This 1976 album finds the mystic krautrock outfit in typically ecstatic mode. The bucolic scene on the cover fits nicely with the fuzzy, folky pastoralism contained within. Lovely stuff; and the successful fusion of the spiritual and musical explains why Herzog chose them to soundtrack many of his most far-out films.
Basic Channel number 1. A truly serious, monumental and beautiful piece of techno, which would almost certainly be my desert island techno selection. This twelve features a bashing Jeff Mills mix, and a beatless version. Both of these are superb, but it's the beast on the A side which is special. It's little more than an arpeggiated loop, that is slowly tweaked to become more and more relentlessly intense throughout. A kick drum is introduced after a minute or so, but little else happens, except that a melody gradually becomes apparent as it insinuates itself into your mind. It doesn't need to, because they have nailed the groove, and it doesn't need any tampering.
Aptly titled album by the chameleon-like Chilly Gonzales. Ridiculously entertaining, this album finds him in hip hop mode. Other albums have seen him do post rock and neo classical solo piano. Brilliant lyrics, delivered with aplomb, over beats which venture from trad hip-hop territory to electronica (no beats, which has no beats). The music is provided by a range of collaborators including Peaches, Digital Hardcore chaps Bomb 20, Patric Catani and Paul PM, who also provides vocals on the brilliant mogadon-hop 'Meditation'. This crew also provide little snippets of background vocals, and little intentionally dumb interjections. Personally I think this all hangs together beautifully, and I can't believe how obscure this gem has become.
Germany 1975. A great year in a country with a rich heritage in electronic music. A great decade, in fact, stretching from the abstract experiments of Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream, to the more ambient textures coming out of Conrad Plank's studio in the late 70s, when Eno was collaborating. Somewhere in the middle there were masterful synth-based creations suh as this album, and the TD masterpieces like Phaedra and Rubycon. This album has two huge tracks, with a definite spaced out sci-fi sound to them. Bubbling, arpeggiated synths, phased mellotron backdrops, twittering moogs - this whole sound palette is incredibly pleasing to my ear, and strangely evocative of things I'm not sure I even experienced. I'm guessing it remind me of tv and films I watched as a kid in the 70s, where composers would mimic this kind of music, but who knows? It just hits the right spot.
Here is a companion piece to the Autocreation: another release in the 20 to 2000 series. No beats this time, just throbbing ambience. Chain Reaction style pads echo over bass drones, and a distant melody adds a sweetness that propels these two tracks into the realms of beauty.
Back to the 90s again - 1994 to be precise. This terrific album of incredibly atmospheric electronica was released to little fanfare at the time, but holds up really well. Created by the trio of Kevin Hector, Tara Patterson and Mark Van Hoen, who went on to release a great deal of excellent music under his own name, and initially as Locust.
One of the great records in my collection. This 1997 collaboration is near perfect space rock. A motorik groove chunters along, with some nice spacy riffing. This is edited to trippy perfection by NWW's Steven Stapleton, whilst a plethora of the most mellifluous and syrupy moog tones flutter around the super stereo mix, vying for your ear- and brain-space with a selection of otherworldy, disturbing mutterings, like trapped ghosts having their eyeballs injected with freezing ketamine.
Time for some more metal, and who better to represent the genre than one of the heaviest bands in existence? Come My Fanatics is a monumental slab. If you like the sound of heavy guitars, you need to listen to this. Why upload Come My Fanatics, when Dopethrone is one of the heaviest albums ever? Because you should go here and buy it, that's why. Also recommended, the self-titled debut and Witchcult Today: all brilliant. And if you have the oppurtunity to see them live - do it. It's a near-religious experience.
Split release from 2003 on Fusetron by these heroes of noise. I would definitely say I prefer both Black Dice and Wolf Eyes in a live setting, but that probably goes for all noise artists. That's not to say there isn't some excellent stuff on here: pulsing and droning, with overdriven bass frequencies and brutish harmonics. Of course, there is always the distortion.
1999 release by Coil in their ELpH guise. This was the final installment in a 12 disc series counting down to the year 2000. The series was called '20 to 2000', and each release was 20 minutes long. Released on the German Raster-Noton label, which is a pretty cool label dedicated to pure electronica and design. I did try to collect these, but only ended up with 4, I think. This is one long track of unsettling ambient electronica, which is obviously Coil's trademark.
Unhinged collaboration between The Boredoms' main man Yamatsuka Eye, and heroes of brown-ness Ween. I still regret that I chose not to buy this at the time because it was an expensive Japanese import - instead opting to tape it at the record shop I worked in. Thankfully the web and mp3s were cleverly developed in order that I would end up with a decent copy of this album, which now fetches silly prices second-hand.
A 1993 release on the Infonet label, home mainly to Bandulu and their various incarnations. Reload were Mark Pritchard and Tom Middleton, who were to gain most success as Global Communication. They also released a blinding ep amongst other things as Jedi Knights, and another one as electro merchants Link & E621.
