Electronic
Noah’s Barks pages relating to the electronic music genre. Combine with other tags for subgenres, e.g. “electronic+indie.”
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Wendy Carlos – “Clockwork Orange”
A bit amusing how hard of a time I had finding this release for a moment. I wasn’t aware that Wendy Carlos had a sex change after making this soundtrack and changed her name, and her previous name was cemented in the soundtrack album’s cover art. Anyway, A Clockwork Orange is one of the strangest,… (read more)
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808 State – “Prebuild”
As the title and cover suggest, Prebuild is a compilation of leftover tracks from around the time of Newbuild. As that might suggest, Prebuild is not particularly great outside of being a historical piece. 808 State were very influential to electronic music after all, giving this some worth to anyone interested in the history of music… (read more)
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Tricky – “Pre-Millennium Tension” (1996)
It’s very rare to find a trip hop album that pushes the boundaries of the genre, but Pre-Millennium Tension is one of them. The production is damp—and I mean damp. Some of the thickest beats I’ve ever heard, strange off-kilter instrumentation, and surreal imagery (though not atypical for trip hop). Almost unbearably thick production. Pre-Millennium Tension… (read more)
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The Aloof – “Sinking”
Worth a spin. Sinking is one of those albums definitely in need of editing. Check out those song lengths. I can tell you right now few of them are justified, and a lot of repetitiveness should have been cut to make this a more digestible listen. Right now it’s 72-minutes long. There’s self-indulgence, and then… (read more)
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Renegade Soundwave – “Soundclash” (1989)
Awesome. Renegade Soundwave are cool as fuck and they know it. During 1989 on Soundclash, they were already in the future. Industrial-esque riffs covered by gleaming synths with catchy beats underneath it all while a suave, rhythmic vocalist grooves on top. Soundclash is as dirty and hedonistic as the cover’s dominatrix-featuring nightclub sign suggests. I… (read more)
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Yasunori Mitsuda – “Chrono Trigger” (1995)
The thing that puts Chrono Trigger‘s soundtrack above that of most 16-bit SNES RPGs is the fact that while pretty much every RPG of the era tried to emulate the composition and “epic” feel of classical music (the predictable thing that makes most of them so dull nowadays), Yasunori Mitsuda went the extra mile to… (read more)
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Madonna – “Confessions on a Dance Floor” (2005)
Confessions on a Dance Floor is the kind of album an older Madonna should be making. Instead of chasing current trends, always a few steps behind and all for the goal of creating a subpar version of those trends, she follows her instincts. This leads to an album that has both idiosyncrasies and energy but… (read more)
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Madonna – “True Blue” (1986)
Madonna’s weakest ’80s synth pop album. Too heavy on slower, low-to-midtempo ballad material. Madonna’s greatest hooks were merciless and could make you shake effortlessly. However, some of these smoother keyboard melodies can get a bit atmospheric at times, such as in “Live to Tell,” which gives True Blue its own, unique identity. Along with this… (read more)
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Kraftwerk – “The Man-Machine” (1978)
The reason I don’t like Kraftwerk is that they deliberately try so hard to make their music inhuman. There’s no humanity to be found in an indistinguishable vocalist blankly repeating “The Robots” into a microphone, tone or pitch never changing while plastic synthesizer beats repeat seemingly endlessly in a repetitive rhythm that doesn’t dare to… (read more)
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The Chemical Brothers – “Further”
‘Further’ isn’t ‘Dig Your Own Hole’—but it doesn’t try to be. Further is much more reliant on frigid, glacial synthesizers than thick beats. (read more)