The Best Indie Dance Albums of the 20th Century

A third canon, in progress: the records made where the indie sector met dance culture. Madchester and the baggy years, grebo, the Weatherall axis, punk-funk and mutant disco, the indie disco as an actual room with an actual crowd.

The test is membership, not description. Indie dance was a scene that existed. It had a name, a press, clubs, and an audience who bought both kinds of record. A record belongs here if it belonged to that, not because a guitar band once used a drum machine.

Albums only, and a hard stop at 1999. That cutoff costs the list real records, XTRMNTR among them, which are not homeless so much as early. The Madchester turn itself largely happened on singles and EPs, so this list will own that blind spot rather than patch it with compilations.

Overlap with the electronic canons is allowed. A record already ranked there is judged fresh on this list's terms.