This mix is all about electronic music with a rock attitude. Expect headbanging tunes with a dancefloor appeal!

Tracklist:

1. Make The Girl Dance – Baby Baby Baby
2. The Qemists feat. Mike Patton – Lost Weekend (Killer on the Dancefloor)
3. Mando Diao – Down In The Past (Moonbootica Remix)
4. Bloc Party – One Month Off (Filthy Dukes Remix)
5. Cassius – Youth Speed Trouble Cigarettes (Cassius Reset Trouble Remix)
6. Moguai – Tonight
7. Klaxons – Golden Skans to Interzone (So Me Remix)
8. Goose – British Mode (Jester Remix)
9. Nu Coalition – Born For The Nightlife (Aston Shuffle Remix)
10. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Head Will Roll (A-Trak Remix)
11. S’Express – Stupid Little Girls (Eon’s Blacklist Remix)
12. Justice – D.A.N.C.E. (MSTRKRFT Remix)

Nerditional Information: Do you remember S’Express? Yes, that is the dance music act that had a major hit with “Theme From S’Express” in 1988. I didn’t even know they were still active, but apparently they released a single called “Stupid Little Girls” on Kitsuné in 2007 – and that one’s actually pretty good!

Another artist that I hadn’t heard from in a while is Mike Patton, former singer of Faith No More. After leaving Faith No More, he released a couple of interesting, but also very strange records from Mr Bungle, Phantomas and other obscure projects. Nevertheless, he is a truly great vocalist, and I was happy to hear his cooperation with the truly talented Qemists .

Oh, and there is also a very interesting….errr…..”social experiment” by Make The Girl Dance that was “documented” in video form (NSFW!).

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/29051967@N03/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

There is one particular style of electronic music that I kept picking up again and again throughout my life as a music lover: The combination of typical rock music elements (distorted guitars, real drums etc.) with electronic beats.

For a few years, this combination has been known as Indietronic – or at least that’s how people typically refer to it here. And this is the real reason why I am writing this blog post: I somehow got the impression that Indietronic is not yet understood as a style of its own by many people. For example, try searching for Indietronic DJ sets on platforms like play.fm or mixcloud. You will probably find something, and there actually are quite a few DJs who have specialized on this, but just compare it to other electronic music genres like, say, Tech House. See what I mean?

Let’s listen to a few examples: The obvious way to create Indietronic sounds is to remix songs from Indie Rock bands. There are quite a few good examples for this, like this Bloc Party-remix.

There are also quite a few artists who don’t need a remix to sound like that.
Example: Goose – “British Mode”.

The interesting thing is that Indietronic seems to appeal to both fans of rock music as well as electronic music – but the DJs who are playing that sound are (based on my personal impression) mostly coming from a  rock background. This is not a bad thing, it just means those DJs have a different attitude towards DJing.

While seamless mixing is absolutely critical to many electronic DJs, many rock DJs just try to play good music, one song after the other. From my point of view, this is perfectly ok, but it means less recognition from people with a strong electronic music background.

So getting back to my original question: Why is Indietronic not as universally recognized as other electronic music genres, even though there are many good releases and DJs playing that sound? I think it’s just the mixing. Indietronic is harder to mix for DJs, because tracks are typically shorter and do not always come in DJ-friendly extended versions. As a consequence, many Indietronic DJs do not mix at all, get less attention from the electronic music scene and therefore get less visibility.

However, I can only speak based on my impressions from Cologne and what I read and see on the internet. Do you agree with me? Or have I missed something?

Anyway, let’s just listen to some more music.