sc140: 22 minimal electronica tracks composed in Super Collider using 140 characters or less. Twitter user, computer scientist, and compilation curator Dan Stowell started the trend by tweeting his encoded field recordings of waves crashing on the beach. [more inside]
posted by carsonb on Nov 21, 2009 - 23 comments

Been hypnotized lately? Anthony Burril's video for Acid Washed's "General Motors, Detroit, America" is pure eye candy.
posted by flatluigi on Nov 15, 2009 - 9 comments

The Works of Swede Mason: "Jeremy Clarkson," "Get in the Back of the Van," "Jungle All The Way," "Bill Wyman's Metal Detector," "Put the Lotion in the Basket, *" "Got The Sucka," "The Gobshite, *" "Squashed Thingy," "Spare Me The Madness," and the pair of tracks based on Neighbors deaths "Coffee And Croissants" and "Todd....Dead." [more inside]
posted by flatluigi on Oct 13, 2009 - 14 comments

Moldover's latest CD has a case, which comes with a theremin built into it. Moldover's site and other work. His YouTube channel. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye on Aug 29, 2009 - 19 comments

Last night at the London o2 arena, Gary Numan joined Trent and the gang on stage for an unexpected double bill rendition of Metal and Cars. The crowd went wild....
posted by Mintyblonde on Jul 16, 2009 - 46 comments

Ralf Hütter of Kraftwerk gives a rare interview to the Guardian, who also have a rather nice interactive feature on the bands influence.
posted by Artw on Jun 19, 2009 - 15 comments

Lullatone are a half-Japanese, half-American duo based in Japan who make music that can probably best be described as twee folktronica; a recent EP of theirs is titled "Little Songs About Raindrops". And now, you can make your own with their Raindrop Melody Maker Flash web toy, which looks a bit like a pastel-coloured Tenori-On:
posted by acb on Jun 4, 2009 - 9 comments

Four Hours of Free Funkiness Filter: Pretty Lights [more inside]
posted by jammy on Mar 31, 2009 - 20 comments

So the legendary Throbbing Gristle have regrouped and are touring this spring. Here's a short video of Chris Carter testing out some new gear. Cosey has some new toys as well. Sadly, the original Gristlizer died awhile back. But it is being cloned.
posted by peewinkle on Mar 29, 2009 - 25 comments

Kraftwerk and the Electronic Music Revolution. (amazon) A 3 hour long documentary detailing Kraftwerk's influences and career. [more inside]
posted by empath on Feb 14, 2009 - 33 comments

Accompanied by Aphex Twin's classic Selected Ambient Works II, we have the rarely-seen experimental video Stakker (Westworld) in nine parts: Z Twig / Radiator | Rhubarb | Hankie | Grass | White Blur | Parallel Stripes | Z Twig / Lichen | Blur | Match Sticks [more inside]
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Jan 21, 2009 - 37 comments

8-bit Jesus is a free CD of Christmas classics, done in 8-bit style by the fantastic Doctor Octoroc. [via]
posted by patr1ck on Dec 25, 2008 - 10 comments

Muslimgauze was the sound of an angry Middle East, a prolific source of music dark, spacious and smothering. Tension was a constant theme not only in the music but in the packaging. (For example, Betrayal shows the hands of Yassir Arafat and Yitzak Rabin, and guns, knives, and news photos of an Arab world at war were a common motif in titles and sleeve art.) However, the music wasn't the usual agitprop fare: Music meant to rile a public to a cause isn't normally pigeonholed as ambient, electronica or musique concrete. But the band, hidden from public view, was rumored to donate proceeds to Palestinian terrorists, and that they were eventually silenced by Mossad. Despite the prodigious output -- issuing almost a hundred EPs and albums between 1983 and 1998, over a hundred more since -- limited distribution and perpetual obscurity ensured the rumors were easier to find than the music. While the facts about Muslimgauze have little in common with the fictions, they are, if anything, stranger... [more inside]
posted by ardgedee on Dec 22, 2008 - 48 comments

Ten downloadable/streamable mixtapes of hi-NRG/Italodisco/new wave/Eurotrash/synth mixes for your delectation. [more inside]
posted by ClanvidHorse on Dec 18, 2008 - 19 comments

Marc Moulin, Belgian pop culture polymath and electropop pioneer, has died. Moulin was probably best known outside of Belgium for the electronic group Telex, founded in 1978 with Dan Lacksman and Michel Moers. Telex scored an international hit with Moskow Diskow, made a great video for their version of Twist a Saint-Tropez, did anything but Rock Around the Clock and, most famously, entered the 1980 Eurovision Song Contest with a cheerfully mocking song titled Euro-Vision. [more inside]
posted by grounded on Oct 7, 2008 - 8 comments

Connecticut's Have a Nice Life is responsible for one of the year's most acclaimed, highly conceptual albums this year, Deathconsciousness. The two discs (entitled The Plow That Broke The Plains and The Future, respectively) feature music spanning over five years of collaboration between the two artists, and are accompanied by a 75-page booklet on medieval Italian heretics in lieu of liner notes. Combining elements of shoegaze, new wave, ambient drone, post-rock, experimental industrial, avant-garde dark metal, and electronic music, and citing references such as My Bloody Valentine and Joy Division to their credit, the original and only pressings sold out within hours. Full stream of all 85 minutes available here. Direct mp3 samples here and here. [more inside]
posted by Christ, what an asshole on Jun 28, 2008 - 34 comments

Dance music toys. Get your cheese on. Via Music Thing.
posted by nthdegx on Jan 15, 2008 - 10 comments

Radiophonic Workshop - Alchemists of Sound.
posted by hama7 on Nov 20, 2007 - 13 comments

BIG BIG BIG BIG BIG is a musical composition by the inimitable Dan Deacon, dubbed by his local paper as part vaudeville ham, part electronica genius. Take a tour of Dan's thrift-store electronic keyboard and read his answers to stupid questions in Ignore Magazine. via Miss Cellania
posted by madamjujujive on Aug 14, 2007 - 34 comments

"Psyche Rock," by Pierre Henry (1967) vs. "Theme to 'Futurama'," by Christopher Tyng (1999ish). Fatboy Slim remixes "Psyche Rock" (also featured 9:20 into here) vs. "Theme to 'Futurama' (Remix)". Discuss amongst yourselves.
posted by WCityMike on Aug 6, 2007 - 31 comments

Get in on the stream while there's space, because Autechre is doing a boomtastic live DJ set full of 80s electronica, mashed up weirdness and god knows what else... more links posted in the thread as I think of them but I have to hit post now because it's time sensitive.
posted by fleetmouse on Dec 29, 2006 - 33 comments

Two Atriplex albums finally released! [via mefi projects] If, like me, you're a Fripp and Eno fanboy - give our very own Jimbob a listen. Lovely work.
posted by flabdablet on Nov 22, 2006 - 11 comments

Brian Eno and David Byrne released My Life in the Bush of Ghosts in 1981. It's a great album--and now it's available with a Creative Commons License. "This is the first time complete and total access to original tracks with remix and sampling possibilities have been officially offered on line."
posted by dobbs on Mar 30, 2006 - 44 comments

Legitimate MP3 downloads! If you like the big beat duo The Chemical Brothers, I'm sure you'll be impressed by these two excellent remixes: Flip The Switch & Believe EP. Primal Scream's deep house masterpiece is given similarly impressive treatment in Screamixadelica. Maybe you prefer the punkier electronica of The Prodigy; check out Always Outsiders, Never Outdone. BTW don't forget to donate to the nominated charities on each site if you decide to keep the tracks.

On slightly more dodgy ground, copyright-wise, are the remixes and mashups from tone396, lionel vinyl, fakeID & Go Home Productions (these are clearly only a handful of artists, but in my opinion are some of the best) - I wonder how, or even if you can, apply copyright laws to some of these kinds of hybrid productions.
posted by smiffy on Jun 28, 2005 - 19 comments

All roads lead to Apache. From Bert (.mp3) to Nas (.mp3), surf (.mp3) to electronica (.mp3), the audio genealogy of one influential tune. (via Soul-Sides)
posted by numlok on Apr 21, 2005 - 26 comments

Croatian keyboardist Belinda Bedekovic is quite a spectacle (video). According to her biography, "on her public appearances with her virtuosity and performance she 'demolishes everything in front of her', and they are regularly accompanied by enthusiastic applause, sometimes even leading to euphoria."
posted by mert on Apr 5, 2005 - 58 comments

By a weird coincidence, after reading this interview in New Scientist with three of the engineers who made electronic music possible, I walked by a poster for a documentary film about Bob Moog. One of my earliest memories of electronic music in the 1970s was an elementary school music teacher who was really into Wendy Carlos' and Isao Tomita's early arrangements of classical works for synthesizer. Of course, electronic music history goes back to the 1920s with the theremin developed as a classical instrument. It has its own web portal filled with lots of good stuff. And now for something slightly different, Conlon Nancarrow wrote piano compositions that could not be performed by human hands, demanding the use of a player piano.
posted by KirkJobSluder on Apr 4, 2005 - 20 comments

Galang-alang-alang-a. (insane, 18MB QuickTime music video)
[MusicFilter] Cranking out music somewhere between hip-hop, electronica, Nintendo cartridges, and reggae, 27-year-old Maya Arulpragasam is getting a lot of attention for the results of tinkering with one box. M.I.A. (her stage name) dresses in garish flourescents like it's 1983, dances like no one's watching, and is making waves all around the critic-o-sphere. [RS|NYT|Eye|pm|pfm|New Yorker|CBC] Want a sample? The video for "Galang" takes her grattifi-esque art, animates it, and mashes it all together with her, um, unusual style of dance, for a music+video experience that is hard to forget. Is M.I.A. redefining the world of 21st century global pop... or is it just crap?   (via WG)
posted by blacklite on Mar 12, 2005 - 118 comments

I find Paris's Radio ABF the perfect background noise, with an optional 256kb/s stream. It's electronica.
posted by Pretty_Generic on Nov 18, 2004 - 22 comments

Meet Connor Kirby-Long, the 17 year old wonderkid of indie electronica. From his home in Saint Johnsbury, Vermont, Connor has gained attention releasing a string of internet-only EPs under the names Grandma (1, 2, 3), I, Cactus, (1) and his current moniker Khonnor (1, 2). This month Khonnor released his first full length cd, Handwriting, a stunningly beautiful album made with inspiration from artists such as Jim O'Rourke, Fennesz, Sonic Youth, The Smiths and David Sylvian.
Khonnor's official website has a cute flash game. Bonus: He used to blog. Is he hot or not?
posted by mr.marx on Oct 27, 2004 - 11 comments

Creative misuse and abuse of musical tools with a lot of examples
posted by ronsens on Jul 23, 2004 - 10 comments

120 Years of Electronic Music. Electronic musical instruments 1870 -1990.
posted by the fire you left me on Jul 10, 2004 - 12 comments

Can Islam and Electronica co-exist? Listen to a wonderful track named "Semitones In Darkness" by Subtonal and Fresh Moods from BBC Radio 1's Blue Room this week (Min. 5). You'll hear what Muslims normally say when they are praying: "al-Fatiha" (The Opening), the first chapter of Quran.
posted by hoder on Oct 23, 2003 - 12 comments

Will electronic music ever break in the US? DJs don't speak. Most don't produce their own full-length albums. When they perform, their only motions are precise hand movements and brief shuffles to record bins that are obscured from view and confined to a 5-foot square area. There are no David Lee Roth jump kicks, synchronized boy-band dances, Michael Jackson moonwalks or Janet Jackson ass-shaking. For American consumers, this is a problem.
posted by fellorwaspushed on Jun 20, 2002 - 73 comments

'WHOEVER I LENT MY NORD MODULAR TO /MSG ME ASAP' is an extremely funny fake chat log between the bright stars of the IDM/techno music world. If you're familiar with the music of Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada, Plaid, and the like, and if you've ever used IRC, then you'll probably get a kick out of this.
posted by 40 Watt on Nov 2, 2001 - 28 comments

Publishers of this excellent book (+film) on electronica were trying to raise awareness of afghanistan's problems before WTC. Their subsequent statement impressed me and I'm planning to buy some music. Buying from decent people is a painless way to change the world - where else for more slightly-more-ethical-than-normal retail therapy? (clunky frames site, but you can suffer a little)
posted by andrew cooke on Sep 24, 2001 - 7 comments