The Pleasures of Electricity

Electric Café – Kraftwerk (1986)

Thanks to everyone that’s followed, read, listened, liked, and reblogged. I started this project to showcase electronic music I’ve loved over the years. I wanted to pull tracks from a wide variety of genres (maybe too wide), over multiple decades. I hope you’ve discovered a few new-to-you tracks and bands. Somewhere around posting 40 I decided I would wrap things up at number 100, so I’m pretty pleased to have made it to 88. That’s longer than any of my previous blogging projects have lasted. But I think I’ve reached a good stopping point; it’s more difficult for me to find tracks I have much new to say about, and I don’t want to start repeating myself.

Speaking of repeating myself, I notice I’ve mentioned Kraftwerk eleven times, but never posted a Kraftwerk track. That’s something that absolutely needed to be remedied before wrapping up. Some people were dubious when Kraftwerk released the Catalogue box set with no new or unreleased material, excluding the pre-Autobahn releases, redesigning many of the sleeves, and reverting Electric Café back to its original title, Techno-Pop. The idea that once an act releases music it becomes owned by the fans has never sat well with me. I don’t have to like everything George Lucas did to Star Wars, but it’s his life work and I fully defend his right to continue to alter and present it as he sees fit. Changes don’t magically wipe out my memories. Kraftwerk didn’t force me to destroy any previous copies of their albums I owned. I saw them in concert a few ago and it became very clear to me, with the old and new material combined, updated arrangements, and new visuals, that they’ve been continually adding to one long art project for thirty years. The project is theirs to continually re-mix, re-interpret, and re-curate. It’s art non-stop.

Hypnotize – Scritti Politti (1985)

A long time ago  I worked in the distribution warehouse for a large record store chain in the Washington, D.C. area. One day while slinging boxes of cassettes, a New Order song came on the radio (WHFS). One of my co-workers commented that what he liked about New Order was how the parts of their songs fit together like puzzle pieces. Nor this is not a deep analysis, but I had never thought about it that way before, and for whatever reason that metaphor has stuck with me and I think about often when listening to synthesizer music.

If ever an album of puzzle-pop existed, it’s Cupid & Psyche 85, and “Hypnotize” is a perfect example. The track is a love letter to the Fairlight CMI, all pieced together from tightly interlocking samples. When this was released, I had no knowledge of Scritti Politti’s post-punk origins, or Green’s deconstructionist philosophical predilections, but I knew what digital sampling was and this album’s construction fascinated me. Listening to it now, it’s uncanny how much it sounds like the Art of Noise making a “proper” pop tune. I don’t know how I never noticed this before. Bits of pop and funk have been busted apart, sampled, and reconstructed into something technological and (post)modern. A new pop, indeed. And a fitting sonic foil for the way Green’s lyrics deconstruct and remix classic pop ideas of girls, boys, love and obsession.

Trivia update: This track was mixed by Gary Langan, which goes some way towards explaining the Art of Noise similarity.

Cosmic Rays – Bernard Fevre (1975)

This track brought to you by the  power of Google and Discogs. I had heard about Black Devil Disco Club, but hadn’t investigated their music. Then The Strange New World of Bernard Fevre popped up on my radar. A little digging and I discovered that album consists of re-worked tracks from Fevre’s 1975 album, The Strange World of Bernard Fevre, which is a rare French library music album with tracks titles such as “Fantasm,” “Molecule Dance,” and “Pendulum.” I had been led right back to the sort of ‘70s noodly synth albums that had suddenly become fashionable on various music blogs. A bit of contemporary digital archeology. This particular track sounds like a theme for an old John Carpenter movie. 

Landcruising (Version) – Carl Craig (1995, 2005)

I must be brief today, as I’m waist-deep in some riveting software requirements for an automated instant ticket distribution system. But I’d rather be in a car with Carl Craig, wearing a sharp suite, cruising the city at night, and blasting this track on the stereo. Like if Michael Mann made a movie about Detroit techno.