Here’s a selection of new albums I’ve been enjoying this year, mostly synthpop but a few others in the mix too. Karl Bartos – Atomium Depeche Mode – Welcome To My World Marsheaux – Inhale Kavinsky – OutRun OMD – English Electric Space March – Mountain King Little Boots – Nocturnes Alison Moyet – The Minutes K-X-P – II KMFDM – KUNST

New Spotify playlist! 42: SINTHETIC SOURCES for ANALYSIS v1.x features a range of Favorites In Selected Electronica Sub-Genres, spliced together with brutish determination and saving grace. Contains 10 million volts in the form of: electro-industrial, psytrance, industrial metal, hauntronica goth, hybrid krautrock, Neuromancer dub, soundtrack, glitch and a whole load more. This is a live snapshot of 42 reference points (possible variable [...]

Just to let you know that I’ve updated the New on Spotify page (which lists new releases added to Spotify over the last 7 days) to include the following countries: Ireland Italy Portugal Poland Just select the corresponding country code in the drop-down menu and click away. I’ve also doubled the number of result pages and made a few other minor bug fixes. Enjoy!

2012 has felt very much like a transitional year for electronic (and in particular synthpop) music: the 2nd golden age of synthpop drew to a close, and its former key players took leave to write new material and make way for a new new generation. Consequently there weren’t quite as many stunning albums this year compared to previously, and this list of my 20 favorites fell into place relatively easily. The quantity and quality of [...]

Pansentient Synthpop 2012 is a Spotify playlist containing an ever-expanding collection of the best new synthpop and electropop releases from 2012. Featuring over 100 songs from 100 artists, this playlist is the ultimate modern sampler for every discerning synthpop fan! Updated weekly with additional suggestions from The Electricity Club, Brutal Resonance, Electronic Magazine and Bop 2 Pop.     Featuring: 3 Cold Men, Agent Side [...]

Most electronic music aficionados think of the 1990s as “the dark ages” after the explosion of electro bands in the 80s. Post acid house, good electronic pop music saw a huge decline in the face of grunge, Britpop and the like. But there were some superb releases in this decade. The 1990s saw the electrofication of goth and industrial music to create electro-industrial, a genre I consumed with rabid passion and still love to this day. [...]

The 1980s is the most important decade for me, musically speaking. It’s when I was a teenager so – as I’m sure is true for you too – music from my teens will always have an extra special resonance to me. Unlike my best of the 1970s list, pretty much all of the albums below I heard at the time of release. So many great albums dropped in the 1980s, but there’s only room for a dozen or so of them here. So sorry to exclude [...]

I was born in 1968 – the year the Beatles released the White Album and White Noise recorded An Electric Storm. On the day of my birth, Mary Hopkin topped the UK charts with Those Were The Days. My first record was a Magic Roundabout album (which melted a few days later because I’d left it in the car window one hot summers day. I could still listen to it on my little record player, but it was even more surreal as the voices were [...]

Coldwave is minimal post-punk analog synth music that’s seen a huge resurgence in the past couple of years. While I knew and loved the likes of Fad Gadget, Hard Corps, Joy Division and The Future, I had little knowledge of the many lesser-known bands who’d self-released a vast amount of this chilled, sparse synth music on the back of the first wave of synthpop and industrial music in the early 1980s. Now several new labels have [...]

The new Spotify for Android app has been widely praised (not least by me) but there were some features from the previous version that were either dropped completely or hidden away. Fear not though as there are some workarounds you can try: read on to find out how!   How to Play Local Music Files Spotify on Android used to have a Local Files area that listed all the MP3s and other non-Spotify music files stored on your phone. You could [...]