Best 90s electronic music duo (non knob-twiddlers edition)

Lamb vs moloko vs mouse on mars

Dreeeeexciya

Alex p and Brandon block m8

This grouping is much weirder than the last!

basic channel or drexciya

voted mouse on mars over drexciya, shout out to masters at work

Basic Channel over Drexciya, both super classic tho obvs

Mouse on Mars are the only ones I live full albums by here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRoIuEe6Bbs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AW7MBWdNHa4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdMQNAHiYgQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJeffcmZH7U

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-5RQAqV_Jc

moloko

LFO vs 4hero vs The Orb vs Krome & Time vs Origin Unknown vs Drexciya

I can't do this

Mouse on Mars definitely belong on the other poll, an appalling omission. Considered LFO but that one guy left so nah. Anyway I don't really care about any of these, apologies.

Drexciya.

Nightmares on Wax weren't a duo were they? Thought it was just George 'EASE' Evelyn

burger/ink for 'las vegas' like stuff from everyone here though

las vegas is srsly amazing, it's on spotify and that

Ive always preferred 00's solo stinson Drexciya but its still a fierce submarine battle with basic channel

L? F? O?

Nightmares on Wax weren't a duo were they? Thought it was just George 'EASE' Evelyn

It was a duo of Evelyn and Kevin Harper for their first singles and first (and best, IMO) album. But I forgot Harper wasn't on the following records anymore (except for the "Dredd Overboard" single), so I guess it's a matter of opinion whether they should be in this poll.

Considered LFO but that one guy left so nah.

They were a duo for their 90s recording career, though. You shouldn't let post-90s stuff affect your judgement here.

ok i will allow you in your mind to add any LFO or MoM votes here to the other poll.

Btw, those of you who know Alter Ego only for "Rocker", I would strongly recommend checking out their 1996 album Decoding the Hacker Myth (despite its awful title). It's a lovely piece of euphoric, elastic synth lines married to funky breaks, kinda like µ-ziq without the drill'n'bass wankery. Any fan of mid-90s Warp would probably like it.

This one is more difficult! at any point in the last three months it could have been any of these;
Alter Ego
Basic Channel
Burger/Ink
Masters At Work
Mouse On Mars
Shut Up & Dance

First Alter Ego album with the Blue Note style cover is superb. I kind of lump Sensorama in with Alter Ego (they are the same duo as far as I know).

Swayzak hasn't been mentioned either. Seeing them live in '98 was a real moment for me. I'd seen creativity with Djing before but two guys and some boxes creating a dubby minimal groove in a smallish club inspired me.

I refuse to choose between Moloko and Lamb

Where's the love for Westbam, Hardfloor, Jam & Spoon, etc? Germans did other cool stuff besides minimalism, you know?

Drexciya, Basic Channel, MAW... it's crazy how much more I identify with this poll.

very broadly speaking, it's UK (plus France) v US & Germany...

write in vote for Sun Electric

I did consider adding Sun Electric to the list, but I thought no one would even remember them.

Anyway, I guess it's not a mystery who I'm voting for...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSv8XeOxD_g

come on it's obviously basic channel, these guys cast a bigger shadow over techno than anybody since derrick may and mr fingers

i mean it is literally impossible to talk about house and techno in a broad context w/o evaluating the impact of those guys, nobody else on the list can claim that (you could easily sub in any number of hardcore and bleep artists for 4 hero and lfo and drexciya is non pareil but also sort of in their own world)

i'm not saying i enjoy basic channel more than drexciya necessarily but that's not really what these polls are about, are they?

like i'll take lfo (leeds warehouse mix) and sea snake and tied up an black sea over any individual basic channel track (not counting maurizio) but not over the entire genre of "hardwax techno"

TBH Basic Channel's specific appeal has been kinda run down a bit by the emergence of the entire genre of "hardwax techno" as a permanent side-serve to detroit.

But I get your point and think this poll is theirs to lose (esp. if one includes Main Street Records and Rhythm & Sound).

versus 4 Hero who are less obviously the sole ancestors of the styles and sub-styles they fostered, but maybe fill a "patient zero" style role - it's likely that darkside hardcore, artcore, atmospheric/jazzy d&b and broken beat would have happened without them but nonetheless everything that actually happened in each of those moments can be traced back to their pivotal role.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUD4RaRSSio

yeah but that's just arguing that 4 hero sparked a fad several times in a row, mr kirks nightmare was the anthem and maybe it was even the one that sparked the trend but it was hardly the only stab anybody had taken at darkcore or whatever you want to call it

similarly i'd say guy called gerald re: their ambient leanings etc

also you know i love then most for their jacobs optical stairway project

Yeah I was agreeing with your distinction though.

er, sorry, the side serving joke put me in death to false techno mode

god 'phylyps trak' is just like transcendentally brutal

come on it's obviously basic channel, these guys cast a bigger shadow over techno than anybody since derrick may and mr fingers

The poll is about the "best", not the "most influential" though. The BC stuff that I've heard is okay, but there are other 90s minimalists (Emmanuel Top, Burger & Ink, Khan & Walker, Plastikman, etc) I like more.

Basic Channel entirely passed me by

basic channel: get into it!

start with quadrant dub xp

huh, somehow I knew about Porter Ricks and Monolake, tho

One thing I've always wondered about Basic Channel: were many people actually into their tracks at the time they came out? Because I can't remember hearing anything by them, or about them, until the late 90s, and even then it was Rhythm & Sound that I first heard. By the time I got to hear the actual BC stuff, I'd already been listening to other artists influenced by them, like Monolake, who I thought did the same thing better. So that's why I've never been that impressed by them.

(haha, x-post with Dan)

yes, many many people were into basic channel when they came out. it made a *huge* impact.

http://www.discogs.com/artist/Maurizio#t=Appearances_Mixes&q=&p=1

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh duh, Basic Channel = Maurizio

okay yeah now the impact argument makes sense

i should say, a huge impact on the field of "serious techno"

yes, many many people were into basic channel when they came out. it made a *huge* impact.

http://www.discogs.com/artist/Maurizio#t=Appearances_Mixes&q=&p=1

I dunno if that's supposed to prove it, if you look at the Discogs entry for Air Liquide, for example, they appeared on about the same amount of mixes in the 1990s, and you can hardly say they had a huge impact even then:

http://www.discogs.com/artist/Air+Liquide#t=Appearances_Mixes&q=&p=1

Compare Maurizio to Emmanuel Top:

http://www.discogs.com/artist/Emmanuel+Top#t=Appearances_Mixes&q=&p=1

He has more than three times as many mix appearances in the 1990s, but these days few people credit him as a minimal techno pioneer, even though he totally was.

I thought the point of that discog link wasn't the number of appearances but who Basic Channel actually were

actually IIRC air liquide / rising high did have a big impact on german techno, esp in terms of germans adopting breakbeats and giving rise to stuff like khan and walker, etc

also i realize things are different in finland and america but over there is 15 the same as 30?

also tuomas yr question was about "back then"

"back then" emmanuel top was getting 5/5 reviews in mixmag

but here's the thing: those basic channel appearances are much higher profile than those emmanuel top appearances

yeah I was gonna say Air Liquide was huge at the time IIRC but got lazy

No idea what anyone is on about or what that list of random artists at the top is all about but Basic Channel is the answer

emmanuel top *was* high-profile then, for example it was kinda the centrepiece of one of the chem brothers big mixes

actually IIRC air liquide / rising high did have a big impact on german techno, esp in terms of germans adopting breakbeats and giving rise to stuff like khan and walker, etc

Haha, you realize Walker is one half of Air Liquide?

also i realize things are different in finland and america but over there is 15 the same as 30?

I count 14 mix appearance for Maurizio in the 1990s (plus 3 for Basic Channel). Did I miscount?

Who else was getting remixes like this from UR?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qptCcKCB1c

oh duh, walker was in liquid, you're totally right. anyway, they were a big influence on that

xpost you didn't miscount, i think you just didn't count stuff like phylyps and rhythm & sound, they had a ton of aliases, right?

tuomas have you ever analyzed your overweening desire to always be right?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x48HJpCuK-o

speaking of maurizio ploy remixes,

though i am tempted by MAW, my vote has to go the Orb.

Basic Channel belongs with the knob twiddlers, but clearly is the most important of these. I voted Lamb for sentimental reasons.

still not choosing between Lamb and Moloko (but if pressed, would pick Lamb)

gotta say dubby minimal is sounding kind of boring to me these days

4 Hero

I just wanted to say, I'm not denying Basic Channel were influential from the turn of the millennium onwards, when the German minimal techno scene became popular, it's just that I don't remember them being very infuential before that. In my recollection, the minimal scene in the 90s was less about dubby, "deep" tracks and more about harsh, dry tunes, like Emmanuel Top or Richie Hawtin or Panasonic, or German Schranz, or what was known as "monotrack" here in Finland. But of course it might've been different elsewhere in the world.

no pre-95 it was exactly as you describe but it's tricky because one bleeds into the other when you look at people like hawtin and dan bell

or baby ford or force inc etc etc

tuomas reads very well in eeyore voice

no pre-95 it was exactly as you describe but it's tricky because one bleeds into the other when you look at people like hawtin and dan bell

Yeah, but that was the exact reason I asked whether the Basic Channel tracks were influential when they originally came out, since that was in the early 90s.

My introduction to Basic Channel, Chain Reaction, Maurizio etc. was with their feature in The Wire which I think was Aug '96. It was at that point I saw them as superior in terms of sound design to a lot of German and European techno that preceded that time. They release the iconic metal boxed CDs around that time also I think. I remember people who I admired like Carl Craig were bigging them up in interviews. This was obviously a few years after they had released the first 12"s.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

the very first promo pile that arrived @ ireallylovemusic hq happened to be the back catalogue of eat static.
while the odd track was fun for 10 minutes, have to admit i never got to the end of an album.
same goes for the secret knowledge album to be honest .. /

my vote may be boring, but it has to be the orb.

Lamb without any hesitation.

basic channel v. lfo v. mouse on mars for me

mouse on mars fell off pretty hard, but god, i love their glam/instrumentals period so much.

basic channel 'radiance' also extremely beautiful.

all the lfo lps are quite good too. even have a lot of love for 'sheath'.

tough call.

Where's 2 Bad Mice?

Whether to vote Burger/Ink for one perfect album or Mouse on Mars for at least five near-perfect ones...

Alter Ego
Basic Channel
Burger/Ink
Masters At Work
Mouse On Mars
Shut Up & Dance

I think I'll go for Shut Up & Dance... never fails to get me going...

Burger/Ink are restyled as Mohn with a new album out very soon..!!

4hero, for Parallel Universe alone.

Finally got around to voting, decided on MAW just shading Basic Channel and Drexciya.

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

photo finish.

LOLLLL

basic channel records were massive on the underground when they came out, those 12"s had a huge mystique iirc in terms of sound design and even the pressings themselves. dave clarke would routinely award them five dancing men in his Mixmag Update reviews.

i would have voted for MAW tho, tbh.

"The slammer" ices the rest of this boring egghead shit

Where's 2 Bad Mice?

I thought of including them, but apparently they had three members, despite the name.

Interesting that Moloko got only one vote, I thought they might win. I guess people don't listen tho them that much anymore, especially since Roisin Murphy has had such a strong solo career?

i like Moloko fine but vote for them over BC or Drexciya??? fucking mentalism

Non, non, non, non-non-non, knob!
Non non, non-non-non, knob!
Du-o...

Best 90 electronic music duo: THE FINAL BATTLE