Gabba Flamenco Crossover said:
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
Gabba Flamenco Crossover said:
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.