MTV's Dishes

Artist: Various electronica stars of the 90's
Title: MTV's Amp
Released in: 1997
Color: Traffic cone orange

Amp was a TV show aired in the wee hours that spotlighted electronica (apparently MTV believes everyone who listens to non-mainstream music stays up late: Exhibit A: Headbanger's Ball. Exhibit B: 120 Minutes). Somewhere in my parent's house is a well-worn VHS of Amp episodes featuring the likes of Basement Jaxx, Dieselboy, Mocean Worker, etc. Great show.

As for the album..... well, AllMusic raves about the Amp album as illustrating depth and variety and being a good introduction to electronica. False! There's way too much big beat, and the latter half is quite shoddy.

A quick run-down:

Classic trax (7 total):

• Chemical Brothers - Block Rockin' Beats (big beat)
  
• Fluke - Atom Bomb (big beat)
  
• Underworld - Pearl's Girl
  
• FSOL - We Have Explosive
  
• Aphex Twin - Girl/Boy Song
  
• Orbital - The Box
  
• Goldie - Inner City Life
  

Duds (5 total):

• Tranquility Bass [no wikipedia unsurprisingly] - We All Want to be Free (bo-ring big beat)
• Prodigy - Voodoo People (Chemical Brothers remix - they big-beatify a great song)
• Josh Wink - Are You There... (so bo-ring!)
• Crystal Method - Busy Child (unsuccessful big beat)
• Atari Teenage Riot - Sick to Death (screechy... yes, I know it's supposed to be, but it's unpleasant)
  

[For the completists, I remain neutral on Photek - Ni-Ten-Ichi-Ryu.]

Almost all the classic trax are on the first half, and almost all the duds are in the second half. Was the track selection split between two people and the second one sucked? We'll never know. I look forward to listening again the albums that the classic trax are from (most of which will show up here eventually - I think I actually once went in a record store with this CD in hand...). However, this is the first CD in the Dishes Project that has had some seriously dated material.