The Best Electronic Albums of the '90s
In the '90s electronic music stopped making singles and started making albums, so rank the ones that justified it. Every entry is a studio album from the 1990s whose Wikipedia opening sentence credits it to an electronic act, drum and bass groups included. If it names no act, the artist's own opening sentence decides. Trip hop or vocal synth-pop first in the genre field is out: no Violator, no Very. Ambient is a tag, not the test: these are sets of self-contained events; a record whose events are sections of one sustained state belongs elsewhere. The upper band also sits on Album of the Year's one page chart of 25 '90s electronic albums. Nothing in the lower band does. Each printed year is the year of first release; a Spotify date never decides it. The link goes to the oldest edition Spotify carries of that record, chosen by edition and never by the date the page prints. Where the linked page shows a different year, the item says so. Voting reorders this. It cannot decide what belongs.
Underworld — Dubnobasswithmyheadman (1994) is #1 on “The Best Electronic Albums of the '90s”.
- 1
Underworld — Dubnobasswithmyheadman (1994)
Karl Hyde was writing like a man reading billboards through a car window, and Rick Smith built nine tracks of progressive house patient enough to let him do it. Cowgirl runs eight minutes and earns all of them, one riff turned over until the words start to mean something. Album of the Year keeps one chart of 25 for this genre and decade, and this is on it.
Open in Spotify - 2
Roni Size & Reprazent — New Forms (1997)
Bristol's answer to whether drum and bass could hold a double album, played by a band with a live bassist, a DJ and two MCs. Brown Paper Bag is the one everyone knows, clipped strings above a bassline that walks rather than runs. Bahamadia guests on the title cut. One of 25 rows on that same chart at Album of the Year.
Open in Spotify - 3
Aphex Twin — Selected Ambient Works 85-92 (1992)
Thirteen tracks that R&S put out in 1992, most of them older than the release date suggests, and none of them especially interested in being dance music. Xtal opens with a detuned loop and a wordless voice and never resolves either. Everything after it works the same way, patient and slightly wrong. Album of the Year counts it inside 25.
Open in Spotify - 4
Boards of Canada — Music Has the Right to Children (1998)
Two brothers in Scotland working with degraded tape, half heard children's voices and synthesiser lines that sag a little out of tune. Roygbiv is over inside two and a half minutes. It does the whole trick on its own. Warp issued it in April 1998, eighteen tracks on the CD. Its place among the 25 comes from Album of the Year.
Open in Spotify - 5
Orbital — Orbital 2 (1993)
The Hartnoll brothers gave it no title, wrapped it in brown card and let everyone call it the Brown Album. Halcyon + On + On runs nine and a half minutes, takes its vocal from Opus III and slows it until it sounds sedated, which is roughly the subject. Ten tracks. Among the 25 that Album of the Year prints, this is one.
Open in Spotify - 6
Robert Hood — Internal Empire (1994)
Detroit techno reduced to its parts: one loop, one filter sweep and nothing else you could call a melody. Tresor released eleven of them in 1994. Internal Empire sits halfway through and comes closest to a tune. Album of the Year has it in a chart of 25.
Open in Spotify - 7
The Chemical Brothers — Dig Your Own Hole (1997)
Big beat at the moment it stopped being a Heavenly Social in joke and started filling arenas. Setting Sun has Noel Gallagher singing over a drum loop that owes the Beatles a great deal. Eleven tracks, out in April 1997, closing on nine minutes of clarinet and feedback called The Private Psychedelic Reel. It landed in the 25 Album of the Year assembled.
Open in Spotify - 8
Leftfield — Leftism (1995)
Progressive house with a dub sound system in the basement and guest vocalists who had no obvious business being there. John Lydon spends Open Up shouting about burning Hollywood down; Earl Sixteen handles Release the Pressure. Eleven tracks on Hard Hands in 1995. Not on the 25 row chart Album of the Year publishes.
Open in Spotify - 9
The Prodigy — Music for the Jilted Generation (1994)
Written under the shadow of the Criminal Justice Bill, which is why Their Law exists and why the sleeve shows a raver cutting a rope bridge. Voodoo People lifts its guitar riff from Nirvana's Very Ape and drops it over a breakbeat that will not sit still. Thirteen tracks, July 1994. Album of the Year's own 25 has no line for it.
Open in Spotify - 10
Photek — Modus Operandi (1997)
Rupert Parkes cut drum and bass down to a study in space, ten tracks on Science with more silence in them than sound. The Hidden Camera opens the record with a rhythm assembled one hit at a time, nearer to a percussion exercise than to a dancefloor. Album of the Year passed over it when counting to 25.
Open in Spotify - 11
Autechre — Tri Repetae (1995)
Sean Booth and Rob Brown at the point where their machines began sounding corroded on purpose. Clipper is a rhythm played on what could be a failing lift mechanism, and the nine tracks around it are colder still. It came out on Warp in November 1995. Album of the Year did not find room for it in 25.
Open in Spotify - 12
Daft Punk — Homework (1997)
Two Frenchmen with a sampler, a filter and no interest in choruses. Around the World repeats its own title through a vocoder for seven minutes over a bassline in debt to Chic, and it is what made the pair famous. Sixteen tracks on Virgin in 1997, and Spotify types this id a compilation where the Wikipedia article calls it a studio album. The 25 gathered by Album of the Year leave it out.
Open in Spotify - 13
LFO — Frequencies (1991)
Mark Bell and Gez Varley were Leeds teenagers who had worked out exactly what a bass bin does to a room. Tan Ta Ra arrives halfway through fourteen tracks and still sounds like a warning. Warp had it out in July 1991, back when bleep techno was a thing people said. Album of the Year went elsewhere for its 25.
Open in Spotify - 14
The Orb — Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld (1991)
A double album of ambient house that treats the mixing desk as the instrument and assumes you have two hours spare. Little Fluffy Clouds is built on Rickie Lee Jones describing the skies over Arizona in an interview, with Ennio Morricone underneath. Ten tracks in 1991. Nothing from it reached the Album of the Year 25.
Open in Spotify - 15
Goldie — Timeless (1995)
Jungle rebuilt as a double CD, opening with a suite twenty one minutes long that carries Inner City Life and Diane Charlemagne's vocal. Nobody in the genre had tried anything at that length. Saint Angel comes next, strings over a break chopped past recognition. Fourteen tracks on FFRR. Album of the Year got to 25 without it.
Open in Spotify - 16
Air — Moon Safari (1998)
Moog basslines and a Wurlitzer, made in Versailles by two men who met studying architecture and mathematics. Sexy Boy is the nearest thing on it to a single, and even that arrives with its French vocal buried under vocoder. Ten tracks on Source, January 1998. No entry for it once Album of the Year stopped at 25.
Open in Spotify - 17
Fatboy Slim — You've Come a Long Way, Baby (1998)
Norman Cook's third act, after Housemartins bass and Beats International, and the one that turned big beat into advert music. Praise You loops Camille Yarbrough's Take Yo' Praise over a piano that keeps slipping out of time on purpose. Eleven tracks, October 1998. Album of the Year left it outside the 25.
Open in Spotify - 18
Moby — Play (1999)
Eighteen tracks built over Alan Lomax field recordings, ignored on release and then licensed track by track until it was everywhere. Porcelain is the one Moby has said he nearly cut, and it might be the best thing on it: a piano figure and a string line with almost nothing behind them. It never made Album of the Year's list of 25.
Open in Spotify
How this list was ranked
Readers rank this list by voting items up and down. Items are ordered by reader votes.
