i love techno a-z: abe duque - autechre

it's no secret to those who know me... i LOVE techno. (and house, and electro, which i don't bother to make too much of a distinction from techno, they have sort of blended into each other anyway, in my opinion...)

i could upload a thousand tunes i find notable for one reason or another, but i'll start with A... and work my way to Z (do i have any Z?) here's the thing though... a lot of these tracks don't really "stand on their own", a techno track is mostly conceived of as an element in a mix, to be blended in that "non-stop ecstasy throb" that was rightfully jabbed at in an article recently on muddup! so try to imagines these tracks as a temporary layer, slices of rhythmic orientation to be juxtaposed and framed by the dj in the moment...

abe duque - i don't like the rest of this album ("so underground it hurts"), and he was pompous when i met him (saying "it doesn't hurt anymore"), but these two tracks have a nostalgia about them i dig. mind the name dropping in the first one, and i mostly only feel the words in the second...

(mp3)abe duque - "what happened" from "so underground it hurts"
(mp3)abe duque - "acid" from "so underground it hurts"

akufen - was pretty great when i saw him live at fabric. credited with a unique style of "micro-sampling", which seems to bypass copyright laws by only grabbing tiny snips... some of it's a bit smalzy, but it's a great sound.

(mp3) akufen - "severed finger samba" from "montreal smoked meat"
(mp3) akufen - "the dragonfly who thought he was a mockingbird" from "the appleseed ep"

alter ego - i don't know shit about this artist, but this track has a nice "bassline" house sound. it's a lot like what i've heard described as blog-house. it gets annoying after too long, but useful for like a minute and a half of dancefloor slamming...

(mp3) alter ego - "fuckingham palace" - from "why not"

aphex twin - you can't overstate the influence of aphex twin. great jungle, ambient, etc music. i love "on", "windowlicker" (videos) and a ton of his acid work, but these two get me personally with the techno feel.

(mp3) aphex twin - "elephant song" from "analogue bubblebath 4"
(mp3) aphex twin - "breath march" from "analord 4"

ark - this french musician makes minimal, goofy but solid tunes. also some slow, hiphop instrumental bangers... these are the only tunes i would play in a techno/house set...

(mp3) ark - "preacher" -from "caliente"
(mp3) ark - "sweet chat rio" from "alleyuark"

autechre - another highly influential musical force, these folks make a lot of machinic, experimental sound. some great melodies, here and there. a little sparse for most situations, but these two tracks i play a lot... particularly the second, but it's not really "techno"... but what is it?

(mp3) autechre - "djarum" - from the "anti ep"
(mp3) autechre - "iera" - from "untitled"

that does it for A...

anyone you think is missing?

bear in mind i'm going with first names, and if the artist has a ton of aliases (like atom heart) i'm going to use their "real" name (uwe schmidt)...

god, i love techno...