Digging the electro revivial

The last few years, I have really been digging the musical revival of the 80s sound, particular its electro influences.

This month, for instance, we have seen a hit record from Black Eyed Peas, Boom Boom Pow!, which is a very modern take on the 80s electro/miami bass sound, and recently we’ve also heard it in and no end of R’n'B records with a classic electro beat.

I am essentially a musical child of the 80s, and was really into hip hop and related in those early days (I got bored of it somewhere in the 90s).  I still get excited when I put on some of those records again, however basic they seem now compared to today’s vast dense production values.

I’d almost forgotten about electro for many years, when suddenly it reared its head again in 1997 on one of Mark Bell’s remixes of Bjork’s Bachelorette.  What a cracking revival that was, and it got me listening to all my old 12″ and compilations again, and now I hear the beat everywhere.

In particular, I’m quite entranced by Laroux at the moment, particularly “In For The Kill”.  Most worthy of note too is Skream’s Let’s Get Ravey remix.  Not only is the angelic simple ambient vocal sweet in itself, but then the downtempo dubstep beat comes in and it stomps along, then we get to the ravey bit …  The ambient part reminds me of a fairly obscure Billie Rae Martin track, a cover of Throbbing Gristle’s “Persuasion” with Spooky, however I only know it for the excellent ambient version on the Trance Europe Express compilation (not-ambient version here).

The latest single is “Bulletproof” (not the PWEI one , and that’s good too.  There’s also some other material at Kitsune, including a nice CD issue of “In For The Kill” with other tracks, available through places like Juno.