various artists - The Man Machine: Mojo Presents The Electronic Revolution

It's a jolly good giveaway, this comp. Chock full of synthesized sounds ranging from the ambient to the caustic. There's even something that was written to be played whilst you run with your iPod attached to your bicep. Thanks, Nike.

Looking back at 2009, I wouldn't have given this a second thought. OMD and the Orb were artists I just skipped over on my way from Oasis to Oxes. I fucked with LCD Soundsystem, but most of those dudes had been in punk bands in the 90s, so they couldn't be all bad, could they? Sometime around then, Kraftwerk did some dates in NYC, and a dude offered me a ticket and a ride. I shrugged.

Now? Now this is all I really want to listen to. I want to fall into a K-hole with Tangerine Dream as the soundtrack. I'll buy all the Ultravox vinyl I find abandoned at a thrift store. I'm going to track down all those Flying Lotus productions, using the Discogs production tab as my lodestone. This is the future, circa 2009. Filled you with hope back then, dinnit?

Discogs

Click here to download.

Tracy + The Plastics - Culture For Pigeon

There's a big, thick thru line from the Screamers to Tracy + the Plastics, who combined DIY music, filmmaking, and queer culture into a multimedia performance that the likes of the Whitney fawn over, but kids with mohawks sadly tend to overlook. I only saw this once, possibly during the tour in support of "Culture For Pigeon", the third and final full-length from Wynne Greenwood, and it kinda blew my mind, to the point where I still wonder what I saw that so many others overlooked.

I really just wanted to dance, you know? I was a young white cis male, finishing up college, in love, finally confident enough in myself to accept it was ok to like Madonna as much as I like Fugazi. And where a lot of the electroclash scene felt ultra posey to me, this was mutant dance, for a weirdo who was looking for something that felt as honest as Gang of Four. This was a start for me.

Discogs

Click here to download.