I started only-semi-coherently ranting at that point, and if he wasn't driving I probably would have grabbed and shaken him.
Anyway, at that point I rattled off a list of bands from 1997 that he should be listening to instead of that recycled lukewarm pabulum. I think most of what I shouted out was actually from 1996 or 1998, but when I got home, I spent ten minutes making a list.
Today he posted his list of the best of 1997, and his favorite bands suck. (I find it hard to be in his car because of this music, srsly.) Here then, is my rebuttal, in two parts:
<LJ-CUT text="The Best of 1997, or, Fuck Futurepop --More--(28%) ">
The Best of 1997, or, Fuck Futurepop:
Big beat, trance, IDM, trip hop, and just a sprinkle of goth:
- The Chemical Brothers - Dig Your Own Hole
- The Crystal Method - Vegas
- Fluke - Risotto
- Les Jumeaux - Cobalt
- Juno Reactor - Bible of Dreams
- Underworld - Pearl's Girl
- Panacea - Low Profile Darkness
- Add N to (X) - Avant Hard
- Not Breathing - Sangre Azul
- Autechre - Chiastic Slide
- Mono - Formica Blues
- Portishead - Portishead
- Recoil - Unsound Methods
- Perfume Tree - Tide's Out
- Locust - Morning Light
- Mistle Thrush - Super Refraction
- Trance to the Sun - Delerious
Rock and/or industrial:
- Veruca Salt - Eight Arms to Hold You
- Hanzel und Gretyl - Transmissions from Uranus
- Course of Empire - Telepathic Last Words
- Engorged With Blood - Engorged With Blood
- Morphine - Like Swimming
- Sky Cries Mary - Moonbathing
- Radio Iodine - Tiny Warnings
- C-Tec - Darker
- Souls - Bird, Fish or Inbetween
- Gary Numan - Exile
- Sister Machine Gun - Metropolis
- Tanya Donelly - Lovesongs for Underdogs
- Sleater-Kinney - Dig Me Out
- L7 - The Beauty Process, Triple Platinum
- Bile - Biledegradable
Thank you. Drive through.
Portishead is ten years old now? Good lord.
For some reason that's more recent than I expected for Portishead, but quite a bit older than I expected for Like Swimming. Given that he didn't make 9/9/99 I shouldn't be surprised though...
To resolve your bumpy memories, the album named Dummy came out in 1994, which may be what you are thinking of first, instead of the second album, named Portishead.
i'll play consensus facilitator, and suggest that dr_memory was referring to the disheartening fact that there has been no new songs from Portishead in 10 years, not the album's release date/
I believe you are correct; this would certainly not be the first time I've misinterpreted the English language. What I could add to this post for substance is that the singer, Beth Gibbons, has gone on with a solo album in the mean time.
Wikipedia tells me there is a new album arriving in April 2008, and their page shows a fairly active touring calendar. 10 years were certainly long enough to wait.
Beth's Live In Berlin album has a couple of songs (especially one called "Tom The Model")that come close...but the "methadone" of solo projects is instantly outclassed by a fresh dose of the real deal.
very few things can still cut through my crust of jaded cynicism, but Portishead remains one of them
have you seen this before?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hba1_wHMSDQ
I was going to jump in with Six Finger Satellite, but I was a little surprised to find out that "Severe Exposure" was from '95. I only found out about it in '97 or so.
I wonder if there's some long german word for that goldfish-memory rediscovery-shock that yeah, it was just that long ago, and by extension, you're just that old now.
What I always enjoyed about VNV Nation is that you could almos t hear the mouse clicking in Fruityloops.
Best laptopmusik slam evar.
Not that I really listened to anything better in 1997. 1997 for me was basically MAN TEN YARD FIGHT IS SO RAD FLOORPUNCH IS AWESOME
I think it's so *cute* when you guys scrap.
Thank you. I said it in 1999 and I'll say it again, fuck VNV.
I eagerly await jwz mixtape FFF6.
suddenly i'm glad i don't rely on either of you for music recommendations :P. the chemical brothers and the crystal method? ugh! talk about music that hasn't held up well. i'll give you autechre, recoil, portishead and mistle thrush though. but really, there are good reasons i don't still listen to hanzel und gretyl or sister machine gun anymore.
Just because it doesn't hold up doesn't mean it wasn't the best music of that year! Context, lady.
Crystal Method didn't hold up well at all because it was completely over played. In the "Big Beat" Genre, it was a defining album, though, and you can't forsake it that.
Also they were in almost as many TV commercials as Moby...
That's a good thing?
Big Beat, aka, Jock Rock.
Sorry, make that Jock Jams.
Woop, there it is!
I think Vegas holds up well, but all the rest by Crystal Method is crap.
I went to see the Chemical Brothers about a month ago, and I'm here to tell you that they've held up very well indeed :-)
I, too, will live a happier and more fruitful life if I never have to hear VNV or Apoptygma Bezerk ever again. But there's not really very much futurepop on structurefall's list - Noisex, Wumpscut, and Numb (in particular) are much bigger on the screaming and the crunching then they are on the doof-doof.
More best-of-1997 as I remember it:
Hooverphonic - A New Stereophonic Sound Spectacular
KMFDM - Symbols
Godflesh - Love and Hate in Dub
Laika - Sounds of the Satellites
The Orb - Orblivion
Lords of Acid - Voodoo-U
whatever that GYBE album was called
....and Numb - Blood Meridian, even though it's the first album on his list. Because it's just that good.
Stereophonic: 1996.
KMFDM: utterly without merit.
Orb: yawn.
Voodoo: 1994.
Stereophonic: Balls.
KMFDM: As far as I'm concerned, it's the only solid album they've written in their twenty years, and it took them ten years to get there.
Orb: Yawn? Really?
Voodoo: Balls again. I had no idea my copy was a reissue.
Didn't listen to Orblivion back in 1997 but that's one of my absolute favorites, right here right now. Perfect wandering-around-the-city-aimlessly-while-on-drugs music.
As for KMFDM, I only like their albums from MDFMK onwards. Tried getting into Symbols a month or two ago, but it just doesn't sound as good as their more recent stuff.
The only worthwhile KMFDM albums are the ones he released as "Pig". And even those are uneven.
I'd argue that if you're gonna refer to KMFDM as one person, it would be Sascha K and not Mr. Watts... but thanks for the recommendation.
numb's wasted sky was a much better album, imho
eh, i like that one too, but i feel like everything prior to blood meridian was just -trying- to do sonically what blood meridian and language of silence actually achieve.
also, while wasted sky sounds a lot better, i think christmeister had better songs.
mu-ziq's lunatic harness was released in 1997. omfs.
Apropos of the distant future of 2007, I discovered Underworld this year, and find them to be excellent work/hacking music. I learned only yesterday that they published a new album this year, too - a nice surprise after my assumption that they were a 1990s-only act. I can recommend them to anyone who likes electronic music.
VNV will always have a place on my guilty-pleasure playlist, alas.
what a crack-up. that is what I was listening to back then.
both of your lists, however, showcase far too many albums by bands I like that are not their best effort.
I won't say specificallly which ones ...
unit 187 sucked but I still have a warm spot for that(something to be said for a great break-up song coming along when you are actually breaking up with someone).
hehehe... that's exactly how i got -in- to unit:187 back in the day. if "nobody" isn't a great breakup song, i don't know what is.
Funny, I think my musical tastes in 1997 were much, much closer to yours than eric's.
Fluke and Crystal Method were defining albums of that time for me
The C-Tec album, at the time had been playing in the clubs since 1995 or so, but only had a commercial release in 1997.
I remember having been passed a CD-R of the album a year or two before it's release. It was a rare commodity that DJs treasured.
Sleater-kinney - Dance Song '97 :)
yes!
low profile darkness! that record is fantastic.
glad to see these on there too:
Add N to (X) - Avant Hard
Not Breathing - Sangre Azul
Autechre - Chiastic Slide
Mono - Formica Blues
just from a quick glance in my itunes (providing it is correctly tagged), it'd say my best of 1997 would be:
Gridlock - The Synthetic Form
Panacea - Low Profile Darkness
P.A.L - m@rix
Radiohead - OK Computer
Aphex Twin - Come To Daddy
Atari Teenage Riot - Burn, Berlin, Burn !
Blur - Blur
Imminent Starvation - Human Dislocation
Synapscape - Rage
Autechre - Cichlisuite
these two don't really count because they're not really albums, but like a "best of" or "B-sides":
Jane's Addition - Kettle Whistle
Haujobb - From Homes To Planets
Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds - The Boatman's Call
I didn't know anyone had heard of Engorged with Blood besides me.
And I did only because I worked with Steve Kirk from 96-99.
At the time, Live 105 was playing "I'm Fryin'" pretty regularly. I saw them play at Covered Wagon.
Aha! I couldn't figure out how I knew of that band at all - but I lived there 95-98 and listed to Live 105 pretty much exclusively on my commute. Must've worked its way into my brain.
Engorged With Blood FTW!
Prodigy - Fat of the LAnd
July 1, 1997
I'd call that a far more solid an influential release than anything by Crystal Method.
I wasn't making a list of albums that are influential, I was making a list of albums I liked.
If I'm not mistaken, Idiot Flesh "Fancy" came out in 97.
They were fun live, but recorded, I find them utterly unlistenable.
+1 "Straw" (aka "Hollow Men" by T.S. Elliot)my favorite song from their live show became than vegan cookies on CD....
1997, you say? After the long dark years of grunge, it was the year that metal finally resurfaced. Bruce Dickinson's "Accident of birth" and Hammerfall's "Glory to the brave" were the light at the end of the tunnel, showing that there was life in the old dog yet...
Well at least we can agree on the years of grunge being long and dark.
See? Common ground.
I was commenting just the other day about the Newsletter that Goes Out to Hipsters and Scenesters to keep us up on What's Hot in the Music Scene. Apparently my subscription Ran Out in 1997.
Everything since then has been Completely Fucking Foreign to me. I recognized these bands, at least. So if I can locate a working TARDIS, maybe I can be Cool Again.
Dig Your Own Hole is completely unbearable. I have an idea of what they were trying to do, and I want to think it's clever, but whenever I hear it coming out of a speaker I want to turn it the fuck off.
(Erm... and I haven't actually heard of C-Tec, let alone that album. But, yeah, right on with everything else.)
Among others:
Sneaker Pimps - Becoming X (Feb. 1997). Either that or Underworld's "Second Toughest In The Infants" was the first album I ever bought
Radiohead - OK Computer
Distance to Goa, Vol. 6: I suppose a comp disc doesn't entirely count but this is my favorite of the DtG collections
I thought Becoming X and Second Toughest were both 1996.
I despise Radiohead.
I thought Becoming X and Second Toughest were both 1996.
Huh, you're quite right about Becoming X (and Second Toughest). Never mind then.
Yay! I thought it was just me that despised Radiohead. Probably because every single other person at my school traipsed out on Day 1 of release to buy OK Computer, apparently in the bizarre belief that it made them special and different.
Kid A's OK, though.
Add N to (X) doesn't get enough recognition.
Isn't Faith no More's Album of the Year from 1997?
My list would also include KMFDM's SYMBOLS and The Dandy Warhols Come Down. I listened to those a lot back then.
A few more:
Aube: Cardiac Strain
Björk: Homogenic
Coil: Unnatural History III
Covenant: Sequencer
Diary of Dreams: Bird Without Wings
Index: Faith in Motion
Lycia: Cold
Mentallo & the Fixer: Burnt Beyond Recognition
Photek: Modus Operandi
Sigur Rós: Von
Switchblade Symphony: Bread and Jam for Frances
:wumpscut: Embyrodead
Xorcist: Soul Reflection
Last but not least, my favorite (and criminally out-of-print):
Forma Tadre: Navigator
Embryodead was great.
Forma Tadre was at least 1996. I remember being at the Digital Underground store (which became Metropolis Records online store) in Philly in 1996 for the Download show there, and trying to get them to not send a copy of the Forma Tadre disc to some loser who mailordered it, and instead sell it to me right there with cash in hand! But they were ethical, so no dice. :) Anyway, got it only a short time later.
And if you're ok with iTunes: http://www.formatadre.com/FT_Main.html
And PS: Xorcist is a brave choice - wouldn't have made that one. :) And I'm sorry to say my wife helped release it!
You're right, Navigator was released in 1996 on Offbeat; 1997 was for the domestic release on Metropolis. Same goes for Covenant's Sequencer. And the Lycia album was released in 1996 too. Sigh, can't trust CDDB for anything...
Great to see Andreas Meyer active again, can't wait for the new album!
Xorcist is ok; Scorched Blood was a club staple for a while. Certainly not my top choice on the list, though.
I am an unabashed fan, so I have to say that The Elevator Drops' "People Mover" came out in 1997.
They just put out a download-only album this year, so they're also on my best-of-'07, but it's a bit of a leap from their previous work.
I still listen to half these regularly... People keep yelling at me to get new music.
Pearl's Girl was 1996. Has one of my all-time favorite Underworld tracks, "Cherry Pie".
But don't be shocked if I wasn't into most of the other raver crap. ;)
Nice one on the Les Jumeaux though - good stuff!
And PS: this entire thread (i.e. what to listen to in 1997 besides future pop) is insane - VNV (and by extension future pop) was 1998 at the earliest, and was effectively completely unknown in 1997!!
Oh, and C-Tec "Darker" was a guilty pleasure - spun it the week it came out the one time I spun at Das Bunker in LA. kyronfive's still friends with one of the founders of C-Tec (well, Cyber-Tec anyway).
Just curious, can you pick any random year and name your 10 favorite bands from that year?
I'm imagining he did a "filter by year" on whatever mp3-playing program he uses for the list here.