Halcyon days

I wonder why it was called the 'Brown Album'?

I'm not sure whether this is a post about an album or just one song, because Orbital's Brown Album contains one of my top five (impossible to narrow it down further, believe me I've tried) electronic tracks of all time: Halcyon +on +on.


The swirling vocals are by Kirsty Hawkshaw, sampled from Opus III's early 90s rave classic 'Fine Day'. Repetitive looped voice samples are a feature of this album, but nowhere are they used quite as devastatingly as on Halcyon. Haunting, cinematic, touching, rarely has dance music sounded quite so emotional. Not surprising when you consider that the track was supposedly inspired by the Hartnoll brothers' own mother's addiction to tranquilisers.

Unsurprisingly too, its sweeping, bittersweet sonics have appeared on countless movie soundtracks, usually at the point of conclusion when battle is done. It's a sad fact that most electronic music doesn't age well but Halcyon, released twenty years ago in 1993, sounds as fresh as a daisy growing on a newly laid camomile lawn.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure the same can't be said for one of the films it featured in: Mortal Kombat. I'll let you decide...

Splendid Isolation

A strangely beautiful album

Shoegaze. Barely known electronic sub-genre or instruction for optimum listening? I can't be sure, but I do know that the undisputed king of this little musical cul-de-sac is Ulrich Schnauss. And his finest hour has to be 'A Strangely Isolated Place'. But don't let the title fool you - it'll leave you feeling anything but lonely...

The album features eight digital lullabies that range from laid back to completely horizontal - this is the sort of chill out music that chill out music chills out to when it really needs to chill out. Well, you get the picture.

This long player glides along on waves of shimmering chords, mysterious vocal washes and sparkling beats. They're the kind of beautifully chilled soundscapes that should send you to Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.  But weirdly doesn't. Because you won't want to miss a single sonic second.

From the warm waves of 'Gone Forever' to the dreamy 'A Letter From Home' to the gentle introspection of 'Clear Day' you'll quickly find yourself staring intently at your laces with a big dumb smile on your face.

This binary universe

You wouldn't believe how hard it was to pick the first album to write about. In the end I decided to go with the one that inspired the title of my blog. This Binary Universe by BT is in my opinion the first true electronic symphony. A digital opus of sublime soaring strings and gorgeous glitchy noise, wrapped around some truly magnificent warped beats, played by an orchestra of robots. It's the kind of thing I imagine a Terminator might have on his internal mp3 player to listen to while exterminating the human race.

Especially the track above, the fabulously mental Antikythera Mechanism.

It was a bit of a departure for the only superstar DJ called Brian, the majority of his work up to this point being in the key of trance. He'd worked on a few soundtracks in the build up to this album, which probably helped inspire this change of direction, but nothing in BT's back catalogue prepared me for the joy of hearing - and seeing - this. The album came with a DVD of short films shot specially for each composition. They're as wonderfully eclectic as the music that inspired them.

Music that became such a labour of love that BT actually went to the lengths of inventing pieces of software to create some of the sounds and time signatures. Now that's dedication even a Terminator would be proud of.

Look, even the album cover features robots!

Bleeps, beats and basslines...

...These are a few of my favourite things. Since I was old enough to develop a decent taste in music it's been firmly rooted in the category electronica. Music for robots, compositions in the key of X. And the weirder the better.

I've been a collector and crate digger for as long as I can remember and my library of CDs is taking over every cupboard, bookcase and even the loft of my home. You could say my house is full of, well, house (amongst other genres)!

This blog is a thinly veiled excuse to go back through my collection and dig out some rarities, lost classics and little heard of extended mixes and then write about them. There might even be some sounds to go with the words, if I can work out how to do it.

It might be fun, it'll definitely be noisy...