Darkdancer

not good

I usually like IDM and EDM ; I can always enjoy some weird electronica, epic breakbeat or good old-fashioned techno. But this is just brainless dance-pop with inane lyrics for the terminally inebriated. There was already a ton of better stuff playing in clubs in 1999. Even the album cover looks like clearance-bin material. A couple of tracks have nice groovy beats, but it's not enough to save this dumpster fire. Hard pass. 2/10

I always appreciate when this project serves up an artist and album I've never heard of or from before, and this is definitely on the more interesting side than not in that regard. It's a little disappointing to find out that Les Rhymes Digitales' founder, "Jacques Le Cont", is in fact an Englishman (Stuart Price) who decided he was a frog in a limey's body; this isn't really helped by the fact that this album doesn't sound particularly French *or* British. It's a decent throwback album, though, with much better sound quality than anything made in the 80s had. The songs themselves aren't all that inspired, with "Soft machine" and "Sometimes" the highlights for me, and props too for "Brothers" and "Jacques your body makes me sweat". ("(Hey you) What's that sound?" was a disappointingly unoriginal cover/sample, but the video is pretty fun, although kind of bizarre that the Wikipedia entry for this album links to Buffalo Springfield's "For what it's worth" rather than Skee-Lo's "I wish" as the source.) Not a horrible album by any stretch, but it felt like he was trying to be like Fatboy Slim doing a tribute to the 80s, and didn't quite make it.

I vacillated between enjoyment and nausea--the repetition doesn't make for great dance music; it makes for boring dance music. Still, some of the lyrics were fresh, so occasionally I got down with that.

Fine - not really a dance tunes fan, but a decent enough listen.

Good enough loo it was a dance album that wasn't terrible

I went into this with low expectations and I was wrong. Nothing truly outstanding but I did enjoy listening

solid 3 harmless, un-inspiring music

Ugh, who has time for this?

Dated. Unlike anyone who is really into it.

not for me

It's fairly standard late 90s euro dance. Quite repetetive, sometimes cool, but mostly background music.

Another discovery from the list. The production on this album is fantastic. Again, this makes sense as Stewart Price (AKA Les Rythmes Digitales) ultimately received most of his accolades producing music for some major artists, including Madonna’s Confessions on a dance Floor, for which he won a grammy. Overall, this was a fun album, but I think I like the 2000s EDM music that this album helped launch or even contemporaries like Daft Punk better. This makes sense as this album is clearly an homage to music of the past. My biggest complaint is that some of the longer songs feel repetitive. My son got me into EDM music, which I enjoy when I’m in a particular mood. I was not particularly in this mood today, so I’ll try to remember to revisit this the next time I am.

Can’t say I’ll be listening again but a pretty solid dance album, yet nothing in here that I think may grow on me Something about disco to disco made me want to tear my ears out, topped off by that WAAAA sound A bit from about funk had the literal melody of the autotune outro thing from California Gurls (“Caaaaaaalliiiiifoooorrnniiaaaaaa-aaaah” if you know what I mean)

Really not sure who this is for Kinda ass ngl 1.5

OK, started well, but then it just went on and on and on and on. Seriously I imagine one track from this on the dancefloor would be fantastic and the album seems like it would be a great element of a DJ's mix kit. Listening to it start to finish though is a waste of time. Filler I'm afraid. 2/5

Another 80s style synth-pop record, perhaps the first but I don't really care. They all sound remarkably similar and just don't do it for me.

music make you lose control triangle dancing guy. this wasn't good. 2.67/5

Similar to Daft Punk but slightly less repetitive. Decent for clubbing or exercising to but pretty shallow stuff. Another average album that shouldn't bee on this list.

It's ok. Probably won't listen again

Overall Rating - 3.08/5 (6.15/10). Competent electronica. Not my preference, but not bad.

I want to make love to you in this club I don’t see what’s wrong with a little bump and grind

This album is basically Daft Punk if they had 100% less skill.

Good enough for what it is, but definitely not my preferred genre. Too repetitive, lacking in meaning, and obnoxious. However, I still found myself vibing at times. I even added a song to my liked list: Take a little time.

90er electro vomne französisch tönende artist? aha ersch engländer. aber erste track no fun? he ich finds no cool. uf sometimes isch de nick kershaw?? huere geil??

Cool beats, but insufferably repetitive.

#112 - Darkdancer - Les Rythmes Digitales ⭐️ To be fair, it’s not called 1001 GOOD Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.

truly, deeply shitty

This genre already comes with prepacked/produced sample and tracks. Midi replaces fingers and skills, Drums, premade. Tempo locked in. The artisty comes from the arrangements, blending and the abilidytty to stand out using basiclly the same tools as everyone else. EDM as a whole is cheesy, but great EDM artists make art that is soulful, thought provoking and pulls you in, lessen the cheese or knowing how to play off it. Darkdancer by Les Rythmes Digitales is cheesy, it surface level and sounds like a kid in. his bedroom slopping together default samples or even building songs from the demo songs that comes with their DAW and SYNTHS. I did not like this album..."I don’t know why I dislike this so much. It’s like a lot of things that I’d like being done not so well." - JOE

Always happy to be surprised with some late 90s French House, especially when it feels much more built off a love of 80s synth pop (as well as disco) instead of the usual 70s milieu. It doesn’t make the whole thing totally divergent, but where it does split, it’s very cool and makes it honestly feel well ahead of its time, like it predicted later turns in nostalgia with ease (and then the base of the thing is just really good anyway besides). Just some really strong clean dance tunes, ahead of the curve and all that.

really cool, it sounds like if Daft Punk had stayed a bit more conservative and disco-like in their sound design. I'd heard and liked Jacques Your Body before but never knew the artist. disc 2 has some great remixes!

1 terrible

I've come across quite a few albums that give me this reaction, why is it on this list? I mean, it's an okay album, I quite enjoyed it, dancing along, but it doesn't stand out from the pack at all. A lot of it is pure 80s electro nostalgia, that was done to more effect the first time around. This could have been one of any number of house albums from the time. It's okay. It'll tap your toes a bit, but I think I'd rather listen to an original than this rehash.

I really liked this. Pretty repetitive but the music was great.

There was so much better dance music in 1999 I have no idea why this is on the list

was not expecting to like this, especially after looking at some reviews, but i actually had a great time with this!!

Good grief, what absolute dross.

Not my vibe very repetitive songs

Sorry, maar dit is gewoon tering hard

Vet gezellige elektronica, wat een vibe. Deze gast heeft blijkbaar ook een mooi CV met productiewerk in deze stijl: Jessie Ware, Rina Sawayama, Dua Lipa. Cool om te horen waar dat vandaan komt.

En 3 mots : une sacrée daube, il y a des albums absents qui méritent d’être dans dans la liste, celui ci mérite d’être retiré de la liste Aucun plaisir, aucune créativité et aucune influence le strike de la pseudo electro pourrie Si vous n’avez pas compris, je n’ai pas aimé .

This album feels like a serious step backwards after the big beat and electro-rock scenes, which sound much deeper and more atmospheric to me. I’m no expert, but apparently the guy behind all this played a major role in the development of 2000s electropop… congratulations for that. Or not. The beats are particularly simplistic, this is basically dance/pop music most of the time. Tracks like Soft Machine or Hypnotize make it pretty easy to hear the connection with some more contemporary records. Interesting from that perspective, I guess, but overall this was a pretty painful listen for me. Too popish to me.

Pretty fun dance/DJ stuff. Cool to hear the Missy “music make you lose control” sample here as well. It kept things moving and wasn’t taking itself too seriously. Not a bad spin!

Surprisingly enjoyable to listen to given my issues with the prevalence of subpar albums of this type on this list. I found it to be original and interesting and it brought something new to a genre that has been frankly overdone.

Bien.

O ne. Naslovnica ni obetavna. Ooo neee. Začetek albuma ("Dreamin'") tud ne. O fak. Obžalujem, da sm prej en dim nardila. Fak, sm pomislila na Missy Elliott k sm vidla naslov komada ("Music Makes You Lose Control"). I guess so samplali isti komad? (Ja, "Body Work" od Hot Streak. Pa vidim, da me čaka še butchering Buffalo Springfield/Stephen Stills komada. Ugh.) To je muska za ljudi v srednji šoli, k nimajo nobenega zanimanja ali okusa za musko. Ker obnoxious komad ("From: Disco to: Disco"). Horrible repetitive drivel.

It’s pleasant to listen to, though it is a bit of an overload.

3.5

3.0

A bit too much cheese for me

It was not offensive, but nothing really special here and repetitive

A bit too long

It was probably for the best that on Spotify four of the songs were unavailable to play.

2.5 i only heard two songs nik kershaw and one other (others arent available in my country or something?)

no lo sé

This is good and deserves more props. It was created as a pastiche that bamboozled the music press trying to find 'the collective of reclusive continental producers behind it'. I'm all good that level of shithousery. It was in fact all one bloke who went off to produce pish like the Killers and latter day Madonna. Reminds me of Chromeo and Milo.

The wiki article is sparse which is why I was thinking why is this album revolutionary, the best example of its genre, justified on ending up in a greatest list compilation. I could not find the answer. It is b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-lowin in the digital ether. 2. Change my mind. Thank you for teaching me paulstretching fellow reviewer.

Exclusively background music. Didn’t finish obviously. High 2

Wasn't too bad actually. I dont normally listen to this type of music but some of the songs like Soft Machine and Whats That Sound? where defo bops.

Pretty cool, some classics, pretty average all in all.

Not my usual jam but this is great

It was solid

I liked this more than I thought. Terrible album cover but the dance music got me moving

It’s not bad, but not for Me

I probably would've enjoyed it more, but it's the kind of music you really need to be in the mood or situation for.

“I’ll take all of that you’ve got!” Listened to a shorter version twice before realizing, to my delight, it was 1/2 the length. Listened to the full length a few times. Love every second, whatta find!

More of this dance/techno, less of all the other stuff

Не особо зашло, ещё и спотифай показывает только 3 трека в альбоме

I hadn't realized that Les Rythmes Digitales and Jacques Lu Cont are the same person (Stuart Price); I'm familiar with the work under the latter name from his Killers remixes, which I've quite enjoyed. I can also appreciate the Francophilia, which seems to give Price the sense of freedom he needs to be experimental to the point of frivolity; he'd clearly rather be compared to Daft Punk and Air (which he can differentiate himself from) than to Fatboy Slim and Basement Jaxx (which would make that harder). But none of that theorizing matters if the music isn't up to snuff. "Disco II Disco" annoys me; "MDC Vendredi" entrances me. And thankfully, there's a lot more here of the latter than the former. Nik Kershaw's "Sometimes" is a particular highlight, pulling the Eighties forward in time at exactly the right historical moment to make maximum impact. And on the finale "Damaged People" Price takes just a bit of a turn toward early Prodigy in the form of a Howlett-esque keyboard riff that underlies Thomas Ribeiro doing his best Jay Kay impression. I'd tell Price not to be so anxious about his influences if he weren't doing such a good job transmuting that anxiety into something worthy.

I've listened to nearly 900 albums on this list so far, and this is absolutely the worst one of all. No contest

Dreamin'!!!!! Music makes you lose control!!!

Ræva. Gadd ikke høre halvannen time.

Nice to see a europop dance album on here. I enjoyed it, the guest singers had some good songs. Nonetheless, there's probably better similar albums from the 90s you could have listened to over this.

Pretty good dance album. Nice production. I didn’t listen to the second disc as only the first 11 tracks are on the original track listing.

I think I've tried listening to this one before. On paper it looks to be right up my street...in reality, it's too repetitive even for an EDM fan like me. There's some OK stuff in here, but nowhere near enough variation to keep me interested. I liked "Sometimes" - the lyrics elevated it above most of the rest - but even the tracks around four minutes felt longer than that, because there just aren't enough new ideas being introduced to make these tracks interesting to me.

A little boring and not very cohesive.

Most of the basslines are sweet and the vibes on each song are 100% foot tappers. For an electronic album this is pretty peak. Banger after banger. But it’s still an electronic album, and I still wanted to listen to something else after about 30 minutes.

Was this a mistake?

Overall, not bad. ★★★

Soundtrack to an early 2000s obscure sports PS2 game

Enjoei

Maybe this is good, maybe I don’t care…

nice

Bit Beverly Hills cop….okay

Fun album with infectious grooves but worthy of being a top 1001 album? Not so sure about that. I hate to mark this low because it will impact my love of electronic genre but this kind of sucks.

Хоч і тут є пару дуже яскравих хаус-бенгерів (після відкривашки Dreamin' я подумав, що це буде АЛЬБОМ), більшість матеріалу повз мене, а деякі треки я був на межі крінжу. Також вокальні пісні здалися не дуже вдалими.

Обкладинка звісно кримінально жахлива. Але альбом сам по собі не такий вже й поганий, просто якийсь дефолтний євро-постдиско-денс-поп 90х. Не знаю що дакрденсер робить в цьому списку, але най буде. 2.5

Honestly I thought it would be worse so that was good at least. Fun to recognize the Missy Elliott sample but her version is much better.

Listened to this one for my personal project! I feel like i could have a crazy one person dance party to this. Would go hard in a club if i was drunk and willing to bop around. The reviews did not lie tho - this guy picks one line and repeats that shit till the song is over. The beat is pretty repetitive as well which makes for good dance music but perhaps not good listening music

From the very first song, I knew this was going to be an instant 5 stars. Great production with great singers and samples. I could dance to this for a long time. But the greatest thing of all is that it’s interesting. Much better than a Costello or Kings Of Leon album. It sounds like it would be made at the turn of the 80s/2000s if the 90s didn’t exist at all. The album has some cool cover art as well! As to some of the reviewers calling this “weird french music,” it’s not french. It’s british. And the guy behind it was VERY influential in the 90s/2000s house space. He’s produced records for Madonna and the Pet Shop Boys. And of course, he’s produced music under his many side projects, like Les Rythmes Digitales and Zoot Woman. Long story short, this is a great album and I’m sad to see that most people here don’t give it the recognition it deserves.

There were a few really good tracks on this. It sounds very of it's time, sometimes in a good way and sometimes in an outdated way. I enjoyed it more as the album went on and I really liked About funk.

No va

Generic late '90s dance club product? And I must hear this before I die? Come on folks, let's be serious.

Not for me

If my friend did that in his basement using audacity at 15 I would consider him talented.

Not quite my style - Some catchy parts but overall nothing here stood out to me. I'd listen to it again but I wouldn't seek it out.

3.3 2x youtube -- good EDM

que coisa horrivel

Jet Set Radio music but a lil worse

Even though he came from Reading, this was a struggle. Maybe like all prototypes, it had to happen.