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Funny. I don't see any office chairs there.

By a buncha Germans calling themselves Kraftwerk. And I still can't get that damned "Autobahn" outta my head. Damn you, Ralf and Forian! Damn you to Hell!!

Who cares, it will carry the same old plagiarized,
derivative pap from a bunch of talentless wankers who take really good original music by brilliant bands and pass it off as their own.

Who cares, it will carry the same old plagiarized,
derivative pap from a bunch of talentless wankers who take really good original music by brilliant bands and pass it off as their own.

Some other groups definately worth mentioning that have been around since around the 60's:

Tangerine Dream
Kraftwerk
Isao Tomita
Vangelis

Led Zeppelin = Geek Fare?

I would have thought something like Kraftwerk more appropriate.

And let's not forget Kraftwerk who used the Speak & Spell on their "Computer World" album which practically gave birth to the techno genre.

"There's so much techological genius in these movies that the 'making of' stuff is worth the cost of the set to me. I haven't even watched the movies yet, I just opened disc 4 and started watching. GOOD STUFF."

Every once in a while there's really cool supplemental stuff in a CD, like videos or images or something. I also love reading the editorials written by music historians in the sleeves of rereleases of old albums remastered. I spent hours studying Eddie Vedder's drug-inspired doodles on the Vs. album. Same goes for Thom Yorke's doodles in OK Computer.

But that's not quite enough. Movies have something that music doesn't have. A large number of people are impressed by and can appreciate visual special effects. It's therefore obvious that people would want to pay extra for a DVD with a large section devoted the the creation of the film. I spent hours watching disc 2 of Attack of the Clones, even though I don't really dig the film. And how many people saw the movie just to see the special effects?

On the other hand, most people I know laugh at me for how thoroughly I read album sleeves and band biographies. They look at me funny when I stop and say something like, "Listen to this guitar line - isn't that cool? He routed his guitar through a flanger and a phase shifter in series...etc." There just isn't the demand for that sort of thing in the public. People just want to hear their Moby (or whatever). They don't want to know what kind of wah-wah pedal he uses or how he looped a particular sample. That's one reason why some technically brilliant bands aren't all that famous, like Kraftwerk, for instance. Their sound engineering is INCREDIBLE, especially considering that they were among the first to use a lot of the technology and techniques so common in music today. (The recording, mixing, and mastering for Electric Cafe (1986) was entirely digital.) I would repurchase all of my Kraftwerk collection at a higher price if there included notes about the making of the album, but I'm a music geek.

Having said that, I'd also like to say that I hate the term "electronica", as it really only describes the range of electronic music that MTV and MuchMusic dare to tell you about, and doesn't even hope to cover a wider range of electronic music that doesn't necessarily include techno.

Here are some electronic artists with a bit more diversity:

Genesis P. Orridge (Throbbing Gristle/Psychic TV)

Kraftwerk

Brian Eno

Laibach

Nash The Slash

Coil

David Thrussel (Black Lung/Snog/Soma)

Pieter Bourke

Boards Of Canada

David Kristian

cEvin key (Skinny Puppy/Download/The Tear Garden/and more...)

Brian Eno

Merzbow

CPI/DXM

Tribes Of Neurot

Lab Report

Thighpaulsandra

Atari Teenage Riot

Now that you've got a real place to start, find out who the artists you listen to collaberate with, and who they are influenced by, and listen to their music too. You'll discover a whole new world of electronic music that mainstream music outlets will probably never even hope to tell you about.

And for those interested in a history lesson: Wendy Carlos Tangerine Dream Kraftwerk Larry Fast/Synergy

If you're not into the whole "electronica" scene, there's still plenty of good electronic music out there. I concentrate here on music with vocals, as that's mostly what I listen to.

Synthpop is basically synthesizer pop. For mainstream examples, think New Order and a host of other 80s pop. Less mainstream synthpop ranges from "darker" music with goth-influenced lyrics to the happy sort of stuff you're used to from the 80s.

Industrial is heavy, distorted electronic music. It may have real instruments (most often guitars), but there will generally be much electronic treatment of both the instruments and often the vocals ("treatment" usually consists of various sorts of distortion).

EBM stands for "Electronic Body Music" (dumb genre name, I know), and is sometimes called "industrial dance". It's essentially a mixture of Synthpop and Industrial. There's incessant arguments over what is and isn't EBM, but pretty much anything from industrial with a vague beat to synthpop with a bit of a harsher edge can fall into the category, depending on who you ask. But the classification isn't really that important anyway.

Some good bands (almost all of these are European, as there's very little of a "scene" in North America) include:

[I'm concentrating on EBM here, as straight industrial tends to be less electronically-oriented]

VNV Nation - Their earlier albums are industrial-leaning EBM, while their newer stuff is very bombastic uplifting synthpop. One of the best out there. Some good songs: Standing, Further, Darkangel, Epicentre, Joy, Kingdom.

Apoptygma Berzerk - Their earlier albums are goth/industrial/ebm hybrids, while their newest one is barely synthpopish trance (a common trend; I guess industrial/ebm is getting less popular these days). Some good songs: Non-Stop Violence, Starsign, Deep Red, Eclipse, Unicorn.

Kraftwerk - Okay, so they're not really synthpop, EBM, or industrial, but they heavily influenced those genres, especially with their industrial (in the original literal sense of the term) instrumentation. And if you're interested in electronic music at all, you at least have to give them a listen. Some good songs: Radioactivity, Pocket Calculator, Boing Boom Tschak, The Robots, The Model.

Beborn Beton - Synthpop, with a darker yet optimistic tone. Some good songs: Deeper Than the Usual Feeling, Hemoglobin, Winter, Another World, Phoenix.

Einstürzende Neubauten - One of the original industrial bands, with the home-made industrial implements to prove it. Their earlier stuff is rather legendary, though a bit inaccesible and very noisy. Their more recent stuff alternates between melodic ballads and noisy clanging pieces, though the instrumentation is still all things from sheet metal to large mechanically-operated flutes. Some good songs include: Was Ist Ist, Zebulon, Sabrina, Salamandrina, Newton's Gravitätlichkeit.

Front 242 - The original EBM band. It's sparse industrial with a beat. Some good songs: Headhunter, Quite Unusual, Body to Body, Im Rhythmus Bleiben, Circling Overland, Welcome to Paradise.

Deine Lakaien - Very melodic synthpop, with the occasional noisy EBM song thrown in. Some good songs: Kiss the Future, Mindmachine, Down Down Down, Return.

Funker Vogt - Aggressive industrial-oriented EBM, with distorted vocals on every single song. The choruses are very catchy and easy to dance to though. Good songs: Killing Fields, Gunman, Nuclear Winter, Funker Vogt, Black Hole, Subspace. :Wumpscut: - Industrial/EBM with a very bleak worldview. Good songs: Totmacher, Deliverance, Embryodead, Sag Es Jetzt, Concrete Rage.

L'âme Immortelle - Industrial/EBM that alternates between distorted male vocals and beautifully clean female vocals. Very good. Some good songs: Tears in the Rain, Epitaph, Gefallen, Judgement, Forgive Me.

Assemblage 23 - Probably the best American EBM/synthpop band. Somewhat similar in style to VNV Nation, but a bit darker. Some good songs: House on Fire, Disappoint, Bi-Polar, Naked, Purgatory, Awake.

Blank - Italian EBM with heavily layered industrial-influenced but catchy music. And even better, you can download 192kbps full mp3s of both their albums from their official site (add a few legal mp3s to your collection!). I'm not going to bother listing good songs, because you can just go get them all and decide for yourself.

Cat Rapes Dog - Amusing (but possibly offensive) lyrics in an EBM/industrial format. You'll probably need to find some lyrics sheets to understand them all, but they're worth it. Some good songs: Don't Wanna Work, Things I Hate, Trojan Whores, The World Is Good and Nothing Bad Ever Happens, Dead Boys Don't Say No, Capitalist Punishment, Eating People is Fun.

Wolfsheim - Very, very good darkwave/synthpop. Some good songs: Heroin She Said, ...Scars Remain..., Lovesong, Künstliche Welten, Once in a Lifetime, Youth and Greed, The Sparrows and the Nightingales.

There's of course lots more, but that's about all I have the inclination to type up at the moment, so that should serve as a good start if you're unfamiliar with the genre.

Kraftwerk has had dancing robots for some time. They even have their own song. "We Are The Robots."

hey, the Kraftwerk website is fun. I wish there was more there, but you'll have fun.

The top being Kraftwerk.

These guys are old school synth. With songs like Home Computer, and Pocket Calculator, you help but feel this music was designed to code by.

Their website is super sweet too. Kraftwerk being an late 70s, early 80s band, has excellent green screen hi-res graphics all over their site. The graphics are kind of stuff that reminds me of the plot function of BASIC, running on an Apple IIe.

IMHO, they are the greatest and most influential band since the beatles, rolling stones era. Today's artists are still sampling their beats.

I'm sure they're not to hard to find on MP3. Remember that these guys predate the IBM XT and Mac. They are the grandfathers of electronic music.

-kyri