Top 10 Best Electronic Albums of the 2000s

The title of this article contains two words that give your average music critic an instant ulcer: “best” and “electronic.” We here at Melophobe never shy away from a good flame war, so let’s take them in order:

Best. We write “best of” columns on an essentially arbitrary schedule because we humans like big round numbers. After all, “the sixties” sounds a lot better than “roughly 1964-1973.” Just as arbitrary, and just as useful, is the urge to order things in neat little lists and label them “best.” Are these the most talked about albums of the last ten years? The highest rated? The most downloaded? The best selling? Not by a long shot. They merely represent the collective will of a few people who live and breath this music, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Electronic. Technology has defined music ever since a gnawed bone became an impromptu drumstick, which makes a category like “electronic music” semantically difficult. When virtually all commercially available music has spent some quality time in Pro Tools, what exactly do we mean by electronic? Go to any rock concert and every sound you hear is courtesy of electrons; the distinctions we make between particular instruments are cosmetic at best. What you’ll notice about our selections, then, is that in each case the machine is placed front and center. Yes, the human element is still the beating creative heart that drives everything, but the tools at hand—many of which did not exist in previous decades—are ultimately what defines it. None of this music could exist without digital samplers, non-linear editing, and an ever-expanding array of audio circuitry. As such, it is uniquely tied to its time, an era we still hope will be remembered as “the aughts.”

Okay then, now that you’ve sipped our Kool-Aid, on with the good stuff:

For your listening pleasure, Tighe McGillivray has created a mix, sampling all of the albums in our top 10. You can listen to it by clicking above. You can also download a higher quality version HERE.

I always thought this was what the future would sound like. Not the future of music per se, but the literal future. It’s dark, atmospheric, alluring and mysterious. With Untrue, the shadowy (or not so shadowy) figure behind Burial blows his epic debut out of the water. The album scores high on every measure, whether it’s the incredibly tight craftsmanship, its precise samples, its unrelenting mood, or the album’s great influence in popularizing dubstep and giving 2-step garage a bit of notice again. In truth, it’s a distilled sound. The perfectly timed, repetitive beats and persistent sense of melancholia. It deconstructs the mood that the trip-hop greats (Portishead, DJ Shadow, Tricky, or Massive Attack) created, and finds the root of what they were trying to express. To me, this album is the sound of a party dying, of mourning not having enough time to dig through record crates anymore, of finding that perfect beat-up EP by some guy you’ll never find again. It’s the sound of not having a ticket and sitting in your car at the “Massive Attack Reunion tour of 2030” and listening anyway. And it’s hard to stop listening to this album. I forced it on all my friends. I told my family. It lives in constant rotation in my car. It’s my favorite electronic album since Four Tet’s Rounds and I always say that album changed my life. Untrue is that good. - Kelly Davidson

When we began nominating candidates for this list, the fantastic soundtrack to The Virgin Suicides immediately came to my mind as the best Air album in recent memory. So much for gut reactions! While Talkie Walkie touches on a number of similar themes—loneliness, unrequited love, escapism—it is by far the more complete, mature, and musically complex effort. The darker undertones are still there, but they’re tempered by a mellow wistfulness that’s lacking from The Virgin Suicides; think gentle drift into painkiller overdose, not so much nooses and razors. What’s more, the boys aren’t hiding behind guest vocalists and vocoders this time around. In that sense, Air is offering the perfect human counterpoint to that other famed French export, Daft Punk: no robot suits. - Riley Nagler

Matmos are at their best with a great concept. Throughout their career, they’ve grown in ambition from an album based around absurdly intimate micro-samples (”Quasi-Objects”), to the sounds of plastic surgery (A Chance To Cut is a Chance To Cure), to a lush period piece inspired by the American, English, and Russian civil wars (The Civil War). With The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of a Beast, the electronic duo harness their most elaborate concept yet by creating ten “audio portraits” of literary, historical, and underground gay and lesbian figures. The construction and execution is masterfully done and the album ends up being a shining example of storytelling without direct song lyrics. The micro-samples are still there, of course, cut and stitched together with a surgeon’s precision, but they become a mere backdrop to the lavish narrative highlighted on each track. An androgynous voice reading passages from Valerie Solanas’ “S.C.U.M. Manifesto,” or samples of semen (kindly donated during the San Francisco International Bear Weekend) layered over delicate harp sounds paint surrealist pictures of their subjects. In fact, the collection as a whole comes off more as a gallery installation than an album. Each “audio portrait” is layered with suggestions of decadence, intrigue, sex, death, insanity and Matmos’ usual sly nod and wink at the deliciously subversive. More sordid details of the album and its subjects can be teased out with each repeated listen, and the experience never ceases to be fantastic! - Kelly Davidson

In a subtle departure from their earlier sound, Lost And Safe blends The Books’ haunting and poignant samples with a more cohesive, song-oriented structure. The banjos and cello are still there, but there is a focus on Nick Zammuto’s vocals that gives the album a warm and depth not found in their previous work. However, his quiet voice does not play against the familiar flurry of found sounds and samples that make up most of The Books’ unique compositions. If anything, it seems to be a logical inclusion of just another instrument. As a whole, the album has many crystal clear, unforgettable moments created by the force of a single sampled voice or half told story, just like on Food for Thought or The Lemon of Pink—moments that seem to capture the essence of both the good and bad of being human. With Lost and Safe, The Books create a solid masterpiece that redefines what their sound is, while advancing it forward. - Kelly Davidson

Well orchestrated, tight, in-your-face. Lacks the terrible lyrics of many a dance cut. Packs seamless mind blowing beats. This is the type of album which brings the masses into a frothy frenzy and keeps ‘em bugging the DJ to “play that one again!” This is the type of album which leads all but the most loyal of fans into disappointment with subsequent efforts. Not entirely unlike Daft Punk’s Discovery [see below]. They pine for more of the same, but woe! Such back-to-back efforts are the stuff of dreams, and so we will all need to find our satiation in this brilliant gem. - Adam Goodman

Sometime right before the turn of the millennium, the once epically proud and dangerously addictive trance scene took a tragic turn for the worse. Similar to hip-hop’s fall from grace, trance sold its soul for a chance to stand briefly in the American club scene limelight. It abandoned its community of loyal, neon-clad drug abusers for big-breasted, bikini sporting Las Vegas types (can you blame it?). From Here We Go Sublime is what trance would have become had it not committed said egregious betrayal. The Field took that nostalgic late ‘90s Sasha and Digweed vibe, stripped it down, looped it… repeatedly, and added a ton of reverb. What we are left with is an album of Mondrian-esque simplicity and Serrano-esque memorability. For those of us who long for a time when trance was less about selling energy drinks and more about taking copious amounts of ecstasy and chasing it with a gin-fueled hangover, this album is everything we could ever ask for. - Tighe McGillivray

Really the Leatherman of the Top 10, this finely crafted arrangement of notes is right at home supplying an inspiring ambient tone in times of work or cooling out and soothing the darkest of thoughts when played in a contemplative foreground. Take, for instance, frantic twangs of “Spirit Fingers” urging you onward after the beast you chase, supplying endless breath to your lungs. Immediately after this your toils are rewarded with the hearty feast of “Unspoken” warmly shaking your hand, congratulatory, allowing you a seat by the glowing fire. The exceptionally well crafted balance of quick and relaxed, of urgent and relieved, are what grant Rounds its exceptional flexibility. - Adam Goodman

Every time Basement Jaxx spits out another album, it’s all too easily dismissed as the product of scatterbrained cheesemongers who’ve overstayed their welcome. This new single can’t possibly live up to “Red Alert.” These lyrics have less substance than Cool Whip. That mish-mash of rhythmic styles sounds awful. And, just as easily, everyone is subsequently proven wrong. Rooty was responsible for five (five!) singles, more than any other Jaxx album before or since, and that doesn’t even include two of my favorite tracks, “Breakaway” and “Broken Dreams.” It may have taken some getting used to, but for a few years in the early aughts it was nigh impossible to go out dancing without hearing “Romeo,” “Jus 1 Kiss,” or “Where’s Your Head At.” More often than not, you’d catch yourself gyrating to all three before the night was over, and with good reason: Basement Jaxx makes the most joyful, effervescent, hedonistic dance music imaginable, and Rooty captures them at their best. - Riley Nagler

I hear you griping out there. “But Melophobe, where the hell is Girl Talk? The mash-up is easily the biggest dance-music trend of the last decade!” And well, you’d be right. Night Ripper and the debates surrounding it are a vital component of computer-based music in the aughts. But guess what: The Avalanches did it first, and they did it better. Since I Left You may not be chockablock with borrowed rhymes and guitar riffs spanning the last 30 years of pop, but what it lacks in top 40 luster it makes up with 3000+ samples of painstakingly curated vinyl lore. Whereas Girl Talk produces hyperactive mixtapes from a pastiche of cultural icons, The Avalanches create an intricate mosaic from mountains of discarded scraps. Listening to Night Ripper is like accidentally crashing a great party; the DJ plays all the songs you forgot you loved, and the unfamiliar context makes them all seem new and exciting. Listening to Since I Left You, on the other hand, is like hopscotching backward through that DJ’s acid-fueled dreamscape; dissonant elements are woven into impossible harmony, everything follows an intrinsic pattern you can’t quite discern, and you feel safe because the flashbacks are someone else’s. - Riley Nagler

What can I say about Discovery that you don’t already know? Not only is it the most influential electronic album of the new millennium, it also retains the title of greatest album… in the history of the universe. Maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much.Touted as Daft Punk’s shift to french house/post-disco, this masterpiece was accompanied by the work of Leiji Matsumoto, animator extraordinaire, and is the only Daft Punk album to feature other musicians (Romanthony and Todd Edwards). While childishly bouncy and somewhat whimsical, it brings a massive helping of ear-porn and a heaping spoonful of aural KY. Discovery is kinky enough for a leatherman bar, yet still safe for the youngins to boogy to in the kitchen. I have yet to decide if it’s a children’s album for adults, or a childishly adult album for kids. Either way, you will love this album. Hell, you probably already do. Considering that Discovery is the best album since Thriller, I’m likely preaching to the choir. - Tighe McGillivray

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