The 250 Best Electronic Albums of the 21st Century

The canon is dance-first. Dancefloor greatness and field-defining artistry count equally, and when two records are level on merit, two tiebreaks settle it: the floor beats the non-floor, the underground beats the mainstream. Vocal-led synth-pop, rap crossover and merely pleasant ambient are held down or kept out. Of pure ambient, only Tim Hecker's Ravedeath, 1972 cleared the bar.

There are no quotas. Nothing is credited for where it came from or which scene it fills. 193 artists share the 250 places and 47 of them chart more than once, which is what happens when you rank records instead of reputations. Techno takes the largest share, then IDM, then dub techno.

Anything from roughly 2018 on is judged on influence it has already demonstrated, not influence it might accumulate. 2018 is still the busiest year here.

Every album sits in a merit tier from S to D, ordered head-to-head inside its band. The tiers are the claim. Adjacent ranks are not: treat ten places either way as drawing order through the middle, fifteen at the tail.

Burial's Untrue is number one. The argument for that, and for the other 249, is on the album's own page.