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8-Bit Operators: Tribute to Depeche Mode: Enjoy the Science
Various Artists
(8-Bit Operators)

Note: Since editor-at-large S.L. Kreighton was actually alive when Depeche Mode put out its first single, and he has a grasp of what "chiptune" music is, we made him listen to this new tribute collection. Then when he fell asleep, we took his notes and published them here, exactly as written.

1. "But Not Tonight" - Bacalao
Drives home the significant charm of Dave Gahan's voice. Instrumental bed is fine, and the treated "ooohs" are pretty.

2. "Enjoy the Silence" - Herbert Weixelbaum
Oh Herbert! This doesn't have the immediate-joy of his 8-bit "Tansmusik" from the Kraftwerk tribute.

3. "Boys Say Go" - GOTO80
Dunno this one

4. "Policy of Truth" - Matt Nida feat. Lisa Schumann
Instrumentally, much of this sounds as if it could be an early DM composition. Good choice for vocalist, as Lisa Schumann's gender gives the words a different spin.

5. "Strange Love" - ComputHer
THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT. ComputeHer's reading of "Strangelove" recalls the future-fear of battered VHS horror films with plots involving a computer becoming obsessed with a human and going all Lifetime bad-boyfriend on any meatspace occupier foolish enough to get in the way.

6. "Martyr" - gwEm
Eh.

7. "Clean" - Laker feat. ONTBG
Really does something different with the tune and adds something (possibly) not done by DM: a guest verse from rapper ONTBG.

8. ffwd
[The song is "Photographic (Megamix)" - 8-Bit Operators -- ed.]

9. "New Life" - Patokai
Just a sped-up cover of a song that's already locked in the era in which it was created.

10. "(Set Me Free) Remotivate Me" - Aonami
I don't recall this song. The Web tells me it was a b-side to "Master and Servant." Huh.

11. "Never Let Me Down Again" - crashfaster
Why does the Vocoder (well, Vocoder-like) voice process suit chip-tunes so well? Because it removes the last human element. Hands down the best song DM ever wrote. Not a bad cover.

12. "Dreaming Of Me " - gameboymusicclub
Topic exhaustion sets in.

13. Somebody - Naomi Sample
I'm pretty sure I cried myself to sleep listening to this song at least once when I was 15.

14. "I Just Can’t Get Enough" - Yerzmeyey
Oh, we probably can. Yerzmeyey's treatment is fine. But after Nouvelle Vague, covering this should have stopped.

15. "Behind The Wheel" - Inverse Phase
Pretty, but I'm going to open the door and do the Adam-12 roll. Enough.


Reference materials: Remember when you found that old cassette of the first Depeche Mode album and the keyboards sound like toys now? And it's kind of cool, still, but maybe a little annoying when you're not in the mood? Yup.

We'll be right back after these messages.

ABC get the shaft, at least here in the United States, when it comes to recollections of 1980s music and specifically, the second British Invasion. Singer Martin Fry ["F-R-Y" -- ed.] was the heterosexual, soulful, and ultimately more fun, predecessor to Morrissey -- all dry Noel Coward wit but clearly ready to charm a lady after the show.

Their '85 LP How to Be ... a Zillionaire! aimed squarely at that decade's crass consumerism, but coated the pill in tasty danceable pop boosted by some impressively huge synth-bass sounds. Plus, "Be Near Me" is one of the best calls to romance of '80s pop. FACT.

The sort-of title track from Zillionaire! has a fun animated video, that looks like a lost episode of Jem. To the dancefloor!


How To Be A Millionaire by SirCumstance

No Take Aways

It's Beltane sweethearts. Let's listen to Bow Wow Wow and practice whistling with a blade of grass.


[Courtesy of HOLLYwoodgoesFRANKIE]

Cruel and Bewitching

Put down the taco son, there’s another holiday going on in the Northern Hemisphere today that has nothing to do with war or binge drinking. Today is Beltane, otherwise known as the start of summer for those who follow the pagan calendar.

The weather may not be very summer-like where ever you are. At The Typing Monkey’s global headquarters it’s positively autumnal … except for all the green. We’re halfway there. So to celebrate please play the following as often as you like:

The Slits
"Typical Girls"

[courtesy Nemova]

And if the word "Beltane" stirs some distant recognition in your brains, perhaps this is why.

(Moon)Light Powered

DEASTRO
Moondagger
(Ghostly International)
Press play and don't plan on stopping once you do. Deastro, aka Randolph Chabot and a trio of new recruits to back him, finds a nearly exhausting athletic pace at the start of his debut for Ghostly International and never lets up for the duration of 14 songs.

Chabot based some of the music on a dream he had, and the whirring electronics and running-paced rhythms reflect that indefinable urgency only dreams create. It's as if he wants listeners to just keep moving with him, whether that movement be dancing or something even more fanciful.

Shimmering waves of synthesizer -- big, square-wave squeals and peals -- roll over simple bass lines and crash into keyboard passages that bounce and chime. Chabot's distant-sounding, but finely delivered vocals and some crisp rhythm guitar add human warmth to Moondagger, especially "Toxic Crusaders" and "Day of Wonder," where the drum kit makes clear that real people are behind every note here.

No obvious candidate for a single stands out, though Ghostly put "Parallelogram" and "Vermillion Plaza" out ahead of the LP. However, given our collective drunkenness on MP3s and a tendency to discard before we've properly digested, just so we can run to the next pretty sound, is an album worth playing from start to finish a bad thing?

If Chabot did anything wrong with Moondagger, it's that he doesn't give us a chance to rest before another song demands action.

Reference material: Chabot's voice, and his restless electronic pop sounds, recall New Order's Low-Life and Brotherhood. [Note to the uninitiated: Please get those albums.] Fans of MGMT wanting to stretch out a bit, or White Williams fans looking for something a little more energetic, should hear Deastro too.

WWDOOSV (Part IV)

sub-ID
BFF
(1320)
Semi-improvised experimental electronic duo. If reading that phrase caused involuntary eye-rolling, please stop reading and scroll on to the next item, or click on one of the "Monkey Love" links and forget this ever happened.

BFF has nine tracks of stuttering drum machines with flighty programming that halts most of the fluidity of what might have been electronic funk, and tosses in some organic elements including trumpet and voice. At times it approaches cubist smooth jazz. Brad Bowden and Alana Rocklin, the people behind the name, know what they're doing, as it can't have been easy to program some of the rhythms. Then again, maybe the joke's on us.

Standouts: "Yup 1" has moments of comparative beauty.
Released: July 22
myspace.com/subid


THE TING TINGS
We Started Nothing
(Columbia)
This is the album that gave birth to what could have been the summer song of 2008 in the United States. But "That's Not My Name" didn't hit as big as it should have. What's left beyond that pristine, elementary single is a collection of forgettable-to-good tunes that lift from Blondie, The Flying Lizards and New Order but lyrically aspire only to Lily Allen in casual wear.

Standouts: "Traffic Lights" allows Katie White to stop the cheerleader shouts long enough to demonstrate that her sugar-wafer singing actually works in the right context. But they can't top "That's Not My Name."
Released: June 3
myspace.com/thetingtings

Resuscitation

KUDU
Back for More
(Nublu)
Great source material makes this collection of remixes work. Most of the Back for More tracks come from the band’s 2006 LP Death of the Party.

The title of that LP shows off the band’s winking self-awareness. On the surface it’s self-deprecation, but the subtext is both instruction and threat. Play Death when the festivities are sagging, but risk sending every one into fits of Kudu-induced arousal.


Back does more of the same. Singer and synth player Sylvia Gordon does sound like a lab-crafted blues mama of the man-killing sort. Yes, she’s part Siouxsie Sioux, and part Annabella Lwin, but there’s a lot of pure New York nightclub monarch in there too.

Gordon’s a clever lyricist as well, capable of delivering the usual come-ons that populate most dance-club vocals, yet excels at tales of apocryphal men (“Bar Star”) and women (“Black Betty”) who are often objects of envy, admiration or spite -- sometimes all three.

Nearly everything on Back aims for dancefloor bliss, generally inflating programmer/drummer Deantoni Parks’ elegant arrangements into slick, neon-lit modern disco. Sinden’s remix of “Let’s Finish” blows the subway dirt off the original and converts the poppy tune into an electro cut. And LingLing re-imagine the brisk pace of “Playing House” as stark, echo-filled dubstep.

Kudu even revisit their own “King Kong” and include a new collaboration with DJ/dance-music luminary Armand Van Helden (the retro-massive “Your Words”).

All of it’s ideal for heating up a summer party, though by the time Back for More ended, The Typing Monkey simply tossed Death of the Party into the player and danced even more enthusiastically.

Reference materials: What are you doing without Kudu’s Death of the Party in your collection? You crushed on Bow Wow Wow, spaz-danced to The Banshees, and later discovered the rhythm and blues side of TK Records. You know what to do.

Relax Baby Be Cool

STEREO TOTAL
Paris-Berlin
(Kill Rock Stars)
At what would normally be the start of side two of Stereo Total’s 7th LP, the duo delivers a socko double-shot of disco. "Merh Licht" hits the early 1980s style in which house and new wave were slapping a new coat of paint on disco and reselling it to the same audience. The track rests almost entirely on a constant hi-hat, kick drum and spare synthesizers.

Meanwhile "Ta Voix au Telephone" sounds like a well-equipped ABBA cover band not at all trying to disguise the fact that they're lifting from Leo Sayer's "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing" and the blatant pornography of The Andrea True Connection's "More More More."

Find any of that distasteful? Then you should probably stop reading. Otherwise Paris-Berlin finds the painfully self-aware co-ed band finding a keen balance between the smooth electronics of Musique Automatique (2001) and their return noisy pop with Do the Bambi (2005).

At 14 songs, the record isn’t without lows -- particularly the been-there, done-thatness of “Patty Hearst” and the too quiet (and guest-heavy) “Baby Revolution.” But the high points provide enough fun that forgiveness comes quick.

“Komplex mit dem Sex” has Francoise Cactus singing hilarious German lyrics about gender confusion. There’s a silly Shonen Knife sounding number (“Plastic”) and enough icy keyboards and stiff guitar/drum rhythms to burst art student pretensions by playing the game better than any one else.

Appropriately, another stellar moment is when they cover Serge Gainsbourg’s “Relax Baby Be Cool.” Plastic Bertrand swiped this riff and fluffed it up a bit for “Ca Plane Pour Moi” but clearly it works best as a monotone command fit for a bank-heist getaway, or maybe a bad afternoon at the hash pipe.

Reference materials: Stereo Total will appeal to fans of Komeda the ye-ye sound of 1960s Paris.