Essential
by Soulwax
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Soulwax bestography
Essential is ranked 6th best out of 10 albums by Soulwax on BestEverAlbums.com.
The best album by Soulwax is Much Against Everyone's Advice which is ranked number 4374 in the list of all-time albums with a total rank score of 329.
(N.B. Bestographies include all albums by an artist (and their variations), but do not include albums ranked outside the top 100,000).
Listen to Essential on YouTube
Essential track list
The tracks on this album have an average rating of 76 out of 100 (all tracks have been rated).
Essential rankings
(Calculated from aggregate positions across 60,000 charts (2 million album rankings). (Last updated: 7 hours ago).
| Year | Source | Chart | Rank | Rank Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | Tuur | Top 50 Music Albums of the 2010s | 20/50 | 12 |
| 2024 | Tuur | Top 8 Music Albums of 2018 | 5/8 | 3 |
| 2021 | stereo_mike | Top 100 Music Albums of 2018 | 30/100 | 4 |
| 2018 | Indie Rocks! | TOP 50: Los mejores discos del 2018 | 35/50 | 2 |
| 2018 | Mixmag | The Top 50 Albums Of 2018 | 38/50 | 1 |
| 2018 | Drift | 2018 Records Of The Year | 36/100 | 3 |
| Total Charts: The total number of charts that this album has appeared in. | 6 | |||
| Total Rank Score: The total rank score. | 25 | |||
Essential collection
Essential ratings
Average Rating = (n ÷ (n + m)) × av + (m ÷ (n + m)) × AVwhere:
av = trimmed mean average rating an item has currently received.
n = number of ratings an item has currently received.
m = minimum number of ratings required for an item to appear in a 'top-rated' chart (currently 10).
AV = the site mean average rating.
N.B. The average rating for this album will not be reliable as it has been rated very few times.
Showing all 4 ratings for this album.
| Rating | Date updated | Member | Album ratings | Avg. album rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ! | 06/16/2026 14:19 | cicadelic | 13,316 | 73/100 |
| ! | 01/10/2026 17:25 | LosWochos | 47,448 | 75/100 |
| ! | 03/10/2024 11:00 | Tuur | 950 | 67/100 |
| ! | 05/21/2020 16:03 | tillz | 788 | 79/100 |
Essential comments
Showing all 1 comments |
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Having been asked to produce a mix of their favourite work for BBC’s Essential Mix series, Belgian dance duo Soulwax took the more prankish route and decided instead to hand in an album of entirely new material, all riffing off the word “essential”. There are moments early on where it feels a bit gimmicky, but as they’ve repeatedly shown in the past (e.g. 00:00 Introversy), a Soulwax gimmick gets done properly. And goddamnit, the beats are infectious. Essentially.
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