2013, Reflections and Commentary

2013 is rapidly coming towards its end, and as this has been a very interesting year for me, I thought I'd take a few minutes for reflection. If you don't feel like reading what is by all accounts a blog post and not a music post, just skip the next few paragraphs and go for the flash players.

I really lost touch with electronic music. I can never be sure whose fault it was, really. Did I change? Did the music? Maybe I just got tired of seeing nothing but dubstep, brostep, chillstep, step step step BLOODY-FRIGGIN-STEP on every genre tag I came across. In truth, this is probably the story of two people who both changed and realized it was time to move on for each other's sake. The music I fell in love with was this happy indie-dance, electro-infused scene where rockers and ravers co-existed. 2007. 2008. Digitalism - Idealism. Klaxons - Myths of the Near Future. Does it Offend You Yeah - You Have No Idea What You're Getting Yourself Into. Justice - Cross. Crystal Castles. The Kitsune Maison compilations gave me tastes of everything going on and I loved it.

#5 was really weird

This is where I'm not sure what changed. 2009 was a huge letdown for me. 2010 was a huge letdown. I just couldn't connect with anything going on culturally at any level. 2011, Justice, Digitalism and SebastiAn dropped albums and I thought it was all coming back, but it wasn't. Culture was looking for that kid I had been in 2007 with a shaggy moptop, boundless enthusiasm and a Deviantart full of Daft Punk fan art, and I just wasn't that kid anymore.

Boba, circa 2008

But now it's 2013. I've spent the last year sitting in game shops playing Magic and D&D, helping friends move and move on, listening to the radio because I'm tired of everything on my player, and becoming a comic book junkie. Somewhere in all this, I began to reconnect. A friend of mine from work was moving out, and living down the street and owning a pickup truck, that left me with the boxes and furniture to transport. Searching for some packing tape behind my seat, I found a mix CD titled simply 'Electro', and popped it into the CD player. It was a collection of tracks from the first few months of Ilictronix (for nostalgia's sake, I plan on posting this list sometime later in the holiday season), and the memories just smacked into me hardcore and I began to regain my appreciation for it all. As we were unloading stuff at her storage unit, my friend mentions that she can bring her own music to her other job, and asked me if I could make some CDs of stuff like what I'd had going in the truck. So I began hunting through my music, putting together collections of all my old favorites. I began googling some artists, happily discovering many had come out with new albums or had them in the works. So far I've seen Klaxons, La Roux, Danger and a few others are slated for probable 2014 releases, and I've heard rumors of others...

To make a long story very short, 2013 is the first year that has supplied music I've been excited about in quite awhile. Granted, I'm not quite the underground-exclusive guy I used to be and Imagine Dragons and Capital Cities are mainstays on my playlists, but it's something. It feels like it felt back in 2008 when I first picked up Idealism and listened to Pogo for the first time.

Insert stock music photgraphy here

Since I've drawled on long enough, I'll skip on excessive commentary and just leave you with some of my favorite tracks of 2013.

HEARTSREVOLUTION · Ride Or Die

HEARTSREVOLUTION · Heart vs The Machine

Capital Cities · I Sold My Bed, But Not My Stereo

Until next time, fellows and girls.

More Stuff

As you may have heard, Empire of the Sun is returning with a new album this June, and it's about damn time. Empire of the Sun put out some great stuff in the '08-'10 period (those 3 years when everything was just awesome), and I've been waiting for more brilliant tracks like We Are the People or Walking on a Dream ever since. It seems we might be getting just that.



I know some of the readers here are friends with me on Facebook, in which case you know that I'm a big Ellie Goulding fan. If she were an anime character and a I was a wiabu, she'd be mai waifu. But since I'm not that corny, she's just my favorite female pop artist, which is a much classier distinction. People may also have heard that I'm not a fan of Louis La Roche. Well I'm not. A lot of his strikes me as distinctly unoriginal, and I still don't believe his claims that he didn't intentionally impersonate Thomas Bangalter to promote his Peach EPin 2008. This remix kinda goes to prove my point- it's just dripping in Together. And also in Surkin. It's like he just superglued pieces of Surkin to Together with Ellie Goulding vocals. Meh. I dunno. I'm biased. Either way, this is still a very cool remix. I'm hoping to pick up the Halcyon Remixes album that Nike put out the other day to review it.



Also on Soundcloud, Magna posted this thing.



If you don't remember, Magna is an awesome American electro artist who released an EP on Power Glove Records a couple years ago and then quickly left his labelmates in the dust and became like a Super-Saiyan of production, and has been wowing everyone with crisp, fresh, genre-bending electro and house ever since. He's a pretty cool guy.