Best of Electronic & Dance Music 2010
Subiza combines indie pop with full throttle techno of the Barcelona & Ibiza dance music.
Best Electronic & Dance Music Album of 2010: Subiza by Delorean
There were plenty of worthy competitors but a humble band that originally came from the rural Basque region of Spain that plays a hybrid of electronic and pop music produced the album that caught my ear and provided the richest rewards for repeated listening.
Subiza has more of an indie pop feel than any of the other notable electronic albums this year, which is why I probably like it so much. While Delorean's musical oeuvre is firmly within the realm of indie pop, the band also has an affinity for the full throttle techno of their native Barcelona club scene and has a close association with the Balearic Islands outernationalist style of dance music heard in the clubs of Ibiza and other fashionable Mediterranean island destinations.
AMG tells us that Delorean borrows from the same Balearic-influenced acid house style that New Order appropriated to craft their 1989 album
Technique, an album that sparked a broader interest in the newly emerging house music trend. While agreeing with AMG's connection of New Order's music to the acid house style of the Balearic islands, Delorean's music has little resemblance to that of New Order's during their middle years.
So what else is new, AMG?... Pop music has been borrowing from the past every since the Beatles rediscovered Gene Vincent, Little Richard and Chuck Berry.
Yeasayer, Massive Attack, Tricky, Crystal Castles, Toro Y Moi and Soundpool all released first rate albums. Some of those albums were bold and experimental. If you're going by Pitchfork definition of "good electronic music", perhaps those less commercial endeavors were more authentic, more experimental and therefore more commendable and worthy artistic expressions. I think that's just a bunch of horsesh*t from a bunch of self appointed public opinion makers who don't even trust their own tone-deaf ears to make a decision about what good music is.
Honorable Mention- Best Electronic and Dance Music Album of 2010
In No Particular Order
Armin Van Buuren- Mirage
Crystal Castles- Crystal Castles (II)
Massive Attack- Heligoland
The Octopus Project- Hexadecagon
Quantic Presenta Flowering Inferno- Dog with a Rope
Toro Y Moi- Causers of This
Tricky- Mixed Race
Soundpool- Mirrors In Your Eyes
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BONUS RANT!
The State of of Electronic and Technology in Music- 2010
The rise of electronic music has made it possible for an anonymous guy living in a basement apartment in New Jersey to be his own John, Paul, Ringo and George. Using those electronic tools that same anonymous loner can self produce his own modern day equivalent of
Revolver on his laptop computer. The rise of laptronica and the rapid development of cyberspace social networks like YouTube and Facebook, have created a career gateway that allows a musically talented person to become an international rock star without ever interacting with other musicians, playing a public gig, or signing a contract with a record label. Pop music stars like M.I.A., Katy Perry and Imogen Heap have launched successful careers using nothing more than a home computer, music software and the vast social networks of YouTube and Facebook.
By the end of 2015 I predict that a majority pop music wannabes will launch their careers via YouTube and Facebook which leaves the music industry irrelevant to the production, manufacturing, distribution, promotion and sales of contemporary music. In the year 2000, I predicted that file trading services like Napster & Gnutella would wipe the monolithic global music industry off the face of the earth by 2010. That didn't happen because the music industry waged war on the customer for theft of intellectual property which postponed the day of reckoning for another few years.
For my part, I'm resetting the music industry doomsday clock for the year 2020. The demise of big music is inevitable in a world where thousands of unregulated, decentralized social networks residing in the intangible domains of cyberspace are in full control the means of production and distribution of music. The only way to postpone the inevitable is to outlaw social networking on the internet.
The do-it-yourself technology of laptronica is beginning to blur the distinctions between mainstream pop & rock music & electronic music. Back when Silver Apples, Kraftwerk & Tangerine Dream were the only bands using synthesizers, you didn't need a PhD in Musicology to figure out the difference between pop music and electronic music.
Depending on your own uniquely personal perspective on exactly what electronic music is, the number of eligible bands within the electronic music genre can vary wildly. Nearly every contemporary rock or pop band uses tape loops, overdubbing, sound processors, MIDI or digital synthesis technology and/or other software programs available for composing, recording & performing music.
Even folk music neo traditionalist bands like Fern Knight, Espers and Kingsbury Manx enhance their recordings and live performances with electronic software.
If the forces of history are any indicator, electronic music is destined to blend within mainstream pop and eventually become mainstream pop. Some observers (including myself) believe that electronica has already become the dominant trend and the future of contemporary pop music.
It's hard to believe that there was a storm of controversy in the mid Eighties when musicians began using samples and pre-recorded tape loops to enhance their live performances. Back in 1989, we all wondered why anyone would pay their hard earned cash for a ticket to a concert where the band was playing pre-recorded music. As it turns out, John Lydon was right on the money when he declared that "rock and roll is dead", over thirty years ago. Mr. Lydon's own erratic career on the fringes of pop music is proof that the unreasonable raving madman is only artistic visionary that inhabits this violence prone, ideological post-industrial scrapheap of a world. The mad men, the visionaries and the provocateurs are the ones who shape the forces of our shared cultural history.
Lydon: The artist as a madman and provocateur
John Lydon is right about another thing. In this brave new world of social networks, electronic enhancement and laptronica the passion, fury and spontaneous messiness of the live performance has been relegated to the backseat and is now a secondary element of contemporary music. You can avoid the entire tedious process of paying your dues by playing the clubs and take the shortcut to fame in fortune by posting one good video of a song on YouTube that goes viral. Fame and fortune is a hollow accomplishment if your success is based on a single good 2 and a half minute home made video on YouTube.
I attended my first and only Public Image Ltd concert at the Ritz in New York City in 1981. The show erupted in to a full scale riot when Mr. Lydon appeared in silhouette behind a gigantic mural sized screen only to taunt the audience. Keith Levine, Jah Wobble and Martin Atkins, Lydon's PIL bandmates did little more than smirk and noodle around on their instruments as Lydon ranted on belittling the audience members as f*ckin' morons and idiots. After about 10 minutes verbal abuse from the ex-Sex Pistol hiding behind the screen, the irate audience began to pelt the screen with beer bottles which flew from the floor and overhead from the balcony. The audience surged to the stage to rip down the tarp and John Lydon remained on stage delighted with the results of of his social experiment in agit-prop theater. There was a riot going on! Finally an employee of the Ritz took the stage yelling "THE SHOW IS OVER, THE SHOW IS OVER" and the bouncers quickly mopped up the rowdier riot participants. Everybody was subdued and ejected from the club by the bouncers who restored the peace with the stunning efficiency of a well trained SWAT team. The whole show was over and done with in less than 20 minutes. As we drove back to Boston in the late night pouring rain, I said, "
That was the best f*cking concert I've ever been to and they didn't even play a single song."
Lydon was right I was a f*ckin' moron who paid 25 bucks for my ticket to the circus and got conned the misanthropic clown lurking behind a screen. Lydon gave the audience an easy excuse to run amok for 20 minutes and they seized a once in a lifetime opportunity to stampede like lemmings into the abyss of madness. That element of danger in which the behavior of the performers and the audience exceed the limits of all rationality, is what's missing from today's rock and roll music scene. And I'm still the f*ckin' moron who wouldn't trade that 20 minutes of mayhem with PIL in 1981 for all of the gold in Fort Knox.
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COMING TOMORROW (well...maybe in a couple of days)- Best of Americana, Folk, Country and Roots Music in 2010