Electronica

Electronica 2: The Heart of Noise is the fifteenth studio album of French electronic musician Jean Michel Jarre. It is the second of a two-part album (the first being Electronica 1: The Time Machine) that is based around collaborations with other electronic musicians from a wide range of decades and styles. Electronica 1 included artists such as Vince Clarke, Gesaffelstein, M83, Armin van Buuren, John Carpenter, 3D (of Massive Attack), Pete Townshend, Tangerine Dream, and others, while Electronica 2 is expected to include collaborations with Pet Shop Boys, Rone, Julia Holter, Primal Scream, Gary Numan, Hans Zimmer, Edward Snowden, Peaches, Sébastien Tellier, The Orb, Siriusmo, Yello, Jeff Mills, Cyndi Lauper and Christophe. In all, the two-album collaboration is expected to have as many as 30 collaborators, and Jarre has described it as his "most ambitious project."

In the late 1970s, Jean-Michel Jarre’s albums Oxygène and Équinoxe sold in their zillions, demonstrating that electronic music could be embraced by mainstream tastes. Almost 40 years later, the list of Jarre’s collaborators on Electronica 1: The Time Machine reads like a who’s who of electronic music, including Massive Attack, Moby, Air, Vince Clarke, Laurie Anderson and John Carpenter. True, by assembling such a stellar lineup, Jarre is reminding us of his status as a pioneer. But this does not feel like a cynical exercise - perhaps because Jarre was shrewd enough to work in person with his collaborators rather than remotely by sharing digital files. Jarre’s soaring washes of chords are present on tracks such as Conquistador (with French techno artist Gesaffelstein) and Zero Gravity (one of the last recordings of the late Edgar Froese of Tangerine Dream)…

Two years in the making, Close To The Noise Floor is a 4CD, 60-track set exploring the origins of electronica in the UK. Featuring tracks from key figures on the cassette label underground alongside early releases by future stars of the movement, this is part primitive rave, part synthesiser porn and part history lesson.

"Analogic Touch" is a tribute to the Berlin school Ambient period, a sound adventure created from the meeting between legendary analog instruments and the latest sound creation software. Imagined and composed by artists Kurtz Mindfields and sound designer Tajmahal; featuring seminal guests such as Robert Rich, Irina Mikhailova, Kliment and many others, resulting in an electronic musical masterpeace.

Jon Savage's eclectic voyage through Post-Punk era electronic music, Disco and proto-techno 1978-1982. Spanning Euro Disco to very early Electro and the classic period of High Energy, taking in mainstream Disco, the strange, minimal and avant garde on the way, these fifteen tracks celebrate the fertility and the futurism of synthesiser electronics in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. Includes tracks by Suicide, Sea Of Wires, Sylvia Love, Cabaret Voltaire, Transvolta, A Number Of Names, Slick and more.