Nostalgia (Unfinished)

With school ending, readers can expect to see more posts from me and probably my colleages, as we don't have all that work to keep us from posting. I'm sorry that I havn't posted that much. With the sudden influx of readers, we've decided to have some us time. So here's a word from our blog. I'm only doing this, because I feel like it. After listening to a bunch of old indie rock songs I used to have on repeat back in the day, I entered a nostalgic mood today. In some sense, I'm looking back at our progression to where we are today. This is more a personal post. It's obviously stupid and feel free to skip it, it's long. I probably would.

This blog has Three contributors: Bastille and Jumpman, yes that's right. Bastille consists of two people: M and J, this is J. To anybody who has been reading this blog some confusion might have occurred about this. Someone who didn't know that would be confused about the above statement about not posting much. Us three guys since about two years ago started becoming obsessed with Electro, all coming from very different backgrounds. Though we all originally liked classic rock, my background was Indie rock, M's was jazz, and Jumpman's was classical (feel free to correct me Jumpman). M and I weren't actually even very good friends until we both discovered Electro. Ever since we have been obsessed with electronic music. People ask me and M all the time how we can possibly listen to this stuff 24/7 and not get a headache. The fact is we feel like we've found our calling with this, and as Ohh Crapp so nicely put it we " just came to accept [our] new religion". I remember car rides where one of us would drive, and the other would be DJing in the front seat, of course we were blasting it every time. After going off to college, we decided to continually keep each other updated on new things we were listening to. This was done via facebook message, and an extremely long thread appeared. After 1000 messages back and forth (on the dot, completely by accident), we decided to create a blog instead. This blog was created without any intensions of ever reaching the public eye, its main purpose was to create a nicer way to send music between ourselves.

With the current influx of readers, our blog's goals have changed a little bit, but our underlying values remain the same: to share between ourselves the music we are currently listening to. In this sense, we do not care about what is new and what is old, we post what we discover in the order we discover it. However, sometimes we will post some older stuff which we really appreciate and want to reiterate that (for example, the recent Buffalo Bunch post. M has been telling me for months about them, and I never got any of their stuff until his post), or we decide to do a more thorough search on an artist we already liked. You also won't see us posting any song we don't like, just because it's from a big name like Justice (unless it relates to the post, and in such cases we will make clear that we don't like the song). We post a lot of stuff, please be nice and at least occasionally buy their stuff.

For people who read this blog, I have a question that I'm really curious about, What got you into electronic music, even if your liking is slight? For us it was Daft Punk's Discovery, Justice's Cross, Boys Noize's Oi Oi Oi, what I feel is the least listened to and yet by far the best M83 album M83, and Ratatat's Classics. Pretty typical. I also want to ask other bloggers out there why they blog and what got them into blogging? And if any readers would like to tell us how they happened to stumble upon this blog, we're curious to know.

-J

Here are a bunch of throwbacks for us:

Kelly by M83 (Jumpman) It was 2007 and i was in santa cruz visiting a college there with a friend of mine who ended up getting me into electronic music, a very important even in my life indeed,

As Above, So Below (Justice Remix) by Klaxons (Jumpman) I had been partying it up in tokyo the summer of 2008, when a friend of mine decided to show me Justice's album cross

Walkman by SebastiAn (J) Sebastian is of course a fucking legend. Creating some of the hardest hitting shit out there. I just remember sitting in my shed with M and Jumpman and creating this epic ass buildup from Walkman into Robot rock, still use that today. Where have you gone Sebastian? Please put out something...

Feel God (TV Off) by Boys Noize (M) I remember when I was first getting into all this, I asked my buddy who knew more about electro than I did at the time some albums that I should get, and Oi Oi Oi was one of the two he said, along with The Looks by MSTRKRFT. I bought it from iTunes, listened to & Down, and just immediately flipped a shit. When we saw him at Coachella 08, it was the most amazing display of DJ skills we had ever seen, and he wasn't using a computer. He was like royalty on this giant stage in this epic enviornment full of amazing things, but for his hour, he had the crowd in he palm of his hand, it was really incredible. He dropped this track, which unfortunately never seems to receive much blog love.

No Day Massacre - Mr. Oizo (Jumpman)

Grand Canyon by Kavinsky (Jumpman)

Saharian Break by DJ Mehdi (Jumpman)

Who Is It (Vitalic Remix) by Bjork (M) This song is by far one of the most beautiful electro songs out there. This was that track that we would play to people who didn't like electro, and most of them loved it. It sort of transcends the genre. Vitalic just makes that sort of music. There was a while when I had lost my iPod, so I burned a CD his album OK Cowboy and was content listening to that on loop as I drove for about two months. He's on that list of DJs I need to see live before I die directly under Daft Punk. I wouldn't even care if his DJing skills sucked, his productions are so incredible and just mean a lot to me that it would be a fantastic experience.

Superheroes 2007 by The Toxic Avenger (J) The Toxic Avenger is someone who we've always seen as being underrated. His Superheroes EP was epic and fantastic. Out of all the electro fans I personally know, none of them really give Toxic the light of day. And yet he's been there for us since the very early days.

Sleep Deprivation by Simian Mobile Disco (M) This song is just awesome, and for a while was the only Simian Mobile Disco song that we loved. Although we always loved them and listened to them a lot while getting into electronic music, I really don't think we fully appreciated how incredibly awesome they were until we saw them live a month or two ago, and it was by far the greatest electronic show I have ever seen.

Crimewave (Crystal Castles Vs Health) by Crystal Castles (J) They're most famous song. It makes sense that I got into Crystal Castles so early, they're very indie. I think most people have a Crystal Castles phase if they're getting into electro. Seeing them live was great, too bad I didn't see them at Ultra. I've never been a huge fan of their remixes, so I'm kinda waiting for new material to pop up.

I Love The Bloody Beetroots by The Bloody Beetroots (M)
The Bloody Beetroots define electro for me. Their songs just make crowds go insane, its incredible. And they do such an incredible job of including these beautiful chord changes that are clearly inspired by the great Italian composers, including Vangelis and Ennio Morricone. They have such a great balance of beauty and banger and this song is such a great example of that. They really did innovate in their early days and you can really hear how most electro producers today (especially someone like Felix Cartal) are very inspired by their work.

Aerius Light (Breakbot Remix) by DatA (M) Breakbot was especially fascinating to me when I first heard him because he did not sound at all like any of the other guys. Much more relaxed, much more disco influence, but he still managed to not sacrifice any of the dance feel. He's still to this day one of my favorite producers, especially since he released his Dance On Glass mix, which I hold to be the most impressive DJ mix I've ever heard short of Daft Punk's Alive 2007. You can grab the mix HERE.

11h30 by Danger (Jumpman)

Mothership Reconnection (Daft Punk Remix) by Scott Grooves (M) Daft Punk are the kings of dance music. Before I liked ANY electronic music during my junior year of high school (2007), I just bought Human After All on a limb and loved it. I was obsessed with it for a while, then I just moved on and forgot about it. When electronic music suddenly became my life, I went back and listened to all the Daft Punk albums and realized what I had been missing. This track I got the night before our Paris trip (more on that below), and when I met these guys in the airport said: "Get ready to listen to the best Daft Punk track you've ever heard." This track inspired me to explore French House, and really just House in general.

Pogo By Digitalism (J) The most famous Digitalism song, and not without good reason. Digitalism just reminds me of our trip to France and really embodies it. Of course it also reminds me of Electromind where we saw them, how much trouble we had to go through to get there, and how amazing that night was and how amazing Digitalism was. Too bad we missed Popof that night :(, but there's no way I could view that night negatively.

Kid Gloves by Surkin (J) We've always loved Surkin, but I'm not gonna deny, I always liked him a lot more then the other two. He was mediocre both times I saw him DJ (At Electromind and at Ultra), but being so young his production is top notch. In some ways I'm real jealous of this guy.

The Punch (Reprise) by Bag Raiders (J) Another trademark of France, though M likes Nil By Mouth better. I bought this Bag Raiders Fun Punch Ep from iTunes near the very beginning of my liking of electro as iTunes categorized it with Justice and Boys Noize. I didn't pay it much mind. Then while in the bathroom of our very shitty hotel room in a horrible neighborhood in the south of France, I stumbled upon them on my Ipod and decided to give them another listen. Boy was I surprised, I cranked it up and started blasting it. M and Jumpman could hear it from the other room, and thought I was listening to metal or something. I stormed out of the bathroom, and we just sat down and listened to the EP all the way through, instant classic. Though their newer Turbo Love EP is also very good, Fun Punch EP I find is very under appreciated by all the Bag Raiders Fans I know and better then Turbo Love EP.

Beel by Teenage Bad Girl (J) A relatively late addition compared to most of the other artists on here, however, also classic. For the longest time the only song we really liked on Teenage Bad Girl's album was Cocotte, and we kinda knew USB Dick (which is my least favorite song on the album). I think the rest of the album was a little too experimental for us at the time. After they destroyed live at Electromind, one of the better shows I have ever seen, it got my interested in giving their album another listen. I immediately started listening to the album on repeat, and of course for a good week nothing could be heard from our cars but that album. We figured out that they were geniuses, who really don't have a single bad track. One of my favorites by far, probably most excited to hear any new stuff by them. Blows me away every time I listen to them.

Massage Situation by Flying Lotus (Jumpman)

Ghosts 'N' Stuff by Deadmau5 (M) Deadmau5 has grown to become our favorite producer at the moment, well, at least until the next Daft Punk album comes out (hopefully fuckin soon!) I had always liked his remix of HBFS, but never really explored his stuff, and when I finally did on request by one of my friends here, it was too minimal/repetitive for me. Then something clicked. I'm pretty sure it was this song along with Slip that just made me go nuts for him. Then a few weeks later we saw him at Together As One on new years in LA. If you have any questions about our fanaticism over Deadmau5, just click on his name in the tags section and you'll see.