This is the first post of a ten part series featuring my top 100 artists of 2019. They are ranked according to how many times I scrobbled them during the year. I filtered out musicians that have nothing or little to do with electronic music, e.g. I started to listen to quite some classic and baroque, inspired by Pere Portabelle’s movie Die Stille vor Bach about the life of Johann Sebastian Bach. I listened to all the Bach family members I could get my hands on and I have to admit, they all sound equally talented to me, i.e. I could not say that J.S. was the greatest of them, but then again, I’m not a classic expert. I also excluded the glorious glam rock band T-Rex, although they were sampled more than once by the cologne based techno innovator Wolfgang Voigt (but one of his pseudonyms will appear somewhere in the top 100).

All in all I scrobbled 3298 artists last year, and as a guesstimate a little over 2000 were eligible. To reach the Top 100 an artist needed at least 29 scrobbles. Since I listen music mostly as a background activity while reading, this top 100 is heavily biased towards instrumental easy listening sound. For every artist I will include a short note and a youtube clip, so you can get an impression of his, her or their work. Let’s G-O! Here are the places 100-91:

 

#100 Thomas Brinkmann

Thomas Brinkmann is a familiar name for everybody interested in minimal techno of the 90s. His series of EPs about female forenames had a similar appeal as Wolfang Voigt’s Studio 1 series (which btw. Brinkmann remixed for the Profan label), although it never quite reached that level. I had quite a few of the records before my parents decided to throw away half my record collection. During the 00s I saw him once DJing in a club in Zurich called Dachkantine, a gig he probably did to promote his girlfriend who did a Schranz techno live act. Also noteworthy is his stuff as released Soul Center.

 

#99 Disco D

Nenad J. suggested I should do a ‘ghetto‘ special for the aerobik label night last November. To prepare the set I updated my knowledge of the various ghetto genres (detroit booty, miami bass, ghetto house, ghetto tech, booty house, …) and listened to some of the stuff. This is how Disco D deservedly made it into this Top 100, despite my focus on non-vocal music.

 

#98 The Other People Place

One of the last monikers used by James Stinson before his death. It is part of the Drexciya world and entails only two releases, the Warp album Lifestyles Of The Laptop Café and a split EP with DJ Stingray as Mystic Tribe A.I. on clone.

 

#97 Mind-Flux

Mind-Flux is an ambient trance duo who was mainly active in the 90s.

 

#96 Ashra

Ashra is a 70s ambient and krautrock band from berlin that succeeded the well known band Ash Ra Tempel. They were, as discogs put it, “pioneering guitar and electronics”.

 

#95 Cantoma

Cantoma is a british downtempo project that began in the late 90s.

 

#94 VC-118A

VC-118A is Samuel Van Dijk’s beautiful minimal electro concept project, most releases are thematically about airlines and airports, in 2012 the Dutch artist released the debut album International Airlines.

 

#93 40 Thieves

A San Francisco based electronica collective.

 

#92 Transllusion

Already the second time that James Stinson appears in this list. Finest Detroit Electro.

 

#91 Komarken Electronics

Interesting Nu Electro producer from Sweden.

Next week, we’ll look at places #90-#81. Stay tuned, stay with us!