Anthony Rother Presents Electro Commando1 Welcome to Psicity [coll] – [PSI49NET]

incognito   12/11/2013   A Library, CD

This is a 2002 underground electro compilation from the Germany-based PSI49NET label. Split into “downtown” and “uptown” halves, disc one (Downtown) focuses on more traditional electro; it’s quite minimal and sparse, focused mostly on the breaks and beats. All the classic elements are here, from the robot voices to the acid stabs and paranoid minor-key panning twinkly notes dancing about the top of your brain. Disc 2 is more bass oriented, and sounds a lot more trance, techno and house influenced (in that order.) Personally I found it difficult to get into and stay with disc 1, but Uptown really did it for me. There are a lot of saw-tooth basslines, robot vocals and harder beats. For the 2002 era, I think disc 2 would have been a bit more electroclash influenced than disc 1, which is just fine with me – i never had a problem with electroclash. Listening to it, however, you hear a lot of basslines that would later be used and recycled in some of the poppier and quite frankly garbage electro/electroclash sounds to emerge in the second half of the 2000s.