Asking for a friend... literally. I've been doing my best to score the internet for all the significant musical events in 1999, but I'm sure I'm missing stuff. So far I've been using RYM and Scaruffi's website to figure out what came out that year, as I don't really trust the likes of the Rolling Stone or Pitchfork.
So I'm going to divide this into two parts - albums from trends that are ongoing in 1999, and albums from trends that were mainly a thing in the early 90s but some of the bands still had one left in the tank.
The big name trends of the 90s were grunge, hip hop, brit-pop, and pop punk.
Brit-pop and grunge were pretty much dead by 99. I can't find any significant grunge releases from that year (rym literally lists 11 grunge albums from that year), other than Seaweed's worst album. However, some members of that band collabed with the Screaming Trees to make a decent album, New Dawning Time, but that was hardly grunge. Some websites cite that Blur's album 13 came out that year, which actually came out in 98, but I'll include it just to have that style represented. I'm not a big Brit-pop fan (quite the opposite) but I liked that album, and I do think it was an important step on the ladder for us to get from Blur to Gorillaz.
Hip hop was in a period of transition in 1999. All of the big names from the early 90s and late 80s were fizzling out and dropping their more mediocre projects, but a new wave of artists was tentatively taking their spot. However, hip hop never has a truly dead year. While Slick Rick, Dr Dre, and Q-Tip were disappointing us with half ass-ed projects, this year featured Mos Def's peak, as well as an excellent collab album between Redman and Method Man. Talking about Redman, this is the year where two of the biggest stars of the 00's had their debut - Eminem had his commercial debut with the Slim Shady LP and Daniel Dumille debuted as MF DOOM for the first time on OPERATION DOOMSDAY. In a way, 1999 hip hop had a theme: the three rappers to experiment the most with alter egos and eccentric personalities all had significant releases in 1999. DJ Spectre had a decent instrumental album that year as well. This was also Lil Wayne's debut year, I'm not the biggest fan but that is certainly worth mentioning.
1999 was a relatively decent year for Pop Punk, if only for two reasons. This year featured Blink 182's first and only decent album (and nobody gon tell me otherwise!), Enema of the State, and the famous American Football. It also featured one of my favorite punk albums, Zen Guerilla's Trance States in Tongues.
Then we have Pop. I don't really know what pop was around for this year, I know Wilco and Beck had decent release. I'll probably take a quick listen through the Billboard top 100 and see if any of those singles are good. I would consider the Morphine release that year to be Art-pop, along with the aforementioned Stereolab album, but obviously some actual pop would be nice too.
So now those were the major commercial trends from the early 90s, but they were not the only trends from that era. We also had Slo-Core, Foxcore, Goth, and Noise-psych. Slo-core only offered an album from Low which was absolutely fantastic of course. Foxcore only gave us Le Tigre from Bikini Kill. 90s Goth gave us Folkstorm's Information Bliztkrieg, which is actually super good. On the other end of the spectrum, the 90s brand of harsh psychedelic was having an amazing year. I especially feel the need to shout out Maron Jones' The Sleeping Sickness as well as Porcupine Tree's Stupid Dream. Harsh Jar Tempo had one of their better albums this year, and their fellow New Zealander Peter Stapleton had TWO albums in 99, under various names (and I thought keeping up with MF DOOM's monikers was bad!). Some other early 90s acts that "still had it" in 99 included Lida Husik, Kristen Hersch, Boss Hog, Omit, Califone and Ani Defranco, all of which had top tier releases that year. The Mountain Goats had a compilation record that year, and we got albums from a couple of Darnielle's contemporaries like Simon Joyner, Phil Elvrum, Steve Wynn, Steven Meritt, and Paul Westerburg. Oh yes and of course, this was also the year that featured Nine Inch Nails last good album.
A LOT of 90s Prog Rock bands were still releasing fantastic albums in 99. Cul De Sac's probably my favorite, with Luigi Archetti being a close second. We also got albums from guys like Buckethead, Home, with Flying Lattenbauchers being something I need to check out ASAP.
Metal Had a decent year in 99. The biggest release is obviously the Rage Against the Machine album, but Annihalitor and Today Is The Day were apparently just as good. And of course Slipknot had their first and best album that year too.
A lot of 80s bands made a come back in 99. One of the older Goth bands, Black Tape for a Blue Girl, had a couple of good records that year. A couple of 80s Prog rockers had a come back that year, including Fred Frith, Arto Lindsay, Cheer Accident, Jah Wobble's Deep Space self titled album.** Shoegaze** / Dream pop gave us a couple of good releases, including Flaming Lips' The Soft Bulletin, Giant Sand, and Yo La Tengo. The Innerzone Orchestra released Programmed that year. Apparently some African artists made a come back that year as well, Kandia Kouyate. A lot of the super abrasive psychadelic acts from the 80s had releases in 99 as well, including Dead C, the Boredoms, Bruce Russel, and Handful of Dust. Apparently this band "Thinking Fellers Union Local 282" could also qualify. Lastly, the singer songwriter Joe Henry released his Fuse album this year.
Now for the "contemporary" acts. One of my most surprising finds is that this was an absolutely fantastic year for jungle. Fila Brazillia's Touch of Cloth was an important step towards the eclectic. Sping Heel Jack's Treader mixed in a heavy dose of classical, as did DJ Spooky's release. Both Faultline and Andrea Parker were at their creative peaks at the time. D'tachi, Dylan Group, and Mice Parade also had significant releases. Hrvatski started doing some avant-garde shit with breakbeats - a compilation album of her experiments was released in this year. In other electronic genres, "garage" made waves with the single Sweet Like Chocolate, Paul Haslinger releases his Score album, David Toop had a pretty significant Ambient release, and Scanner had some relatively difficult recordings on Lauwarm Instrumentals.
Glitch and Trip-hop were at their peak in 1999. One of my favorite groups, Matmos, released one of their best albums that year. I'm told that Vladislav Dlay was the best of the bunch for Glitch music, with Pita and Pansonic close behind. Trip-hop had a fantastic Howie B album come out, but it also had some lesser known gems from the likes of Basement Jax, Jamie Lidell and Bernhard Fleischmann.
At this point, you're probably wondering where all the Post-Rock is. Truth is, this was such a good year for post-rock that I had to make it it's own section. There's damn near 50 significant releases in Post-Rock alone. This year featured amazing albums from big names like Godspeed, Mogwai, Four-Tet, and Jim O'Rourke, but also dozens of underground masterpieces. Scaruffi swears by the Black Heart Processions album, which is certainly worth mentioning, but I myself would be quicker to recommend the work of Doldrums, Joan of Arc, US Maple, and Solex.
Okay, it's time for the Punk section. This was a BIG year for punk. I already mentioned the pop punk and Zen Guerrilla. However, there were two main events from this year that were much more significant than anything by Blink 182 - Saetia's self-titled EP, and Choking Victim's debut album. Choking Victim, if you don't know, is technically a ska punk band, but I think the moniker "cracksteady" is much more fitting. They fuse Ska with some of the nastiest rabies infested hardcore punk you've ever seen. This was a huuuuge influence on the Crust punk we got in the 00's and 10's - we don't get Daze n Days without this album. Oh and the Saetia release? That, my friends, was the invention of what we now know as Screamo. The band Thrice was pretty quick to follow up on that screamo sound, helping it spread to the like a weed among mid 00's local scenes, just like the Frontbottoms do now. Of course, there were other good punk releases that year as well. Dismemberment Plan, Juno, Mindless Self Indulgence, Arab on Radar, Static-X, etc etc. This was also a good year for proto-punk (IE garage rock) and post-punk. Just listen to the album "Extreme Radical" and tell me it's not awesome. Garage rock actually had a couple of mediocre releases with fantastic singles, but it's worth checking out the Deadly Snakes and Comet Gain. Scaruffi Daniel Famille listed as doing something relevant, maybe you guys will see something in him that I don't.
There was of course lots of other great stuff that deserves mentioning, like Fiona Apple's album, Sigur Ros' experiments, Wilco's fun,
Submitted May 15, 2018 at 12:19PM by Lipat97 https://ift.tt/2L1IcRZ
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