The greatest electronic track ever written?

There's so much out there that I love and adore but there's one song that will always stand out in my mind as the one track I know that will always send shivers down my spine no matter where I am or what I'm doing. The greatest electronic song ever written? Probably only to me…

The brother bought an album in 1996 called Future Funk. It was a kind of rag tag compilation of Big Beat and Drum and Bass tunes featuring the likes of Chemical Brothers, Goldie, Bomb the Bass and Nightmares on Wax. All in all, it was a fantastic selection but what topped it off for me was the inclusion of one tune on it that I listened to more than any other on it and one that I've probably listened to more than any other electronic song that I have known and adored.

It was Mutant Jazz by T-Power and MK Ultra and even the name of it is class.

It starts with a louche hip hop beat with a lachrymose saxophone motif playing over some lovely synth bass and piano that skirt around each other. It breaks down to just the refrain of the sax and a filtered voice telling us that 'The white man has… a god complex' before the main beat skitters in and takes over.

A restless fusion of IDM and jungle beats are what propel the rest of the track and while they are complex and constantly mutating they never sound forced or contrived. The power and depth of the subby bass helping to keep it all anchored together. What makes the track so magical is how the different elements of the track build and build without you even realising it. A Himalayan flute signals the start of a progression of pads that keep layering on top of each other and adding more to the wistful melancholy of the track. All the while, the saxophone keeps repeating its downbeat motif until near the end of the track where it breaks free and the sound of it mixed with the pads and the careering percussion becomes a thing of pure joy until suddenly it all ends and we're left with just the pads playing by themselves and they bring the song to a close with an ecstatic sigh. Pure magic.

The brother never got the compilation back off me.

I've listened to many tunes and many genres of electronic music in the last 20 odd years of listening to dance but none are as timeless to me as this track. It still has the power to enrapture me to this day and it's one that will still have me smiling like an e-addled raver when I hear it in my eighties.

Thank you kindly, Marc Royal and Nigel Samuel, for creating this thing of beauty.

For techno, I have to say Daft Punk's track Alive off the Homework album is best piece of techno even written. But I've never got over this tune, I'll always remember listening to it for the first time in a mates house on youtube with ****ty speakers plugged into the laptop.

It's breathtaking.

Scubadevils wrote: »

^ Yeah Alive is an incredible track alright. I first heard it on a Sasha mix, probably around 1994, used to love how it was mixed in, the sheer energy from it, worked really well in the mix actually.

And on Alive 1997 it's just cataclysmic!

It's an insane album alright, not a single bad track on it.

Even tunes like Burnin' tend to be forgotten about, even though that tune is genius.