Like in the opening message is described, purpose of list is not to be only "albums I like" -type best of list. Neither about who is cool guy. As reminder of some quidelines:
QuotePlease, no suggestions based on who is your friend and who is cool & great dude.
What kind of releases should be included?
1) Preferably on their relevance influencing whole genre and importance in some sort of landmarks.
2) Releases with high status based merely on success, and therefore their obvious influence in getting into ears of big number of people.
3) Releases with exceptionally good/original/unusual contribution, to musical or cultural climate of power electronics, even if they may not be at their time or at the moment high "commericial" success.
4) Releases with high local relevance. Local not meaning "you and your buddies", but for example domestic scene of your country.
Purpose of the list?
To observe & investigate the development of the genre, it's highlights, exceptional releases. Basically landmarks of genre from 1979 to 2008. To observe something like this, can't be merely list of top-3 or evern top-10 PE releases and biggest bands. Every release doesn't have to be equivalent of RIGHT TO KILL in musical style, legendary status or such. There is needed to be releases that show where genre went after the first and biggest impacts. And also releases, what are not necessarily milestones of genre as whole, but some fraction of it.
So, before thinking about what is the good albums of couple recent years, I would suppose they are yet to be
canonized in first place. Lets say album that have come out 2020, how could it be yet have become cult classics, canonized in genre history by people involved and critics? You could think some releases, such as from Linekraft would make it. We could observe that after slow starts of quite small releases, suddenly something happens. 2017 playing in German festival highly praised gig, and followed with albums on Tesco, Hospital, SSSM, Aussaat, New Approach, etc. While some of the praised American bands don't sell from my distro at all, their popularity over here seems to be next to nothight, I guess I took like.. 30 of Linekraft Howling CD alone. Not sure how many times Asura LP was re-stocked. People praising, buying and band topping themselves with many of the releases. However, what of the albums would survive test of time? That can't be really known now. It will be known later on. Also, to think how remarkable "2020 release" something is, one should compared it with other 2020 releases, and I would assume most people have yet to even hear enough albums to evaluate what stuff even came that year?
More interesting would be looking back into years where we have enough distance and it is possible we even know a lot of releases that each year came. Unfortunately the topic on Chondritic/Troniks forum that had all the name dropping & suggestions, is no longer online. What all was suggested, but was hesitated to put it, unless enough people comment that it really is something made a difference.
Like 1999? Nothing there yet. Think how good releases came in 1999!
-Taint - Dau ghter: Victimology 2 CD
-Proiekt Hat - Deform Process LP
-Genocide Organ :The Truth Will Make You Free: LP
-IRM "red album" LP
-Folkstorm Information Blitzkrieg CD
-Atrax Morgue Overcome LP (debut LP, plus marking stongly this changed style into big vinyl)
-Sutcliffe Jügend – The Victim As Beauty CD (many friends as why I don't like this album, since they are it among the absolute biggest landmarks of power electronics)
and so on...
Jumping into 2001 and there is 1 album? Con-Dom surely was great, no problem. JerUSAlem? Good, but maybe not good enough, since it barely does more than follows the previous album. Propergol Renegade CD - like it or not, pushed production into quite new levels.
2002.. Control – Algolagnia CD. First was good, but this 2nd release, damn, it changed a lot what is done in "PE" and since then artists established its place in global scene, multiple tours in Europe, Japan, etc.
Strom.ec Neural Architect probably had even bigger reach due USA label with bigger pressing (compared to debut album)...
2003.. If it was era of "what constitutes as PE" being even more flexible, artists who would be known as NOISE, would produce album that certainly fall closer to old PE than many of PE bands themselves. Lets say like Prurient "History of AIDS". Same year, compilations as "Field Tales" 3xtape stood out as quite testament of this era. While tape advertised itself to be "inspired by the 80's cassette culture", I'd say it is much more than that.
2004 only one album? To me that era feels like there was a lot of things happening. While putting out things such as N12 "substitute", Pain Nail debut LP, they didn't appear in vacuum but in vastly busy flourishing genre of that time. Some could say even kind of new rise of PE? So there must be more. Just placing years and albums into any sort of chronology after almost 20 years is a bit tough!
