Electricity is sacred. Even if it consumes power and is bad for the climate. Did the Minimal Wave pioneers of the 1980s already know that even back then they didn’t call themselves that, but they made all the more thorough use of synthesizers and drum computers and created a style with them that is as weatherproof as blues, afrobeat or the work of Johann Sebastian Bach. If you think you have had plenty of reissues of this style in recent years, you can practice your humility with the compilation »Artificial Dancers – Waves Of Synth« by Amsterdam DJ Interstellar Funk. Because it offers a number of quirky rarities – or the opportunity to get close to musicians who might not necessarily have been on the radar before. The Norwegians of Det Gylne Triangel, whose »Maskindans« also leave room for the humorous sides of machine music, belong in the first category, for example, or the Teutonic-named project Im Namen Des Volkes, which presents itself quite as expected in its contribution »Alles ist Gewinn«. To the second category belong the Dutch darkwavers of Clan of Xymox, whose demo of »Stranger« exemplarily dispenses with some pathetic pomp, which the album version later loaded. Also pleasing is the New Yorker Richard Bone, who with his »Alternate Music For the Hindenberg Lounge« extensively celebrates the joy of discovery of the early eighties. Apart from that, there are old acquaintances to be heard again, Human League with the crude-consistent instrumental »4JG«, Liaisons Dangereuses in an unregulated live version of »Dias Cortas«, and Chris And Cosey were once again ahead of their time and in 1996 still sounded like in the eighties. Whereas, when the result is as sunny and warm as in »Hybrid C«, you don’t want to have said anything at all.
Yukimi
For You
Ninja Tune