Most Overrated Electronic Musicians

Alright, I do take issue with this (surprise!)

Fatboy Slim - Was he ever rated highly? He's popular, that's for sure, and he's a pretty skilled DJ, but his albums generally didn't garner high reviews. In fact as I recall his last two were rated pretty poorly.

Basement Jaxx - They do get high ratings, but they do make pretty nice dance tracks, even though they get old quick. It's more an issue of if you like the genre - they're good at what they do, but if you don't like what they do then they will of course seem that way.

Chemical Brothers - For the first part of their career they definitely were, but that's more the fault of the fanatical music press who called their then-pioneering style something of a musical revolution. I do consider Dig Your Own Hole a classic but just barely. Strangely enough I feel now they're sort of being underrated, as their last few albums weren't really too much worse than their first few, and yet they're getting slammed constantly.

Underworld - This one I take real issue with; I've always felt that they're really underrated by those who have only heard "Born Slippy NUXX" and a few of their other banging house tracks like "King of Snake" - they're great tracks but there's so much more to the band. In my mind no other electronic musician has approached the scope of these guys's work, and they've rattled off more truly great tracks than I can count - with tracks like "Skyscraper" and "Dark and Long" (NOT the famous "Dark Train" mix) they've put a very emotional and human element into dance music, which AFAIK hasn't really been done like this before. They have (hands down IMO) the best vocalist of the genre. And, despite it being 15 years since their beginning, they're still innovating and going strong, while most electronic bands peaked sharply in the mid-to-late 90's. They're also one of the few that can appeal to fans all across the board, be it house, trance, or ambient, as they've made great tracks in all those styles. I think they deserve the credit they've gotten (if not much more).

Aphex Twin - Okay, I more or less agree with this one, but I think he deserves credit for offering some of the most cerebral music out there. He's one of the few musicians who can claim to have almost no influences and as a result his music sounds very unique. He's kind of hit-or-miss though, especially this decade, but I'll never forget how the Richard D. James album basically warped my mind - sorry to use a tired cliche but it really made me look at music in a new way. Not to mention he's very influential to others (I guess it remains to be seen if this is a good thing - most "IDM" quite frankly sucks).

Oh, and I'm surprised you didn't mention Daft Punk! Surely they have some great tracks but they've no sense of a good build up, most of their best hooks seem to be sampled, and most of their tracks are 2-3 minutes longer than they should have been. Every time I listen to Homework it feels like running a marathon, and Human After All basically exposed them as hacks - okay, their live show rules hard, but why are they still megastars? They're great with vocoders, I guess....

And on that note, JUSTICE! First time I heard it, I thought it was decent, but obnoxious, and used too many production tricks to cover up a lack of any real songwriting. Turns out it's regarded as one of the best albums of the year. Barf.