Top 50 Most Overrated Electronic Albums

COUGH!
http://valen.host.sk/discografia/resultado/discos/imagenes/radio-activity-(1975).gif

Only 50 because these lists never seem to go on for 100.

"legendary album, way ahead of its time ... complexity yet funkiness is almost unreal" - some boob on discogs.com

the complexity and funkiness = wholly imaginary, actually

legendary = yes, but so are crocodiles in the toilets

ahead of its time = maybe, in that the boring post-techno electronica glut wasn't scheduled to happen for at least seven or eight years.

Yeah but Radio-Activity isn't really "overrated" because NOBODY brings that album up when talking about either classic electronic records or classic Kraftwerk records.

And Play was still included in the new issue of Spin's 25 Crucial Electronic Albums Ever.

overrated 'super discount'

I had to sneak this over to my record store's listening station (to preserve the rep). Utter crap.

Also brings to mind the last few Chemical Brothers records, which while not utter crap, are overrated all the same.

haha xpost

Case closed via review by Aquarius Records:

"At this rate by volume 6 or 7 there may not be any sound left at all, just gentle whispers and inaudible drones."

Also: Their trick to stretch out a song for two or eight more minutes is to add an annoying flanger effect to the loop.

ha, all my failed 90s attempts to make music do this trick too

not sure if I got it from them or if it's just because (unlike many other effects) flanging a drum loop is easy and fun to play with in 90s tracker software

I still rep for Pole's 1/2/3 because I had surgery and was laid up for a week and mildly drugged up and I just sat around listening to all of them on a loop and staring at a textured wall and intermittently napping

this is a v good way to listen to records ime

(not electronic but) my maybe-favourite Oneida record "The Wedding" isn't anyone else's favourite Oneida record iirc, but it is the one that was on the 3-disc changer during my week off after surgery, drifting in and out of awakeness/awareness, dosed up with a big bag of synthetic opiates

even the good posts in this thread are marred by the premise of it. i feel like "overrated" is such a one-dimensional concept especially when applied to electronic music where the ratedness is so marginal and in-the-moment in the first place. when it arises it comes from a rock perspective which is just deeply lame. and the less serious variety is like cyclical revulsion/nostalgia, "what were people thinking from 2003-2007" or w/e.

― you bet, nancy (map)

like i said in the other thread, most of the stuff in this thread, including stuff i've contributed, is stuff i enjoy and think is good. when i talk about "overrated" i do talk about it from a rock perspective because, one, i come from a rock background, and two, most of the "overrating" does seem to come from a rock mindset - favoring albums, etc. you know what it reminds me of, actually? people who will insist with a straight face that frank zappa is the best 20th century composer. most of the people who say that haven't heard very many 20th century composers!

But I will agree that this thread is an unproductive one. Most music could be construed "overrated" regardless of genre. Where's the "underrated" thread?

― octobeard

it's called "house and techno bobbins 2018", it's full of great stuff, check it out

there are others as well, techno/house bobbins of the past, basically anything saer posts

they're not called "underrated" but i think that's probably for the best

you know what was good was snd's first album

― you bet, nancy (map), Wednesday, May 16, 2018 8:21 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

fuck yeah

the worst thing about this thread is people shitting on whole artists for not producing albums that sound like Discovery or something

the thread is for ALBUMS

Clicks and Cuts was and still is great fuiud

That reminds me: Discovery

I saw snd live and man sounded like sandpaper on wax

Mark Fell is God, afaic

it makes me think of the pipecock era, or when i was just getting into dancier and blacker music and sort of trying to digest the history of it, when it was like there were these gradients of what is and isn't ok to like among different types of fans. i know a little bit more now and have a better sense of what kind of fan i am and i can think of a bunch of more rewarding ways to engage with what people think about electronic music from their past than "overrated" ffs.

― you bet, nancy (map), Wednesday, May 16, 2018 11:43 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

even tho i have participated itt in prob dumb ways i think u are otm

also rush otm too when he said itt or maybe the other one that all these albums are worth listening to, imo nothing we are saying here really has to do w/ the music itself anyways. if you love those clark albums then i am ultimately very happy for you

btw i love those pole albums

def think a most underrated albums thread would be more useful

or a "random old electronic music you're loving" one

JIV that is some generic fast fashion bullshit house Herbert and you should know better

― El Tomboto, Tuesday, May 15, 2018 9:34 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

house music is good

i made an album all of samples taken at a mcdonalds and it's a comment on capitalism is less good

eh i like this thread lol even though its full of people being wrong

don't get re albums that supposedly sound dated re electronica.
I mean, I still listen to Kraftwerk/Yello/Cabs/Pedro/Prefuse 73 etc a lot.
if its good upon release, then its good a few years later even if there are new generations of software that may be better now.

More about changing styles/aesthetics imo

but that happens in every genre

isolee 'wearemonster' got overrated imo, 'rest' was way better but critical attention was inversely proportionate

Though production techniques can factor in...some end up sounding 'timeless' or 'classic' because they keep getting re-used, others are popular for a minute and then not so much (like sidechain compressing everything to the kick drum, or glitchy Pro Tools sample chopping all over the place, or putting mid-tempo breakbeats through guitar pedals in a way that sounds very '90s, etc)

xp

but that happens in every genre

Exactly?

ok thought we were saying electronic stuff gets pegged as dated more than other genres and positing theories as to why

that was Moka's post i dont really agree w it either

100% agree w/r/t Isolee. Rest is much better than wearemonster, but perhaps the people who loved wearemonster were new to the genre and so they overvalued the album because they weren't around for the release of Rest.

it's an obvious point but dance music can get just as caught up in roots and tradition as others musics, like deep house for ex

it's not all "must generate new alien sounds"

I think stuff that's using a brand new instrument or tool gets pegged to a time... until there's a revival a couple decades later and then people marvel about how "contemporary" something sounds

sometimes it's just revisiting older sounds, but other times it's enthusiasm for something new that's a different take

for instance, all the eurorack stuff now

do I need to dig around and find out what eurorack is ?

it’s a modular synth system

someone had the genius idea to come up with a standard form factor/voltage/specified cable for modular synth units so you can put them all in a little box or cabinet and plug them all together using the same cables

you've heard a bunch of stuff in recent years made that way, trust me

it's the thule roofbars of synth

you've heard a bunch of stuff in recent years made that way, trust me

I have no doubt that's true.
however, I have never heard that phrase before.
ta.

someone had the genius idea to come up with a standard form factor/voltage/specified cable for modular synth units so you can put them all in a little box or cabinet and plug them all together using the same cables

Robert Moog did that in 1964!

"today" is my jam off wearemonster, so so dope

xp yeah, but someone had that genius idea again in the mid 90s

and thus the cycle of modular synth rises again

btw the coolest niche thing now is the vcv rack software, which in a recursive manner, emulates and gives people a way to build modular synths in software and wire them up. other software has done it but this is a pretty cool framework

link for a nice example https://www.facebook.com/groups/vcvrack/permalink/184204178906401/

Mark Fell is God, afaic

― brimstead, Thursday, May 17, 2018 5:16 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^

like for all of the interviews he gives where he's just so anti-dancing (yawn), he sure has made some v. funky (and gorgeous) music

Wearemonster generated a lot of buzz at the time but it doesn't seem to have lasted in the critical memory in the way that, say, Alcachofa has. Isolee in general now feels like one of those producers who made so many great, detail-packed records and now gets overlooked in the rush to lay hosannas on Villalobos as the crowning auterish genius of his era.

(Beau Mot Plage has lasted, obviously, but individual tracks rarely feel over or underrated in the way that albums do)

I like a lot of early Bicep tracks and remixes but their album was just really formulaic and boring, not in a joyous and familiar way but in a predictable and unthrilling way

Yeah. I bought the album purely on the strength of seeing it appear several times in the ILM 'best of 2017' poll, not previously having heard a note of it. I was quite dismayed by how pedestrian it is. Probably the first time that the hivemind has let me down.

"probably the first time that the hivemind has let me down"

If that was only your first time, you're in for a world of hurt

challop: SAW 2 is 85% meh

I have a bunch of Thomas Koner CDs that I picked up because The Wire was all over them, and I'm still not sure just what the hell I'm supposed to be hearing! (The Porter Ricks stuff is pretty good, though.)

Wearemonster generated a lot of buzz at the time but it doesn't seem to have lasted in the critical memory in the way that, say, Alcachofa has. Isolee in general now feels like one of those producers who made so many great, detail-packed records and now gets overlooked in the rush to lay hosannas on Villalobos as the crowning auterish genius of his era.

― Matt DC, Saturday, May 19, 2018 4:49 AM (six hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this to me feels like a better example of 'overrated' than villalobos for that reason kinda? like, i also actually want to listen to achso but not wearemonster

that said 'rest' is pretty awesome to me still in the way that mid 00s villalobos is

I've always felt that way about SAW2

köner is awesome
thirded on the SAW2 "what gives?"

I agree with the post upthread to the effect that a lot of the excitement around Wearemonster was catch-up for people who missed Rest the first time around. The former is still a great record IMO, but Isolee's "auteur" period was really in the years leading up to and culminating with Rest (see also the early singles, many of which ended up on Western Stores, and stuff like the remix of Blaze's "Lovelee Dae").

There's still total classic tracks in the following years like the "Lent" and "Sweet Chat Rio" remixes from 2003, and especially the "Cardiology" and "Africa / Brazil" remixes from 2004, but they're more like superb dancefloor articulations of all of the producer's assembled tricks and tactics (no surprises that this stuff is often my favourite Isolee) (actually in retrospect Playhouse really missed a trick by not putting out a remixes collection at about that point).

The fact that Isolee was really an auteur in the years before the microhouse / minimal crossover means that, while Wearemonster arguably was overrated on release, Isolee as an artist is now underrated - perhaps because more people had the luxury of following the tail end of Villalobos' classic era in real time, it's easier to think of his work as "important" in a way that is less obvious for Isolee.