Retro Electro bands.

I have long been a fan of electronic music, initially 70's artists like
Tangerine Dream and Jean Michel Jarre, and then in the 90's techno bands
such as Underworld and Orbital, and obviously arching over both areas
Kraftwerk.



The 80's electro-pop never interested me, I was always looking for
something more more atmospheric and expansive. I also like traditional
ambient music (not what techno fans referred to as ambient, which mostly
seemed to be fairly poor techno), especially Brain Eno and Harold Budd, as well as some of Sylvian and Fripp's offerings.



I mentioned a couple of bands in the 'listening to' thread, and was
asked to expand a little on them, so here is a little about some bands
you may not have heard of, and some you may have heard of, but maybe not
considered to be of interest.



I collected many of the Tangerine Tree/Leaves recordings, bootlegs which
were distributed by fans of the band through Yahoo groups at the start
of the last decade. The band were positive about the releases, and even
officially issued a 20 or so of the releases through their bootleg boxes
and bootmoon series.



Together with some of the Tangerine Dream recordings a friend sent me a
compilation of bands who were continuing to make analogue synth and
sequencer based music in the style of Tangerine Dream and Jean Michel
Jarre. Until then I was completely unaware that people were still making
such music, and performing it live around the world. A very niche
market these days, many of the bands make a loss by recording and
performing, but do so through the love of the music. Some/many of the
bands can very amateurish, but a few do stand out, so here are a few I
would say are worth trying if this music interests you.



Redshift

Mark and Julian Shreeve, together with other collaborators, and now including Ian Boddy.

Recommended albums: Redshift (1996), Faultline (2003)

http://www.redshift.biz/



Free System Projekt.

A Dutch band, have increasingly become more influenced by mid 70's Tangerine Dream

Recommended albums: Atmospheric Conditions (2002), Moyland (2005), British Aisles (2007) (musiczeit download)

http://www.freesystemprojekt.nl/



Arc

Mark Shreeve and Ian Boddy, but they do have a different feel to Redshift

Recommended albums: Arcturus (2002), Church (2010)



Other bands to try.

Brendan Pollard, Airsculpture, Fanger & Schonwalder, Radio Massacre
International (People Would Really Like Space Rock ... is good, but a
lot of it is very poor, be warned), The Omega Syndicate - were a bit
amateurish to start with but have become a very good live band over the
years There are many more, but it can get a bot samey listening through a
lot of them and those are the bands who have stood out to me.



There has been an annual concert/festival in Hampshire for the last ten
years called The Hampshire Jam, which is now organised by the website
http://www.musiczeit.com/, where you can also see an awful lot of
listings and hear some samples. The concert is held in Liphook village
hall, which holds something like 160 people, so not a massive event, but
a very pleasurable day out, there are usually four or five bands
playing, some of the shows have been fantastic, some not so.

http://www.awakenings-em.co.uk/ - run similar events based in the midlands but slightly less accomplished artists some of the time, and there are similar events in Europe and the USA too.

As well as muscizeit, there are a couple f other websites dealing in this style of music:
http://www.synthmusicdirect.com/ - CD rather than download based website run by STeve who runs Musiczeit.
http://www.groove.nl/ - Dutch website, rather annoying at times with floaty bits of graphics.



I'll post a bit about the Tangerine Tree later, and also some bands more
recent bands worth trying if you like this sort of music like Orbital,
Aphex Twin and possibly Underworld.



I hope that gives a little information to try the bands if you are interested.



Jamie



Comments

  • JimJim
    edited February 2011
    Strangely, this is useful Jamie.  I really didn't like electronic music way back when in me yoof.  But lately I've been listening to some bit by bit and finding it oddly attractive and I'm not sure why.

    I shall investigate, many thanks.
  • Glad to be able to help.

    I will try and make a list of my favourite electronic albums, covering various fields and moods. Tangerine Dream and Jean Michel Jarre remain favourites of mine, but a lot of the new bands have been making some really enjoyable music too.
  • Apart from TD and JMJ - both of which don't do much for me, to be honest - this is all a mystery to me.

    I like that! I'll be checking some of this stuff out.
  • edited February 2011
    Thanks for this. I appreciate music pointers. I've been reacquainting myself with modern electronica music of recent but know nowt re the stuff you're mentioning. Erlend Oye's album Unrest is nice IMHO
    Andy
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