Autechre "Incunabula" (Warp Records, 1993)

Artist: Autechre
Album: "Incunabula"
Release Date: November 29, 1993
Genre: IDM, Experimental-Techno, Ambient-Techno
Mood: Trippy, Hypnotic, Quirky, Slick
Reminds Of: Aphex Twin, Plaid, Mouse On Mars, Boards Of Canada
What People Think: AllMusicGuide, AmazonUsersReviews
Definitely Worth Buying: CdUniverse, Amazon

Tracklist
1. Kalpol Introl
2. Bike
3. Autriche
4. Bronchus 2
5. Basscadet
6. Eggshell
7. Doctrine
8. Maetl
9. Windwind
10. Lowride
11. 444

Way back in 1993 and 1994, Warp Records released a series of albums under the "Artificial Intelligence" series that have all nearly gone on to be classics. One of these releases was Autechre's Incunabula, and although they've done some more experimental and fairly interesting work since then, this album will always be their benchmark. It's one of those rare electronic releases on which individual tracks all manage to sound different, yet the album has an amazing cohesive quality. Not only that, but it's one of the major releases that helped to spawn the whole "IDM" (Intelligent Dance Music) movement and propel Autechre into the spotlight.

Over the course of nearly 78 minutes, Sean Booth and Rob Brown take you to a world where machines rule, but instead of sounding harsh or industrial (except slightly for a couple moments), they draw you in even more with their delicate and overlapping sounds. It's a highly melodic trip through a warm bubblebath of electronic textures that will make you feel like assimilation with machines maybe isn't such a bad deal after all.

If you've seen the movie Pi, (and especially if you own the soundtrack), you've already heard the first song on this album entitled "Kalpol Intro." It's a moody, gurgling track that provides the perfect, short beginning that helps tickle your inner ear and lead you along and into the rest of the disc. Mixing seemlessly into the next track (as every song on the album does), the group gets things moving a little more with the track "Bike." After a shimmering opening part, it moves right along with a shuffling little beat and some seriously deep backend bass.

Basically, you're not going to go wrong with this disc if you like electronic music that isn't the run-of-the-mill dancefloor bilk. Whether the group is cranking out the awesome "Basscadet" (probably the most upbeat song on the album with a muffled kick drum and all kinds of blips and squeaks) or the slowly-progressing epic of "Windwind," nearly every single moment on this disc is interesting and changing. Although some of the noises used on the album sound a little dated, the arrangements of the actual songs themselves are timeless and the disc flows from beginning to end without nary a hitch.

It's moody, shimmering, and beautiful and quite possibly one of the best intelligent electronic music albums ever made. If you've heard newer material by Autechre and it's a little too cut up for you, don't write them off. Instead, head for this album and listen to it several times over. Play it loud on a good stereo or headphones and hear the subtle layers and textures. If I had to choose only 5 electronic albums to take to an island with me, this would be one of them. 

source: AllmostCool.org

"The album's title is a Latin word, the plural of incunabulum, the term used for printed books published prior to 1501, or more generally for something in its infancy or early stages or development..."

Luomo "Paper Tigers" (Huume, 2006)

Artist: Luomo
Album:"Paper Tigers"
Release Date: October 24, 2006
Label: Huume
Genre: Microhouse, Minimal-Techno, Experimental-Techno
Mood: Trippy, Sexy, Lush, Detached
Reminds Of: Superpitcher, Vladislav Delay, Herbert
What People Think: DustedMagazine, AllMusicGuide
Definitely Worth Buying: CdUniverse, Amazon

Tracklist
1. Paper Tigers
2. Really Don't Mind
3. Let You Know
4. The Tease Is Over
5. Cowgirls
6. Good To Be With
7. Dirt Me
8. Wanna Tell
9. Make Believe

Finland's Sasu Ripatti is a man of many aliases-- Uusitalo, Vladislav Delay, Sistol-- but his best-known project is undoubtedly Luomo. With the 2000 debut of that alias Ripatti surprised the world-- or, at least, the world of techno-shut-ins and internet obsessives-- with the deeply resonant, unabashedly romantic Vocalcity. Until then, Ripatti's work had been marked by its drift, nuance, and noncommittal stance-- it was all haze and no solid edge. With Vocalcity, an album true to its name, Ripatti revealed a vision of deep house shot through with swoons and aloof, seductive female voices; for many fans of his previous, greyscale work, hearing Vocalcity was like seeing in color for the first time. Ripatti's next Luomo album, 2003's The Present Lover, was even more upfront; every song packed to the gills with shivering harmonics, breathy vocals, and digital goosebumps. At the time, bedroom producers were discovering not just rave but pop music, and vice versa-- when Kylie's Body Language emerged shortly thereafter, some critics alleged that the pop diva was taking after Luomo, whose star seemed on the rise. But somehow, nothing went the way it was supposed to. Caught up in contractual disputes, The Present Lover's U.S. release was delayed for months after its European release, and what should have been Luomo's big, splashy entrance onto the pop stage turned out to be a lukewarm wading-in. What's more, critics didn't fall all over The Present Lover the way they had Vocalcity. Who knows why-- maybe it was too poppy for their tastes, or maybe their enthusiasm flagged while they waited to be given the green light to write about the disc: American writers wishing not to alienate the album's publicists were forced to sit on the sidelines while the album came and went in Europe. Another three years on, and Ripatti's world has changed considerably. Force Inc., the label that first brought Luomo to fame, has gone under, and he no longer has ties with BMG, the major that fumbled The Present Lover. So far, so sobering. But the surprise twist to this workaday story is that Paper Tigers, Ripatti's new Luomo album, released without much fanfare a few weeks back, is a glorious, outsized triumph of a record. On the one hand, it remains true to the diehard Luomo sound-- indeed, it bears more than a passing resemblance to this year's surprising Uusitalo disc Tulenkantaja, which sounded more like Luomo than the more ambient Uusitalo project. The same tricks are in play-- brittle, overbright synths that shed pixel-dandruff with every riff; convoluted digital effects that treat sounds as though a great, robotic hand were scrunching them up into a ball like so much waste-paper; breathy vocals playing peekaboo across the soundfield, cooing and whispering, disappearing and turning up somewhere else when you turn your head to catch them in action. (Call it the "whack-a-mole" school of vocal processing.) And of course, there's that bassline: Listners waiting for Ripatti to do something new with his low end should stop holding their breaths, because once again, we're treated to that same dubby underpinning, bouncing like a Bungee cord that stretches by fifths. But Paper Tigers is also, in its own way, a total curveball. It's the most cohesive of any of Luomo's albums, by which I mean you can listen over and over again until you have no idea whether it's just beginning, or wrapping up, or pumping steadily through its middlemost densities. The hooks are less pronounced than on The Present Lover, but every track is very much its own song; Ripatti infuses traditional verse/chorus structures with his horizontal sense of sprawl until his tracks roll out like an endless, head-over-heels tumble. The whole record seems wrapped up with the very act of pop listening; the songs are at once hook-heavy and just out of reach. Hearing them feels a little like trying to rescue the memory of a melody that lingers on the tip of your tongue, a teasing wisp of a lick. The songs are as solid-- and as sticky-- as cotton candy. Rhythmically, Ripatti has never been better; in songs like the staggering "Wanna Tell" it sounds like he's trying to tell the story of a stop-start career in the stuttering advance of faltering house programming. And while for the most part the female voices Ripatti employs sound as they always have-- multitracked and harmonized six ways from Sunday-- they're more convoluted than ever, with one exception: "The Tease Is Over", whose simple, girlish vocals recall the Cardigans, of all people. "The Tease Is Over", of course, could well be the title of the album: Luomo is back, familiar and yet somehow freakier than ever.

(source: PitchforkMedia)

“Equivalent to watching a malfunctioning remote control vehicle bump repeatedly into one spot on a wall.”

Cex "Oops, I Did It Again!" (Tigerbeat6, 2001)

Artist: Cex
Album: "Oops, I Did It Again"
Release Date: October 12, 2001
Label: Tigerbeat6
Genre: IDM, Experimental-Techno, Ambient-Techno, Glitch
Mood: Hunorous, Aggressive, Messy, Harsh
Reminds Of: Kid606, Boards Of Canada, Aphex Twin, Autechre
What People Think: AllMusicGuide
Definitely Worth Buying: Amazon

Tracklist
1. (You're Off) The Food Chain
2. Eleven Million Dollars Worth Of Bearer Bonds
3. Destination: Sexy
4. First For Wounds
5. I Said It Knowing Full Well I Had No Intention Of Doing It
6. Texas Menstruates
7. It's All About Guilt
8. Flex On Cex, Eh
9. I Don't Think You Do Sin, Julia
10. Florida (Is Shaped Like A Big Droopy Dick For A Reason)
11. OD'd On First Base
12. Keep Pretending
13. Not Trying
14. After #4 Matrix Sndtrk. Rob D 'Clubbed To Death'

Cex is an interesting guy. Not only does he never play any of his recorded material live (from what I've read, in any case), he also freestyles, plays mic stands like they were trombones, and really gets the crowd to participate. Which is why, after buying his CD Oops, I Did It Again!, I was so surprised. You see, it's not the iMac driven hip-hop he was busting loose onstage. No, it's... it's completely different! There's hardly a trace of hip-hop, besides some of the beats he uses; it's mostly skittish electronics with warm guitar sounds and drones overtop. And is that a good thing? Hell yeah. The album starts and ends on a melancholy note. From the a cappella tape recording of Cex (also known as Rjyan Kidwell) singing to the home recorded message left by a girl right before graduation; it's pretty poignant. Again, the first track, "(You're) Off the Food Chain" is about as organic and sad as they come, with Cex singing "Tar baby I know you look at me/I look at you/I think you're pretty, and tar baby/I know you're on a pedestal/up high in the garden, and I'm down in the mud below." About halfway through he stops singing, and a guitar comes in. He soon begins to manipulate his voice, sampling bits and pieces of what he's just sung. It's amazing. The last track, on the other hand, is simply depressing. On a tape recorder a girl says, "I don't know if you can hear me, because I'm talking in a headset and my voice is kind of morphed because of it. [...] I just figured this would be a really lame way of telling you I like you, in person or on the phone or something, but telling you on tape, which is probably worse than all of that put together." This continues for maybe a minute, and it really sums up the album well. What's in the middle of the album, between those two songs, fluctuates between funny, happy, depressing, and a whole bunch of other emotions that I can't really think of or put into words right at the moment. The song "I Said it Knowing Full Well I Had No Intention of Doing It" combines washes of ambient texture and guitar figures to create something that's really beautiful. I'd go as far as to say it's my favourite song on the album (either that or "(You're) Off the Food Chain"), and it functions well as a more relaxed break from all of the electro-beats. Next is "Texas Menstruates," which is as funky as "I Said it..." was somber. Another noteworthy item within Oops, I Did it Again! is Cex's bizarre sense of humour. Not only do the liner notes depict Rjyan brutally killing a woman and disposing of the evidence (yeah, I know!). No, there's also a skit (wherein Cex assumes both of the voices of a mother and daughter arguing about "the naked man cooking eggs in the kitchen"), and song titles ("Flex on Cex," "Florida (Is Shaped Like a Big Droopy Dick for a Reason)", the album title). It doesn't get much better than that. So, I guess you'd say I really dig this, even though I was misled with his awesome live performance. When I saw him during his tour with the Dismemberment Plan, in London, Ontario, he got a pretty cold response from the crowd. Frankly, that surprised me. His show was so energetic and fun that I'm surprised more people didn't get up. Then again, when it was a club filled with kids there to see Death Cab for Cutie, I guess it's not all that surprising that they didn't completely fall for a skinny white guy freestyling about Sweden, riding bikes, Chess, and Osama bin Laden. Nonetheless, this record is triple-t hottt, and I highly recommend it.

(source: fakejazz.com)

"The naked man cooking eggs in the kitchen..."