For reasons still unknown to me, I recently signed up for the Helsinki City Run, a half-marathon on May 9. I rarely exercise because I usually get bored out of my mind, but now I’m jogging through the snow three days a week and trying to make a go of it. Even quit smoking (again). We’ll see if this sticks.

Here’s a quick mix that I put together to keep moving. Ten tracks. One hour. Be forewarned: I like to run to emotional electro and full-tilt techno.

KinoSport – Music for Running 63 minutes

01.   Einmusik – 69 (De Medici Edit)    Italic, 2007
02.   Bangkok Impact – Aus Birgittes Tagebuch    Crème Organization, 2003
03.   Miss Kitten – Rippin’ Kitten (Ellen Allien Remix)    Ladomat 2000, 2002
04.   Elektrochemie – You’re My Kind    Get Physicial, 2006
05.   Jori Hulkkonen – Enter the Fear: Who Will Be Slaughtered Next?    Turbo, 2007 
06.   Legowelt – Disco Route    Ghostly International, 2002
07.   Basic Channel – Octagon     Basic Channel, 1994
08.   Maetrik – Ceredrum    Treibstoff, 2009
09.   Adultnapper – Maxwell’s Demon    Ransom Note, 2007
10.   Artificial Latvamäki - It is Not Now Either    Mezzotinto, 2006

A few weeks ago, I wrote this sentence: “In 1999, Dopplereffekt delivered the classic electro album (of which there are only three or four), Gesamkunstwerk.” Like many of the things I write here, I dashed this off without thinking. But it sounds right to me: there just aren’t that many great electro long-players. And then a reader rightly asked, “So what would you say are the classic ones?”

In response, I’ve put together the following list. Please note, these are only proper albums – no EPs or singles, which are a whole different animal. Of the five albums listed, four are from Detroit and these boil down to the same two people. Nonetheless, this is an absolutely definitive list of the all-time best electro albums:

5. I-F – Fucking Consumer
Disko B, 1998
Four simple reasons: the glossy polish of ‘Disko Slique’, the hard edges of ‘Playstation No. 1′ and ‘I Do Because I Couldn’t Care Less’, and yes, the monster anthem ‘Space Invaders Are Smoking Grass’. The steel drums on ‘Theme from Sunwheel Beachbar’, however, keeps this squarely at number 5.

4. Adult – Resuscitation
Ersatz, 2001
This album will always be a landmark, even though I’m sure some eyes are rolling. Go ahead and hate what it spawned (everything from Avenue D to the Klaxons), but love the original. Nicola Kuperus and Adam Lee Miller were creating hard-edged synthetic-ennui long before Brooklyn art students chopped up their hair, put on clever t-shirts, and grabbed their Casios. Resuscitation reworks the highlights from their first 12″s during the golden age of their Ersatz imprint. It’s a flawless album, flowing from dazzling electro instrumentals (“Mouth to Mouth”) to some of the sharpest statements on modern culture in recent memory (“Pressure Suit”, “Human Wreck”). I wrote a short fan letter to them here. Between the jittery music, chilling lyrics, and unnerving photography, Adult. came very close to achieving the ideal of a gesamtkunstwerk (‘total artwork’) – which brings us to:

3. Dopplereffekt – Gesamtkunstwerk
International Deejay Gigolo, 1999
Put it this way: if you can make an album where a track repeatedly says “I want to fuck a mannequin” and it makes perfect sense, you’ve created a work of art. Taking all the right cues from Kraftwerk, Gerald Donald and Kim Karli established a world of fetish objects – “Plastiphilia” is “The Model” taken to its obvious conclusion; “Cellular Phone” is the new “Pocket Calculator” – yet the sound is very much their own. Well, it’s actually Detroit’s sound, because this set the template for most of the city’s great electro records in the early ’00s – although there’s one release that went a little further:

2. Elecktroids – Elecktroworld
Warp, 1995
Four years earlier, there was another Detroit tribute to Kraftwerk and yet another project by Gerald Donald, along with the late James Stinson (both of Drexciya fame). In 1996, a friend of mine picked up Elecktroworld in the used-bin at Record Time simply because of the awesome cover. We got home and stared at the turntable, trying to figure out what the hell we just bought. “I’ve got a stun gun, I’ve got a stun guuuuuun…” It was like Kraftwerk’s wicked acid-casualty nephews – we couldn’t tell if this was old or new, from Detroit or Dusseldorf, or if we were supposed to take it seriously. Aside from the relentless vocoding, there were other curveballs: the fuzzed-out drums of “Check Mate”, the surprising soul in “Midnight Drive”; the cheesy Pink Panther noir at the end of “Mystery World”. You could easily open this thing up like a clock and see the different elements that would soon make up Dopplereffekt, Japanese Telecom, Arpanet, and Drexciya – but then you’d break it.

1. Le Car – Auto-Biography
Ersatz, 2000
Bad-ass basslines, fun melodies, and incredible production. Sometimes the drums hurt, they’re so crisp. Each track sticks close to the four-minute mark, taking off fast and spraying beeps and lasers across an aerodynamic framework. It’s surprising that it took so long for an auto-themed project to emerge from Detroit, but Adam Lee Miller and Ian Clark grabbed Cybotron’s “Cosmic Car” (1983) and ran far with it, creating masterpieces like “The Concept Car”, “Motorway Sparks”, “Automatonic”, and “Flame Job” (not to mention the artwork – remember those inked-up tire treads on the plain white 12″ sleeves of Auto-Motif?). I used to play this over and over while driving around and delivering pizzas back in the day. It was a sad moment when the robots at the beginning of Ectomorph’s “Audiofile 10″ remix announced that “this morning Le Car was involved in a fatal accident . . . listening to the radio too loud.” Adam went on to form Adult and Ian launched his Perspects project (who would certainly be on my list of greatest electro 12″s), but their best work is here. Let’s get a petition underway for a 10-year reunion.

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Le Car – Cinematic-Automatic
from Auto-Biography. Ersatz, 2000

* * *

Detroit electro has mastered the concept album, possibly more successfully than any other musical genre. Each release carries its own mythology wrapped around a single theme (alienation, technology, cars – all of which are probably related) and its faceless nature allows us to shape it into whatever we want or need to hear at the moment.

Detroit, Michigan

Adult. is one of my all-time favorite bands, even though I only like twenty percent of their output. I diligently buy all of their records, yet I don’t enjoy most of them. But I really love that twenty percent. It’s a frustrating relationship: the Detroit duo nailed a brilliant sound with their first two LPs and now they won’t go anywhere near it. In 1999, they inadvertently kick-started electroclash with the Entertainment and Nausea 12″s on their groundbreaking Ersatz imprint and a few years later, nearly every Brooklyn band sounded like mean parodies, except dressed in hipper outfits. Built largely from their first singles, the Resuscitation long-player is a jangled masterpiece and their second album, Anxiety Always, turns up the paranoia a few clicks, hinting at the darker days to come.

An Adult. track consists of three key ingredients: sharp drums, an arpeggio (first perfected in Adam Lee Miller’s Le Car project), and that voice — Nicoloa Kuperus’ voice can do a lot: dead-eyed and detached on “Dispassionate Furniture” and “Human Wreck”, growling through the bad-ass stomp of “Minors at Night” and “Blank-Eyed Nose Bleed”, and surprisingly reassuring and warm on “Nite Life”. And then there’s her teeth-shattering psycho-bitch screech, which was hair-raising in small doses but now it’s shot through all of their recent records for no good reason except for spooky theatrics. Like few other bands, Adult. immediately creates a distinct mood — or destroys one: on the way to a friend’s wedding, “Skinlike” popped up in the car: When I touch your skin, I have to wash my hands… Mood is key with Adult. The song titles plus Kuperus’ eerie photography have established one of the most compelling identities in electronic music (look at the woman draped across a man’s body on an airstrip on Resuscitation —  is she trying to save him, or rifling through his pockets?). But these days, the emphasis on mood is outstripping the music.

You have to give Adult. credit for not repeating themselves (even though that’s what I want them to do). After their Ersatz label went dark, they relocated to Thrill Jockey and got even weirder. On their past three records, the wheels have come off: guitars crash in a small room, manic melodies are hinted at before exploding, and Kuperus sounds fully unhinged. There’s a lot of yelling going on and I scowl at my speakers, wishing they’d return to their signature sound instead of trying to dismantle it. On their newest record, the track titles read like self-parody (“Inclined to Vomit”, “I Feel Worse When I’m With You”, “Plagued by Fear”). The goth-paranoia aesthetic has become just another schtick.

In 2001, when Kuperus sang that she’s “been working on her anxiety because it’s something I can do for free” or spoke of human wrecks, mindless consumerism, and the ennui of modern life, I believed her. She sounded honestly worried about our modern world and her voiced seamlessly merged with the frigid electro that remained at the forefront of the project. It was perfect music for anxious times and, yes, it was quite adult when compared with the subjects addressed by other electro acts. Now it’s all about fidgety moods and being a basket case. I’ll keep buying their records because they’ve earned it and, more importantly, they still nail it every now and then.

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Adult. – In My Nerves
from Gimmie Trouble. Thrill Jockey, 2005
Their brand of paranoid electro-punk is perfectly executed here: the jittery vocals and that guitar riff reveal what you always thought you’d been hearing in Adult.’s earlier work.

To get an idea of the spectacular sound they started with, here’s one of their earlier tracks:

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Adult. – Skinlike
from Resuscitation. Ersatz, 2000