Nineteen Ninety Never

If you’ve been in Toronto for the past years, you’ve probably noticed that the city has some serious electronic talent.

Part of that talent includes some of the city’s finest music blogs:

Salacious Sound posts some great party tracks on a very regular basis, and they’re often the first place I read about tours coming to Toronto. A recent post they wrote stakes the claim that Toronto might just be the Remix Capital of the World, and I think the might just be right.

Here’s a couple of choice tracks from Toronto artists they posted recently:

Autoerotique - Gladiator (Torro Torro Remix)

Barletta - Panther (Torro Torro’s SalaciousSound Remix)

As a bonus, their History of Electro series kicked off the other day, and promises to be a great series of posts.

Pugged Not Thugged is a blog that I’ve only been reading for a few weeks now, but I already like it a lot, especially the fact that there were the first place I heard the O-God Ducksauce remix:

Ducksauce - Barbara Streisand (O-God Remix)

ElectroTO is like a shrine to the city’s finest electro. In their “What’s Good Wednesday,” posts the blog’s writers Trackson and The Vamp give everyone a good heads up on the city’s best parties. The image at the top of this post comes from them (thanks, guys), and is one of the better redesigns of the Jay’s logo that I’ve ever seen. Close seconds are the one where the Blue Jay looks like an uzi and one I’ve seen of the Blue Jay wearing headphones.

A recent fave from ElectroTO:

Jesse Rose - Where Were You Last Night

Plus, ElectroTO has some wicked t-shirts available for sale.

Torontette has been blogging her little heart out for the past couple of months and while her tunes of choice aren’t always the pumping electro I prefer, she’s still got a feel for the city.

I especially like the Van Schie tracks she had up recently:

Matt Van Schie - Saturday Night (GLOVES Remix)

Finally, this blog post is dedicated to the memory of The Curb Crawlers - the first music blog I started reading (single tear rolling down my cheek) and despite having folded up shop, still one of the internet’s finest pieces of HTML and CSS.

What are your favorite T-dots artists or blogs? Hook me up with some new stuff to listen to.

The Panther Moderns were a sort of youth terrorism organization in the book Neuromancer by William Gibson:

“Panther Moderns,” he said to the Hosaka, removing the trodes. “Five minute precis.”

“Ready,” the computer said.

It wasn’t a name he knew. Something new, something that had come in since he’d
been in Chiba. Fads swept the youth of the Sprawl at the speed of light; entire subcultures
could rise overnight, thrive for a dozen weeks, and then vanish utterly. “Go,” he said. The
Hosaka had accessed its array of libraries, journals, and news services.

The precis began with a long hold on a color still that Case at first assumed was a
collage of some kind, a boy’s face snipped from another image and glued to a photograph
of a paint-scrawled wall. Dark eyes, epicanthic folds obviously the result of surgery, an
angry dusting of acne across pale narrow cheeks. The Hosaka released the freeze; the boy
moved, flowing with the sinister grace of a mime pretending to be a jungle predator. His
body was nearly invisible, an abstract pattern approximating the scribbled brickwork
sliding smoothly across his tight one piece. Mimetic polycarbon.

Cut to Dr. Virginia Rambali, Sociology, NYU, her name, faculty, and school pulsing
across the screen in pink alphanumerics.

“Given their penchant for these random acts of surreal violence,” someone said, “it

may be difficult for our viewers to understand why you continue to insist  that  this

phenomenon isn’t a form of terrorism.”

Dr.  Rambali  smiled.  “There is always  a point  at  which the terrorist  ceases  to
manipulate the media gestalt. A point at which the violence may well escalate, but beyond
which the terrorist has become symptomatic of the media gestalt itself. Terrorism as we
ordinarily understand it is inately media-related. The Panther Moderns differ from other
terrorists precisely in their degree of self-consciousness, in their awareness of the extent
to which media divorce the act of terrorism from the original sociopolitical intent….”

In the book, the “random acts of surreal violence” described above take the form of the Panther Moderns facilitating a raid on an office building by hacking into the building’s computer network to basically hypnotize everyone inside into thinking they’ve been poisoned. At the same time, some of the Moderns called the police to tell them that:

“an obscure sub sect of militant Christian fundamentalists had just taken credit for having introduced clinical levels of an outlawed psychoactive agent known as Blue Nine into the ventilation system of the Sense/Net Pyramid. Blue Nine, known in California as Grievous Angel, had been shown to produce acute paranoia and homicidal psychosis in eighty-five percent of experimental subjects.”

Throughout the raid, the Panther Moderns refer to themselves as ‘Brood’ and another character as Cat Mother.

Since Neuromancer is pretty 80s, here are some synthed-out tracks to get you thinking about the original cyberpunks:

Crystal Castles - Untrust Us (Alex zelenka Remix)

Ghostland Observatory - Sad, Sad City (Pretty Girls & Lasers Remix)

Valery Gore - Shoes of Glass (TEEN Remix)

Streetlab - Rat Racer (TEEN Remix)

(get more music from TEEN on her Myspace)

Part of me wants to think that those tracks are what the Panther Moderns would be jamming to if they were actually around today. A bigger part of me knows that they’d probably be fucking around on 4chan instead.

If you like this playlist, you might also like the Space Dub playlist I put together (smiliarly inspired by Neuromancer), or the mix I think Thanos would have given Death.

I’ve been a big fan of The Girls Can Hear Us ever since Audioporn mentioned that they sound like another of my favorite artists, Scotty Dynamo.

The Girls Can Hears Us! (conveniently shorted as TGCHU) have the sort of self-aware hilarity that I like in my electropop-rap, and the catchy beats also make for pretty good gym music.

Now, just in time for summer, TGCHU are going to drop their debut album and all of the songs sound pretty good. Even better is that the boys are fans of giving some of their tracks away for free, and hooked me up with a couple for posting here.

The Girls Can Hears Us - Every Day

The Girls Can Hear Us - All I Know

Silver Medallion - Slave (The Girls Can Hears Us Remix)

To stay posted on when their album comes out, hit up TGCHU.com. Bide your time until then with a couple of other TGCHU tracks I’ve posted here and here.

Its the beginning of March here in Toronto (actually, its probably the beginning of March in the whole world) and the weather is unseasonably warm. To celebrate, I ate lunch on a patio.

Is this the beginning of summer? I hope so, and to get in the mood I’ve been listening to these smart Beach Boys remixes.

Beach Boys - Good Vibrations (Stanton Warriors Remix)

Beach Boys - Wouldn’t It Be Nice (TheGirlsCanHearUs! Remix)

More love for TheGirlsCanHearUs! and a few more Beach Boys here.

The lovely girl in that photo? That’s Heather and she writes Toronto Uncovered.

Or at least that’s the way it comes across in this re-work of Britney’s 3 by Toronto’s own Scotty Dynamo. Give it a listen, then catch him where ever you go. He’s ScottyDynamo on  Twitter, MySpace and YouTube and he is going to be what you’re telling your friends about when they ask if you’ve listened to any good music lately.

3 Remix - Britney Spears feat. Scotty Dynamo

Work It - Scotty Dynamo

You can also grab a couple more of his tracks on a post I wrote a few months ago here or hit up Audio Porn Central for a good write up about him. They’ve even got a few more tracks from him.

After reading about him on Tzero I haven’t really stopped listening to Scotty Dynamo. It really doesn’t get much better than white teenagers making club raps about partying and living the good life. Seriously.

Scotty Dynamo - Cars Glamour Fame Money

Scotty Dynamo - Make It Right (Remix)

I had trouble choosing what tracks to post because they’re all gold.

Find the kid on MySpace, Twitter, Flickr and buy his stuff on iTunes.

Do it now, so you can tell your friends you were listenin’ to Scotty Dynamo before he blew up.

Well, actually you can. But this one of him from a few weeks ago is pretty good.

The Birthday Girl (behind him) also looks pretty good.

Anyways, here are some tracks from that night:

Ladyhawke - Paris Is Burning (Cut Copy Remix)

Ladyhawke - Paris is Burning

Bag Raiders - Sneaky Dub

CSS - Move (Cut Copy Remix)

PNAU featuring LadyHawke - Embrace

As much as I hate to post a video with out a related audio file, I couldn’t resist this one:

LIGHTS - Drive My Soul (official music video)

According to a poster I walked by on College Street this morning, she’s going to be at the Mod Club on Friday. It’s a six pm show, so I don’t know if I can be bothered.

Lights on MySpace

Dmoney says that Drums of Death is coming to Toronto this Friday and that you should “Go to the show so you can tell all your friends next year that you were into him before he blew the fuck up. ”

We looked up some of his shit, and it is fully sick.

Lesser Panda - Carousel (Drums of Death Remix)

Tricky - Council Estate (Drums of Death Remix)

See you at CiRCA on Friday.

SEK-ONE from The Curb Crawlers music blog is going to be DJing with Alias.

Check out the Facebook event here for deets, then check out these posts to listen to a wicked track from Alias and a mix tape from SEK-ONE