1994: The Year That Beats Broke

Alongside Richard D. James, the year’s other other workhorse has to be Beck Hansen. Sandwiched by the anti-folk Stereopathetic Soulmanure (February 22) and the Calvin Johnson alt-country collaboration One Foot in the Grave (June 27) was Beck‘s major-label bow for DGC, Mellow Gold (March 1). It brought together stream-of-consciousness rap, slacker rock-outs, and tossed-off sampledelica, crystallized in the classic groove of “Loser” and still somehow just a hint of the genius to follow. “Loser” was also the bravest face on a trend of artists within rock and mainstream pop who appropriated synthetic production and instruments. It would manifest itself in so many one-hit-wonder modern-rockers who managed to stumble upon a sampler, but it also allowed Blur to revisit their Madchester rave past in the cautionary siren song “Girls and Boys” from Parklife (April 25) and even gave Madonna her first taste of the future on Bedtime Stories (October 6) and its remixes.

Another big name with a popular renaissance in 1994? Beastie Boys, whose fourth album Ill Communication (May 23) finished off the bridge from rap to rock they began on Check Your Head using (ha ha) “Sabotage.” That track and its throwback-TV video by Spike Jonze was part of a four-song string of hits they hadn’t seen since the days of Licensed to Ill. It was indicative of how hip-hop’s own stream of consciousness—and genius—was particularly wide and deep this year. Damn, yo: We heard thoughtful and entertaining debuts from Outkast and Gravediggaz. There were standout sophomore efforts from Digable Planets, Method Man, and The Roots. We heard confident West Coast cacophony, as well as fringe lunatics like Lucas and DJ Shadow.

But really though, rap in 1994 was first about Nas‘ debut Illmatic (April 19). Short and tight—10 tracks in 40 minutes—because the release date snuck up on him, Nasir Jones and an all-star production cast laid out for listeners his hate/love relationship with New York’s Queensbridge housing projects: how they had minimized and enslaved him, and how they inspired him as they had rap’s great voices of the past. It took seven years for the thing to go platinum, about as slow a burn as a classic album could be, but rap cognoscenti knew what was what long before then. And then rap in 1994 was about The Notorious B.I.G.‘s debut Ready to Die (September 13). Unlike Nas’ artistic statement, East Coast Biggie and his Bad Boy crew returned the volley of 2Pac’s Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z… in rap’s dick-swingin’, dope-slingin’ game. It debuted selling less than Illmatic but would go platinum four times over, powered by Christopher Wallace’s rhymes and stories—desperate, detached, yet always thrilling.

We also heard what it must sound like when machines rap to us—or maybe when they’re rapping in their dreams. The subgenre of glitch was a November baby, borne from both old principles of musique concrete and new technologies for sound acquisition, decay, looping, and distortion. Autechre‘s Amber (November 7) was their second album but the duo’s first with completely new material for the Warp label, and they started to forsake proper drum-driven tracks in favor of brittle, impolite, constantly shifting atmospheres, like a child’s ball pit on a raft in heavy seas. C’mon, there’s even a highlight track called “Glitch” sitting in the middle of the LP. One week later, Markus Popp and his friends in Oval put out the first version of Systemisch (November 14) on the Mille Plateau label. Using damaged CDs as their source material, Oval built up their own fragile illusions of song from microsamples of microsamples.

Despite American or Continental incursions, beats of the day were still largely a British empire. In 1994 a cross section of English cities produced a clutch of albums that defined popular electronic music styles and trends, pushing electronica out of its pigeonhole as just an occasional curiosity on album charts or awards shows. The year began with the release of Underworld‘s dubnobasswithmyheadman (January 24), which saw London New Wave and synthpop veterans Karl Hyde and Rick Smith tie the majesty of riffs and the magic of slam poetry to Darren Emerson’s rhythms and atmospheres. In the long, sweeping grooves of songs like “Cowgirl” and “MMM Skyscraper I Love You” the trio personified “intelligent” techno, dropped the first real hints of big beat, and cornered the remix market. Tangentially, they also built a second cottage industry of design and imagemaking in and beyond music; their album graphics helped spread the word about their own creative firm Tomato, and gave artistic legitimacy to contemporaries like The Designers’ Republic.

The spring and summer found England’s beats getting weirder and, some would say, more wonderful. Despite having been signed to the Virgin label on the strength of their hard-charging “Papua New Guinea” single, the Manchester duo Future Sound of London made an immediate left turn onto wider, more spacious roads. The star-studded Lifeforms (May 27) was the commercial and critical peak of FSOL’s career, a landmark ambient dub release and an epic headphone trip—fewer jokes than The Orb, more grooves than Aphex Twin. Meanwhile, over in Essex, The Prodigy were politicizing and expanding on their acid techno. Music for the Jilted Generation (July 4, weirdly enough) was a twofold declaration of independence: supporting ravers against laws and police actions intent on killing the scene, and unafraid to double down on their digital aggression with hints of nascent drum ‘n’ bass. There’s a good half-dozen tracks on here that oldheads will recognize—”No Good (Start the Dance)” and “Voodoo People” among them—and should have passed down to their kids.

Then, in a five-week span as kids went back to grade schools and “uni,” the city of Bristol released a double shot of your baby’s love. The UK debut of Dummy (August 22) by Portishead and the worldwide release of Massive Attack’s second album Protection (September 26) justified the existence of trip-hop and made the English port the genre’s spiritual home. Massive Attack’s debut Blue Lines will always be considered square one of trip-hop, but it was a very upbeat album that leaned heavily on uptempo dance music and classic R&B tropes. Dub reggae and British soul informed new works like “Spying Glass,” “Eurochild,” the instrumental “Heat Miser,” and the Tracey Thorn title track to much darker effect. Dummy, meanwhile, pulled from hip-hop turntablism, torch songs, and film scores to give music such as “Numb,” “Roads,” “Glory Box,” and Beth Gibbons’ timeless “Sour Times” a sad yet sinister air. These bookends/competitors contained theme songs for questionable decisions, forever suggesting the pulsing and dour music of sexual and criminal underworlds.

So yeah, this particular Year of the Dog may very well have been the year for Dookie and Superunknown, the debuts of Weezer and Oasis, long goodbyes for artists like Cobain, Cash, Buckley, and Elliott Smith, and so much more in rock, pop, and urban music. But it was also effectively the debutante party for countless major players and well-known styles with a turntable, keyboard, or sound library within arm’s reach. They laid digital foundations where a lot of today’s music (underground and above) revisits, on which a lot of it rests, and from which it liberally samples. Only weeks and sometimes days would go by between important release dates and events on electronica’s calendar. Whether you’re now a fan of everything going to the beat, or can’t tell your EDM from your IDM and couldn’t care less, 1994 is largely responsible for where you stand.