Best track out of these seminal (chart) debuts

What does Nate Dogg have to do with the others? As much as I love all these tunes (except for "Come Together", never heard that), I gotta go for "Aftermath", because of the BASS.

Besides, "Regulate" is by Warren G featuring Nate Dogg.

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I can't even remember what Pacific sounds like, despite it being a top ten hit. According to Wikipedia, Gary Davies was responsible for it being a hit by playing it so much on Radio 1. I mean that really makes me feel old, Gary Davies.
A hard choice between LFO and KLF, I voted for KLF.

voodoo raymond is tooooo good for anything. it wins easy.

I've got it down to 4.

couple more i maybe shd have included like 'stakker humanoid'. the orb and fsol have not aged toooo well.

I don't get that, UFOrb still sounds totally fresh to me. Some of the first album is patchy, including the single in the poll I guess, but "Ickle Fwuffy Cwouds" still kills it.

Anyway I voted for LFO, because they are LFO.

heh i was listening to UFORB this morning. not really feeling. yeah 'little fluffy clouds' is yoga flame and i like the single mix of 'perpetual dawn' and the track in this poll. but then there are lots of 18-min dubby tracks i can't be fucked with tbh.

Dubby is good, I'm less fussed with the aimless noodlers.

think we're talking about the same tracks there.

ie the boring tracks are boring, the good ones not!

so why did you include 'Regulate'?

part of short-lived 'nate dogg' meme gambit

Altern-8 Dogg

Missing option:

http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/images/homepage/2303_jewel_header.jpg

The Ray Keith Mutation of "Chime" is one of my favorite dance tunes ever.

regulate

play nice

I'm a bit flummoxed by the inclusion of the magnificent Regulate, so I'm going to pretend it's not there and vote forthe equally magnificent Voodoo Ray.

Wright cemented his reputation of knowing nothing about music when he famously declared that LFO, the self-titled techno classic, was the worst song of 1990, showing that he knew nothing about the direction music was taking at the period.

You been reading Martian's blog?

Just googling for shit I sort of remember being sort of funny. Wright getting all grouchy dad over "bang bang bang rubbish".

But whoever wrote that is an idiot.

he knew nothing about the direction music was taking at the period

Dude just liked vocals, right?

I would say LFO because they never got better later on, and that one remains their classic.

Of course, you could say the same thing about "Voodoo Ray" too.

Timelords kneejerk disqualification for KLF, I'm afraid.

Right now - "Chime" because I'm still reeling from the shock of Dale playing it on POTP yesterday.

His verdict? "Good single, that."

Surprisingly un-Geir-like answer there Geir. Are you sure you don't really want to vote for "Chime"? Is "Regulate" one of the g-funk singles you check for?

I love Orbital, but not really "Chime", which is atypical of the more analogue-oriented sound they developed later and also doesn't have the same melodic qualities that a lot of their later work do.

"Regulate" I kind of like, but generally electronica >>>>> rap.

Had "Little Fluffy Clouds" been Orb's debut I would have voted for that though. Not sure if I have even heard the original version of "...Pulsating Brain....."

they didn't actually chart till 1992, but they'd done a load of singles by then.

I do wish that the smoother original version of "Pacific State" from the Quadrastate EP had charted, in preference to the version with the over-busy squiggly-wiggly bassline.

I also went with "Chime". I remember going back to the club I used to DJ in, just after it re-opened circa November/December 1989, and having a miserable night because they were playing all this "soulless" abstract techno that I couldn't get into... except for this one tune, which I'd never heard before, that stood out a mile from everything else. But it still confused and disorientated (and fascinated) me, as I kept expecting it to resolve and climax and go all four-to-the-floor whumpa-whumpa, whereas instead it just kept shimmering and tickling and staying unresolved and out of focus...

Yesterday on POTP Dale did 1984 and 1990. I wonder what all the cardiganed sixtysomething Bachelors fans made of the likes of Orbital and Queen Latifah?

Voodoo Ray, Pacific, Chime, LFO, all great, I voted for "Pacific", but could have picked any of thses four.

"Evergrowing Pulsating Brain..." I think is pretty tedious. Generally, I think the Orb are fuck awful boring, "Come Together" is OK-ish I suppose, if I'm honest, I'd probably like it more if it didn't have "Primal Scream" written on the sleeve. "What Time is Love" I used to play to death, kind of not interested in it, reading that godawful Bill Drummond book was kind of a disconnect for KLF stuff for me. "Aftermath" I don't remember at all.

Has any act from the "electronic dance music makes all other music redundant, get with it FFS oldster" days dated more poorly than FSOL, I wonder. That shit is so fucking rank, bleh.

"Stakker Humanoid" still rocks, though.

It does!

You missed the full extent of fsol's horrible pretentious we are music year zero steez if you didn't follow them in "Electronics & Music Maker" and "The Mix"

Papua New Guinea is forever awesome, and i like a lot of their brooding ambient stuff after that (becuz i don't really care about 'overproduction' or 'pretentiousness')

likewise 'Pacific' is unimpeachable in whatever form (even like the '98 remix...tho not so much the Grooverider one what a missed opportunity) - i declared it best thing ever at the time and it took around 10 years to shift from that view.

I've never liked Pacific State, don't see what all the fuss is about.

You were probably digging Jive Bunny at the time.

(xpost)Generally, "pretentious" is a positive attribute to me, but god, after reading a puff-piece by/about them in "The Mix" I was usually ready to bang my head against the table. Luckily I hated their music too! (shd put "music" in inverted commas for full veins-bulging-on-temples effect)

"Pacific" was the point where I "got" this music. It's a bit cheezy-sounding to me now, heard it, or knockoffs of it used as incidental music too much, but still good to listen to b/c the programmed beats have a bit of swing to them. v v few acts got this.

Mercifully I never read those "trade" magazines, doubtless full of sombre-looking shaven-headed faces reluctantly looking up from control desks.

would like to see visual comparison of Pacific, Chime, LFO and Voodoo Ray 'scores' as they would appear in a modern sequencer with each melodic and rhythmic component assigned their own track. it might demonstrate well what Pacific has that the other three don't - it's less mantra-like, more staged and progressive and stands out on this basis. basically it's jazzier.

"Electronics & Music Maker" was pretty good, very focussed on electronic musicians at the bottom of the heap, till '85-87, when the editor fell hard for DJ/turntable shit/acid house and instead of incorporating it into the magazine, threw out everything they covered, and only covered all that, as well as adopting this really tedious pre/proscriptive editorial mindset - this is what you should be listening to, you shouldn't be listening to yesterdays music they were fond of this phrase "yesterday's music", the low point being when they slagged off a manuel gottsching gig as "yesterday's music" while raving about "sueno latino" in the same issue. Some dude wrote them a letter pointing out the obv, they printed a snarky response form the editor "blah blah blah recontextualising, get with it old fart, yesterday's music blah blah blah" FSOL were like the magazine's house band for about three years. The magazine died a long slow death after "Sound on Sound" started publishing. That was fascinating, wasn't it.

FSOL albums are generally indigestible, I find. Especially the ones where they call themselves Anonymous Humungous or whatever it is. Very boring, I'm afraid.

fsol thing was weird - love/hate for me really. they did seem like dicks and no doubt some of their sound and imagery was annoying. still remember being blown away the first time i heard their R1 Essential Mix tho (also first time i ever heard Tomorrow Never Knows heh)

i've always really really liked 'pacific', without shame, in any version i've heard. that and 'voodoo ray' are properly sublime n shit.

'papua new guinea' is classic too, but you know, 'even a stopped clock'.

out of this lot it's the warp tracks i like least. the 'loving you' mix of the orb track is what i have in mind, but it still takes a backseat to the others.

have heard 'come together' too many times so that's out.

People who like "Papua New Guinea" might want check out "Cascade", which probably has been overlooked by history because it came out on a double-disc album that always looked too impossibly overblown for me (and I assume many others) to buy.

"Cascade" is certainly rather more grandiose than "Papua New Guinea", but that hardly seems like a killer criticism when y'all still listen to mid-90s Orbital albums. Sasha & Digweed's first Northern Exposure comp nicely recontextualises it as, um, ambient rave I guess? Wish there was more of this sort of tearjerker breakbeat house around (see also, and obviously, 69's "Desire").

My answer is probably "Voodoo Ray" but it seems wrong to choose with this poll.

FSOL singles did surprisingly well in the charts (even in the wake of Orb buzz). 5 top 30 singles after Papua New Guinea is impressive.

22 Future Sound Of London Papua New Guinea May 1992
27 Future Sound Of London Cascade Nov 1993
14 Future Sound Of London with vocals by Elizabeth Fraser Lifeforms Aug 1994 Notes
22 Future Sound Of London Far-Out Son Of Lung And The Ramblings Of A Madman May 1995
13 Future Sound Of London My Kingdom Oct 1996 Notes
12 Future Sound Of London We Have Explosive Apr 1997
28 Future Sound Of London Papua New Guinea 2001 (remix) Sep 2001

Not a bad run, even if they probably all dropped to 68 in the second week.

this question doesn't make much sense, but voodoo ray wins anyway.

What the fuck was "Far-Out Son of a Lung..." doing at 22?

FSOL are great! and Amorphous Androgynous!

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

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

Sheffield has it.