So it's the mid-90s, I'm in junior high, I love techno but it's not so easy to come by in Texas. But 104.1 FM, the pop-rock radio station for Moms, will play "dance music", and some of it's pretty good. I cling to this like a liferaft.

1. "Set U Free", Planet Soul

…And then there was the "Planet Soul" song, which was not just pretty good but great. This song's weird, progressive, does strange things with tempo, but its laid-back groove is so accessible even KRBE would play it, as long as it's after 8 PM. Unless you'd figured out KTRU Rice Radio's erratic schedule (which, at this time, I had not) this was the only way you were going to hear a 303 on the radio in Houston in 1995.

This song was later blatantly ripped off by Jocelyn Enriquez as "A Little Bit of Ecstasy".

2. "Sweet Dreams", La Bouche

When I think about 90s "dance music" (I don't even know what actual genre I'm even talking about; my main mental association with "dance music" was the period I was too young to know the names of electronic genres. Is this "Eurodance"? Or was that later?) I think La Bouche. They were the Archetype. All their hits sounded about the same, they all had cheesy production and cheesy raps and they were all extremely effective.

This works, it really works, this music was created with a Purpose and it succeeds at it hard. Listen without judgement

3. "Straight Up", Paula Abdul

If I ever have to explain to someone what the Synclavier was, I will simply play them this song.

This song might actually be the exact point the 80s pop production style peaked. There's so much going on here! The sampled flutes. The Scarface visual gimmick on the the video. I spent years wondering why the worst possible retaliation for mistreatment Abdul could imagine inflicting on her partner was to go "a ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba".

4. "My Lovin' (You're Never Gonna Get It)", En Vogue

Here's a song from that brief, magical junction point in the 90s when hip-hop, r&b, pop, "dance music", and the OST to "Paperboy 2" for the Super Nintendo were all briefly the same genre. And then there's the video, which increases the sense of all things conjoining by loading up with 50s R&B imagery. 90s kids, you've heard this song but have you ever really listened to it? This is a bop. This is so charming.

5. "You're Not Alone", Olive

Eventually the "dance music" era of 90s Houston radio (soft rock radio will play some techno) gave way to the "electronica" era (regular rock radio will play some techno). Right on the border in late 1996 dropped this lovely europop song with some legitimately hype sampler work. Listen to this in stereo (headphones or whatevs).

Bonus: This "lyrics" video upload was mis-encoded and starts glitching interestingly about 20 seconds in.

⬇️ Click below for remixes by Seal and Autechre ⬇️

What is "IDM"? I will explain: Intelligent Dance Music is neither intelligent nor danceable, nor is it music. Or at least that is the way I prefer it

1. "Concept 1 96​:​01 01​:​00", Richie Hawtin

Under the name "Plastikman", Hawtin achieved fame as a "minimalist composer" who repurposed dance-techno techniques to sculpt stark sound landscapes. This bumping downtempo piece is from a previously very rare, self-published one-track-a-month limited-vinyl series he did while developing the sound of the Plastikman "trilogy"; now it's just on Bandcamp.

Hawtin says he recorded this track on January 1, 1996.

2. "CB03.wav" (27Mhz series mix), Magic Window

This is some acidic, futuristic-sounding drum & bass I found on YouTube (the link goes to the full 3-track "Zerotime" EP, which you can also find on Bandcamp). I don't know anything about this group but they seem to really like Windows 95 and are very good at constructing fussed-over vaporwave timbres. Jamming rhythm on that first track, and lots of enormous sounds with wonderful tastes. I think this is "IDM".

3. "Lofi tech beats PCBcore", Arman Bohn

This is a Selected Ambient Work with bitcrushed beats by the Picocore and semi-random tones by the Nunomo Qun (so with the Teenage Instruments TX-6 on mixing duty, that's two cheap idiosyncratic miniature synths and one very expensive idiosyncratic miniature synth). Slippery and indistinct in a way I find abstrusely compelling, this leads you down a twisty techno labyrinth then strands you at a dead end.

4. "Movement" (Hurdslenk remix), TWR72

This song was released last month, but is that kind of timeless techno that sounds like it could have been recorded anytime since 1985. What genre is this? Berlin? "Schranz"? Is Shranz a real techno genre? That sounds fake. Anyway this an absorbing, driving drum torrent anchored by tribal-style rhythms. There is nothing wrong with making the entire song out of drums. This track is good proof of that.

5. "Iceplanet", Funkstörung

The visionary Skam Records was the original home of some of the 90s' most influential electronic artists, like a feeder team for Warp. They did a hyper-limited series named "MASK" where well-known artists anonymously dumped tracks that were out-of-character, "going too far" or literally illegal, and some of the 90s' best tracks accumulated there. From MASK 200 (1997, 200 copies printed), here's a chill space journey I love

⬇️ Click below for industrial dance techno ⬇️