Do you live in the greater Pittsburgh area?
Do you like video games?
Do you ever wish there was a place where you could buy vintage and import games at affordable prices and play classic arcade games on giant 99″ projection screens?
Then I got the place for you, the Penn Hills Game Exchange, an awesome video game store/arcade in, duh, Penn Hills, PA.
It’s a new store that a couple of my friends just opened, and it’s totally rad. You should check it out. Tell them I sent you. That way when I come in they can reward me with free candy.
Now that I got the plugging out of the way, here’s an incredibly eclectic assortment of electronic music.
Boom Boom Satellites
Push Eject (Howie B Remix)
4 A Moment of Silence
4 A Moment of Silence (Trapezoid Mix by Jack Dangers for Meat Beat Manifesto)
I plan on writing something a bit more in-depth on Boom Boom Satellites sometime in the future. For now I’ll just say that they’re one of my favorite Japanese bands, and I’ve been somewhat of a fan of theirs ever since I saw them open for Moby in 1999. However, it’s not easy to be a fan of the Boom Boom Satellites if you live in America, as almost none of their albums have been given a physical release in the states, and a few aren’t even available on Amazon MP3 or iTunes. That’s why I went all out when I was in Japan and I bought every single Boom Boom Satellites album I could find, giving myself a complete discography of their studio albums; one of their live releases, and a CD single for “Broken Mirror” which was apparently in a Gundam soundtrack (yo, the Japanese love Gundam, for real).
But these remixes are from none of the albums or singles I bought in Japan. Nope, I got these off of a 12″ single that I bought right here in Pittsburgh. Funny how that works.
The Future Sound of London
Snake Hips
The Future Sound of London have done a hell of a job of making sure all their 12″ singles, remixes and other assorted oddities are in-print and easy to snag on various digital services. And good on them, it’s nice to see a band actually understand that if you make  music available, people might buy it. Makes finding a track for me to share a real pain in the ass though. I bought a few FSOL singles in Japan, and this extended mix of “Snake Hips” is the only one that I am sure isn’t on a CD or digital release that you can find in America. The album version from ISDN is about five minutes long, but this version taken from a 12″ single is about eight and a half minutes long. Not surprisingly, it’s still weird.
The Folk Implosion
Natural One (Unkle Mix)
Natural One (Unkle Instrumental)
As the 2000s progress, I find myself more and more often identifying certain pop culture artifacts from the 1990s as “90s as shit.” My Saturday Morning Cartoons covers compilation: that’s 90s as shit. Space Jam:Â incredibly 90s as shit. Anything with Seth Green where you watch it now and go “holy shit, Seth Green is in this?”: also 90s as shit.
This right here, a song by Lou Barlow from a controversial Miramax film (Kids, a vomit of a film if there ever was one) that was in turn remixed by Unkle, one of the greatest flash-in-the-pan acts of the decade, and a poster child for mid-90s “electronica,” is some real  “90s and shit” shit. It’s also some really good shit, so check them out.
Push Eject remix is very nice! Loving that tune.
How in the world is UNKLE “one of the greatest flash-in-the-pan acts of the decade”? Just because Shadow left the Lavelle changed it up completely? Never Never Land is an amazing album that I would include in my top albums of the 2000’s.. War Stories was not very good, but Where Did the Night Fall is solid.
I would classify nearly every 90s electronic act as a “flash in the pan” as almost all of them came, delivered one or two massive hit albums, and then went back into their wheelhouse of delivering consistently great, if under-heard electronic music. You may like UNKLE’s other material, but the truth of the matter is that none of it came close to matching the success of that first album.
The Trapezoid mix of “4 a Moment of Silence” is melodically and stylistically similar to Francois Kevorkian’s remix of “Planet Claire” on the B-52’s “Time Capsule” EP. It’s definitely worth a listen as well.