Taking Sides: Futurism vs. American Gigolo vs. ???

I'm leaning towards getting individual artist LPs instead. The Fischerspooner CD sounded great in the shop yesterday.

just don't call it synthcore or electroclash - yuk!

i think the single is much better than the rest of the fischerspooner lp. as for felix, i think the last album isn't all that, his previous one 'i know elektrikboy' under the name Thee Maddkatt Courtship is better (although quality control varies wildly)

do DMX Krew count at all, as part of all this? i'm not sure, maybe not. But either We Are DMX, or Fffffrrrreeeesssshhhhhh!!!!! should be at the top of anyones list anyway

Get American Gigolo--ace top to bottom, mixed well, fun fun fun. AVOID and DESTROY Electroclash 2001 comp--unmitigated piece of shit. Also worth mentioning is Kapital: New York City, a well-sequenced 2CD box (w/useless DVD of "arty" visuals) from Universal France (you should be able to get that cheap in the UK, right? cheaper than in the States? or am I just being naive here?)

Call it electro? Another vote for American Gigolo

I just bought the City Rockers presents Futurism thang. Will report back when I've played it. The American Gigolo set looks a snip at £7.99 from Amazon - I think I'll order it. Reynolds reviewed some of this stuff in Uncut last month - anyone read it?

Futurism CD2 is entertaining. 1 I'm finding a bit dull. The cover version of Sunglasses reminded me of that old West End Sunglasses mix. Might have to go and AudioGalaxy that now...

I'd love some pointers on "Adult". I've heard Hand to Phone in several different places (2manydjs!) BUT NOTHING ELSE EVAH.

Here's one of the other comps I was referring to in the question.

Yes, it is electro, I guess, but the sound seems darker, drier, more staccato than what I remember of the 80s version (admittedly, not much).

... closer to Acid House now I come to think of it.

adult.. .. the album "resusitation" is good, the 12inches are a little hard to get hold of...

Another big yes for 'American Gigolo'.

I share Jeff's hesitation with the word "electro", especially when it then becomes difficult to distinguish it from the nu-electro boom of a few years ago (perpetrated by a lot of IDM artists, and ultimately making it difficult to plain rule out something like, say, Autechre). It's like there's two hitherto intertwined strands of electro that are being teased apart. In this new version, not only is the idea of cold futurism embodied by personalities rather than solely in the music (cf. the cold facelessness of Jedi Knights and their compatriots), but there's less spindly programmed beats and a *lot* more stomping kickdrums - I think this is a good thing. It makes the music at once more compulsive and druggy (in a coke sense, not an e sense) and a lot more pop.

Spirtually if not necessarily sonically the largely unmentioned influence for a lot of this stuff seems to be mid-to-late eighties industrial like Front 242 and Neitser Ebb (it's very easy, for example, to imagine this as being the soundtrack music for the film 'The Living End' instead of the industrial-pop that was used). I may or may not expand on this at a later point.

The upcoming Charles Manier EP on Ghostly will hopefully become known as the epitome of the DAF/Suicide/Front 242-influenced deluge of records.

it's funny - this music is really popular here at the moment (glasgow) but back in the 80's, i couldn't get arrested for trying to play DAF, Suicide, Front 242 etc. Funny how times change and thankfully i didn't sell all my old ebm records.

I find it funny because I've never heard enough of the original stuff and yet I am LOVE the new things.

From all the descriptions this sounds like music right up my late eighties Wax Trax lovin' alley...

For Compilations(If you want the real shit...):

Resusitation by Adult. On Ersatz Audio Auto-Biography by Le Car on Ersatz Audio V/A From Beyond on Interdimensional Transmissions Music Compacte on Viewlexx Records The Man From Pack by I-F Anything of Psi49net Records

Call the good stuff electro, call the rest of the shit Electro-pop.

Electro pop is electronic music for people who are embarrassed to admit that they were sweater rockers a year ago and who want you top think they are cool because they dig this "electronic" thing, but do not actually get pure electronic music. Adult. was making electro with vocals 7 years ago, and it did not become cool until NYC bit it and said it is cool last year. Between Kitbuilders and Adult. nobody else was making vocal electro in the mid-90's. Leave it to NYC to bite Detroit, make arse candy electro records, and rake in the cash.

If you are going to buy into this trend, buy Ersatz Audio records, as they are the best outfit in this genre and they deserve your business.

I bet you were at the 100 Club in '76 too.

Um, define "pure electronic music" please, mt. Also, if you believe it's so much better than (to use your term) electro-pop, you could at least say why, give us something to work with.

Alright, you have this thing called electro. Electro is not really based of strong melodic themes, so much as the harmonic elements work together to push the rhythm forward. Electro is drum based dance music. It is not about vocals as melodic leads so much a another drum in the mix. iow electro is primitive hip-hop...

The kind of pure electronic music that I am talking about is a music that has despensed with a lyrical narrative and a traditional song structure. It is a music that comes from 20th century academic electronic music, 60-70 minimalism, and late 70's conceptual disco. It is not about the song, it is about the track. It is not verse- chorus-verse-brige...

The best example I can give is when Laddio Boloko, Panasonic, and Trans Am played a show in Detroit together a few years ago. I really liked Laddio Boloko, they had rock instrumentation but their dummer was leading the group, and they had really weird song structures. They were a bit like Can in the throws of Amphetine psychosis(but in a good way). :) The crowd kinda got them because they could recognize the instrumentation and it fit in with their sense of what a rock show was "supposed" to look like.

The Panasonic goes on and it is two Finn's standing over an MPC and a few processors. The play weird noisy electro stuff, definitely extreme sounds that are not tied to the conventional. It is 808 percussion and extreme noise. The crowd got so loud that you could actually hear their talking over the house P.A. I think there were about 10 people in the crowd actually listening, and about 7 of them were dance music people that I had seen at clubs. Panasonic was brilliant, really interesting and fresh.

Then Trans-Am comes out and plays this lame-ass faux sleazy 70's electronic rock music and the crowd eats it up. It has nothing to do with the music itself, it just fits into the expectations of the crowd and is therefore "good". They look rock, the sounds kinda rock, and they are not challenging anything or expecting their audience to accomodate their vison of music.

The point that I am trying to make is that these new electro-pop bands are just cashing in on other peoples ideas. It is this lame candy electro that doesn't really funk or groove; but the bands look good, they have pop song structures, and most importantly, they have lyrics so that it is easy for people to "get it". Fisherspooner and Miss Kittin are fucking awful. They write shitty songs with the current trendy sounds, and are more image than music. The people who are buying into this stuff are just tourists, they will move on to the next trend when this one is done. They think they want something new because it is another influence to make themselves appear cool, but they do not actually want to take the leap into truly deep electronic music. "We will use your pallette of sounds and make them sound lame and stupid from over-use and commericalization, but we will not actually acknowledge or understand any of your real musical innovations or values."

Adult. might have a look, but flat out, Adam Miller writes damn good songs with great beats. If you are going to buy into electro, make sure it has raw funk. They might be mixing in a strong post-punk influence, but their tracks still groove. Miss Kittin and Fishspooner are not funky.

surely you can't create seperate categories for the good and bad of a given genre (other than 'good electro' and 'bad electro'.)

i don't like fischerspooner (what little i've heard) and i do like adult... but i don't think they're doing anything that's fundamentally different. adult is just more successful at the same game. 'hand to phone' is a pop song... you can't call it 'pure electronic music' just because you like it better!

"We will use your pallette of sounds and make them sound lame and stupid from over-use and commericalization, but we will not actually acknowledge or understand any of your real musical innovations or values."

Mike isn't this essentially what Bambataa and Arthur Baker said to Kraftwerk? "Lame and stupid" in this case being a roundabout way of saying "fun and interesting".

I'm not sure what "values" you'd ascribe to electro - I'm sure you wouldn't do this but it almost sounds like you're confusing/conflating it with detroit techno (a big mistake, I'm sure you'd agree, as it totally denies the *other* legacy of electro: miami bass, freestyle, booty techno etc.)

Bottom line is electro-pop existed then - look no further than New Order - and there's no reason for it not to exist now. If anything I found the former nu-electro boom - with its self-conscious links to the IDM scene - to be as much if not more revisionist than this current euro-trash reincarnation. And finally - do you really think that it's so easy to equate songfulness with meaningless commercialism and anti-songfulness with "deep electronic music"? By that logic progressive house is the most advanced *and* authentic dance music around.

there one category in which new electro is better than all other house and techno combined: song titles