Muzik 25 best dance albums

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

Round up the usual suspects.

1. DJ Shadow - 'Endtroducing' (1996)
2. Chemical Brothers - 'Exit Planet Dust' (1995)
3. Orbital - 'Untitled (The Brown Album) (1993)
4. Primal Scream - 'Screamadelica (1991)
5. BT - 'Ima (1995)
6. LFO - 'Frequencies (1991)
7. The Orb - 'Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld' (1991)
8. Daft Punk - 'Homework' (1997)
9. Kraftwerk - 'Trans-Europe Express' (1977)
10. Underworld - 'Dubnobasswithmyheadman' (1993)
11. Soul II Soul - 'Club Classics Volume One' (1988)
12. Aphex Twin - 'Selected Ambient Works 85-92' (1992)
13. KLF - 'The White Room' (1991)
14. Massive Attack - 'Blue Lines' (1991)
15. The Future Sound Of London - 'Accelerator' (1991)
16. Soft Cell - 'Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret' (1981)
17. Nicolette - 'Let Nobody Live Rent Free In Your Head' (1996)
18. Air - 'Moon Safari' (1998)
19. Public Enemy - 'It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back' (1998)
20. Happy Mondays - 'Pills 'N' Thrills And Bellyaches'
21. Leftfield - 'Leftism' (1995)
22. Negativland - 'Escape From Noise' (1987)
23. The Prodigy - 'Music For The Jilted Generation'
24. Basement Jaxx - 'Remedy' (1999)
25. Fatboy Slim - 'Halfway Between The Gutter And The Stars' (2000)

What do you think of the list, and what is dance anyway?

― Billy Dods, Thursday, 10 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

No Chic, George Clinton, James Brown, Inner City, Pet Shop Boys even.

Negativland???????

― Billy Dods, Thursday, 10 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Leftism should be way higher. What the fuck is Fatboy Slims worst album doing on there? and yeah what the fuck is dance. it should be called Muzik magazines best 25 and then it'd be simpler since dance appears to be anything they like, generally speaking.

― Ronan, Thursday, 10 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I want to go to a dance where they play Endtroducing, Selected Ambient Works, Moon Safari, Blue Lines and and Trans Europe Express. That'd be fun.

― Mark, Thursday, 10 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

lest we end up debating dance agin to the expense of the (atrocious) list, i think they mean -electronic- dance. or at least music that couldn't (inna "it wouldnt have sounded like this" sense) have been made before the introduction of the cheap synthesizer (and maybe the sampler.)

― jess, Thursday, 10 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Dance albums? They picked the wrong Selected Ambient Works then.

― Honda, Thursday, 10 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

It's unfair to call the list atrocious- much more accurately it suffers from being predictable. There're indubitably some great albums on there - Blue Lines,Endtroducing, etc etc etc - but anyone with a stereo system has probably heard of most of them, if not bought a sizeable number (exceptions being LFO, Nicolette and Negativland). Therefore, same old choices, same old lack of inspiration cf Mixmag best 100 etc etc

Main problem, to get all Reynolds on yo ass, is that the list is ridiculously rockist - no. 1 in scattering pop and trip-hop bands all about the shop, and more vitally in assuming that dance music is about the album form in the first place. Great 'dance' singles from 'Good Times' to 'Move Your Body' to 'Energy Flash' to 'Here Comes the Drumz' (incidentally, why no jungle?) to 'Neighbourhood' stand alone as great dance tracks outside the context of 'the album', a form of presenting music that is perfect for rock bands but isn't the definitive yardstick by which to measure great music. An' ting.

― baboon, Thursday, 10 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

No, not a good list. (Too many cases of right artist/wrong album; too many weird omissions of entire genres; the token rap pick is sort of embarrassing.)

But how many really great full-length electronic-dance artist-based non-compilation LPs do you suppose there have ever been?

― Ian, Thursday, 10 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Baboon's got it right, but there's another reason why albums lists for dance are annoying, and that's because it completely zones out whole areas of dance music don't tend to produce albuns - although they really should have *something* from jungle there. In fact only the smallest smattering of albums here are consistently good to actually dance to.

I'm not sure whether to be amused by the sentimentality of BT's first album's high placing. You almost get the impression that the magazine longs to return to the days when it could cover prog-house cover to cover. Nicolette charting so high frankly baffles me - has anyone actually listened to that album? And if they did, would they, like, recommend it to the average punter?

― Tim, Thursday, 10 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

i.e. when ILM discussed this same question a long time ago, the artists and albums named were almost all on this list.

― Ian, Thursday, 10 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

But how many really great full-length electronic-dance artist- based non-compilation LPs do you suppose there have ever been?

by my estimation...10. maybe 12.

― jess, Thursday, 10 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Actually there are heaps of good albums, there's just not as much consensus around them as in rock (whereas "classic tracks" is much easier because there's the run-on effect where if everyone on the dancefloor loves a particular track you end up enjoying it more yourself).

― Tim, Thursday, 10 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Actually there are heaps of good albums, there's just not as much consensus around them as in rock

I'm not so sure about that, Tim. When's the last time you heard anyone who's into electronic music breathe a word of dissent on, say, Trans-Europe Express? I can't think of any rock albums that have an equivalent consensus behind them.

― Ian, Thursday, 10 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Yeah you're right on that score Ian and I was less sure of my wording as soon as I pressed 'submit', but then really as I said before very few of the entries on this list are particularly danceable. The problem is that the really danceable albums (ie. collections - but not compilations - of dance tracks) rarely get to even the minority consensus level that you might get around a mildly hyped rock album of the year - perhaps due to the whole 'faceless' issue. In the dance world, classic tracks live on for ever, but unless your a scene-insider fanatic 'quality product' is largely interchangable (note for example the half-surprising lack of 'real' techno in this list - a genre with no dearth of very carefully constructed and thematic albums).

The consensus on these sort of personality-fuelled non-dancing electronic albums is of course very strong in comparison (although even there I'd say Kraftwerk is a deceptive example, because they're like dance music's Beatles - could you talk about a similar level of consensus for albums post-88, ie. the explosion of dance music as we (and Muzik) know it?

― Tim, Friday, 11 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Ian an Tim both have point, there are heaps of good dance albums and T.E.E. is the Pet Sounds of dance. Right?

The list? Okay why not? It's a list and therefore bobbins. 'Leftism' = overrated, the token dance album. Nicolette? Nice but nothing special. BT = a joke. 'Exit Planet Dust' = overrated. Wrong Prodigy album. Albums by Air, Massive Attack, Aphex, Shadow don't really contain floorfillers although one could stretch it a bit and state they are indeed products of dance culture and then it would be fair I guess to include them. So no 'Timeless', 'Sawtooth', 'Parallel Universe' or 'Black Secret Technology'. Ah well. And oh I just realize: no Carl Craig or Plastikman. Dear oh dear.

― Omar, Friday, 11 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

i don't like this list much, but i'm not entirely sure why, beyond the fact that i don't like many of these records, i'm not entirely sure what 'dance' music actually means (perhaps once, even 7 years ago it was enough of a ghetto, album wise, to mean anything, now it seems to mean pretty much whatever), but i guess its pretty interesting in seeing the formation of a canon, well, the solidifcation of one anyway (over the last few years)

― gareth, Friday, 11 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Why is 'Entroducing' #1? The infinite wonderful-dance-music-potential of creative sampling? I like the album but I find it an awkward #1 choice for a list like this.

― Honda, Friday, 11 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Didn't they have the top 100 singles before? Cos that was a much better idea. Except Cafe Del Mar were no. 1.

― Ronan, Friday, 11 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

i thought alison limerick or someone was at number one when they did the singles?

― gareth, Friday, 11 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Perhaps I'm wrong. I will try and find the list.

― Ronan, Friday, 11 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

jess, i agree with you. In general the genre is just not particularly wel suited to full length albums. I guess the reasons for this are pretty self-evident. If you have to go full length, the DJ mix CD is usually more effective i think

― g, Friday, 11 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Picking that Fatboy Slim album is EMBARRASSING. Either of the first two would have been a better choice. An argument could be made for the first PRodigy album that would be hard to counter, but I have no problem with _MftJG_ making it onto this list. Adding that DJ Shadow album was silly, and putting it at #1 is just asinine. And in what universe is _dubnobass..._ more danceable than _Beaucoup Fish_?

The only albums I think they got absolutely right are Orbital, FSOL, Soul II Soul, Massive Attack, and Basement Jaxx. That KLF album almost makes it, but since the album doesn't include the Tammy Wynette version of "Justified And Ancient", I can't whole-heartedly agree. And I was busily scoffing at the Public Enemy pick until I remembered that pretty much EVERY SONG on that album is intensely boogieable.

― Dan Perry, Friday, 11 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I'd have to scoff more at the fact that Muzik apparently thinks said PE album came out only the four years ago.

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 11 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Do you think they meant to include the "He Got Game" soundtrack?

― Dan Perry, Friday, 11 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Ned, Ned, that's the It Takes A Million Box Set. Jeez.

What I missed (not because I personally rate them or anything like that): Faithless. I though *by law* Muzik was required to have a Faithless album in these type of charts. Same with Dave Clarke.

― Omar, Friday, 11 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I know nothing about Faithless beyond "Insomnia" but that song is EXCELLENT.

― Dan Perry, Friday, 11 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

If "Insomnia" had been a one-off, sure, forgivable. But their ENTIRE SCHTICK is throw really bad rapper over really obvious prog-trance-house track to give it pretention-cred with the critics, spice it with a couple of weak trip hop moments to please home- listeners and voila! A band who, while having not a single actually interesting talent, are liked by everyone. For which they must die.

― Tim, Friday, 11 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

But in fairness, they may be beating their own one trick into the ground. but it is their own. sort of like the Beastie Boys or someone.

― Ronan, Saturday, 12 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I thought Reverence was a damn good album. Actually sounds far better to me now than when I first got it. When I bought it as it first came out, I wasn't that impressed.

― patrick, Saturday, 12 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.