Self-isolation? Nothing new for this columnist let us tell you. Here’s the latest from his nice “room”, you know, with the padded walls
Cymbals. Filters. Tooty bits. Flaps. There are many musical elements to ponder when deciding the greatest electronic music track of all-time. Does it have a good beat? Would a vicar tap his foot to it? If so, which foot? Is he tapping anything else and should we call the police?
Does the track title contain parentheses so everyone knows it’s clever, like Meatloaf’s ‘I’d Do Anything For Love (Especially That, You Saucy Thing, Oo-er Matron, Put It Away, You’ll Have Someone’s Eye Out)’? The most useful question, however, is what would Fat Roland choose as the greatest electronic music track?
A lot of idiots would go for New Order’s ‘Blue Monday’, famous for being 12 inches wide so it wouldn’t fit into an MP3 player. Peter “Hooky” Hook, whose nickname was Peter Hook, slung his bass guitar so low he often fretted passing dachshunds in the face.
Some fools would go for ‘I Feel Love’ by Donna Summer, which made disco so popular anyone not sporting a novelty afro wig and vomit-coloured flares was shot on sight. This track was notable for its futuristic synthesiser work by Giorgio, the pink hippo on ‘Rainbow’. And some plopheads love Ultravox’s smash number two hit ‘Stockport’, best remembered for its soaring chorus, “This means nowt to me, ooo Stockport.”
Those cacky tracks are too populist for you, the discerning Electronic Sound reader. You have better taste. Like me, you only drink coffee squeezed from the finest teats. Your pyjamas are fashioned from priceless mahogany, and your children are called Tarquax and Falloopi. What your gold-encrusted ears deserve is some proper underground shizzle. So listen up: I fingered history’s record box until it splatted out this, the ultimate countdown of the actual best electronic music tracks of actual all-time.
10. ‘Squelchy Plops’ by Acid Reflux, written in an acid house club’s toilet in 1988, made using only samplers, rubber gloves and nose pegs.
9. ‘Voodoo Malcolm’ by A Guy Called Malcolm, a song about an office worker who doused himself in Lynx Voodoo because he thought he’d hook up with Susan from accounts, but it turned out her flirty face was just a twitch due to her eyelid eczema.
8. ‘My Heart Will Go On’ by Celine Dion. Wait. I think this is a mistake. Apologies.
7. ‘Oscillate Daydream’ by Valve Molester, a groundbreaking 1960s studio experiment that sounds like someone throwing a wind chime at a pensioner.
6. ‘One Bleep Farting Over And Over For 27 Years’ by experimental composer John Forehead, who had a massive forehead. This is only listenable from an FM radio gaffer-taped to a sheep somewhere south of Reykjavík.
5. ‘It’s All Coming Back To Me Now’ by Celine Dion. Sorry about this: I think I’ve got my research notes mixed up. It won’t happen again.
4. ‘Scratch My Pants Off’ by Herbie Jazzcock, a breakdance track with scratching so vigorous, it would divest the listener of every thread of clothing. Just typing this paragraph has shucked me down to my cruddies.
3. ‘Xlap$$joot1770deltaFFFFFt’ by Aphex Twit, which literally redefined music by crossing out the word “music” in the Oxford English Dictionary and replacing it with the noise of a thousand bees inside a cement mixer.
2. ‘An Ending (Ascent)’ by Celine Dion. What?! Hold on a second. This is messed up. I think I reordered the wrong column on the spreadsheet. Let me just rewrite this list and we can carry on to Number One shortly. I hope you don’t mind waiting: I won’t be long.
* Note to the Electronic Sound editors: there’s a little problem with this column, so please hold off before publishin—
