We’re fast approaching the time of year when regular music biz writers get very itchy feet. They are all dying to tell you which, out of the massive pile of freebie product they grafted from willing record companies, were their favourite albums of the last 12 months. Right now, in tiny backrooms across the country, they are busily scratching out their thoughts (can’t you hear them children?...)
Sad to say, I haven’t been privy to this same massive pile of musical graft for the past year. So instead, I thought I’d self-indulge with my Top Dance and Electronica albums of the last 2 or 3 years, just so I have enough product to choose from!
If you don’t agree with the choices, good. That’s what this is for, to generate a bit of discussion. Insert your favourites, add categories, whatever. Perhaps this will incite you to submit your own list to ITM?
Here we go..
1/ Best commercial compilation (non-mixed) – Dance, House and Club
Classics Volume 5 (Vicious Vinyl)
A few years back, a little 18 year old named Billie Piper had a few Top 10 UK hits, one of which countrymate and DJ, Tall Paul, decided to remix into something palatable enough for the rest of us to digest properly. That song was “Because We Want To’ and it became a 7 minute wonder of tweaking that was hotly sought by the dance underground. Before it hit big, Vicious Vinyl had nabbed it and whacked it on this compilation, along with 22 other little dancefloor stormers.
Vicious Vinyl still produce one of these quality comps every year and they remain essential buying. Two years on, these tracks still sound fantastic on their own, or sandwiched together in the non-mixed environment they’re found here. With nary a bad track in the lot, this is a perfect snapshot of dance music in Australia, circa 1999. Check out Binary Finary’s long long mix of ‘1999’, as just one good example, and throw your hands in the air in ecstatic pleasure all over again.
2/ Best commercial compilation (mixed) – Gatecrasher Discotech (INCredible)
Asking someone which Gatecrasher CD is their favourite is a little like asking a hunter which weapon he prefers to kill rabbits, the RPG or the missile launcher?! Usually, these compilations from the UK’s most over hyped and best known club night take the concept of packaging a dance compilation to somewhat dangerous levels of blandness. By attempting to smooth out all the varied and more interesting forms of the dance genre into an easy listening 3 minute pop format, much of the creative and spontaneous joy of this music is squashed. Like that poor rabbit!..
However, this one, ‘Discotech’, is delightfully different. For a start, this double contains some much harder edged tracks than previously featured. Even better, the mixing is absolutely perfect (and no, I don’t care if a computer did it, it’s still fantastic).
They’re never going to be the cutting edge of progressive new sounds these comps, but as a collection of current UK dance floor fillers and commercial hits, they are the standard to which many others should rightfully be compared. ‘Discotech’ is by far the best they’ve ever produced. 
3/ Best freebie magazine CD – Guy Ornadel’s Progressive Session, Muzik Magazine June 2000 (no label)
Guy Ornadel has toured this country, but even so, he’s still not terribly well known here. On the evidence of this fantastic 70 minute outing for Muzik Magazine he did last year, we should hope he returns to our shores many times in the future.
Constructed as a non-stop dance assault, this little mix leaps straight out of the blocks with ‘Plutonium’ by Luminance and doesn’t let up until ‘In My Brain Now’ by Peppersonic drifts away, 10 boogie-full, butt shakin’, foot stampin’, cliché-pumpin’ tracks later. By that time, even if you weren’t originally planning to go out, to borrow my old mate Yoda’s favourite saying, “you will beeeeeee!...”
Every track fits here so perfectly, all of them flowing effortlessly from one to another. This is the sort of CD you put on and within 10 minutes, people are asking you who it is, where they can get a copy and ‘hey, don’t turn that off yet!!’.
Addictive, brilliant and very hard to find of course, you should search somewhere like eBay for a copy as soon as you can.
4/ Best Mix set (studio) – Nu-Breed, Anthony Pappa (Global Underground)
It took me at least 5 full listens to this 2CD set before I finally ‘got it’. Am I slow?...maybe. As it is, two years on from the first listen, I am still hearing things daily in this brilliant mix set that amaze me.
So complex in it’s intentions and so profound in it’s progression, this album will initially have you reeling. Much of the credit must, of course, go to the originators of the tracks actually used here but it’s Pappa’s blending of them into a totally seamless, flowing, liquid vibe that most impresses.
There is nothing on this album that is even remotely commercial, yet almost all of it is essential. So underground that it’s almost kissing Lenin, ‘Nu-Breed’ tracks an artist at the absolute peak of his creativity. Combining equal parts dirty sex, disturbed ramblings, unadulterated fun and razor edged humour, Pappa manages to define Progressive House with this album (and that’s no easy feat!).
In future years, when they look to the sound that was 2000, this album
will be the explanation. 
5/ Best Original Techno album – Decks, EFX & 909, Richie Hawtin (Novamute)
Ooooh, a hotly contested category and really, there could be a hundred different artists sharing this one. However, for mine, Richie Hawtin’s deft technical expertise and keen music sensibilities earn him the highest kudos imaginable.
This album is nothing short of genius. Hawtin’s many years of practice with 3 deck mixing reaches the zenith of it’s creativity here, combining the best of pop and techno to produce an almost entirely new style and genre. Though DJ Shadow had already done it similarly for the Hip Hop world a few years before, Hawtin took 5 giant steps forward for the Techno genre (not that it needed much help) with “Decks..” 
6/ Best ‘comedown/chill’ album – Back To Mine, Nick Warren (DMC)
The 1st release in this high quality, very well-known series and by far the most polished. Combining the sounds of strings, of water flowing, Leonard Nimoy, disembodied whispers, Coldcut, synthesisers, old movies (Barbarella), parts of obscure soundtracks, Liz Fraser (Cocteau Twins), rocket launches, Moby, train stations and samples from just all over the place, this is the most laid-back set of emotive and relaxed rhythms you’ll probably ever hear.
At best, pure genius. At worst, a perfectly arranged set of vibes, moods and textures by a man with exceptional music taste.
7/ Best original new music dance album (Overseas) – Wide Angle, Hybrid (Kinetic)
OK, it’s not exactly a rave favourite this one, loaded as it is with soft strings and mellow arrangements. But it is undeniably dance and undeniably great.
Hybrid created a sound that many subsequently copied and their trademark sound found its way into many latter day star’s albums (PvD’s “Out There And Back” must owe at least a little something to these guys influence?)... Chock full of great rhythms and original melodies, all with toe-tapping beats and arrangements even your punk-assed, rock music-loving sister could understand, Hybrid probably deserved more cross-over success with this than they received. Still a critics fave and re-discovered daily by word of mouth from adoring fans, if you haven’t heard it yet, do yourself the old favour.
Real music for real dancers.
There you have it groovers. Get to writing!...
candyflip
