The Electro Compendium is a superb in depth exploration of the current take on a thirty year old genre and much kudos must go to compilers Dave Paton and Jean-Paul Bondy for putting it all together. Colossal.
[Release page] There’s an increasing trend for massive free compilations on the web. Electronic Explorations, the Future Sequence Sequence series and The Centrifuge, to name but a few, have all compiled monster high quality free to download releases showcasing the extraordinary breadth and depth of music out there. This beast is no exception with an astonishing and somewhat overwhelming 116 tracks—the focus of which is electro.
As a youngster the tune that started my obsession with all things electronic was Kraftwerk’s Tour de France so it’s with excitement that I read that the content here seems to be towards, forgive the grandiose term, ‘pure’ electro rather than the warped modern hybrids that incorporate breaks, dubstep and please no—electro house.
And it certainly lives up to that promise—there’s some absolute beauties within and, given its size, the overall quality is extraordinarily high. The whole gamut of styles and expression through the prism of electro is represented in finely produced and superbly clinical form.
There’s futuristic abstract mechanoid funk from Ben Milstein, pretty slo mo cascades of synth melodics from Volum and some proper bouncing vocoder led galactic funk from Volsoc. Gentler lower tempo workouts from Zwart Licht Kommando and MANASYt are awash with melodic bleeps and sci-fi posturing whilst ardBit & Roel Funcken provide fractured hyper produced glitch and Jeff Taylor Cross an electro horror disturbia.
Later we find perfected Kraftwerk replicas from Dark Vector, sublime vocodor melodics framed with arcade machine references from Popkomm and a superb epic dead of night workout from Phausis. There really is an immense amount of great music here and I’m barely scratching the surface of this epic release here, so will leave it to you to get involved and discover your own favorites. There are a host of names you will recognize and many more you may not so the chances of new discoveries are high.
The Electro Compendium is a superb in depth exploration of the current take on a thirty year old genre and much kudos must go to compilers Dave Paton and Jean-Paul Bondy for putting it all together. Colossal.
The Electro Compendium is available on Anti-Social Network.
