Profile Records Best Of Techno Vol 1 Poll

Fuse.

i have this on tape. i love it. i dig the maximalism or overstuffedness of the Andromeda track. sounds like new beat, basically. everything but the kitchen sink. fat bassline, breakbeats, technotronic synths, sound fx, sped up rakim sample. LOTS going on, but it fits somehow. it's a very varied various artists kinda comp!

who wrote the liner notes?

lol is this a Warp comp?

Uh, no...Profile is the label, see.

I have this! Hell, I have the box set -- five discs. Plus the similar five CD set on house.

Oh yeah sorry hungover. I'm sure a lot of this stuff was on Warp in the UK.

Liner notes are one 'DB,' who put the album together along with Gary Pini.

i adored the profile house comps. i was just playing volume two last nite!

so, was this comp a good introduction to techno for someone in 1991? i have no idea. or an american in 1991 more specifically.

From the tracks I know off there I'd say it's a good comp but probly not much of an intro to mainstream techno in 91.

Strangely I don't recall any of these tracks other than the FUSE one, but suspect that it's one of the GTO ones.

seems kinda random the way its put together. not like those house comps. but i like the music anyway. and it was all new to me when i first heard the tape, um, 3 or 4 years ago! nothing on it really screams CLASSIC to me. but when i'm listening to it i get that weird feeling i get when i'm listening to a genre comp sometimes that i could listen to music like this all day or all week or all month for some reason. i get into it!

xpost, me too, Alex ... although I have a strong feeling the Rhythmatic, Voodoo Child, and Speedy J tracks if I heard them (particularly Speedy J, I think that track is on a +8 comp that I own).

nothing on it really screams CLASSIC to me

For me, "F.U." and "The Bullfrog" are stone-cold classics. But I'm tempted to vote for Speedy J because he really could do no wrong at that point (which is still true even today, for the most part).

db's liner notes are a trip. 3 is the best - i haven't heard this one though.

seems kinda random the way its put together.

A lot of these comps from around this time seem to be, like the Techno Nations ones that Kickin' did. I think it's maybe a lot to do with it being a kinda transitory period between this stuff being underground and overground and it not being immediately obvious if something was one or the other

Yeah the Speedy J one is on the Plus 8 Classics comp

Okay are people forgetting what that Nexus 21 track sounds like? (It is Altern8 under a different moniker doing dreamy house that they would later sample for "Hypnotic St-8".)

Liner notes are one 'DB,'

This is DJ DB of History of Our World fame, no?

I got rid of the box ages ago which I sorta regret. Maybe I was miffed that techno had usurped house in the zeitgeist. More likely it was just too damn patchy (although admittedly the house box was too).

But. I took a History of American Popular Music course c. 1991 and said history apparently stopped with Aretha's "Bridge Over Troubled Water" since that was the last song the prof played. However, for the last day of class, he asked us to bring one song from the 1990s which we thought pointed towards the future (and, yes, that means yet again the 1980s weren't part of history).

Anyhoo, I remember only three examples of the future of music as of 1991: Seal (!), The Nylons (!!!), and Little Richard's "Itsy Bitsy Spider" (! x infinity). Seal, I can forgive - Prog&B sounded pretty futuristic back then. But the fuckin' Nylons??? Wasn't the point of their music, such as it is, to look back? And come the fuck on. Little Richard??? Worship him but was he the future of anything by 1960 much less 1991?

I was in a rage by the time I walked up to the front of the class to play Zone: "Eternal #2" from this comp which was authorless in a way very much unlike "Itsy Bitsy Freakin' Spider." And boy did I sound a lot like those liner notes while pumping my choice. But it was such an amazing experience. Half the class seemed awakened for the first time all semester while about a quarter were stunned and/or whispering to one another as if I just unveiled Jeff Koons' "Made in Heaven" series (leaving one quarter completely unfazed). The prof was cool at first, asking me where the term "house music" came from and whatnot. But he got downright frosty when the conversation evolved into a gripefest about Rolling Stone. It was awesome. Eventually he had to tell me to sit down since he realized part of what we were bitching about was the truncated history he'd been handing us all semester.

Of course, it all seems a bit silly now if only because the concept of "future" in a capitalist society is nothing to parade about. Still, the very real folk behind Zone get my vote for affording me the opportunity to shake up that bullshit class for five minutes.

P.S. I wrote my final paper on The Frogs' It's Only Right and Natural, imagining it as a collection of songs hidden away in an attic for 100+ years. I got an A but there were no comments on the paper.

Still, it could become a huge movement in the U.S.

LOL !

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

"Techno is, in many ways, soulless. It's disposable, quickly produced and lacks the spiritual quality of classic house. However, it maintains an energy and force that most other genres of contemporary music seem to lack."

This reminds me of the time I was arguing with this kind of dim-witted and, shall I say, rockist, person to whom I was defending the merits of techno. One of his final arguments was that unlike techno, house had it's roots in detroit, thereby making it soulful and thus valid.

"best of techno" with no detroit artists? yet they include richie hawtin? i guess some things never change.

""best of techno" with no detroit artists?"

Of course.

yeah, a compilation released in 1991 has the same tracklist 17 years later. wtf, right? (xpost)

That said I think there are some Detroit dudes on some of the other volumes.

Well okay there is a stray Tronikhouse track on Vol 2 anyway.

Didn't DJ DB later become a big US drum and bass DJ?

Ha ha maybe Detroit producers boycotted involvement en masse after reading DB's liner notes.

"Ha ha maybe Detroit producers boycotted involvement en masse after reading DB's liner notes.

-- Tim F"

haha, it could be. talk about missing the point of the music entirely! though at least there is no debate about moby and richie hawtin having no soul ;)

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I reviewed this album in Spin when it came out, but I never got a chance to vote in this poll. In the review I say the only track I liked much was G.T.O.'s "The Bullfrog," thanks to its percussive croaking. So I guess I would've voted for that one.