The “Kings Of” series of compilations has been pretty solid thus far, especially the “Kings of Techno” with Carl Craig and Laurent Garnier providing very interesting listening that many who consider themselves “into techno” might not even recognise. Their upcoming “Kings of Electro”, though, is a straight-up joke.
You know it’s gonna be suspect when the discs are compiled and mixed by Playgroup and Alter Ego. Is that really the best that they can come up with? Were DJ Surgeon, DJ Godfather, and DJ Assault busy? Aside from that humongous mistake, the track selection is just stupid. I love Maurizio, Plastikman, DBX, Psyche, and Robert Hood (“Minus” is probably my favorite Rob Hood jam, too!) as much as the next man, but what do they have to do with electro music? All were included on Alter Ego’s mix. This might be the only time you’ll ever hear me criticising someone for playing such excellent records. At least they got it right by including a Drexciya side-project, Dopplereffekt, but that alone isn’t enough to make up for the lack of real live electro on their disc.
Yeah, Playgroup did a much better job by throwing in some Unknown DJ and “Arcade Funk” by Tilt, a silly electronic go-go jam, as well as some other nice jams. But where is the Miami representation? Dynamix II is cool, but some Pretty Tony, 2 Live Crew, or some Magic Mike really NEEDS to be on there. And nothing Egyptian Lover related?!?!? WHERE IS KRAFTWERK?!?!?!?!?! Yet they find room to include a track by Joey Negro?
The lack of effort here is astounding. Modern electro and its related music is basically not even represented (Clone? Bunker? Electrofunk? etc?!?!), and the classic tunes are severely lacking in many ways. BBE basically missed the boat entirely here, this reeks of an attempt to cash in on the fools who wouldn’t know real electro music if it slapped them repeatedly in the face. What really puzzles me is why the lack of electro had to come at the inclusion of fantastic music that just doesn’t belong on this compilation.
For those who need a real dose of electro, I highly reccomend you check out DJ Surgeon’s “Old School Electro Party Mix” or DJ Assault’s “Straight Up Detroit Shit Volume 1”. Shit, BBE could have licensed those two mixes and put that out and done the genre right!
8 Comments
er…and i was thinking of recording my own electro mix soon. remind me not to send you the link!
don’t forget the x-mix series…that three disc box, Aux88/Dave Clarke/Depth Charge closed the case on electro for me….
@ gutter: it’s all good as long as you’re not claiming to be a king of electro 😉
@ nick: yeah, that aux 88 one is absolutely insane. can’t say that i’ve heard the others, though if theyre anything like that aux 88 then they are also worthy candidates!
caught Egyptian Lover in Dublin about a month ago, he can still rock it
Oh my… there isn’t much more I can say about this that hasn’t already been said. I guess we can also be thankful that they didn’t fill it with electroclash 😉
I have to agree about the depth and undergrund-ness of the release.
That said, I think that with the Alter Ego mix the goal was to get a feel of some of the recent, now-already-gone, post-electro-clash sound.
It is definitely more of a 6-years-ago than a kings of… comp.
i think they dropped the ball before they began by enlisting those two acts to compile the CD.
Azzido de Bass? ugh
lol maybe they were referring to the new phenomenon of minimal electro. What a joke. I’m not that big into electro but certainly have enough knowledge to look at the tracklist and be baffled by their lack of common sense. In fact I think there was more stuff closer to electro on the kings of techno release with Robotnick and Arpanet. I found that comp. too a bit strange. Sometimes people go over the top with eclecticism.