A selection byThe Waxonia Desk
A general selection
Ten records that open ten doors. One way into each genre we cover, plus two that show what the deep end sounds like once you are through.
- Picks
- 10
- Years
- 1983–1998
- Curator
- The Waxonia Desk
- Updated
- 2026-08-28
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The picks — selected, not ranked
Rhythim Is Rhythim / Strings of Life
1987 · Transmat
Start here if you think electronic music is cold. There is no bassline and barely a kick for half its length, and it still empties a room into a dancefloor faster than anything made since.
Also on Detroit Techno, The Eighties, The Waxonia Desk — Detroit, Heard in Europe, The Waxonia Desk — The Hundred
Mr. Fingers / Can You Feel It
1986 · Trax
House music at its most elemental: a bassline, a hi-hat and an enormous amount of patience. Every four-to-the-floor record made since is arguing with this one, whether or not it knows it.
Also on Chicago House, The Eighties, The Waxonia Desk — In the Room, The Waxonia Desk — Looped and Filtered, The Waxonia Desk — The Hundred
Goldie / Inner City Life
1994 · FFRR / Metalheadz
The record that proves breakbeat music can carry grief. If drum and bass has only ever reached you as speed, this is the one that reframes the whole genre as something you feel rather than survive.
Also on Drum and Bass, 1994, The Waxonia Desk — The Hundred
Massive Attack / Unfinished Sympathy
1991 · Wild Bunch / Circa
Strings, a slow breakbeat and a vocal that refuses to resolve. It sounds like a pop single until you notice nothing in it behaves the way a pop single does.
Also on Trip-Hop, The Waxonia Desk — Sounds Like a Single, The Waxonia Desk — The Hundred
My Bloody Valentine / Only Shallow
1991 · Creation
Four snare hits and then a wall. Shoegaze is often described as vague; this is the record that shows how precisely engineered the vagueness has to be before it works.
Also on Shoegaze, The Waxonia Desk — The Hundred
Eric B. & Rakim / Paid in Full
1987 · 4th & Broadway
Rakim rewrote what a rapper could sound like — internal rhyme, conversational delivery, nothing forced to land on the beat. Almost every MC you like is downstream of this.
Brian Eno / An Ending (Ascent)
1983 · Editions EG
Four chords and an enormous amount of room around them. The best argument that ambient music is composition rather than absence, and the easiest one to hear on first listen.
Also on Ambient, The Waxonia Desk — The Hundred
MJ Cole / Sincere
1998 · Talkin' Loud
Garage at its most elegant: a two-step shuffle that never lands where you expect, under a vocal treated as an instrument. The genre's case that rhythm alone can be luxurious.
Also on UK Garage, The Waxonia Desk — Garage on the Mix, The Waxonia Desk — The Hundred
Drexciya / Bubble Metropolis
1993 · Underground Resistance
Now the deep end. Detroit techno as science fiction, made by people who refused to be photographed and built an underwater mythology instead. Play it after Strings of Life and hear the same city thinking differently.
Also on Detroit Techno, The Waxonia Desk — Detroit Techno, The Waxonia Desk — Detroit, Heard in Europe
Todd Edwards / Saved My Life
1995 · i! Records
The other deep end. Hundreds of vocal fragments cut to a sixteenth and rebuilt into a melody, decades before anyone called it a technique. Once you hear the method you cannot unhear it anywhere in dance music.
Also on UK Garage
About the curator
The people who write the rankings on this site. We keep the lists honest, we argue about the order, and we get asked the same question more than any other: where should someone actually start. These are our answers.