Welcome to Part 7 of my “100 Favorite Albums of the 1990’s” list! This part covers the late fall of '96 through early spring of '97 - the majority of my senior year of high school. '96 was a banner year in so many ways, and '97 was shaping up to be another great one - live shows, festivals, raves, and so many classic, era-defining albums across multiple subgenres of rock, hip-hop, and electronica. Nearly half of my 100 favorite albums of the 90's were released in this two year span - ’96 - '97. Twenty of my 100 favorite albums of the 90's were released in '97 alone.
⁃ Will G.
Part 8 (1997) coming soon.
Originoo Gunn Clappaz: Da Storm (10/29/96)
OGC were the last Boot Camp Clik members to release their debut "solo" album, and maybe that was by design. This rap trio were no slouches but, in retrospect, didn't have the charisma of fellow Clik members like Smif-N-Wessun and Heltah Skeltah. With uneven production from longtime Clik associates, including Da Beatminerz, Da Storm wasn't quite the rap tempest its namesake suggested, but a few cuts did rise above in the album's latter half, like a Wild West-themed joint featuring Brand Nubian's Sadat X riding high off his own solo debut, Wild Cowboys, released a few months earlier.
Aphex Twin: Richard D. James Album (11/4/96)
British electronic musician Richard D. James had a knack for building his own audio equipment and rejiggering old synthesizers, taking music composition and production to its limits. Issued by the famed “intelligent dance music” label, Warp, the Richard D. James Album was James’ fourth LP under his Aphex Twin alias. Dominated by impossibly fast, spastic percussion - a style termed “drill n’ bass” - the album seemed like a pisstake, but it was also steeped in lush string arrangements, melodic synth, and modulated vocals that lent it a rare sense of melancholy and genuine beauty. Radiohead took notes.
Tricky: Pre-Millennium Tension (11/11/96)
A key founder of the trip-hop genre, along with Portishead and Massive Attack, Bristol, England's Tricky was one of the more challenging artists in my rotation at the end of ‘96. He'd split from Massive Attack the year prior to releasing an acclaimed solo debut, Maxinquaye, soon followed by the comparatively sinister and abrasive Pre-Millennium Tension. His croaking raps, paired with Martina Topley-Bird’s mellifluous singing, mingled atop off-kilter beats, growling bass, and dubwise production that forecasted the left-field dubstep excursions of artists like Kode9 and Burial a decade later.
Mobb Deep: Hell on Earth (11/19/96)
Hot off their breakout album, The Infamous, Mobb Deep returned a year later with another banger - Hell on Earth. As implied by its title, this one went even darker. Created at the height of rap's violent East vs. West rivalry, Havoc and Prodigy - with Nas, Raekwon, and Method Man featuring - spit fire on the mic, including a portentous diss track aimed directly at 2Pac. Entirely self-produced, the album's ominous sound echoed its bleak lyricism with eerie piano and string loops, creaking noises, and vinyl crackle enveloping booming kicks and crisp snares seemingly engineered to snap necks.
Bjork: Telegram (11/25/96)
Few artists in the 90’s were as fearless and eclectic as Bjork, and her formidable singing voice was only part of the equation. Nearly two decades into her career, having started as a child-age performer in her native Iceland, Bjork’s appetite for music and musical collaboration meant that she was always on the cutting edge - something I relished. Telegram, a collection of remixes of songs from her lauded second solo album Post, played like a sampler of the era’s aural avant-garde, covering a swath of genres ranging from classical to industrial, IDM, jazz, trip-hop, drum & bass, and ambient.
Various Artists: Torque (1997)
Ed Rush, Trace, Fierce, and Nico perfected the "tech-step" sound on their landmark drum & bass album, Torque, by melding sci-fi dystopianism with polyrhythmic war drums and cavernous bass characterized by a sinister midrange drone - accomplished by running a "Reese" bass sample through a guitar distortion pedal. Tracks were also dubbed live, with Nico riding the EQ desk and augmenting audio effects in real time. The result was a gnashing miasma of mechanized dread - heavy metal by way of dubwise studio alchemy. Nothing else sounded like it, and it remains an absolute favorite.
Nuyorican Soul: Nuyorican Soul (1/29/97)
Issued by Gilles Peterson's Talkin' Loud label, Nuyorican Soul was an ambitious multi-genre, multi-artist collaboration helmed by NYC garage/house producers Little Louie Vega and Kenny Dope Gonzalez, aka Masters at Work. The album blended Afrocuban jazz, salsa, funk, soul, hip-hop, disco, and more, and featured legends like George Benson, Roy Ayers, Tito Puente, and members of the Salsoul Orchestra. Along with Jamiroquai and the Beastie Boys' own jazz-funk fusion, this project heavily informed my approach to club deejaying years later - variety was the spice, but groove was the main ingredient.
Blur: Blur (2/10/97)
Just when I'd had enough of American alt-rock, my favorite British rock band retooled their sound in the style of American alt-rock. Blur had been champions of Britpop, in many ways the antithesis of American alt-rock, but a losing rivalry with fellow Britons, Oasis, left them in the dust. Reinvention was imperative. Incidentally, the band's growing appreciation for American indie and noise-rock - think Pavement and Sonic Youth - jolted them out of a creative rut on their self-titled fifth studio album. Built on raw, lo-fi jam sessions and atypically personal lyricism, it turned out to be their most successful album. Woohoo!
Sneaker Pimps: Becoming X (2/25/97)
By the late 90’s "trip-hop" seemed to be shorthand for lightweight downtempo banged out in a home studio by a couple dudes with a sultry chanteuse cooing overtop. Despite all the opportunists flooding coffeehouse playlists, genre originators like Massive Attack, Tricky, and Portishead kept pushing the envelope. Add Sneaker Pimps to a short list of newcomers doing the same with their debut album, Becoming X. This British trio incorporated alternative rock and industrial influences into their leaden beats, anticipating the darker turn many of trip-hop’s founders would take on later albums.
Daft Punk: Homework (3/25/97)
Homework, the debut long-player from French electronic music duo Daft Punk, was a collection of singles stitched together in album format with no overarching concept except to deliver hard-hitting house music with a punk rock aesthetic. These tracks were minimal, raw, and frequently abrasive. I prefer their disco and AOR-inspired follow-up, Discovery, which boasted better songcraft and studio polish, but Homework was still a milestone. Hit single "Around The World" was the first vinyl 12" I ever bought - I'd picked up two copies to teach myself how to beatmatch on my new Technics 1210's.
100 Favorite Albums of the 1990s: Part 2 of 10 (1992 - 1993)
100 Favorite Albums of the 1990s: Part 3 of 10 (1993 - 1994)
100 Favorite Albums of the 1990s: Part 4 of 10 (1994 - 1995)
100 Favorite Albums of the 1990s: Part 5 of 10 (1995 - 1996)
100 Favorite Albums of the 1990s: Part 6 of 10 (1996)
Coming Soon - 100 Favorite Albums of the 1990s: Part 8 of 10 (1997)
Coming Soon - 100 Favorite Albums of the 1990s: Part 9 of 10 (1997 - 1998)
Coming Soon - 100 Favorite Albums of the 1990s: Part 10 of 10 (1998 - 1999)
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