My 5 favourite electronic records of the 90s

 After all this a new blog, we need to get acquainted first !

1. Roni Size / Reprazent - New Forms (1997)

I remember listening to this one a lot 15 years ago and yet, i only began to grasp its genius during the last few years, sign of an album definitely far ahead of its time. A visionary for blending spacey drum'n'bass, future soul and organic jazz but also hard rythms and deep textures, and even right away from the start, on the opening track Railing, for merging hip-hop with experimental electronics in a manner that would pave the way for Thavius Beck and British grime, the Bristol genius unfortunately never matched this level of epic abstraction again. With the irresistible groove of its hypnotic bassline shaking an almost nighmarish atmosphere of analogic phantasmagoria and digital meltdown, Mad Cat remains one of my favourite instrumental tracks ever recorded. No need to say that the 2 CD version is essential.

2. Aphex Twin - Richard D. James Album (1996)

Surprisingly, Richard D. James' more accessible work is also my favourite, right before the schizophrenic Drukqs and the seminal Selected Ambient Works Volume II. Synthetic strings and candid melodies (Fingerbib) along with acid grooves (Peek 824545201) collide with epileptic beats (Carn Marth) and destructured rhythms from the starting point of the opening track 4, and bravura "pop" pieces like To Cure a Weakling Child and the crystalline hit Girl/Boy Song, as well as the bouncing final Logon Rock Witch became for good reasons some of the biggest classics of a highly celebrated discography (Milk Man, weirdly compelling nursery rhyme from the Girl/Boy EP added as a bonus on the american edition would also have to count for one). Of course, there are a few dark corners too, starting with the unsetlling Cornish Acid... after all, Come to Daddy was released the same year and one can't change his true nature !

3. Funki Porcini - Love, Pussycats & Carwrecks (1996)

Maybe too discret for his own good, James Braddell influenced many during his Ninja Tune era, from Amon Tobin to the late great Alias through The Cinematic Orchestra, without really making a name for himself, ultimately leaving the label on a stroke of genius (On, in 2010) to focus, since Plod, on a more ambient direction with underground masterpieces of atmospheric and troubling beauty like One Day, Conservative Apocalypse and earlier this year The Mulberry Files. His best work during the 90s, Love, Pussycats & Carwrecks melted jazz into hushed drum'n'bass, evanescent clouds of ambient and liquefied downtempo drums like no one ever could before or even since, with a result alternately tense (Carwreck) and dreamlike (I'm Such A Small Thing), retro (Snip & Lick) and futuristic (Theme Music For Nothing), abstract (The Last Song) and meditative (Going Down), easy on the ears (Hyde Park) and oddly unbalanced (12 Points Off Your License). A fascinating unidentified musical object that too few people know about.

< my many FP reviews on IRM, for French readers >

4. Autechre - Tri Repetae (1995)

Pretty much the greatest band in activity today with a discography so mesmerizing of constantly genius exploration that no other electronic artist from the great Warp era could come any close except maybe Leila if she had released twice as many albums (just listen to BoC and AFX last records and then, listen again to anything Rob Brown and Sean Booth put out after the almost "poppy" yet still strong Quaristice...), Autechre, for me, really became next level with this on. Surely, Incunabula (1993) helped define IDM, and Amber (1994) set the bar quite high for electronic ambient music with a softer sound (especially if you compare it to what came next, the very abstract and destructured masterpieces Chiastic Slide and Confield), but Tri Repetae really started to share, with a fascinated niche audience at the time, that unsettling mood of distressed computers, the melancholy of machines dreaming of becoming human and fearing of waking up from that dream, a state of (cyber-)mind made of feverish steamroller rubbery rhythms, anxious synthlines and agitated blips. Often qualified later as cold, mechanic and disembodied, Autechre's music never disconnected from that underlying disquietness of the soul, more human than ever today in our era of ever-increasing artificial intelligence.

< my old review in French from 11 years ago >

5. Boards of Canada - Music Has the Right to Children (1998)

One of the peaks, with the even stranger and greater Geogaddi, of a body of work dedicated to out-of-this-world dreams and subconscious mythologies, Music Has the Right to Children felt at the time like an experience in easy-listening turned corrupt. In the continuity of Maxima (1996), downtempo syncopated beats slighly influenced by trip-hop and instrumental hip-hop, eerie melodies of distorted vintage synths and manipulated abstract voice samples float above ethereal voids of oneiric vapors and future-passed nostalgia. Michael Sandison and Marcus Eoin capitalized on their mysterious persona and instantly became a cult duo for the whole electronic community but ultimately failed to renew with that timeless inspiration with a somehow shy and predictable Tomorrow's Harvest in 2013, regardless of a quite blind critical acclaim - if you ask me their underrated Campfire Headphase was much more touching and interesting... while ex member Christ., who departed after Twoism, remains virtually unknown despite a tremendous series of dreamlike releases on Benbecula and Parallax Sound. Life is unfair for geeky musicians with no marketing plan.

Bonus :

6. Oval - Systemisch (1994)
7. Alec Empire - The Destroyer (1996)
8. Leila - Like Weather (1998)
9. The Curse Of The Golden Vampire - The Curse Of The Golden Vampire (1998)
10. Seefeel - Succour (1995)

Also, a few albums among my all-time favourite which would have made a perfectly good top 5 but that i chose not to include for not being "electronic" in the purest sense : any Massive Attack (or trip-hop/early instrumental hip-hop like Alpha's Come From Heaven, DJ Shadow's Endtroducing etc), Björk's Homogenic, The Dust Brothers's Fight Club OST, The Third Eye Foundation's You Guys Kill Me and The Prodigy's The Fat of the Land.