I’m loving my new flash music player A LOT, so I’m going to update it with new choons as much as poss. I even went through some of my old music collection (yep, all three miles of it :p) in a frenzied bid to unearth the opening track, Orbital’s classic reworking of the theme tune to Doctor Who. It’s worth mentioning that the Hartnoll brothers, who decided to call it a day back in 2004, are reuniting to play a special one-off show at 2009’s Big Chill festival to mark the 20th anniversary of their groundbreaking debut album Chime – woo hoo! (Ian Brown – take note!)
Continuing the techno theme, I absolutely had to include Kraftwerk, the Godfathers of the genre. I plumped for a softer number thats got plenty of bleeps and blips in it, but isn’t as full-on as Orbital. I’m thinking about The Prodigy loads at the mo (probably cos I absolutely have to see them at Nottingham Arena in April) and can’t seem to get Music For The Jilted Generation out of my mind, especially Poison. Love the deep bass dub! I know Radiohead aren’t techno, but they are prog rock, and again, I wanted something older to show the doubters that they’ve ALWAYS been prog – it ain’t just a recent development, y’know! The atmospherics in Planet Telex are fantastic – even 14 years on.
Lastly, coining the term ‘uber-producer’ long before a hugely overrated tosspot called Mark Ronson (see my namecheck on wikipedia if you really want to know what I think!) appeared out of nowhere, the genius of Talvin Singh concludes this round of tunes. The buildup of tablas, drums, loops, samples and breakbeats on Vikram is colossal and shows just why he won the Mercury Music Prize back in 1999.
Anyway, the theme for the new playlist is the end of the year, so here’s a selection of weird, sci-fi stuff that I think marks the darkness of the year’s end and heralds the vision for a new dawn. Or some such claptrap. Enjoy! 
Full playlist:
- Orbital – Doctor? (from The Altogether, 2001)
- Kraftwerk – The Model (from The Man-Machine, 1978)
- The Prodigy – Poison (from Music For The Jilted Generation, 1994)
- Radiohead – Planet Telex (from The Bends, 1995)
- Talvin Singh – Vikram The Vampire (from OK, 1998)
