DJ Mag Top 50...

[swears]

No one under 25 gives a flying fuck about albums now - the idea that music should come in discrete chunks of 40-70 minutes is archaic.

I'm under 25 and love albums. I think there's still there's a sort of satisfaction from listening to a set a songs with some sort of focus that you can't get from a Winamp playlist or whatever. Even on a really basic level of sheer entertainment 40-70 minutes is better value than 2-5!

I agree that this list is bollocks, even as an "interesting" little read. I'd much rather read a totally subjective, obsure selection by somebody including stuff that I wasn't aware of rather than some smug hack trying to convince me that "these are the TRUE CLASSICS, so pay attention plebs!"

And Mylo no.5?
Fuck off.

 

[mms]

Lists are bollocks. I'll expand that thought in a few more specific directions.

As gek says, influencing who? And in what way? To suggest that dance producers are influenced by albums made by other dance producers is insane. Ideas in dance music do not circulate in that way. A list of 50 influencial machines, breaks, sounds, riffs or moods would be a good addition to any debate on dance music. Possibly I could have a crack at the clubs, tracks & individuals that have had most influence in the scenes I follow or have followed. But albums? There arent any good dance music albums (as opposed to albums influenced by dance music). Well OK I can think of a few but they are only a few, and with the exception of SAW 1 universally too obscure to make it into this list. Sheet 1 & frequencies I enjoyed in my yout' but havent heard them in ages, so I suspend judgement - but I suspect my love for them then was more down to wanting a rave substitute, however inadequate, at an age where I wasnt able to rave on a regular basis.

The only way that albums influence dance music producers (and here we see the outlines of DJ mag's underlying position emerge) is commercially - producers see albums doing well in the mass market, and consciously tool their sound to fit that format. Leftism being a case in point. I dont mind leftism as a record & I dont blame dance producers one iota for wanting adequate renumeration for their time & energy - but the effects of this 'influence' are almost always destructive. New Forms was pretty much the funeral for jungle/d&b as an innovative & vital musical style, but I wont get started on the Dead Hand of Peterson or I'll be here all day.

It baffles me why people are still hung up on albums. It was a musical form that emerged in the mid 60s and dominated for the next 2 decades; but having taken a series of progressively more severe batterings from MTV, cheap studio equipment & rave culture it has been utterly destroyed by digital music sharing. No one under 25 gives a flying fuck about albums now - the idea that music should come in discrete chunks of 40-70 minutes is archaic.

I compiled a list of my favorite 20 albums for a friend recently and the vast majority of them were from the late 60's & 70s - not because I'm a retro-hipster, but because that was the period when the album was a new & vital form. The only exceptions were SAW 1, which is really a compilation of unrelated tracks, and a gillian welsh album which happened to have been made in 1998 but could really have come out any time in the 20th century.

The only reason for producing music in album form today is the commercial imperitive to satisfy a slowly ageing mass market - aesthetically, it makes as much sense to work within the album form as that of a sonata or an eightsome reel. People enjoyed music for a long time before albums came along, and as digital technology becomes more entreched & adaptable new & exiting forms will emerge to lead us to places we can't even imagine yet.

The only thing more decrepit that albums are monthly music magazines, so at least DJ are in good company.

People still love albums, they sell loads, singles sales are the thing going down - digital has jigged that around a bit but not much.
also there are loads of brilliant danceish albums, some of which are on this list some of which aren't.

 

[Gabba Flamenco Crossover]

I'm under 25 and love albums.

Touche. Caught by the sweeping staement police! But i think you're an exception.

Even on a really basic level of sheer entertainment 40-70 minutes is better value than 2-5!

No way! A really good single is the nuts! Actually, the timeframe isnt the important thing, it's the vitality of the form. i just think that everything that can be done with albums has been done, and music is only released in that format these days to give consumers what they know.

And Mylo no.5?
Fuck off.

Weeeeelll... influential doesnt have to mean great, as has already been noted. And that record is probably influencial in demonstrating to a lot of industry people that dance music can still sell big units so long as it's bland and careeerist & doesnt rock the boat. So I think we will see it's influence over the next few years. I'm not happy about it either (insofar as I care, which to be honest I dont), but that's the way these things work.

 

[baboon2004]

I don't quite understand the fuss. "Dj Magazine in 'total shit' shocker" - it's like getting annoyed because Q put Sgt Pepper's at number 1 again.

Who reads music magazines these days anyway?

 

[stelfox]

crucially, artists still like making them. it's far more rewarding to put an album together interms of making a clear, cohesive statement than to make singles that people are just going to download and listen to totally out of context of your other work (not that there's anything wrong with that, mind).
i don't like leftism at all and never did. however, it is an influential album.
if it hadn't been made, you'd never have faithless for a start, and they'te pretty damned huge, whether you like it or not (personally, i think they have one or two pretty decent moments).
i'm dismayed that they've got any hip-hop in there, because if hip-hop is "dance music" in a dj mag context, then surely hip-hop should comprise at least 90 per cent of this list!
as for the continual castigation of monthly music publications, please stop everyone.
some of us work hard in this format and try to do something good for people and non-stop bitching about the irrelevance of waht we do is pretty tiring.
also blogs and messageboards are no subsititue for the people i predominantly write for.
1) people like buying magazines. they're in a montly format, so they're not too much of a demand on people's time and don't have to be checked every day, instead they're easy to dip in and out of until the next issue comes along.
2) they're broadly based, where most blogs as are much more of the single-genre persuasion, giving people a ton of choices in one convenient package.
3) not many bloggers get to do big interviews with big stars, which people also like.
4) as a rule blogs are way too insider-oriented, not accessible enough, jammed with meta-crit, rather than getting discussing big stuff that the majority of people really care about, they're also often very poorly written and bloody difficult to read even when they're done well, whereas print products have editors (which helps) and are on paper, which is much nicer to look at.

 

[bassnation]

i'm dismayed that they've got any hip-hop in there, because if hip-hop is "dance music" in a dj mag context, then surely hip-hop should comprise at least 90 per cent of this list!

yes, this is the problem - if dance music as a category is broad (and in my view thats exactly what it should be, hip hop and all) it becomes impossible to do a list like this. hip hop has far more artist albums than house, techno, electronica etc. its going to be massively skewed and pretty meaningless, if other genres don't really operate on that basis anyway.

if, on the otherhand you go with the subtraction of "urban" genres from the dance umbrella as some people have tried to do, all you'd get is a list of euro trance producers.

i'm not sure its at all useful as a description anymore.

 

[jaxxalude]

I finally got hold of the DJmag issue with this list. They're the first ones to admit, in the intro, that dance music was always more about the 12" than the album. But there is a detail there which kind of gives me food for thought: the records were chosen by "DJ's, artists, producers and other music experts". Sorry if I'm being all conspiracy-theorist here, but it makes me think if there weren't any "directions" about the list. Meaning, if these people were given instructions about what kind of list it was supposed to pan out, rather than be given free reign on their choices.

 

[baboon2004]

as for the continual castigation of monthly music publications, please stop everyone.
some of us work hard in this format and try to do something good for people and non-stop bitching about the irrelevance of waht we do is pretty tiring.

Apologies, but it's not an ad hominem criticism of any kind, cos I think that the writing you do (the stuff I've seen online) is pretty good.

But we are all allowed our opinions, surely?

 

[jaxxalude]

i don't like leftism at all and never did. however, it is an influential album.
if it hadn't been made, you'd never have faithless for a start, and they'te pretty damned huge, whether you like it or not (personally, i think they have one or two pretty decent moments).

Personally, if there is an album here which might be an origin for Faithless it's rather the Sasha/Diggers mix-CD than anything else. Sure Leftfield were a product of all that Guerilla, B12, Hard Hands, etc. environment (as bassnation already stated so rightfully before). But to be sure, if there is something Leftfield made which might have been influential, it could only be the "Not Forgotten" and "Open Up" 12" singles. In terms of their aesthetic, they (as in these singles) pretty much laid some of the basic foundations for many a dull prog/tribal record released ever since (although I still love both tracks). As an album, "Leftism" was too sprawling and incoherent to give it a proper context/scene/sub-genre for which to be tied into.

 

[Slothrop]

It baffles me why people are still hung up on albums. It was a musical form that emerged in the mid 60s and dominated for the next 2 decades; but having taken a series of progressively more severe batterings from MTV, cheap studio equipment & rave culture it has been utterly destroyed by digital music sharing. No one under 25 gives a flying fuck about albums now - the idea that music should come in discrete chunks of 40-70 minutes is archaic.

No it's not - from my experience, plenty of people under 25 listen to albums, even the iPodders I know tend to have copied ripped albums off mates as much as they've downloaded tracks, and having a discrete chunk of 40-70 minutes is no more arbitrary than having a discrete chunk of 3-6 minutes - it just means that you can do different things.

What seems stupid about the list, as a couple of people have pointed out, is that dance music is much more heavily influenced by tracks than albums - albums mostly only generate more albums (so New Forms lead on to late nineties fusion-and-bass, but not much in the 12" / DJ / dancefloor market) whereas tracks generate more tracks expanding on the ideas and albums cultivating them and getting them into a home-listener friendly context. So I guess a lot of the list will have been 'artist X was very influential so we'd better include their best known album.' Presumably this is also why the observer list only had one 'dance' record in it - a fact that pissed me off until I realised why it was.

Out of interest, did the original DJ mag list come with any explanations?

 

[hamarplazt]

It baffles me why people are still hung up on albums. It was a musical form that emerged in the mid 60s and dominated for the next 2 decades; but having taken a series of progressively more severe batterings from MTV, cheap studio equipment & rave culture it has been utterly destroyed by digital music sharing. No one under 25 gives a flying fuck about albums now - the idea that music should come in discrete chunks of 40-70 minutes is archaic. ...

and

The only reason for producing music in album form today is the commercial imperitive to satisfy a slowly ageing mass market - aesthetically, it makes as much sense to work within the album form as that of a sonata or an eightsome reel. People enjoyed music for a long time before albums came along...

That's actually a very, very interesting point. We often forget the rest of music history when we talk about the horrors of the current mp3-revolution. When the first means to record sound came out, a lot of serious aesthetes were deeply disturbed by it, thought it took away the soul of the music, making it mere product. And in a way it does seem like a similar thing is going on now, reactionary romantics thinking that the new forms destroy the nobility and meaning of music, rather than just changing the focus like records did when they were invented. However, I don't really buy it. First of all, the mp3 playlists resemble a way of listening to music that has been around as long as albums: listening to the radio. Of course, here you choose your own playlist, but it's still the same flow of hits. And it's hardly a coincidence that so many people use the random function of the mp3-players, in that way it resembles a radio flow even more. That's one way to listen to music; "albums" is another, and I doubt that will ever go completely away, even if the media (cds) does. The reason for this is my second point: Yes, people enjoyed music long before albums, but they were also thinking in "wholes" long before albums. The "album" concept have been around for hundreds of years, in the form of dance suites, song cycles, quartets and symphonies. There will allways be musicians that want to make more integrated works rather than just hit singles, and there will allways be people who want to listen to such works, whether played by a symphony orchestra or downloaded to an iPod.

What was unique about the LP album when it came out, was that it was the first time that it was really possible to have such large works as integrated, recorded wholes. In a way, it was the first time something like the music equivalent of a book existed. And interestingly, this meant that a lot of stuff that wasen't originally interested in making larger works - popular folk music, basically - suddenly started to do so. And I see no reason why electronic dance producers shouldn't feel inspired to do so as well. That's not to say that there isn't producers making albums for purely commercial reasons, or that there isn't heaps of awful attempts to make grand album statements in this field, but there's also a lot of people putting a lot of creativity into it, and getting great results.

I don't think rave music by definition is beyond the album format, but it have certainly allways been a problem to make it work that way. One reason for this is that a lot of people on the rave scene are so determined that their music is all about 12"s and tracks, that they're pretty much making it a self fulfilling prophecy - of course they can't invent a lasting rave album format when they're not even trying. Another reason is that most of the people actually trying doesn't really try at all, because they're not doing it as rave albums, but as rock concept albums. However, rave albums are possible. The Prodigys Experience is probably the most well known example. And Biochip Cs Biocalypse is the best I've heard by far (but not influential, unfortunately), constantly inventive, catchy, exciting, far out, and still working as a whole.

Of course, a list of the 50 most influential tracks certainly would have been infinitely more relevant and interesting, but I think we've all established that by now. It is indeed a mystery what on earth they were thinking with "influential dance albums". It seems to be an odd mix of mostly albums that made an crossover impact beyond the core dance audience, combined with a few well established underground classics, as well as some inclusions that just makes no sense no matter what definition you're using - David Holmes???

I actually think it could have been an interesting list, because the whole idea of influence rather than greatness forces you to think outside your usual hobbyhorses and blindspots, making music criticism almost a taxonomic science. Sadly, though, this list doesn't use that potential at all, and actually resemble a lame best-of attempt much more than an actual exploration of the labyrinthine evolutionary paths of electronic dance music.

 

[gek-opel]

Albums are an effect of commercial and technological happenstance, however, there is a certain underlying sense that music historically works at certain total durations.... an individual song or movement is settled at about 4 mins, a longer suite at 30-60 mins, shall we say, and a dance piece (be it a club night or a tribal shindig) could be set much longer... as such I suspect no mater what the format there will be certain musicians producing suites of music, its just that perhaps given the fall of "the album" as central cultural artifact those whose music is less suited to this (ie pop musicians, dance musicians etc) will not bother with them... which would be good, as anyone whose sat through the end of a pop R'n'B record with ill conceived attempts at gospel, or a dance record's dire prog-indie bits will attest...

 

[mrchrispy]

Many laughable things about this list as has been documented by everyone above, but I can't believe this thread has gone on to it's third page and I still get to be the first one to point to out that there's no Kraftwerk on the list (or did I miss it?)

 

[gek-opel]

I think someone said that already, but it needs saying over and over and over again-- since they are the single most influential act in the history of dance music (just check Computer World, a good 50% of the ideas for the next 10 years of dance/electronica are in there...) How the hell did they miss them out???

 

[Freakaholic]

Youre right, it needs to be said again......No Kraftwerk????

But more interestingly, in light of the nature of dance music, I would like to see someone (more knowldegeable about the histroy than I) take each one of these albums in the list and show a Mixtape that was the actual influential work.

Other than the downtempo genre, Id say most of these were propelled by mixtapes. As mentioned by others, certain tracks have much more influence than albums, but Id guess that their influence relies on a certain high-profile DJ set that included it.

 

[gek-opel]

It would have been more useful to list all the albums (perhaps pre-dance) which influenced modern club-based dance music... would have made a hell of a lot more sense than listing off a load of albums, half of which are little more than souvenirs of the end point of a given scene, buffed up commercially and placed on a little shiny cd...

 

[hamarplazt]

Many laughable things about this list as has been documented by everyone above, but I can't believe this thread has gone on to it's third page and I still get to be the first one to point to out that there's no Kraftwerk on the list (or did I miss it?)

The lack of Kraftwerk have been noticed several times in this thread actually. But as I wrote, there isn't included anything before the late eighties house explosion (what's the earliest one on the list? KLF?), so I guess that's a deliberate choice they've made. If it isn't, and they really claim this is the best dance albums literally ever, then the list goes from being extremely poor to being an outright atrocity. Even avoiding the hip hop question, there's SO MUCH revolutionary historic material missing. No first generation disco or electro, no synth pop, no EBM.

 

[jaxxalude]

and they really claim this is the best dance albums literally ever

It's not a Best Dance Albums Ever list, it's a Most Influential Dance Albums Ever list. I just thought it was important to point it out.

 

[hamarplazt]

It's not a Best Dance Albums Ever list, it's a Most Influential Dance Albums Ever list. I just thought it was important to point it out.

Ah yes, my mistake. Heck, I've been arguing about this exact point all thread. And of course, it makes the lack of historic material much, much worse.

 

[Ned]

Meanwhile Alan McGee thinks the single is dead. So people who predominantly enjoy rock music think the single is dead, while people who predominantly enjoy dance music think the album is dead - I wonder why that could be.