Electronic Music Past, Present and Future | KTKD

Beck - Cellphone’s Dead.

Scott Garcia featuring M.C Styles - It’s A London Thing.

Back in 1997 speed garage was taking over the airwaves of London and this track by Scott Garcia soon became the new anthem for many of us young Londoners.

Juno - Soul Thunder (Vocal Mix).

Dntel - (This Is) The Dream Of Evan And Chan.

Imperial Brothers - We Come To Dub [Instrumental Dub].

Peter Tosh - I Am That I Am.

CSS - Off The Hook.

John + Julie featuring Auriole - Circles (Round and Round) [Hyperactive Mix].

Hardcore techno business from the Greater Than One duo.

Brian Eno - Thursday Afternoon (61 Minute Version).

T99 - Maximizor.

Commercial rave from Belgium’s T99.

I don’t often play this record, in fact it’s probably the first time I’ve listened to it in years - possibly even the first time since 1992! 

While it’s no ‘Anasthasia’, I’d forgotten that ‘Maximizor’ is actually a pretty catchy euro dance tune.

Dream Frequency feat Debbie Sharp - Take Me.

Big ‘90s hardcore piano track from Dream Frequency.

The sound of that piano accompanied by Debbie Sharp’s vocals is enough to send tingles down your spine!

Jean Michel Jarre - Magnetic Fields LP.

First I must point out that I’m not a big fan of Jean-Michel Jarre. I remember him being hugely popular when I was young and his concerts were supposedly pretty spectacular, I just never got the hype. I loved electronic music even then but Jarre’s take on it wasn’t gritty like Kraftwerk or DFA, it didn’t have the same ambience as Brian Eno or the catchiness of Gary Numan or The Human League. It felt like electronic Prog Rock, very self indulgent with lots of unnecessary musical showboating interspersed with moments of brilliance.

Having said all of that, I do own his early albums which I picked up for pennies at bootsales back in the ‘90s, mainly to use for sampling. I’ve gone back to listen to them from time to time over the years and they have grown on me, what seemed quite cheesy to me at the time now has a retro quality to it!

I don’t think I’d ever enjoy listening to a Jean-Michel Jarre album in its entirety but they’re worth owning just for those parts which are a delight to listen to and if you put them in a mix you can lose all that bloat!

Magnetic Fields (1981).

Tracklist:

A1 Magnetic Fields Part 1.

B1 Magnetic Fields Part 2.

B2 Magnetic Fields Part 3.

B3 Magnetic Fields Part 4.

B4 Magnetic Fields Part 5 (The Last Rumba).

There are some nice sounds to chill out to on this album. Magnetic Fields Part 1 is your typical Jarre epic, 18 minutes of him and his synths. Part 4 is a proper ambient track, Part 2 sounds like it could’ve been used in an 8-bit computer game and as for Part 5 (The Last Rumba), I’m sure he just pressed the demo button on his Casio keyboard from Argos!

Little Little - Tickle Me.

Back in the late ‘80s when I started getting deeply involved in the house music scene, I encountered a style of music that really excited me. It seemed to be some sort of acid house / techno but it sounded a lot harder and darker than what was coming out of America at that time.

After a while I learnt that these tracks had a collective name and there was a whole scene based around them in Belgium. It was called New Beat.

Of course, when I found out about this whole new sub-genre of dance music I had to listen to a lot more of it to see what I was missing and I’m glad I did!

Messiah - Temple of Dreams.

In 1991 and 1992 ‘rave music’ as the media liked to call it (and a term I hated!), dominated the charts. Messiah joined the likes of The Prodigy, Altern 8, The KLF and Utah Saints in making the crossover from the underground rave scene into the world of pop.

Looking back at the hardcore and techno tunes that made it in to the charts at that time, most of them had one thing in common - catchy samples. A sample you could chant along to definitely went down well with the masses!

By filling out their driving techno track with dialogue from the Schwarzenegger film ‘The Running Man’ and a beautiful Elizabeth Fraser vocal snippet from This Mortal Coil’s ‘Song to the Siren’, Messiah were on to a surefire hit with ‘Temple of Dreams’.

Joyce Sims - All And All. 

Performance for Top Of The Pops. May 1986.

This is one of those tracks that always makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. It used to do it to me back in the eighties and it still manages to do it to me now even though I must have listened to the song hundreds of times over the years.

I don’t know quite what it is about ‘All And All’ but when Joyce Sims hits that chorus I can almost feel the endorphins being released!

Morcheeba - Never An Easy Way.

Violet - Central Pro. NYC.