This obscure Miami-based band recorded some of the finest minimal synth-punk tracks ever made on two ridiculously rare 7" pressings. Check this "live" cut of Meteoright, the audio for which is available on 180g vinyl at Minimal Wave for $22.

Meteoright Live

Schematic

SCHEMATIC: 24bit/96kHz vinyl rips, record scans, cover art and vintage flyer artwork...

Futurisk Flyer Illustration c. 1982

Futurisk Flyer Illustration c. 1982

I recently scored an original 7" pressing of Player Piano from 1982 on Clark Humphrey Records.

To fuel your AV room rock out, all the songs from Player Piano are presented below in their correct order. These videos are also now available on our youtube playlist. Listen to how different the studio and live versions of Meteoright are!

A1) Poison Ivy

A2

A2) Meteoright

A3

A3) Push Me, Pull You (Part 2)

B1

B1) Lonely Streets

B2

B2) Split Second Decision

SPA

While working with a group of nutters at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in the 1960s, Derbyshire pioneered loop-based composition by manually recording and piecing together magnetic tape loops and rocking multiple reel-to-reel machines (see below). This brief clip of Derbyshire reel-to-reel beat matching is taken from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop documentary Alchemists of Sound, which can be viewed in its entirety on our Equipment + Theory playlist.

To give you an idea of just how progressive this dame was, this audio clip from the BBC archives reveals the makings of a dense, tasty electro track that predates Kraftwerk's Autobahn by at least four or five years.

Lastly, to demonstrate how all this theory and avant garde technical ability combine to create legendary music, I've  included the original Dr. Who TV intro which,  although composed by Ron Grainer, sounds so amazing because Derbyshire "realised" it.

This song was composed and performed by Delia Derbyshire, THE goddess of electro. Although it might sound like Gorillaz to contemporary listeners, you'll find a texture in this music that you just don't hear today. The sexual undertones are distinctly 1960s and add an wickedly psychedelic component to the song. For more info on Derbyshire, check the post related to the Dr. Who theme song.

Man am I feeling this tune! The slow descent into acid-fuelled dancing madness is too much to bear on this spring day. You can't beat those slightly off key vixen vocals. Bagarre's Circus LP or Lemonsweet 12" are classic slabs of electronic italo that sell for around $100 each on Italian vinyl, but you can score Spanish pressings with slightly lower sonic quality for roughly half that. Happy hunting!

http://youtu.be/RVWYENKd8wE

End of line...

No, Michael Stipe and did not dabble in Italo. Actaually, Computer Communication was the second of four releases to appear on the short-lived Xanadu label from Italy in 1983. This is a readily available and largely underrated Italo classic 12" that you can still buy in excellent condition for around $20. They're pretty tough to find for sale in the US, so you'll probably have to pay international air postage from Italy if you're dying for the track.

SCHEMATIC: Automan 11 bootleg reissue...

Beyond buying a few records to lower the per unit shipping cost or waiting for one to show up in the US, this track was reissued as a high-quality bootleg as the B-side of Automan 11 in 2005 along with Junior  Byron's Dance to the Music and Kazino's Binary on the A-side. A NM example is currently available in the US for $10 on Discogs Marketplace.

I embedded youtube videos for all three tracks, since they're all pretty rad. That being said, I do prefer the dub version to Junior Byron's track, which was used to great effect on DFA label co-owner and LCD Soundstyem frontman James Murphy's FabricLive.36 compilation.