Thursday , March 28 2024

Tag Archives: Electronica

The Lion and the Dominatrix

“The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight” (1984), one of the great electronic dance numbers of the ’80s, is essentially a technopop deconstruction of the melodic line from the Token’s classic “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” (1961), to which the title coyly alludes. The brilliance of the song lies in its juxtapositioning of organic …

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Dead Can Dance (but they fall down a lot)

Some of the most indelible music of the ’80s was made by Dead Can Dance, a rotating phalanx of players around singer/songwriters Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard incorporating medieval, gothic, Eastern European, Middle Eastern, and various other ancient and sacred musical influences into songs and tone poems with mythic titles …

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Lords of Acid – Greatest T*Ts

Lascivious techno fiends Lords of Acid have just released a greatest hits package on Sanctuary, called appropriately enough Greatest T*Ts. This is their story. Belgian Praga Khan (born Maurice Engelen), German-born Jade 4 U (Nikkie Van Lierop) and Oliver Adams have produced a blizzard of exceptional electronic dance music (new …

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Pink Floyd – Live At Pompeii, The Director’s Cut

Surely Pink Floyd is the strangest mega-successful group in rock history. Beginning in the mid-’60s as a R&B-based hard rock band like the Who or Pretty Things, the band – Syd Barrett on guitar and vocals, Roger Waters on bass and vocals, Richard Wright on keyboards, and Nick Mason on …

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Daniel Miller – Godfather of Technopop

Daniel Miller is the most influential figure in the history of technopop. As artist (The Normal, Silicon Teens), founder and owner of Mute Records (and sublabels Blast First, NovaMute, The Grey Area), and producer (Depeche Mode, Yazoo, Fad Gadget), Miller has had a hand in many of the genre’s finest …

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Halloween Music Must Haves

Are you throwing a Halloween Party? Do you want something cool for the ghouls who will be in attendence? The best collection of spooky modern rock songs that any DJ worth his dead ass can have, should include the following songs with which to rock the dead, (and paralyze the …

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Synthesized Putrefaction

Just in time for Halloween – the sound of synthesized putrefaction, metaphorically speaking anyway. What is the most successful technopop song of all time? Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love” from their ’81 Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret album. Originally an obscure soul single from the ’60s by Gloria Jones, Soft Cell’s version finds …

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Justin and Britney

The romantic pairing of certified Teen Idols Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake was a media dream made flesh, so to speak. How sweet, how fitting that these magnetic fresh faces on the cusp of adulthood would cling to one another for shelter and understanding against the gale force winds of …

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KMFDM

Sascha Konietzko is founder, bassist, programmer, sometime-vocalist, producer and focal point for the German/American industrial group KMFDM (which stands for “Kleine Mitleid Fur Das Mehrheit,” translated “No Pity For the Majority”), perfecters of the metal guitar and electronic beats approach to industrial music. KMFDM has released classic albums Money, Angst, …

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Who Is Richard James?

Richard James (aka Aphex Twin, AFX, Caustic Window, Polygon Window) is among the first generation of music makers to use the computer as primary instrument, not just as a manipulation/editing tool. His genius spans various electronic music categories including the ambient, techno, hard core and trance subdivisions of house music, …

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