that was just my intuition. Those are pretty good picks as, saying everything is forgotten in two is probably a bit exaggerated. But if we recall the really big crossover dance records of the 2000s (Alcachofa, LCD Soundsystem, Metro Area, Burial, Justice, Boy In Da Corner, Drukqs etc.), at least to me those seem to shadow anything from the current decade in terms cultural impact. Or maybe one just needs more temporal distance to judge the current decade.
| quote: | Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
I was talking to a friend recently about how the "blogosphere" doesn't seem nearly as relevant to electronic music anymore. 2010-2011 were probably the pinnacle of the "dance music you don't dance to" era, when getting picked up by Pitchfork and co would be how big new acts broke out. It seems in the last ten years things have become more club-oriented again, thank God. |
The "Blogosphere" doesn't even really exist anymore, pretty much all of the blogs from around 2009-2012 are long dead now and there haven't really been new ones.
I'm not sure if prententious "dance music you don't dance to" ever really went away, it's just changed form. If you look at RA's lists from the past 5 years, it's chock full of it with very few dancefloor records. People that were listening to Nicolas Jaar in 2011 are listening to "experimental non-European queer club music" or whatever the it's called now. At the start of the decade, dance music was still recovering from the mid-2000s mnml coma, I think there's just way more music coming out in general now to satisfy all sorts of demands. Honest to god rave music is back big time, for sure, but there's also a flood of headphone and experimental records coming out all the time, probably much more than in the early 10s, at least quantitatively.
| quote: | Originally posted by Sykonee
EDIT: While making lists of what albums were the movers and shakers of an era are fun and all, I'm honestly far more fascinated in the Next Big Nothings of the decade. Those records everyone, at the time, was so certain to lead revolutionary change in how things would progress forever after. |
That should be called the " Nicolas Jaar category" lmao. Also, in 2016 people wouldn't shut up about that stupid DJ Babyfather record (it was RA's top pick). I don't think it's aged well beyond the gimmick (having the record set up as imaginary pirate radio show). I also remember a lot of hype on the 2013 James Holden record (The Inheritors, also RA's top pick). I don't think it's aged terribly, but Krautrock-tronica hasn't exactly turned out to be next hot thing, has it? And it's still a bit too recent, but I don't think anything from the PC-Music Universe is going to age especially well. Music that's intentionally cheesy, OTT and annoying never ages well. The SOPHIE album got hyped to all heaven last year but it's just Autechre meets Europopdancecandyland? |
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| AlphaStarred |
| Lou Karsh - Phantom Structures would probably be at the top of my list. |
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| SYSTEM-J |
| quote: | Originally posted by Woony
I'm not sure if prententious "dance music you don't dance to" ever really went away, it's just changed form. If you look at RA's lists from the past 5 years, it's chock full of it with very few dancefloor records. People that were listening to Nicolas Jaar in 2011 are listening to "experimental non-European queer club music" or whatever the it's called now. At the start of the decade, dance music was still recovering from the mid-2000s mnml coma, I think there's just way more music coming out in general now to satisfy all sorts of demands. Honest to god rave music is back big time, for sure, but there's also a flood of headphone and experimental records coming out all the time, probably much more than in the early 10s, at least quantitatively. |
It never went away because it was there for a long time before 2010, but in terms of its dominance over clubbing taste, I think the movement built up in the second half of the 2000s with stuff like The Field and LCD Soundsystem and peaked around 2010.
One of the more general cultural trends of the last decade is the switch in catch-all label for disparaging the mystifyingly popular from "hipster" to "millennial". I think hipster culture, with its attendant mouthpiece blogs and all-powerful cultural influence has died off in the last ten years to be replaced by social media, word-of-mouth and algorithms. You keep citing Resident Advisor as though they're some big cultural force, but nobody outside the electronic music scene gives a about RA, not in the way they did/do about Pitchfork. In many ways the "blogosphere" was the last dying spasm of the traditional "tastemaker" media outlet, and the decline of that kind of media is why you can't find the same grand narrative for dance music, and the big albums that landmark those narratives. When everyone gets their tastes refined by a Spotify algorithm, who cares what the Big Important Albums are? |
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| planetaryplayer |
| quote: | Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
nobody outside the electronic music scene gives a about RA |
Their reviews are meaningless. i think the only good thing about RA is event listings, this is important for me b/c i don't have any social media |
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| SYSTEM-J |
| quote: | Originally posted by planetaryplayer
Their reviews are meaningless. i think the only good thing about RA is event listings, this is important for me b/c i don't have any social media |
I'd agree with that. I don't think their reviews have much influence. I can't think of many obscure records that have blown up off the back of a positive RA review. |
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