Best electronic music albums of 1995: Quarter Final 4 – Carl Craig versus Leftfield

What is the best electronic music album of 1995 (see the series so far here)? You no doubt have an opinion, especially if you check out the 16 albums that started this competition off. But opinions are like holiday homes on the Costa Daurada: everyone's got one. The only opinion that matters in this ongoing competition is mine. And if that sounds egotistical, then, er, sorry about that. Yeesh. I'm a real douche.

This is the last quarter final before we move into the semi finals. The stakes are high. Today's bout is between:

Landcruising by Carl Craig
Leftism by Leftfield

Carl Craig and Leftfield both began their careers in 1989, and both went on to shape electronic music. A sped-up spin of Craig's Bug In The Bassbin supposedly lay the groundwork for drum 'n' bass, while the 'field are credited as starting the genre of progressive house. It will be a shame to lose either of them. Brace yourself.

Criteria one: which album feels too big to fit into a caravan?

Carl Craig pays tribute to his motor city hometown, evoking sunny drives with the window wound down. Following that logic, it would be pretty difficult to fit a road inside a caravan. On the other hand, Leftfield's space shanties evoke an entire universe of texture and colour. Their sound system was so incendiary, it once stripped the plaster off the roof of a venue. Fitting Landcruising into a caravan might be like trying to fit a camel through the eye of a needle, but getting Leftism into that glorified shed would be like shoving a whole flipping solar system into the atoms of the needle itself.

Winner: Leftism

Criteria two: which album has the best individual noise?

Carl Craig's got some great vroom vroom car sounds. I would have preferred choo choo sounds, but sometimes you've just got to take what you're given. Leftfield have barely any transport sounds: not even a tractor. That said, they've got tonnes of strange and wonderful noises: bleepy radar bits on Original; funny bubbly bits on Melt; an electronic wobble board bit on Release The Pressure; and a bit where a guy goes waaaah like he's doing a mad skateboard trick which I suppose technically is a form of transport.

Winner: Leftism

Criteria three: which album makes your record collection look coolest?

I remember Leftism coming out so clearly. It was beautiful chunk of vinyl, and looked superb on my coffee table next to my nose flute. "Look at this lovely album," I would tell visitors. "Is that a nose flute?" they would enquire. "Stop looking at the nose flute," I would scream. I didn't get many visitors. Leftfield are cool, but Landcruising looks way cooler. It's dark and mysterious, and the clash of the car emblem and the dot matrix text only raises questions. You'd not keep it on a coffee table: maybe that's why it's cooler.

Winner: Landcrusing

Criteria four: which album would you play to ward off a tiger?

A walkover for Leftfield. They've got John Lydon on their side, threatening to open things up and burn Hollywood to the ground. He's the original Tiger King. If Johnny Rotten was cornered by a snarling tiger, he'd smear it in butter, which tigers famously hate. Carl Craig not only fails to repel tigers, he's a positive tiger magnet. Want proof? He's from Detroit and their baseball team is called the Detroit Tigers: that's how bad he is at warding them off. Useless.
Winner: Leftiism

Criteria five: which album has the sexiest track titles?

Carl Craig's track titles are a bit dry. Home Entertainment, Technology, Mind Of A Machine. I'd imagine a date with this album would result in an early night: me getting into bed on my own while Landcruising fixes the VHS player. Leftism fares a little better: the track titles Open Up, Melt and Release The Pressure could all be mistaken for b-sides to Madonna's Justify My Love. Even then, I'm not terribly excited, even if the Leftfield title Inspection (Check One) is a euphemism lifted straight out of a Carry On film. Oo-er missus.

Winner: Leftism

Criteria six: Which album would sound best played on the panpipes?

The staccato synth stabs of They Were rolled off my panpipes like lemmings off a cliff, and the wandering lackadaisical melody of One Day Soon floated seamlessly into the air like, er, lemmings floating up a cliff. A good result for Carl Craig. And while the opening siren call of Leftfield's Melt was easy to follow, the panpipes sounded naff against their speaker-rattling production. A win for the lemmings, Er, I mean... a win for Carl Craig. Just to clarify, Carl Craig is not a lemming. If anything, he looks like a handsome baby seal.
Winner: Leftism

Criteria seven: miscellaneous and worryingly random

Because I'm reckless and want to watch the world burn, this final criteria is generated using Wikipedia's random page function. Which album could scale an Austrian mountain range? Carl Craig because he's land cruising. Which album has fourfold rotational symmetry? Leftism thought their album didn't quite hang together at first, so Carl Craig must be more symmetrical. Which album would win a TV talent show? Leftfield because John Lydon would show off to the judges. Which of the two albums would make the best Mongolian poet? Leftfield's 21st Century Poem may ignore thousands of years of pre-2000 Mongolian history, but at least they have a poem. Which album would make the best Christmas tree to create a home for the cartoon chipmunks Chip n' Dale? Carl Craig and I'm not explaining why.

Winner: Landcruising

Overall winner and going through to the quarter-finals: A landsliding win for Leftfield, as they scoop five of the seven sets of judging criteria. Looks like they're the one to beat as they move to next week's semi final. In 2005, Carl Craig released a reedited version of Landcruising called The Album Formerly Known As..., updating some of the sounds, Maybe he was anticipating this very competition. Too little too late, Carl. Too little, too late.

Next week, I launch the semi finals of this stupid contest to find the best electronic music album of 1995. Stay tuned. See all the original riders and runners here.

Further Fats: See the whole Best Albums Of 1995 series here.

Best electronic music albums of 1995: the Quarter Finals

Back in the onions of history, I started a contest to decide the best electronic music album of 1995. 

16 albums butted against each other in the most brutal battle since Genghis Khan laid siege to Milton Keynes. The Chemical Brothers and Autechre were some of those who fell by the wayside in the first round: it was not pretty. Since I finished that first round, the entire of civilisation seems to have collapsed, and we are left with just eight albums gingerly staggering towards the quarter finals. 

It is now time for those quarter finals. 

The following albums will face each other daily in a battle so apocalyptic, a butterfly will faint on the other side of the universe. The remaining contestants are:

Quarter final 1:

Freefloater by Higher Intelligence Agency

Timeless by Goldie

Quarter final 2:

Maxinquaye by Tricky

Everything Is Wrong by Moby

Quarter final 3:

Post by Bjork

...I Care Because You Do by Aphex Twin

Quarter final 4:

Landcruising by Carl Craig

Leftism by Leftfield

Some heavyweight candidates there. Which would you choose as the best electronic music album of 1995? Who do you think is going to struggle? 

I don't care how you answered those questions. This is because there's a twist in this contest: it isn't open to a public vote. The winners of each bout are decided by a panel of very experienced experts. The panel consists of, in no particular order:

1. Me.

2. Er...

3. That's it. 

That's right. It's a dictatorship. It's a despotic autocracy. It's a flipping con. The first round saw me eliminating albums on the basis of which would make the best biscuit, or which was best suited to egg-themed karaoke.

In the upcoming quarter-finals, there will be some different yet equally unhelpful criteria on which the judging panel (me) will make their (my) decisions.

Expect a quarter final daily over the next four days. Don your marigolds and stuck a broom up your bum: this is going to get messy. In the meantime, see the series so far here, and see the 16 albums I started off with here.

Further Fats: The Best Albums of 1995 series

Best electronic music albums of 1995: The Black Dog versus Carl Craig

Three weeks ago, I began a battle to determine the best electronic music album of 1995. That battle is still going: this is heat seven of eight, after which we get to the quarter finals. See the series so far here, and see the 16 albums I started off with here. "But Fats, this is going to take many more weeks if you keep posting this slowly." Considering the current climate, that is no bad thing

I fired up my trusty random number generator to pick today's pairing. Remember, only one of these will survive through to the quarter-finals. The choice is between:

Spanners by The Black Dog
Landcruising by Carl Craig

This is a fascinating match. In one corner, we have a seminal British IDM act clearly influenced by Detroit techno. And in the other corner is a bonafide Detroit techno album debut. Good job there is no chance of messing up this contest with comparisons that blabber on about biscuits and cute animals, huh.

Criteria one: which album would make a better biscuit?

The Carl Craig album would be a cookie rather than a biscuit. This is because Americans have funny words for things. They also call herbs 'erbs, pavements sidepavements and aluminium aluminiminimum. Spanners by The Black Dog is such a wonky take on recognisable techno, it would be an unusual biscuit like Mr Kipling Viennese Whirls or those pink wafery things. That said, Carl Craig wins because The Black Dog's techno biscuits would be so loaded with e-numbers, they'd make your eyes pop out of your bum-hole.
Winner: Landcruising

Criteria two: which album has more bangin' choons?

I once praised The Black Dog's Barbola Work because it was "one of the few classic 90s techno tracks that makes you cha-cha-cha". It's easy forget now how alien and amazing their work was when it first appeared. Carl Craig's got the tunes, though: Einbahn is Autobahn on rollerskates, and the sheer 80s drama of Mind Of A Machine is enough to crack a smile on a bloodhound.
Winner: Landcruising

Criteria three: which album's track titles better remind me of cute animals?

Carl Craig's debut album falls down badly here. There are no animal references in his track titles. I'm not saying he hates animals so much that he sneaks around back alleys baseball-batting weasels to death: that is for you to decide. Looking at The Black Dog's titles, Pot Noddle is definitely the name of a crime-fighting pig and Nommo is its sworn warthog enemy determined on wreaking destruction all across the pig sty. Oh and they're both dressed in tutus, so they're still cute.
Winner: Spanners

Criteria four: which of the two would Jesus listen to?

When the UK lockdown is over, pop into your local church. Who's the vicar? Oh look, it's Carl Craig. And the church organist? Carl Craig again. Who's that little old lady running the coffee bar? It's Carl Craig in a dress. Now pop to your nearest Buddhist centre. Look at all those little fat statues of Carl Craig! Saint Craig is so spiritually connected on Landcruising, he simply has to be Jesus's favourite. The Black Dog feels more like a crusty old geezer collecting sign-ups for a humanist society round the back of Aldi car park.
Winner: Landcruising

Criteria five: which is the better album to sing songs about eggs to?

It's not often I type this sentence, but neither album really screams eggs. The Black Dog album suggests Starburst sweets, odd-shaped leeks and an interesting purple mould that's taken hold at the back of the fridge. The Carl Craig album suggests oysters served on a lattice of spun caramel drizzled in the finest liqueur. What wins this category for The Black Dog is the chattery voice in transitional track Bolt1 which definitely sounds like someone yabbering on about Tesco's running out of eggs.
Winner: Spanners

Criteria six: which album has the better cover design?

Landcruising is brilliant driving music, and its cover logo is clearly a nod to Detroit's automobile industry. The three-headed CGI beast on the cover of Spanners is more confusing. Is it a dog gone wrong? Is it a fancy paperweight? Is it a hallucination and I really should stay off the Windolene? Of the two, the strange black dog is the more memorable.
Winner: Spanners

Criteria seven: miscellaneous and worryingly random

This final area of judgement takes as its cue Wikipedia's random page function. Here goes. Which album is the most moist? Detroit gets five inches more rainfall per year than Sheffield, so Craig has it. Which album will win you the lottery? The Black Dog because of the track Utopian Dream. Which album is a heavy assault tank? Carl Craig because he be landcruisin'. Which album is a novel nanomaterial? Carl Craig's album is a debut, so it's novel by default. Which album has stout, sparse tentacles like the white sand anemone? The Black Dog, obviously – dogs are famous for their tentacles. Three-two to Craig.
Winner: Landcruising

Overall winner and going through to the quarter-finals: The Black Dog are so central to my love for electronic music, that I'm chalking this win as a surprise: it's Carl Craig's Landcruising that cruises (geddit?!?!?) through to the quarter-finals. Well deserved: it's a cracking album, despite the weasel thing.

There is one heat left in this first round, so stay tuned: the battle to find the best electronic music album of 1995 will continue. See all the original riders and runners here.

Further Fats: See the whole Best Albums Of 1995 series here.

A Team Doyobi bundle: £12.99 ... carrying a puppy under your ludicrously tanned arm: priceless

If fatroland.com has become known for anything for the past eight years, it's shopping.

There's nothing I like better than mincing down King Street, my beemer parked in a disabled space, to look disdainfully into shop windows full of clothes for retarded stick insects. Daddy's credit card, expensive shades, puppy under arm. That's how I shop.

Good job, then, the real world has Bleep, the online electronic music shop. Recently, they launched a 'bundles' sale, which is a brilliant way of getting rid of all the dross you can't shift otherwise.

I suspect all the fried gold has sold, but there's a decent set of silverware left. There's 808 State's Quadrastate, which had that saxophone tune, bundled with their Planet Mu Rephlex rarities album Prebuild.

There is a vinyl album bundle from the godfathers of chiptune Team Doyobi. I think their music is deeper than the lazy chiptune tag, but anyhoo it's worth a punt because they're key players on Manchester's Skam Records.

And if you prefer plastic, there's a CD pack featuring a brace of albums from London producer Kevin Martin: one under his King Midas Sound collaborative moniker, and one as the quite-frankly-brilliant The Bug. I still think The Bug's London Zoo is one of 2008's essential releases.

Along with a couple of slices of brutalism from Venetian Snares and a wee bit of vinyl from the Ant and Dec of techno Carl Craig and Kirk Degiorgio (note to editor - please delete the Ant and Dec bit: it makes no sense), the bundle sale is still worth a poke with your music-buying stick.

Visit the sale here or click on the links in this piece. And no, I'm not paid by Bleep: I just like 'em. Oh crap, they're towing my BMW - looks like this shopping trip is over. Later, dahlinks.