Listening list for an electronic music class

nomos

nomos

Administrator
Dissensus crew - I need to harness your music list-making powers for a moment. The problem is this: I'm a TA this term for a course on Western popular music since 1945 and I've been asked to present the final lecture on electronic music. 3 hours to distill 25 years worth of accelerated music culture. Obviously I can't be nearly as comprehensive as I'd like to be but I'd like to make it as meaningful as possible.

Each week we'll be giving the students a list of 5 or 6 tracks to listen to before class. This is the listening list I was given for "Modern popular electronic music" week:

1. Kraftwerk: Pocket Calculator 1981
2. Juan Atkins/Model 500: No Ufos 1982
3. Anabolic Frolic: Euphoric State 2000
4. Massive Attack: Inertia Creeps 1998
5. Seefeel: Time To Find Me 1994
6. Prodigy: Smack My Bitch Up 1997

Obviously there are problems here. Anabolic Frolic? No acid, ardkore, jungle, etc...? Seefeel rather than Aphex? And there will be no need to go as far back as Kraftwerk since we'll have had "Autobahn" a couple of weeks earlier.

So I'm looking for suggestions. If you had to (try to) sum up a quarter century of electronic music in 5 or 6 six tunes, what would they be? Would you pick quintessential examples of styles or tracks that signalled moments of transition and recombination?

Any thoughts would be well appreciated. :)
 
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martin

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The Normal - TVOD
Stakker - Humanoid
Shut Up & Dance - Here Comes A Different Type of Rap Track
Coil - Dark River
Tuff To The Bone - Dancehall Junglist
Basement Jaxx - Romeo
Nasenbluten - Cuntface

But don't be surprised if your pupils all suddenly start wagging class to get cabbaged
 
H

hamarplazt

100% No Soul Guaranteed
autonomicforthepeople said:
Each week we'll be giving the students a list of 5 or 6 tracks to listen to before class. This is the listening list I was given for "Modern popular electronic music" week:

1. Kraftwerk: Pocket Calculator 1981
2. Juan Atkins/Model 500: No Ufos 1982
3. Anabolic Frolic: Euphoric State 2000
4. Massive Attack: Inertia Creeps 1998
5. Seefeel: Time To Find Me 1994
6. Prodigy: Smack My Bitch Up 1997

Obviously there are problems here. Anabolic Frolic? No acid, ardkore, jungle, etc...? Seefeel rather than Aphex? And there will be no need to go as far back as Kraftwerk since we'll have had "Autobahn" a couple of weeks earlier.
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Not to mention the fact that it's somehow ridiculous to have both Kraftwerk and Model 500 on it, considering how close to classic electro the early Detroit sound was. Actually, that's a really, really lame list they've got for you there.

If Kraftwerk have been covered, I'd suggest:

Front 242: No Shuffle
Mescalinum United: We Have Arrived
808 State: Flow Coma (well, Stakker Humanoid is just as useful here)
Alec Empire: Microchipkinder
The Prodigy: Charly
DJ Hype: Rolll the Beats
 
nomos

nomos

Administrator
I didn't even notice that, Nick. Maybe "Cosmic Cars" was originally in that spot.
 
H

henry s

Street Fighting Man
1. Rhythim is Rhythim - "Strings Of Life" (Detroit in a nutshell)
2. Young Gods - "Jimmy" (possibilities of sampling/studio as instrument)
3. Metalheadz - "Terminator" (pivotal/transitional track in jungle evolution)
4. Oval - "Do While" (covers glitch/laptop)
5. DJ Shadow - "What Does Your Soul Look Like?" (hip-hop/trip-hop in one fell swoop)
6. Boards Of Canada - "Everything You Do Is A Balloon" (not sure why; lovely listening, though!)
 
R

redcrescent

Well-known member
subvert47 said:
Human League - The Dignity of Labour
amazing 1979 proto techno

:)
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There's a track on that The Golden Hour of the Future CD that is just bangin' techno too, but the name's slipped my mind. The Future=early incarnation of HL.
Much more significant is Jammys' "Under me sleng teng", I think, a touchstone for so many things which came after it.
 
R

redcrescent

Well-known member
Early years of the Human League are so worth the time invested, IMHO, I don't think the last word on them has been spoken. Of course forget them by the time Marsh and Ware leave on to better things.
 
N

Ness Rowlah

Norwegian Wood
1980 - "Underpass", "No One Driving" or "He's a Liquid" John Foxx (1980)
1985 - ? something ambient (Budd/Eno?)
1990ish - U96/Altern8/808 State/LFO or something along those lines
1995 - "Novelty Waves"/Biosphere
2000 or so - Get Ur Freak On/Missy Elliot
 
R

redcrescent

Well-known member
autonomicforthepeople said:
tracks that signalled moments of transition and recombination?
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Donna Summer's Giorgio Moroder-produced "I feel love" (1977) would qualify as a moment of transition, I suppose. First totally electronic production, etc etc.
 
Z

zhao

there are no accidents
let's keep this list concise and restricted to current electronic works, excluding dance music. I think these recordings are important (very much enjoyable too but that's not the point).

Ryuji Ikeda - 1000 Fragments
Alva Noto - Prototypes
Pan Sonic - A
Asmus Tietchens - Beta Menge
Kaffe Mathews - CD Cecile
Senking - Silencer
Steve Roden - Speak No More About The Leaves
Akira Rabelais -
Stephen Vitiello - Bright and Dusty Things
Oval - Systemische
Aube - Pages From the Book
Toshimaru Nakemura - No Input Mixing Desk
Taylor Deupree and Kenneth Kirchner - Post Piano
Stephen Mathieu - Wormloch Variationen


oh and do NOT listen to some of these HACKS on here. Metalheads? 808 State? come the fuck on. this is not Candy-Rave 101. if Ali G taught the class he'd put these on.
 
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nomos

nomos

Administrator
confucius said:
let's keep this list concise and restricted to current electronic works, excluding dance music.
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Yeah the focus of the class is electronic popular music so dance stuff will be front and centre.
 
Z

zhao

there are no accidents
sure maybe it's important to mention the beginnings of house or how jungle evolved, but students do not need to take home tracks they can hear on TV-commercials or in dance clubs, things that they are already surrounded by. what they need is exposure to things that they have no immediate access to and are not likely to explore on their own.

I don't see how the likes of Boards of Canada or Massive Attack or the Prodigy (WTF???) can be important to the history of electronic music any which way you look at it.
 
Z

zhao

there are no accidents
oh shit I didn't know it was "popular electronic music". my bad.

in that case... yeah. Donna Summer, Kraftwerk, all that.
 
T

tate

Brown Sugar
confucius said:
I don't see how the likes of the Prodigy (WTF???) can be important to the history of electronic music any which way you look at it.
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but that's because you are american and therefore have a skewed understanding of the prodigy's role in this story (not that i am recommending them, mind)

confucius said:
Ryuji Ikeda - 1000 Fragments
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I actually do believe, however idiosyncratic the notion may be, that Ryoji Ikeda will one day belong to the electronic music canon in a very essential way (see his work on dumb type's 'scanning memory', or matrix disc 2, or last year's C4I). But he doesn't yet.

confucius said:
oh and do NOT listen to some of these HACKS on here. Metalheads? come the fuck on. this is not Candy-Rave 101. if Ali G taught the class he'd put these on.
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Um hello, blasphemy, to call terminator (rufige cru, ahem) hack-work is beyond the pale :D
 
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hamarplazt

100% No Soul Guaranteed
Tate said:
but that's because you are american and therefore have a skewed understanding of the prodigy's role in this story (not that i am recommending them, mind)
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Well, I am, or at least the early stuff. "Candy rave" like the Experience album is simply so much more interesting, inventive, exhilarating, technically groundbreaking, etc., than all that self consciously "experimental" avant garde. Not that stuff like Pan Sonic or Asmus Tietchens isn't great, but it's nowhere as mindbending - let alone influential for the history of electronic music - as the best rave stuff. And exactly because everybody have heard the later, lamer rock crossover Prodigy, they should be exposed to the madness of their early breakbeat greatness.
 
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