Electric Independence

The top six Electric Independence things of 2005. Break it down…

Vitalic

OK Cowboy

PIAS/Citizen

Odd: I played this to death every day up until its April release. Since then I’ve hardly touched

OK Cowboy

, but I still adore it. What initially appealed, I think, was the giddy prospect of Vitalic becoming an international techno superstar who’d crossover into the charts and

Top Of The Pops

and “La Rock 01” would be used to sell everything from Lucozade to hair gel to Mercedes and he’d generally slay 2005. As far as I can tell this hasn’t happened. But it “happened” this year for Mylo and that weird fashion DJ guy David Guetta (is he an alien?) so it just shows what a waste of time rooting for the underdog is.

Jackson And His Computer Band

Smash

Warp

Did you hear this album? It’s incredible. As it happens, 26-year-old Parisian electronics genius Jackson Fourgeaud is a close personal friend of Electric Independence but I’ve no qualms about championing him and his music in the press until the end of time. I’m thrilled to have instigated his relationship with Warp and it’s been eye-opening indeed to have been involved since day one in a “campaign” such as this. There’s a feeling that Smash ought to have made a bigger impact since its September release but, as well as it’s done around the world, it’s actually turned out to be one of those word-of-mouth classics that people who love this kind of music will eventually find out about. There’s no hurry. His live set is captivating, incidentally.

TBA

Annulé

Max Ernst

Hearing an artist for the first time, falling in love with their music, and then finding out all you can about them is one of life’s pleasures for me. It was easy to be seduced by this bittersweet album from Tusia Beridze, a 26-year-old producer originally from Tbilisi in Georgia. But she left that place and these days she lives with her partner, Thomas Brinkmann, in the German countryside so it’ll be interesting to hear what she comes up with next. Together they DJ their rubbery techno everywhere, laptops side-by-side, really enjoying themselves. She told us that they live next door to a pony called Johnny who eats their grass from time to time.

Kelley Polar

Love Songs Of The Hanging Gardens

Environ

If you know Kelley Polar at all it’ll be through his work with Metro Area—he arranged strings on their more popular tracks—or from his three exquisite EPs on Environ, Morgan Geist’s impeccable disco imprint. His AMAZING debut pop album,

Love Songs Of The Hanging Gardens

, has just come out and if we cared about pointless end-of-year lists we’d say it’s a “contender for album of the year”. Instead we’ll just say it sounds like Christmas in heaven and watch him slowly but surely explode in 2006, like a slow-motion firework.

The CBS Top 100

www.cbs.nu

Sometimes it’s hard to imagine what life was like before the Cybernetic Broadcasting System, Dutch disco master I-F’s online radio station and forum. Besides broadcasting the BEST electronic music 24 hours a day and besides being a place where a community of electro nuts from all over the world can pretend to be robots and talk for hours about the different mixes of Steel Mind’s “Bad Passion”, the CBS’s inaugural Top 100 chart of viewers’/users’ favourite tracks, first broadcast over Christmas last year and downloadable from the site, has provided countless moments of joy and inspiration in what has been a strange old year. This year’s countdown commences on Boxing Day.

Various Artists

Minimize To Maximize

Minus

I liked this compilation so much I stuck its promotional stickers, tastefully I might add, on my bicycle. Normally that’s not my style but the bike was this sleek silver Marin hybrid model that looked beautifully techno and rode like a dream and I felt the minimalist-looking Minus stickers complemented the streamlined, futuristic feel of the bike. But in September the frame snapped due to a freak stress fracture, an unfixable break. I was devastated. Then a month or so later I found the same model at a crazy price on Brick Lane. Now I need more Minus stickers.

PIERS MARTIN