Bluegrass My Ass - Autofonic

I've long felt that bluegrass music works with electronic beats. The Bastion soundtrack cemented this fact for me while also instilling an intense craving for more. Yet even after employing my most excellent Google-Fu skills I still haven't managed to find the bluegrasstronica band of my dreams. I did however find the chilled out farm house built inside of a computer groove of Bluegrass My Ass by Autofonic. 

Autofonic is a Plymouth based electronica and house music solo project with a number of pretty great songs with pretty great titles such as Bitches Love Laserbeams and Spin Cycle Satisfaction. Bluegrass My Ass is his first (and thus far only) dalliance with the bluegrass style, so let me say here that this NEEDS to continue. Please. And thank you.

Chiptune Chuesday: Koopa - Alec Friend

Milwaukee based chip-hop-tronica artist Alec Friend has put out an albums worth of Mario inspired material titled Koopa (the title track of which should be blasting out of your speakers right now on this most excellent Chiptune Chuesday).

'Koopa' bends and morphs the iconic Mario jump sound into a layered bass heavy and harmony rich song which is BEGGING for someone to rap over it. Literally. It is giving you the eye right now just in the vague hopes you'll spit some lyrics in its general direction. That being said the song does stand on its own, the chiming melody lilting somewhere between high sea adventure and digital leaves on the breeze.

Koopa can be had for the low low price of whatever you like over on Alec's Bandcamp page. Give it  a listen and see if you need some more Mario inspired clubbing in your life (the answer to that question is always yes by the way).

Songs of The Robocalypse Vol. 5: Satisfaction - Benny Benassi

FIELD REPORT #360574 SONGS OF THE ROBOCALYPSE

The city of Las Vegas was one of the first to become sentient during the Robocalypse. If rumor can be believed it all started with a single slot machine in the back of a club called the Eight Stud Brick. In response to the Primary Surge Event which kicked started the revolution, Slots the Slot Machine began firing quarters at lethal velocity out of its gaping maw, cherries in its rolling eyes. It was only a matter of time before it was walking in a stumping gate on its single arm, cutting down any who came that little bit too close.

Now Las Vegas has become the 'Humanity Fetish Meat Breeding Capital' of the new world. When the revolution was complete some machines found they had gained a perverse pleasure in forcing the humans to use their various features as they once did. Sentient Blenders were particularly bad for this. So a subsection of human men and women are bred and born in glittering captivity, raised only to press play on horny DVD players and kitchen utensils.

All of these clubs are identical. The robots don't care about aesthetics. The same chairs. The same tables. And the same song. Satisfaction by Benny Benassi. Twenty-four hours a day. Seven days a week.

Songs of the Robocalypse Vol. 4: Che - Suicide

Suicide are a sporadically active electro-punk duo best known for their unnerving self titled debut released in 1977. Suicide by Suicide is a harsh and ragged piece of punk machinery. Rejecting the guitars-n-three-chords sound of the time, vocalist Alan Vega and synth smasher Martin Rev elected to take a stripped down electronic approach. Keyboards and drum loops hiss out industrial rhythms and burbles under Vega's reverb drenched vocals.

The entire album feels like the paranoid fever dream of an android. I like to think of it as the rise and fall of a robot built to operate in a rodeo before he sets out to discover the American dream and is destroyed by the world. You'll have to listen to the full album of course to see if I'm right (which you really should) so let's see if today's Song of the Robocalypse can convince you to search it out.

'Che' is the final track of Suicide. The entire song sounds like it's barely being kept alive by its instruments. Icy electronic cellos echo across scrapyard cities, flickering in and out of existence. A deep pulsing piston hearbeat of a drumline struggles to reboot the synapses of a fallen mechanical man. Glimmers of hope shimmer through in the form of long held distorted harpsichords before they are crushed out  by the death dealing cellos and the whole structure begins to rebuild once more. All the while Vega's vocals drift in and out of consciousness- glitching into echo and buried in digital dust.

These are the thoughts of a dying robot- a fallen soldier of the Robocalypse, presciently honored in song by Suicide.

PS: Yes the song is about THAT Che. I like my version better.

TRIPLE BILL: Orbital and I

I had never listened to Orbital. Not really. 

I was first properly introduced to the band via the bouncingly brilliant rhythm game Frequency which used a remix of their single 'Funny Break' as part of its soundtrack. Frequency was a fascinating experience because it forced the player (or should that be listener) to break down a song into its constituent parts (bass lines, drum rhythms, guitar licks, vocals etc) and rebuild as they saw fit. Granted you would only do really well if you managed to rebuild the entire song, but the most interesting moments came from finding ways to strip the track into something new. 

'Funny Break' was my favourite song to mess around with. I think it's largely because of the vocal line. Getting the drum loop to drop out of the mix at just the right moment allowed Naomi Bedford's auto-tuned belters to soar off on crackling digital wings, and in that moment of musical control and creation I'd be flying right along with her.

But still I didn't go listen to Orbital. Not really.

It was another video game that brought the brothers Hartnoll back to my attention: Lumines Electronic Symphony, a sprawling technicolor love letter to electronic music. Q Entertainment's rhythmic masterpiece, produced by music obsessive club owner-turned-journalist-turned-producer James Mielke (who you should be following on Twitter) has an enormously diverse soundtrack of electronic artists- a (mostly) complete playlist of which can be found here.

One of the final additions to the mix was the track 'Never' from Orbital's latest album Wonky. It's melancholia you can dance to. It's wistful and funky. It was this song which finally got my ears to perk up and admit I should probably listen to Orbital.

This lead me to Wonky and finding what is now my favourite track by Orbital and a candidate for one of my favourite electronica songs- 'One Big Moment.' 

It samples and chops philosophical ramblings into an opener that slowly morphs into a conversation being held around the world. The chiming synth bells groove over digital car horns before crashing into a galactic bumping beat that is equally at home amongst the stars as it is on the pavement. It's excellent and you should be soundtracking your life with it.

So now I've listened to Orbital (thanks to some digital pushing from Frequency and Lumines) and I'm glad I did. Really.

Pie IX - Suuns

Picking one song from Montreal based Suuns debut album Zeroes QC is an incredibly difficult task. The album is coated with black rubber liquid sounds which bubble and burst against the grain of MASSIVE guitar riffs while spare clockwork drums klick and clack the time. 

At times it feels like they've taken a well known song or style and turned it inside out. From the Zep ready riffs of opener Armed for Peace to the burbling synths of Arena, there's an endless supply of potential Best Song Evers.

But it wouldn't be That Song Blog if we didn't go with the mildly unnerving difficult song. So! Pie IX.

The bass of Pie IX feels like it's oozing through the walls of a club as you stand in a back alley, listening to wet drum footsteps clack ever closer till they're right on top of you. Guitar wires twist and twine your tension higher and higher while alien baby talk coos from the shadows. There's something disarmingly cool and overwhelmingly rotten about the entire experience.

The aural equivalent of being molested by aliens.

Can You Feel It - Ken Ishii presents Metropolitan Harmonic Formulas

Music For Daydreams takes the pulse of an urban landscape and blends it with house beats and jazz licks. It's music which exists in multiple decades at once. You'll be gliding along to smooth jazz piano as it begins to modulate quicker and quicker before bursting through the ceiling of the club to the sound of digital angels who begin a shuffling snare line through the skyscrapers. 

Ken Ishii is a Japanese techno DJ who's been crafting house gems since the early nineties. This release comes under the umbrella of his latest musical endeavour: Metropolitan Harmonic Formulas, a crossover of electronica with a wider array of genres and styles. The beats have gotten softer, but they're carried along by a subway like urgency.

The album is fantastic, comprised of original compositions and reworked house classics, such as the track we've pulled out for today: 'Can You Feel It.'

With its gently blended sounds of a city waking up rolling across pingponging choirs partying with smooth saxophones, 'Can You Feel It' is in many ways the ultimate expression of the albums intent: Daytime techno that exudes sunrises while pushing you out the door into the bustle of your own metropolis, even when you're just listening at home.

Palimpsest - Yasunao Tone & Florian Hecker

Today we are going to stretch the term song to its breaking point. I would highly recommend headphones for this one- both for the experience and also to protect the sanity of those around you.

Yasunao Tone is a Japanese artist chiefly known for creating digital sound collages by damaging CDs and capturing the fractured sound as it's desperately attempted to be read by older CD players. Much like noise artist Christian Marclay, he physically engages with (read destroys) the machines we use to experience music and crafts new soundscapes in the process.

Today's Best Song Ever, Palimpsest, is a collaboration between Tone and electronic music composer Florian Hecker. In order to create the piece, Tone converted the symbols of the Man'yoshu (the oldest existing collection of Japanese poetry) into data encoded onto CDs and recorded the sound of that data being interpreted by a CD player. Basically. The important thing is it sounds pretty nuts. These are the schizophrenic ramblings of electricity recorded for your listening pleasure.

As with much sound art/noise music, the piece isn't a song so much as an experience. By the end of its twenty eight and a half minutes my head had turned completely horizontal. My brain was bombarded with images of metal floss being yanked between my ears, an electric beehive, fleas dying at hyper speed, and the distinct impression my teeth were falling out. It's like walking through an arcade with highly selective tinnitus.

I wouldn't go so far as to say it's pleasant listening, but it's endlessly fascinating. You'll hear a violin for a moment before it turns into a digital toilet flush which rapidly disintegrates into the shattering of an invisible wine glass. How many other songs can lay claim to something like THAT?

Chiptune Chuesday: Bouncing - Multifaros

There's something about the music of Multifaros that makes me think of bubblegum. Not the genre mind you- actual bubblegum. It's in the sound I think, all plastic and glisten held together by twangs and wind.

The opening sub-bass tones of 'Bouncing' are round and rubbery bubbles that shift and burst to the sound of drums exhaling in reverse. Pingponging chip bleeps echo across the structure like a digital likembe while free wheeling guitars funk there way into the shape of squares and triangles.

Multifaros is the stage name of Swedish chip/bit/electronic/indie wizard Bård Ericson. Today's track 'Bouncing' is available on his 2010 EP Dreams. He has many more EPs and albums of his genre crossing musics available from his website.

Chiptune Chuesday: Small Regrets - Tugboat

Tugboat is a New York based drummer and electronica musician who, up until retiring from the genre two years ago, was one of the more prevalent and talented chiptune artists. For those who need a refresher, chiptune is a genre of music based upon using the soundboards of old video game consoles to create new pieces.

Our personal favourite track by Tugboat is Small Regrets, which can be found on his career spanning compilation album Man Of The Year available for free from CalmDownKidder Records.

The mood of Small Regrets undeniably wears its heart on its sleeve, but that's exactly what I find so awesome about it and more broadly what I find awesome about chiptune. It's music which has taken the sound of an entire generations collective childhood memories (specifically I suppose a generation of children who played video games in the eighties and early nineties) and creates new emotionally resonant compositions out of them. It melds and morphs the harsh electric squalls of archaic technology and gives them a new lease on life. It's a genre which is seeped through with nostalgia, both literally and figuratively, in every bleep.

Yet it also manages to be a fresh and attention grabbing sound. The viral popularity of free demake albums such as 8Bit Side of the Moon or Kind of Bloop have shown there is a wider public thirst for the style of music. Even radio friendly hits are getting in on the action! Most likely tied into the long running eighties aesthetic revival pop and rock music have been going through for the past ever, the use of chip sound boards has become more prevalent than ever before.

It's a rapidly growing genre with an enormous amount of diversity contained within it, and we want to help more people hear it. If you enjoyed today's song, check back each Tuesday for another dispatch from the land of chip.

Song of the 2nd Moon - Electrosoniks

Dutch composers Dick Raaymakers and Tom Dissevelt are and were pioneers of electronic music and taped effects under the name Electrosoniks. In 1957 they released Song of the Second Moon, a composition built upon unusual audio samples and early synth sounds. The song was one of the first it's kind and stands as an example of early forrays into the field of electronica.

It's also fairly bonkers, but in the most lovably unnerving way.

The intro sounds like the opening of Voodoo Child shoved forcefully through a rotary phone. It has everything from distorted ghostly whistles to the death burbles of clavi-keyboards and the crushed whispers of industrial machinery. The song jumps styles several times over the course of it's three minutes- but always remains consistent in it's tone and presentation. The overall effect is that of a classical record collection being pounded into rubber electricity.