Un Voyage Á Travers Dans Le Paysage Électronique Français, the French subtitle, goes further. French Touch is the first exhibition to celebrate and dig into France’s electronic music heritage: exploring the lineage which laid the ground for the world-wide success of Daft Punk.
OK, the title could be offputting, suggesting as it does the crassest of adversarial politics. But this record is something far deeper, far subtler and far more enjoyable than that. Yes, the Russia-born, Israel-raised, Berlin-based singer-songwriter Mariya aka Mary Ocher things to say about authoritarianism, xenophobia, and gender and sexual politics – but there is so much more to her expression.
There is no band of the Eighties generation who've remained both as big, and as great, as Depeche Mode. Duran Duran? Lightweights. U2? Sunk into self-parody a long time ago. But the boys from Basildon are something else: they've come through all the pressures of fame, addiction, ageing and the rest with their mojo very much intact, sounding like themselves but still writing fresh songs and hitting new emotional spots.
The equipment pictured above is the Powertran 1024, one of the first digital sequencers to hit the market. According to the May 1981 issue of Electronics Today International magazine, which unveiled it to the public, the British-invented “1024 composer is a machine which will repeatedly cause a synthesiser to play a pre-determined series of notes either as short sequence or a large compositions of 1024 notes: i.e. several minutes long.” The article was headlined “Treat your synth to this sequencer/composer.”
2016 has been a big year for Tel Aviv’s burgeoning underground scene. Acts including Red Axes, Moscoman and Naduve have produced endlessly inventive music at an impressive pace and on a range of labels. Of these, Disco Halal, run by Chen Mosco and based at the Berlin record shop Oye, has been absurdly consistent in its releases, notably a series of re-edits that blend exotic Middle Eastern melodies with dancefloor beats and, in doing so, provide a groove for both head and heart.
In May this year, they broke with their MO and released a mini-LP by Nadav Spiegel, better known as Autarkic. Posessed of a distinctive, often plaintive voice, to add to the sometimes stark, 80s-influenced production, it is a hugely satisfying listen. There are no stand-outs as such, rather an overwhelming sense of cohesion to the songs which, for the most part, occupy a hinterland somewhere between the home and the club. It’s a collection that it’s very easy to lose oneself in, partly because of the life Autarkic finds in his ice-cold palette of sounds. While the songs boast an incredible degree of craft, this helps them to retain a pleasingly ragged – and human – appeal.
It’s also worth noting that the field this year has been very strong: the release of Gruff Rhys’ soundtrack to the 2014 film Set Fire to the Stars was an unexpected delight, Steve Mason gave us his most fully realised solo collection to date, and Xam Duo and The Early Years both made a strong case for Sonic Cathedral to be hailed as label of the year (again) with their respective albums.
Special mention must also go to Hipnotik Tradisi, the extraordinary collision of cultures from George Thompson, otherwise known as Black Merlin. Were it not for the fact that I’d already reviewed it for theartsdesk back in July, it would have been a coin toss to decide which would take the honours for 2016.
Two More Essential albums from 2016
Black Merlin - Hipnotik Tradisi
Gig of the Year
Track of the Year
Vox Low - The Hunt
Overleaf: listen to "The Hunt" by Vox Low
Pictured above is Sweden’s Ralph Lundsten. He might look like a guru or mystic but is actually a multi-disciplinary artist most well-known on his home turf for his pioneering electronic music. His first album, 1966’s Elektronmusikstudion Dokumentation 1 (made with Leo Nilson), was issued by national Swedish radio’s own label and recorded at the station’s electronic music studio. Lundsten (born 1936) began making music for soundtracks in the 1950s and has issued at least 38 albums.
At the Royal Festival Hall the cliché seemed complete. Milling around were white men, white men and more white men – all in their late thirties and older, most looking a little bohemian and a lot geeky, with a few of them a little more hardcore in black bomber jackets, black jeans, black trainers and black baseball caps.
Everything about Xam Duo’s debut album, out earlier this month on Sonic Cathedral, has a wonderful sense of self-indulgence: from the freeform, experimental feel, the stretched-out tones and resulting melodies that exist almost by implication, to the mournful squall of the saxophone, buoyed by a stubborn sea of sound.
Berlin's electronic music world has been traditionally been very white. Sometimes, as with the inward-looking minimal techno of the 2000s, it could feel painfully so. Obviously a city can't really help the nature of its demographic, but monoculture is rarely healthy for the development of living club scenes – and it certainly needn't be that way.
Moby’s last proper album, not including the ambient affair he released via a free download from his LA restaurant earlier this year, was Innocents in 2013. It was a rich yet melancholic affair, the culmination of some years when a sober Moby, no longer on the touring conveyer belt that followed his post-Play mega-success, appeared to find solace in elegant musicality. His new album leaves that behind. Moby has relocated his noisy inner punk and put him to good use.