rave LPs

Completely missed this enjoyable and extremely thorough survey - by Leaving Earth's Taninian, from a couple of months ago - of the single-artist Rave Album

A curious artifact, with a checkered history, and an uncertain market,  for sure...  but T makes a good case for some classics that came out in the period 1991-1992: the apex of rave as a mass phenomenon

Among the ones I've heard and own, I concur heartily with the verdicts (Experience is the gold standard, Rhythmatic's Energy on Vinyl is a lost gem, as is Sonz's Flowers in My Garden, but Eon's surprisingly unmemorable despite the run-up of killer singles etc etc)





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What surprised me: how many I didn't know about....

Especially when it came to the Euro end of things - Germany, Holland, Belgium - where, according to T, there's a shitload of ace full-lengths, with album tracks as fierce and full-on and inventive as the well known singles

Some of these LPs would be pretty challenging to find, I should think - you might find them going  very cheap, but it would probably entail hours digging through vinyl junkyard basements.

However -  quite a few are on Spotify! So if you've got a spare 7 hours...

I couldn't think of any omissions really.  Unique 3's Jus' Unique has some great tunes on it but it came out in 1990 so doesn't qualify. Likewise - although it's been a long time since I've heard it - i feel a case could be made for The Shamen's En-Tact as both a good album and genuinely part of the rave culture, but that 1990 too. As for their Boss Drum - I can't remember a thing about it, but I don't think any of it really qualified as 'rave', not even Ebeneezer Goode", by then they'd have been on the progressive/trance tip if anything, I should have thought. Tracks featuring vocals by Terence McKenna.

Utah Saints had an album out in 1992 but vaguely recall it being plodding stuff, "Something Good" withal.

Bizarre Inc released the album Energique in '92 but I should imagine they would have shifted towards house music by that point. (More curious about their 1989 album Technological, which is described at discogs as "techno". 1989 is early for a UK techno full-length - who else was there doing that? A Guy Called Gerald, 808 State....  a few more house or sample-cut-up in style like S'Express and Bomb the Bass and Coldcut).

Smart E's actually released an album in '92, would you believe.... and some people rate it



There's a coda to the Leaving Earth survey, which looks at albums that came out after the cut-off point that T's imposed - belated full-lengths that already seemed like curios by the time they were released, what with the music having moved on a long way, in multiple increasingly divergent directions.

Here I can think of one or two that might have been included - except that they're not very good, so perhaps would / should be filtered out accordingly!

Like Liquid's album, which I actually reviewed  - not at the time (1995) but many years later for eMusic.

I don't think T included the Messiah album 21st Century Jesus, from 1993 -  but then again, I'm not sure if was any cop at all.

A very belated debut album is Baby D's Deliverance, which came out in 1996 - and from descriptions seems like its contents are largely radio-friendly toned-down versions of the classic hardcore tracks from several years earlier.

Then there's Genaside II's New Life 4 the Hunted, also from 1996, which suffers from eclecticism - the misplaced desire to show versatility and genre non-confinement.

Well, the one arguable major omission in the missed-the-boat category is Gerald's 28 Gun Bad Boy, from '93, but perhaps that is being construed by T as simply too dark, too jungalistic, to count as "rave"?

Tragic cases of rave-era artists who never made an LP?

Acen would be #1

And a close-behind  #2 - Hyper-On Experience.


UPDATE # 11/26/2018

a few other semi-contenders for inclusion:

Sweet Exorcist, Clonk's Coming CD (perhaps too intelligent / subtle to be considered rave)

Nightmares On Wax, A Word of Science (ditto, plus some of it downright mellow, "smoker's music")

Taninian mentions this album



but there's also this one by the same artist, Martin Damm, although perhaps this is too full on gabba-ish albeit fun-spirited




Oh and then a serious omission - i think if we're being honest - is The KLF's The White Room, some of which is well ravey if in a pop-rave style.