Steve Lillywhite served as a counselor, a mediator who helped acts find the most comfortable settings. Mark Ellis, aka Flood, may do this for U2 and Polly Jean Harvey, but his talents are an engineer’s: an expert ear for space and how electronic manipulations resound in that space. Speed was an element, not a determinant. Flood could oversee a prayer like Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds’ “Into My Arm” and the gender play of Harvey’s “I Think I’m a Mother,” most of whose power stems from a commensurate blurring of guitar, keyboards, and rhythm. But he understood the pummel — anyone for Renegade Soundwave, Nitzer Ebb, and NIN?
1. PJ Harvey – I Think I’m a Mother
2. Depeche Mode – Enjoy the Silence
3. Nine Inch Nails – Happiness in Slavery
4. U2 – The Fly
5. Curve – Horror Head
6. Depeche Mode – Halo
7. U2 – Lemon
8. Smashing Pumpkins – Zero
9. PJ Harvey – The Wind
10. Nitzer Ebb – Control, I’m Here
11. Erasure – Oh L’Amour
12. The Killers – Read My Mind
13. Goldfrapp – Clowns
14. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Into My Arms
15. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart – Heart in Your Heartbreak
16. Depeche Mode – In Your Room
17. Nine Inch Nails – Mr. Self-Destruct
18. Renegade Soundwave – Probably a Robbery
19. PJ Harvey – This Glorious Land
20. The Charlatans – Tremolo Song
Humanizing The Vacuum 