Best electronic music albums of 1995: Quarter Final 1 – Higher Intelligence Agency versus Goldie

A horse and a nun walk into a bar. The horse says, "Have you seen Fat Roland's competition for the best electronic music album of 1995?" The nun says, "Why the long face?" The horse says, "You do this every time, Alison, why do you never listen to me?" Ignore those two idiots: they're hogging the queue to the bar. My best-of-1995 battle is back on track. Strap in, music fans.

We started with 16 albums and now it's time for the first quarter final. See the series so far here, and see the introduction to the quarter finals here. The choice is between:

Freefloater by Higher Intelligence Agency
Timeless by Goldie

The Higher Intelligence Agency (HIA) beat the legendary Sabres Of Paradise to get this far, while Goldie knocked out The Chemical Brothers. Two giant-killers, and only one will survive through to the semi finals. We have brand new judging criteria, and special thanks must go to @benjaminjudge, @JacksonWylde and @viaduct_theatre for suggesting criteria two, four and six respectively. Slap on that vaseline, it's time to fight.

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

The squiggly IDM of Higher Intelligence Agency, with its filters squeezed into ever-narrowing frequency bands, would be small enough to fit into a matchbox, never mind a caravan. Stick it under the Calor Gas, sorted. On the other hand, Goldie's Timeless is all about bombast, dynamism and volume. The opening track is 21-minutes wide: you'd not even get that into the entrance of the campsite. There's no travelling light with the monster that is Timeless.

Winner: Timeless

Criteria two: which album has the best individual noise?

Goldie's sound defined an era of drum 'n' bass, and so his album has some ear-bending moments. At one end are the heavenly suspended strings pulling everything taut, while at the other end there's some really ugly crying on Tears. The best single sound are the vocals crescendoing in at the start of State Of Mind as if catapulted from a distant satellite. Higher Intelligence Agency's work is full of great noises, with their squawks and boings and tickly acid (just listen to Elapse), but nothing beats Goldie.
Winner: Timeless

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

I have a real issue with how Timeless looks. I know embedding a Metalheadz logo in a perspex vagina was the coolest thing ever in 1995, but it hasn't aged well. Whereas, if I was flicking through your records and happened across Freefloater, I'd be intrigued. The cover looks like an impressionist Blue Peter ship, and the speech marks around the track title give it an added irony. Yeah. Pretty cool if you ask me.

Winner: Freefloater

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

Let me think this one through. I turn down the side of Lidl and there's a striped, snarling beastie blocking my cut-through to the chiropodist. How do I fight the tiger? I could batter its face with HIA's bloopy beats, but that would only annoy it, and I don't want to run because I haven't got to the chiropodist yet. Goldie's beats might skip along more breezily, but they're much heavier. A fat snare drum right in its snout should do it. Take THAT, tiger.

Winner: Timeless

Criteria five: which album has the sexiest track titles?

With titles like State Of Mind and Jah the Seventh Seal, Goldie's track listing brings to mind the tantric liaisons of sexy Sting. Then again, he might start singing, so let's see how sexy the HIA track titles are. Fleagle. Hubble. Ting. Skank. Hmmmm. Less high class escort agency, more a fleshy fumble in a fag-stained Travelodge. Tough decision. The HIA album has "floater" in its title, which is the unsexiest thing ever. Sting, you've pulled.

Winner: Timeless

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

Complete disaster. I was halfway through the squealing sirens of Goldie's nasty Saint Angel and I dropped my panpipes down the toilet. The bleepy melodies of HIA, especially on Ting, were much easier to handle, despite my pipe-holes being a little damp. I'd wipe them down with bog roll, but, y'know, rationing and all that. I really must find a room in my gaff with better acoustics.

Winner: Freefloater

Criteria seven: miscellaneous and worryingly random

As with the first round, this final judging criteria is guided by Wikipedia's random page function. Which album flies highest? HIA is literally "Higher": it's in the title, duh. Which album makes the best Christmas music? Easy: there's a jolly festivity to HIA while Goldie's more Good Friday, alas. Which album could be prime minister of India? Goldie's led an orchestra, so surely he could do that as well. Which album helps with the scientific study of insects? HIA is the only one I can imagine beetles dancing to. Which album is secretly a Norwegian footballer? I guess This Is A Bad describes Norway's FIFA World Cup results, so Goldie it is. 

Winner: Freefloater

Overall winner and going through to the quarter-finals: No penalty shoot-out here: Goldie goes through to the semi-finals, winning four of the seven criteria. He will face whoever wins the second quarter final. Sad to see you go, Higher Intelligence Agency. The Metalheadz master proved too steely in the end.

Stay tuned for another quarter final as we get ever closer to discovering [cue dramatic look to camera] the best electronic music album of 1995. See the introduction to the quarter finals here. 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: Sabres of Paradise versus Higher Intelligence Agency

This is round one of the battle to find the best electronic music album of 1995, as voted for by me and me alone. See all the riders and runners here.

A random number generator has picked the first two contestants. They are:

Sabresonic 2 by Sabres of Paradise
Freefloater by Higher Intelligence Agency

Winner gets through to the quarter-finals. Let's go to war!

Criteria one: which album would make a better biscuit?

Great question, Fats. This is a pretty easy one. There's much to admire in the icy filters of the Higher Intelligence Agency's second album, following their brilliant debut Colourform and an impressive showing in the Artificial Intelligence series. But it's not very biscuity. If it was a foodstuff, it would be sour sweets or sprinkles, or that dry ice crap posh restaurants cover tables with. Andrew Weatherall's Sabresonic 2 is so tribal and earthy, you'd almost certainly throw it into a biscuit mix.

Winner: Sabresonic 2

Criteria two: which album has more bangin' choons?

Ah. We have a problem here. Higher Intelligence Agency were never really about the massive tunes: it was more a soundtrack to which you could wheelbarrow a load of drugs down your gullet. And although Sabres arguably have more tunes, this second album is really just a remix of debut album Sabresonic. So the tunes are mostly not original: in fact, it's barely an album at all and shouldn't be on this list. Sssshhh. Don't tell anyone. By definition, the other album has more tunes.

Winner: Freefloater 

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

Let's look at Sabres first. "Smokebelch" sounds like a disgusting hippo that you regret inviting around for tea, while "Inter-Lergen-Ten-ko" could be the name of an alien animal from a distant moon. Now let's look at HIA. Oh my. It has "Fleagle" and "Skank" and "Tortoise" and "Ting" and "Pinkgreen" and "Taz". If that's not a hilarious Netflix special starring subversive woodland creatures, then I'll eat my squirrel-skin hat.

Winner: Freefloater 

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

In giving a motivational speech to his newly-appointed apostles, Jesus said: "Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword." An easy win for the Sabres there.

Winner: Sabresonic 2

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

On Sabres' Return Of Carter, I could only do "eeeeeggs, eeeeeggs, eeeeeeeggs", while on Edge 6 I could sing "I like eggs, the special eggs" in a really catchy way. I couldn't do much with Smokebelch II. All I could with HIA's Elapse was repeatedly sing "benedict, benedict", and as for the rest of the album, it was so squiggly, it just put me off eggs. I wonder if the ambient dub scene just wasn't that into eggs.

Winner: Sabresonic 2

Criteria six: which album has the better cover design?

A hard win for Sabres Of Paradise. The guy's got a sword through his head! Ha ha ha ha! What a stupid idiot, getting a sword through his head! He was probably just sitting there making a belly-fluff model of the K-Pop band BTS and then suddenly – whoomph! There's a sword through his head! Ha ha ha ha ha! That said, it's virtually the same album cover as previous album Sabresonic, which means he's only pretending to have a sword through his head. Disqualified. HIA wins.

Winner: Freefloater 

Criteria seven: miscellaneous and worryingly random

Some final criteria chosen with the help of Wikipedia's random article button. A better album for flipping pancakes to: HIA because it sounds so airy. A better album for waking up Ann Widdecombe in the middle of the night to: definitely Sabres. The album that sounds most like echoes from an abandoned Albanian TV station: HIA because it sounds like satellites. An album for spies: Higher Intelligence Agency, of course: the clues in the name. A better album for drowning out 'iMammy (Batteries Not Included)', which is the hilarious title of season two episode three of the award-winning sitcom Mrs Browns Boys: Sabres of Paradise all the way.

Winner: Freefloater 

Overall winner and going through to the quarter-finals: Freefloater by Higher Intelligence Agency. Perhaps a surprise and also a shame considering the recent news about Sabres' Andy Weatherall, but perhaps if it had been the original Sabresonic album, it would have been a different result. HIA go through. 

Using the same criteria (apart from the miscellaneous choices), witness another first round contest in the next day or two. See all the riders and runners here.

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

Jóhann Jóhannsson, Simian Mobile Disco and a pants-dropping Skream: new and recent releases reviewed

Before I get stuck into February proper, please allow me to catch up with a few musical missives that I intended to waffle about last month but didn't get round to because I was too busy sniffing baby wipes.

Jóhann Jóhannsson

This is from a while ago, but I wanted to mention it because I saw him live last year. Swathes of swooshing strings is the order of the day for Jóhann Jóhannsson's album And In The Endless Pause There Came The Sound Of Bees.

Jóhann, who has a name that never seems to finish like Banarama, produces classical music with shavings of electronica and can often be seen playing to bleep-heads. His ostentatiously titled album is in turns delicate and flamboyant, but I can't be doing with the morning-has-broken cheery stuff and would much rather he stick to the murky ambience or the eerie foreboding of his most filmic tracks.

Skream (pictured)

A couple of tracks now. The cold refrain on Skream's remix of Instra:mental's No Future ("lies confusion government control") is nothing short of pants-droppingly brilliant. It's a lolloping half-stepper that stomps its metal legs until you're marching to the same, automatic beat. It threatens to fall into the wobble bass cliche so beloved of dubstep, but it remains purely minimalist.

Speaking of minimalism, Minimalistix is the name of the track on the b-side of the Skream remix. The paddy drums (as in drums that sound like soft pads: it's not me being racist) fight against airy soundclaps as the cut builds and builds and builds.

It reminds me a little of the strange alien isolation of Higher Intelligence Agency and despite its stubborn simplicity, I could play it repeatedly and not get bored: Skream's remix is definitely something to Munch on. (See what I did there?)

Simian Mobile Disco

Beth Ditto, her with the big gob, struck gold when she recorded Good Intentions with Simian Mobile Disco last year. You may want to know there are a couple of remixes doing the rounds, but to be honest former Hacienda resident Greg Wilson's retro stylings have far too much bongo (yes, you can have too much bongo), while Maurice Fulton's disco-tastic take on the track is the kind of generic funk groove that has me sulking in the corner of the club waiting for the good tunes to come on.

Picture from Nailler 9.

A ticket to ride: bumbling into MC Tunes and putting the green suit away

She bounces up to me like Tigger on catnip and starts squatting on the dancefloor. Her bum is pointing in all directions at once and, with alarm bells clanging in my head, I scan the room for a precautionary mop.

She says to me, "You need to dance with your hips. Like this."

For a scruffy haired loser who shuffled around in a painful green suit and wine red tie, a dancefloor was very much like a barbeque is to a penguin; it was a new thing to me and the heat was causing chafing.

It's the Herbal Tea Party in mid-90s Manchester and I'm being taught to dance by an enthusiastic stranger. I must have looked as stiff as a door if I needed a punter to dive in and rescue me from complete humiliation.

The Tea Party stands now as a monster club night in darkest Hulme that has never enjoyed the continuing exaltation of its bigger counterpart, Manchester's Megadog. It's a shame, especially for HTP's very own Dr Frankensteins, co-creators Ian and Rob Fletcher.

Thanks to them, electronic music bowled me clean over, especially when:

(a) I bought Orbital's brown album purely based on an amusing review in the NME;

(b) as a hack, first interviewing one of the Fletchers (I forget which one) but being drawn by a One Dove record playing in the background. I'd never heard proper, creative dance music before, barring the KLF, The Orb and assorted chart rave bands.

There isn't much about the Tea Party on the internet near me. A few forum mentions, but then this gem of a photograph (above).

It's a ticket, posted by Armcurl. It shows (then) South Manchester's finest DJ Justin Robertson lined up beside Charlie Hall and his Drum Club. And there they are. Resident Rob Fletcher plus Inner Sphere Space which, if I remember rightly, was his brother Ian.

Okay it's just a ticket, but this photo represents my bumpy (and grindy) ride into the clubbing world.

I never really became 'cool'. I was frightened by the owner of Birmingham's Beyond club once because he offered me a beer. And I once bumbled into MC Tunes, who threatened my very life just by casting me what he thought was a casual glance.

And I never got into tea either, despite the best efforts of Mr Scruff to make it the tipple of choice for Manchester clubbers.

But I did learn to dance a bit, and the Herbal Tea Party turned a scruffy haired loser into a shaven-haired loser with a penchant for Higher Intelligence Agency, Drum Club and Sabres Of Paradise. Thank goodness I never needed the mop.