- Midnight Oil — “Beds Are Burning”, 1987.
An anthemic rail against the brutal mistreatment of indigenous cultures, this song, even though you’ve heard it 1000 times, has never lost one gram of relevance. (Bonus: monster cowbell.) - Bootblacks — “Captives”, 2019.
This delicious off-album cut is everything that sets Bootblacks apart from the pretenders: precise and perky percussion, sexy-as-fuck guitar and pitch-perfect vocals. One of my personal favorites from them. - The Foreign Resort — “She is Lost”, 2019.
The Foreign Resort are best when their post-punk fury relinquishes control to their synth-driven darkwave melancholy. The feels on this one are massive, but that’s what we’re all secretly wanting anyway. - Project Pitchfork — “December Sadness”, 1997.
From their stone-cold masterpiece ¡Chakra:Red! album (don’t bother arguing), this is Peter Spilles in full haunted vampire vocal mode. - Numb — “Blood”, 1994.
It’s impossible to overstate the influence of this song on my life. Like Skinny Puppy’s “Worlock”, this lullaby for the damned transformed the concept of what electronic music could be. 25+ years later, those heralding blasts of overdriven bass still give me chills. - Missions — “Glimmer”, 2019.
Sexy minimal synthpop from LA-based Missions swims in a retro-futuristic cocktail of percolating synths, delicate percussion, emotive pads and crooning vocoder. A sensational late-night lost highway of a song. - Night Sins — “Annihilator”, 2019.
The lead single from Night Sins’ 2019 Portrait in Silver LP was an unambiguous statement of intent. Synthpop with teeth. Darkwave with razors. Dance music with body armor. - Body of Light — “Time To Kill”, 2019.
The production on this song is insane. Every sample, drum hit, bass rumble, pad, and lyric is placed with astonishing precision. Matched with its give-no-fucks pop drapings, it was a song-of-the-year candidate. - Andreas Rund — “Spectre”, 2019.
My favorite Nein Records release in 2019, Andreas Rund’s massive synths and beats (and just the right amount of edge) are a chemical accelerant to any dancefloor. - White Lies — “Fifty On Our Foreheads”, 2008.
This album felt meteoric when it landed in 2008. So massive, so passionate, a critical bridge from 90s melodrama to the scene today. - Melotron — “Maschinen aus Stahl”, 2001.
This slow-building ode to technological advancement is Melotron at their best: American club-inspired synthpop with a uniquely and unapologetically German perspective. - Depeche Mode — “Precious”, 2005.
This song is just so good. Like really, really good. This, along with “Enjoy the Silence”, is the Depeche Mode feel I want to capture in ember forever. - Kraftwerk — “Metall Auf Metall”, 1991.
The original gangsters of hitting things with other things. - HIDE — “Fall Down”, 2018.
A scorching tour de force, HIDE produce a sort of audio zealotry, a sign-your-soul-away cult of noise immersion, scream therapy, headphone isolationism and emotional expulsion that burns from the inside out.