For me it’s an easy answer, and for me there is indeed (kind of) a Bob Dylan equivalent in electronic music -
It’s Massive Attack and specifically Mezzanine. Arguably has continually influenced electronica for the past 20 plus years. And is often copied but never equalled or bettered, including by the band themselves! Doesn’t even sound dated one bit. Incredible ground-breaking album.
Mezzanine has also influenced rock and roll and even film scores. And together with their prior two albums make the band giants of the art form. Latter two albums hmmm not so much! But of course Bob Dylan was patchy too…
Amazing album and track/video. Plaid just show no sign of dropping in form after so many albums. That tour was a perfect combination, you are lucky to have seen that. As much as I love Orbital, especially the albums up as far as Middle Of Nowhere, I prefer Plaid these days. I think what makes Orbital more popular is that more of their music is dance orientated, a lot of it uses four four kick drums, and also their use of vocals. Not so important to me, but a good way to appeal to the masses. I am sure Orbital would still be just as good to see live though.
100% orbital have lost their way since middle of knowhere, totally agree, as for plaid Polymer is one of the best electronic albums of the last few years, no question, so many good tracks
Sure is. I can hear some similarity with Orbital in these tracks, and sometimes feel that Plaid are making the type of music that I would have liked Orbital to progress towards after Insides and Middle Of Nowhere.
Also love the way acoustic instruments were used on Polymer. Only Plaid could integrate a spanish guitar, violin and clarinet with electronic sounds like this:
I never thought it was that bad but yes, Homogenic was much better (he worked on several Bjork’s albums tho). He probably couldn’t approach experimentally to Exciter the way he could working with Bjork.
A “flop” implies that it was commercially unsuccessful and nobody liked it, which is not true. Fine that you don’t like it and think the music is detached from the singing though, just remember that is just your opinion and doesn’t apply to everyone. I personally like the dry and intimate treatment of vocals here, almost feels like I’m in the vocal booth with her.
Love that remix, but without trying to turn this into a Plaid thread, just thought I’d mention that I like this even more. Not a remix, Bjork featured on their album Not For Threes.
That’s what “implies” to you; for me it’s a musical flop (im not a native English speaker so I could be wrong here).
I know nothing about it’s commercial success.
Btw… Do you always judge music by its commercial success?
P.s. i was always a big fan of Plaid, for more than 15 yrs now
I never judge music by commercial success and had a feeling you might have misinterpreted the word, so I didn’t mean any offense. Just thought I’d point it out because as a native English speaker I’m aware that it’s not common to use that word to describe personal subjective opinions, so I just wanted to make it clear that a lot of people like this remix….because I love Plaid and get kind of emotional about them. Sorry if I sounded critical mate, always nice to meet a fellow admirer of Plaid.
I think the production on Exciter is really good, and possibly the last time Depeche Mode didn’t just churn out the standard Depeche Mode sound. But the problem with Exciter was the song writing was mostly terrible (couple of exceptions) which i’d say was more down to wee Martin rather than Mark Bell…
