Wednesday 14 November 2018

Ilictronix Podcast: The Season Of Tech

Claude and Adam share and discuss their favorite tracks of the week. This week, Claude digs deep in his techno crates and Adam plays his darker tracks for the changing seasons. Featuring tracks from Galaxy 2 Galaxy, Aphex Twin, Bjarki a new track from Clark and more!

This week's ilictronix podcast is now live! I changed the idea I had for my selections based on Adam's opening choice, I talk a little bit about it in the intro chat of the show, but the short of it is that I canned a planned generic Cyberpunk rundown from my spotify playlist of the same name and instead went all in on the techno front. It's of course front loaded with Artificial Intelligence-era Warp stuff but stay tuned, I pull out a couple of rarities towards the end! I also say later on in the episode, but I wanted my choices to be a nice grab bag of techno I like, so that it could serve as a nice jumping in point for anyone listening who's interested, because 'Techno' is an incredibly broad label to tackle. Adam also hits it out of the park with his choices, diving deep intro darkness, treating us to yet another annual installment of his Fall-come-Winter playlists as the brutal Chicago winter begins to take hold. I always enjoy hearing what he comes up with, and especially when I get yet another reminder to pull my finger out and update my Clark-related listening. Tracklist and show notes follow as always:

Tracklist:
Intro:
Nebula - Deep Space

Claude’s picks:
F.U.S.E - A New Day
Aphex Twin - Polynomial-C
Musicology - Telefone 529
Joey Beltram - The Vertical
Bryan Zentz - Floating Point


Adam’s Picks
Bjarki - This 5321
Jensen Interceptor - Battery Assault
Clark - Harpsichord E.C.S.T.
Smerz - Worth It
Vtgnike - Gkbeats

Outro:
Galaxy 2 Galaxy - Jupiter Jazz


Show Notes:
The video Adam was talking about of Squarepusher live at Fuji Rock was easy enough to find, on Squarepusher's own channel of all places. He's appeared there a few times since but this is most definitely peak classic 'pusher, the VHS artifacts and the downright vintage laptop he's using only add to that. Joking aside, it's great to see not only the man himself, but also the crowd be super into it, even if it does get a little experimental at times. 'Pusher was nice enough to include a tracklist in the video description too; the set's split into two parts: Part One and Part Two

I thought I'd also link the details of the Ghost In The Shell albums I talked about. Kicking off with Megatech Body, where I apparently had my own Mandela Effect moment because it's actually called CD and not Co? I guess it would make sense with the vinyl pressing too. Anyway, there's a discogs page with all the different pressings in and all their deliciously 90's graphic design; very handy if you're looking to avoid the Taiwanese bootlegs that exist. If you're looking to pick it up remember to look for the LTD. edition one, it has an extra CD that almost doubles the tracklist!.

The same goes for the tribute albums, I thought that discogs only had the bootleg pressings listed but that seems to have changed. There's a few for sale on there too if you'd like your own slice of obscure techno history! The first album, with the endearingly Japanese title Tribute Category:Techno Style seems to be a little cheaper than the sequel, I can't think of why other than the Scan X track having an incorrect name on the booklet (it's labelled 'Reflections' on the pack when the tune in question is 'Higher', and unlike the Zentz track I mentioned in the episode, they did see a release beyond this compilation.) The second, dubbed in suitably technological fashion Tribute Category:Techno Style Ver2.0.0 is there too, but there's no traclist errors to speak of here. I will say I like discogs new system of showing you the release history of a track if you click on the title of it, makes it easy to make sure I'm not spreading misinfo. I used to to make sure that I was right when I said the Zentz tune only appears on that comp, which it does.

Just as a final aside, if you fall down the rabbit hole of trying to track down soundtracks and similar stuff to the above, another helpful resource other than discogs is VGMDB, as it's name suggets, it's essentially discogs but for animated series' and videogames. Makes it handy to track down catalog numbers and cross reference tracklists if need be. It also has a marketplace like discogs, so it's definitely worth checking out in this case. It's not as populated as Discogs' marketplace, but it can help if you're looking for something super obscure!

And that should be it for the show notes this week, if there are any missing I'll update the post as and when I'm made aware of them as I re-listen to the episode. I'm really happy with how this week's tunred out in therms of selections and talk, despite my slightly cobbled-together tracklist I think I did a good job of nailing what I like about techno, and of course it's always nice to have someone else's selections to get stuck into too. Myself and Adam will be back next week with more of the usual, until then, stay safe and enjoy the music all! We'll leave the light on for ya.

-Claude Van Foxbat

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