I’ve been on a bit of an Eric Fensler kick for the past couple of days. Fensler’s the guy who put together those GI Joe PSAs a while back, but he’s been doing the twisted videos thing for almost a decade now. Lately he’s been doing a couple of music videos for TRS-80, an electronic outfit from Chicago whose latest album, Mystery Crash, relies heavily on the sorts of retro-futuristic synth sounds that would sound perfectly at home played over late-night commercials from the early 80s.

The video for “Special Effect” has plenty of kitsch factor on its own, but it’s the music that sticks. It’s an ominous track with a relentless bass beat and some irresistable synth washes. It’s like a darker Soviet version of the Knight Rider theme song, if you’ll allow me to make a somewhat outlandish allusion. For those of you who like their beats and breaks creepy, cool and vintage, TRS-80 is worth a shot.

So a couple of days ago I found a random flash video called “8-bit Reading Rainbow” and it is awesome. Unfortunately that link went down, and since then I’ve been unable to find any evidence of its existence on the Google, so sadly you will have to live without its crazy intarwebs-fueled goodness. But not all is lost, for the inspiration for that video is readily available, and if you close your eyes real tight and use your imagination, you can probably see that flash video in your head when you hear this song! But don’t take my word for it…

8bit bEtty is a Brooklyn-based chiptune artist who’s released two EPs so far. Both of them are freely available online, though there’s word that they might be re-released as actual CDs, so who knows how long that deal will last (hopefully forever!). As you can tell from the site design, the cute little pixelated graphics on her Myspace, and the liberal sprinkling of exclamation marks throughout her copy, 8bit bEtty makes happy, burbling chiptunes with a healthy dose of whimsy. So why not a cover of the theme song to Reading Rainbow, everyone’s favourite PBS kids show starring Geordi LaForge? A fun track that reminds you of how good the original was while adding a charming Nintendo-esque element of its own. It’s like two, two types of childhood nostalgia in one! Excellent!

(Sorry, gang, One Little Indian asked me to take down the file. Your best bet is to see if it’s available through the iTunes Store, where I’m told the single was released a couple of days ago.)

If you’re a Björk fan, chances are you fall into one of two groups: current fans and fans that lost the plot after Homogenic. That landmark 1997 album is now a decade old, which is probably enough to make anyone who loved it as much as I did feel incredibly old right about now. Already a recognized power at that stage in her career, Björk wrote all the material for Homogenic from whole cloth, as opposed to previous releases made up of songs she’d written throughout the years. As a result the album was Bjork’s more cohesive and unified statement to date, a glorious fusion of electronic beats and orchestral arrangements that still sounds vital today.

The fusion was an idea Bjork had been working towards for years; a mix-it-yourself disc with Mark Bell’s electronic wizardry dominating one stereo channel and the Kronos Quartet playing alone on the other never came to fruition, but the Homogenic tour featured that exact lineup on stage. By the time Dancer in the Dark and the associated soundtrack Selmasongs rolled around in 2000, however, it seemed that Björk had become a bit comfortable with the sound she’d created; though found sounds largely replaced the electronic flourishes on Selmasongs, Björk was still dealing with essentially the same basic formula. The very next year, she threw the whole thing out and produced Vespertine, an immaculately produced album that nevertheless polarized her fan base. While a critical and sales success, Vespertine also put a lot of people off, myself included, because of its wilful obscurity and frustrating lack of dynamics. The $50 I spent on a ticket to her Toronto stop were the last dollars she got from me.

I’d all but given up on Björk after that; 2004’s Medulla didn’t strike me as much better than Vespertine and her public persona grew ever more bizarre and strange—not that she wasn’t already bizarre and strange, but collaborations with Matthew Barney and tours in opera houses seemed to aim for an entirely different level of pretension than I was willing to accomodate. So if you’re like me, you’ve tuned out most of the news about Volta. If “Earth Intruders” is any indication, however, it might be time to start listening again. Backed by production courtesy of Timbaland, an apparent desire to write actual songs again, and a new obsession with the power of dance, Volta may just be the thing to bring estranged fans back into the fold.

Some not-so-new stuff from Pizzicato Five and Handsomeboy Technique. Last year, in celebration of the 5th anniversary of P5’s breakup, Columbia Japan re-released the band’s entire back catalogue on Columbia, plus two greatest hits compilations—that’s a whopping 17 CDs. And if that wasn’t somehow way more than enough, Columbia also put out a remix album two months later, on May 24th (or 5/24, which leads to 524, which is apparently a phonetic synonym for “Konishi,” one of P5’s founding members). Pizzicato Five We Dig You is eleven tracks of five-minute mashup mixes by a bunch of Japanese producers and artists, and bringing up the rear is a Handsomeboy Technique mix with a suitably excitable name (three exclamation marks!). Fittingly, it clocks in at exactly five minutes and 24 seconds.

Though all the mixes are apparently spliced together from Pizzicato Five material, I don’t know nearly enough of P5’s discography to say what comes from where. In any case, it sounds essentially like a Handsomeboy Technique song, but with the influences floating a bit closer to the surface: a bit of old-school hip hop here, a dash of Motown there, a light sprinkling of children singing, and a heaping spoonful of Technicolour wonder all around. In other words, fantastic.

First Savoy Jazz starts distributing Saint Etienne in North America, and now this: Blue Note putting out an album by an act that doesn’t sound very jazzy. The Bird and the Bee is one of the latest projects by Los Angeles singer/songwriter Inara George, who has previously put out an album on her own called All Rise. I mention this mainly because I’ve heard of her before, but can’t remember where; this probably means she’s either been featured on KCRW or Pandora, seeing as how that’s where I seem to find all my vaguely generic, obscure artists these days.

The Bird and the Bee has far exceeded George’s solo profile, apparently popping up on the Tonight Show of all places. I don’t know what they played, but I’m going to guess it wasn’t current single “Fucking Boyfriend”—I’m willing to believe that Middle America is ready for light electronic pop, but not swearing on Leno. One obvious candidate is album opener “Again and Again,” one of those guilty pleasures that probably belongs on a Starbucks CD (or the soundtrack to Garden State, oh no I didn’t!). Give it a listen and you’ll note two things. One, this isn’t jazz any more than the Postal Service is deep house; the Bird and the Bee resemble the slick, Euro-influenced electronic pop of Club 8 or Ivy more than any jazz I’ve ever heard, and while the world can never have too much Club 8, it still begs the question of why Blue Note thought the Bird and the Bee were a good fit for their roster.

The second thing you might notice a bit later is that the band’s own description, “a futuristic 1960’s American film set in Brazil,” is surprisingly dead on despite the lack of resemblance to most traditional jazz styles. And not just in the sense that the Bird and the Bee are heading in the same electronic direction as many bona-fide new jazz (nu jazz, if you must) artists are; I mean there’s a distinct sense that you are, indeed, listening to some retro-futuristic echo of Brazilian jazz, with the same laid back atmosphere and ineffable sense of cool coated in minimalist synths and soothing electronic whispers. Maybe the people at Blue Note know what they’re doing after all.

Halfby is a Kyoto-based DJ with a bunch of releases on the Second Royal label (though I think he’s moved on now to a much larger label, Toy Factory). Astute readers will note that Second Royal is also the home of Handsomeboy Technique, which should give you a pretty good idea of what Halfby’s all about: upbeat, sample-heavy breaks and hip-hop. Halfby’s approach is less pop, more groove; it’s basically Handsomeboy Technique on permanent “party” mode, which may appeal to you if you lean more towards the Avalanches than the Go! Team.

That’s a lot of names to throw at you, and if you don’t know who any of those bands are you might still be a bit confused. So let me put it to you straight: this is infectious breakbeat music, peppered liberally with lounge influences and coated with a sugary pop sheen. It’s like a party in your ears and everyone’s invited. Apparently the kids in Japan actually dance to this stuff in clubs; if that’s the case, then we all need to move to Japan right the hell now, because the kids in Japan are clearly way cooler and way more fun than we are. Halfby’s been around for a while, with a radio hit and praise from the likes of Pizzicato Five under his belt, but has only released on album to date. Recently, however, he’s been putting out a series of singles through Toy Factory, which is where “Screw The Plan” comes from. It’s insanely catchy, and there’s a bizarre music video to boot (also including “Rodeo Machine,” off the album Green Hours):

“Paragon” is a cut off the last Fantastic Plastic Machine album to be released in North America, Beautiful. Tomoyuki Tanaka, the man behind FPM, is still making records, but the Shibuya-kei movement with which he is associated has retreated from Western shores. The breezily optimistic, retro-influenced pop sound doesn’t seem to play so well in a world filled with terrorists imaginary and real, climate change and environmental destruction, and the general sense of pre-apocalyptic ennui that has settled over everything in the past couple of years. Originally intended in some part to pay homage to the relentlessly forward-looking retro-futurism of the 60s, the sounds of Fantastic Plastic Machine, Pizzicato Five and Towa Tei now seem almost as out of touch as the original recipes.

Fantastic Plastic Machine took a more club-friendly approach to Shibuya-kei, especially on Beautiful. With more insistent four-on-the-floor beats on many tracks (including the single “Take Me To The Disco,” which strangely only appears on the album in remixed form as a bonus track), Beautiful is less lounge and more dance. Maybe that’s why it found a home on American label Emperor Norton Records, also past home to Japanese exports like Takako Minekawa and electro artists like Miss Kittin and Ladytron. Around the time electroclash became really popular, Emperor Norton was doing quite well; well enough that Rykodisc took notice and entered some sort of business arrangement with the label in late 2004. At that point Emperor Norton sat somewhere between “partner” and “victim of label merger,” and with the market falling out of both electroclash and Japanophilia, the name seems to have been quietly dropped, and label signees like Ladytron have gone on to release albums through Rykodisc. Does this explain why we haven’t seen a Fantastic Plastic Machine album in the States recently? Or maybe the scene has just petered out considerably, with most of the major players on hiatus or broken up.

Well, whatever. Even if Beautiful now sounds more like a turn-of-the-millennium cultural artifact, it’s still just as fun and crammed full of lounge-club goodness.

Unsettling, paranoid, post-industrial wasteland: if you’re looking for a soundtrack for your worst Children of Men nightmares, you can’t do much better than Amon Tobin. Though he’s dabbled with a wide array of motifs, Tobin’s recent soundtrack for the Tom Clancy super-spy game Splinter Cell 3 has cemented a reputation for grimly cinematic, sample-heavy electronica. If the Bloodstone single is any indication of what to expect from the upcoming The Foley Room, due in March, then Tobin’s latest material is set to bring that cinematic experience to an entirely new level.

“Esther’s” is like a medical bag filled with razor sharp knives, sitting alone on a gurney underneath a flickering surgery lamp in some abandoned eastern European army hospital. It seethes with barely contained malice and tension, something you don’t get much of these days from popular music. If tracks like “Four Ton Mantis” were your personal Amon Tobin faves, then you’ll find plenty to like on Bloodstone.

[review 2006: the best of the year]

A friend of mine went to see the Blow this summer, just before the release of Paper Television. Khaela Maricich apparently introduced a song with an admission: the next album was going to be their pop album, something they could actually make some money on for once. At the time, everyone probably thought she was kidding, but now we know otherwise: Paper Television is the closest thing the Blow has to a pop album.

Of course, no one in the K Records stable really has much to spend on things like big-name producers or lavish, fully-equipped studios in Hawaii, so when the Blow decide to make a pop album, we’re not talking Timbaland and Christina Aguilera. We’re barely in the territory of I Am The World Trade Center, the last indiepop duo (or maybe the only indiepop duo) to garner the half-joking dubious title of “the indie Britney Spears.” They at least had an array of laptop-powered synths and samples at their disposal; whether intentionally or otherwise, Maricich and partner-in-crime Jona Bechtolt work with a smaller palette of sonics to spin their minimalist electropop magic.

If you’ve ever heard a Blow album before this one, however, you’ll think the sound much fuller than before. Bechtolt’s instrumental talents have worked wonders for Maricich, who previously ran the Blow as a one-woman show. While Maricich’s coyly innocent vocals have always been a Blow trademark, Bechtolt’s contributions provide a vital counterpart that has, until now, been missing: sexy lo-fi beats and bleeps that sound just as juicy as Maricich’s best lines.

Accompanying the reinforcement in the production department is a newfound focus in the songwriting; nearly all of the experimental scribbles from older albums have been dropped in favour of—gasp!—fairly straightforward verse-chorus-verse pop structures. And again, the Blow score a bullseye. The slinky, seductive qualities of earlier Blow albums tended toward the subliminal, expressed most effectively in breathy sighs and burbling electronic riffs. On Paper Television those qualities get more play, especially on songs like the siren’s call of “Pardon Me,” aka “The Blow’s Late Night Dance Party Extravaganza.” Everything about this song is sex, from the lyrics (”there was a lot of sweat” indeed) to the relentless beats to the awesome flute-loop breakdown.

The biggest problem with earlier Blow albums was the faint whiff of awkwardness about the proceedings; Maricich could never quite sell material like “What Tom Said About Girls,” a rap track that couldn’t escape the occasional hints of hesitation and the bedroom-pop sound. But Paper Television hits the ground running and almost never lets up; “Pile of Gold” and “The Long List of Girls” more than make up for the lost potential in “What Tom Said About Girls.” On the more traditional indiepop side of the ledger, the Blow offer up “Parentheses” and “Babay,” the closest they’ve come to the ideal Maricich has been chasing with earlier songs like “Jet Ski Accidents” and “A Night Full of Open Eyes.”

“You don’t know this,” Maricich once said during a show, “but most songs by pop stars are written by indie girls.” The crowd probably thought that was a joke too, but listen to Paper Television and you’ll come away a believer.

Overshadowed by the Crystal Method in their heyday and largely relegated to soundtracks and commercials like so many other electronic artists, Death In Vegas’s story is not particularly unique on the surface. Flirting with the boundary between rock and electronica, Death In Vegas has never received much attention for their proficiency with either, so it’s easy to overlook the quirks that pop up throughout their career. They’ve hosted a night at the Barbican in London about surf movies, for example. Their third album, Scorpio Rising, takes its name from a little-seen short film by Kenneth Anger that mixed together fascinations with fascist imagery and leather fetishism—a slightly leftfield choice for an album name. And then there’s the small matter of the video for “Dirge,” one of the band’s more recognizable songs. Featuring the hypnotic vocals of Dot Allison, “Dirge” is six minutes of relentless build-up, and though its structure is extremely simple—essentially two chords and a single refrain repeated over and over—it is intensely menacing and affecting.

“Dirge” is not exactly what you’d call radio material; it’s far too long and sounds like the soundtrack to someone being stalked and murdered. And yet it was released as a single, with not one but two videos eventually accompanying it. The second video features a clipped version of the track playing over elegantly shot but slightly creepy scenes of ballroom dancing. But the first is more interesting; shot with a budget of £200 for a film festival, the original six-minute video features a slightly different cut of the album version. The visuals are simply a series of stark portraits of Americans killed by guns during the course of a single day.