It's only electronic music, but I like it.

I recently had to put together an annotated compilation CD as a final assignment for one of my classes (yes, that's right. For school). We had to take any of one of the themes discussed in the class and work with that. I decided to choose the issue of the authenticity of emotional expression in electronic music. A lot of people don't seem to think that drum sequencers and synthesizers can have the same emotional impact that guitars can. They think that music performed by a human drummer is somehow more "real" than one performed by a machine.

That is bullshit. The ends justify the means, my friend. I don't care how anybody comes up with a piece of music - if it makes me feel something good then I like it.

So here is a list of electronic music that I really like. It's not all instrumentals, either. I tried to include tracks that I blur the line between human and machine. And some that I just really like. Here is the list. Go download this stuff, because it's all good.

1. Air - Sexy Boy

I'm going to begin with this Air song because I happen to know a lot of people's whose introduction to electronic music was this group, and specifically this song. It might sound like a band, but it most certainly is not. The driving rhythm of the programmed drum samples and keyboards carry the ethereal floating vocals, which are only a couple of sets of lyrics. Is that a human being singing the chorus of the song? Of course it is! The vocalist is being put through a device called a vocoder, giving his voice a cool effect that makes "Sexy Boy" sound like the work song of a bunch of robots in a futuristic factory that builds, well, sexy boys I guess.

2. Jonny Greenwood - Moon Mall

A couple of years ago, lead guitarist and renaissance man of Radiohead, Jonny Greenwood composed the soundtrack to the film "Bodysong." The director wanted an avante garde mix of classical music styles and electronic music. This particular track is entirely keyboards made to sound like strummed guitars. At leas that would be my guess. Dancing around the main keyboard figure are glitches and little sped up samples that create a percussive tickle. I think it's really interesting how he managed to pull in this chord progression that could have easily sounded great on conventional string instruments, but filtered it through a non-conventional instrument. These sounds can't be made by a human being through any other means but synthesizers and drum sequences and yet when I listen to this it puts me in a whole other world, just like Radiohead's music does.

3. Boards of Canada - Telephasic Workshop

The moment that we read in class that electronic musicians liked to take the human voice and turn it into a percussive instrument, my mind instantly thought of a couple of tracks. The first one was this one by Boards of Canada. When the song starts, the beat is very minimal and there are no people present yet. But slowly the cut up voices get added on, morphing the beat into this amazing mind-fuck and after a joint or two you'd swear that the pieces of words are forming sentences of their own. This is headphone music at it's finest. But is it de-humanizing performance? Hell no. If we're going to go ahead and say that the human voice in an instrument then there is no reason to limit it to being a melodic one.

4. Daft Punk - Harder Better Faster Stronger

Another vocoder song by the vocoder masters. This is a great song to put on when you want to get people jumping at a party - not quite the peak of your dance party, but a good starting point. I really love the way they have gone in and cut up the overall rhythm track to highlight the vocals. A band could have done that but when its a case of pro-tools editing it gives it this really cool abrupt feeling that in a dance room environment works so well. Though many of the instruments are real samples, they've manipulated them in such a way that would be impossible to replicate the actual tones and sounds with real musicians. At least, if you tried it, I think it'd be difficult. I'd like to hear it though.

5. Underworld - Pearl's Girl

I absolutely had to include an Underworld track on this compilation because I think they're one of the coolest "bands" I've ever heard, not to mention that they’re a techno group. This is from their live album "Everything, Everything." You might be wondering why a house/techno group would ever need to put out a live album. Well if you listen to these tracks on their original recording and then compare them to the awesome intensity found on the live versions you'll see why. This song is incredible because the vocal sample gets turned into this hypnotic mantra that forces the audience at the club to go, as the vocalist puts it, "Crazy." And when the drone comes in later on and you hear everyone flipping out, things only get better. I wish that I had been old enough to appreciate this stuff back in the 90s because I would like to have been at these gigs.

6. Radiohead - Idioteque

So technically this group is getting represented twice but I think that it is necessary. I think they pioneered the way for a lot of rock bands with this track. They basically showed people that it was possible for cold, hard electronic music to become warm and accessible through rock conventions. If you ever saw them perform this on SNL, then your first reaction was probably a lot like mine: "What the hell!?" Witnessing Thom Yorke flailing his arms around while drummer Phil Selway pounded out a beat along with the drum machines was a huge moment for me, personally. You could get the same kind of emotion out of analogue synthesizers and a live band as you could with guitars and amps. There are a lot of people who don't necessarily agree with this, but perhaps they've never heard this song blasted in a club and just let go. And they certainly can't have witnessed the band perform it live, or else they'd realize just how powerful it really is.

7. Cina Saffary - Young Leaves

This is not a track by a major label artist. I found it on a message board for electronic artists that I am a member of. This is an amateur, but he’s great! What is interesting about it is the use of old Nintendo and Atari sounds. This is a big trend in electronic music, as artists are beginning to use Nintendo chiptunes and soundfonts to create music. The melodies on here are very pretty, even though I can't shake the image of Mega man jumping around my TV screen from my mind as I listen to it. Oh, to be a child of the 90s again.

8. DJ Shadow - The Number Song

And now for some DJ Shadow. Here we've got some of the genre called Trip Hop, but it's really just straight up Djing sampling. Shadow uses some great drum breaks from songs and twists them up with vocal samples from all over the place. The result is a harkening back to old school hip hop on top of a heavy droning beat that is 100% DJ Shadow. I love this track because it makes me feel like break dancing. I don't know how to break dance so I won't do it, or else it might be more like break-my-neck-dancing.

9. The Streets - Blinded By The Lights

Here's a little more hip-hop but of another variety. White British rappers might sound like a novelty but I think that The Streets are really something special. I chose this particular song not only because it's my favorite by the artist but also because it mixes a few elements together we've talked about in class. You've got the fantastic beat and then over that a staccato techno club melody supporting the lyric, which is about taking drugs at a techno club. Brilliant! And the female vocalist? That's just one sample repeated over and over in a call-and-response with Mike Skinner's rapping. The song lyric actually ties into the overall story found on the "A Grand Don't Come For Free" record. But taken on it's own, I'd say it's a pretty accurate representation of getting stuck at a club on your own. And that backing track is just so good!

10. Four Tet - As Serious as Your Life

I included this song mostly because of the method behind the artist's mayhem. He jams with real musicians, records it, and then takes those files and chops them up into completely new compositions. So you can hear how this one is taken from what sounds like a cool drum and bass funk jam, but it gets turned into this hip-hop beat. And then it gets manipulated - pushed and pulled - repeated and cut up every which way. It just proves how laptops and studios really have become their own instruments. Real human performance gets transformed into this music that sounds like people actually COULD reproduce it. The ultimate remix.

11. Aphex Twin - Xtal

So I feel like you can't have a compilation about electronic music without including something by Richard D. James on it. And while I could have taught you something by including one of his more alienating, hard-to-listen-to tracks (you'd see how elitist some of this electronica can get), I'm instead going to give you my favorite track by Aphex Twin. This is probably one of the straightforward dance tracks in the repertoire and also one of the prettiest. It shifts back and forth from a lo-fi techno beat to drum lines that could probably be reproduced by a person, but even though it’s machines I still feel like there is some strong emotion in it. I love Aphex Twin because even when he's being difficult, I feel like he's always real and organic. This is electronic music you can feel and touch and taste, etc. Enjoy.