This post is part of our Psych 101 program, an in-depth, 14-part series that looks at the impact of psychedelia on modern music. Want to sign up to receive the other installments in your inbox? Go here. Already signed up and enjoying it? Help us get the word out by sharing it on Facebook, Twitter or just sending your friends this link. Theyll thank you. We thank you.For certain fans, the high point of Slowdive’s return came a few days before the release of their eponymous comeback album in May 2017, when the band unveiled Avalon Emerson’s blissful ambient-house remix of “Sugar for the Pill,” a song that harkens back to the mid-’90s glory days when electronic shoegaze briefly flowered.There were precedents to this brief crossover: My Bloody Valentine, the band to whom all shoegazers aspire, used sampled breakbeats on “Instrumental No. 2” and asked UK producer Andrew Weatherall to remix the already dance-influenced “Soon” for the Glider Remixes EP; A.R. Kane, another key shoegaze progenitor, took influences from house music and dub; and Cocteau Twins’ ethereal rush felt like Brian Eno’s ambient music made flesh. Meanwhile, Primal Scream’s epochal 1991 album, Screamadelica, had already proved that guitars and electronic music could mix. This spirit of experimentation played out in other early shoegaze releases, with Chapterhouse making use of sampled beats on “Falling Down,” and Curve audibly influenced by techno and industrial music.Two records released in 1993 would cement the alliance between electronic music and shoegaze. Souvlaki, Slowdive’s second album, was a stunning fusion of ambient atmospheres and guitars, influenced by Aphex Twin, dub, and Brian Eno (who worked on the album), and was epitomized by the celestial summer-day-glide of “Souvlaki Space Station.” Then there was Seefeel’s debut album, Quique, a dazzling concoction of ambient textures played out on guitar and drums, blurring the line between man and machine.When not mimicking electronics, many shoegaze bands commissioned contemporary electronic music producers to remix their work, their delicate vocals and celestial guitar lines proving ripe for electronic manipulation, such as Spooky’s remix of Lush’s “Undertow” and Aphex Twin’s astonishing take on Curve’s “Falling Free.” The pinnacle of this crossover occurred when Chapterhouse invited Global Communication to remix their second album, Blood Music, in its entirety, creating the ambient classic Pentamerous Metamorphosis. Chapterhouse would return the favor by providing guitars for “8:07” on Global Communication’s 76:14.But by the mid-’90’s, shoegaze was a media bust and the fallout hit its leading lights hard (Souvlaki, in particular, was trashed). Slowdive were dropped by Creation after the release of their third studio album, Pygmalion, in 1995, while Seefeel went on hiatus the following year. Shoegaze was dead, and so too was its electronic counterpart.The release of Blue Skied An Clear in 2002 was highly unexpected. The album, from fashionable electronic label Morr Music, was a tribute to Slowdive, and consisted of covers of their work and new songs influenced by their sound. German producer Ulrich Schnauss, who appeared on the album, released his own tribute to shoegaze the following year, A Strangely Isolated Place, while M83’s second album, Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts, would also drink deep from the shoegaze sound, laying the foundations for his global success and the eventual return of Slowdive, et al., as did The Field’s 2009 shoegazey album, Yesterday and Today. When Slowdive hit up Avalon Emerson for a remix, the circle was completed.

Bleep, the moody northern English take on techno, was arguably the UK’s first homegrown take on electronic music.The origins of bleep lie in Northern English breakdancing crews. Bradford’s Solar City Rockers crew was home to both George Evelyn, who would later form Nightmares on Wax with Kevin Harper, and Unique 3, who in 1988 recorded what is generally acknowledged as the first instance of bleep: “The Theme,” a record that nailed the acidic squirts, looming sub bass, and icy synth melodies that would later define the genre. One year later, “The Theme” would be joined in the shops by Nightmares on Wax’s debut single “Dextrous” (which the group would later re-work) and Forgemasters’ ominous “Track With No Name,” the first record on Sheffield indie label Warp.Warp—now home to everyone from Aphex Twin to Flying Lotus—would make its name as a bleep label, with its iconic purple record sleeves a guarantee of steely Sheffield quality. In 1990, Warp released an astounding run of bleep records, from LFO’s hairs-on-the-back-of-the-neck self-titled classic to Nightmares on Wax’s “Aftermath,” Sweet Exorcist’s “Testone,” and Tricky Disco’s eponymous hit, which bothered the higher reaches of the UK charts (annoying mainstream radio DJs considerably on the way).In the same year, Birmingham’s Network Records (Warp’s only serious competitor for the bleep crown) put out two enduring bleep classics in the form of Nexus 21’s twinkling “Self Hypnosis” and Rhythmatic’s circuit-bending “Take Me Back,” while in the US a young Roger Sanchez gave the bleep sound a New York spin on Egotrip’s Dreamworld EP and Underground Solution’s “Luv Dancin’.” DJ Moneypenny (as Chapter 1) and Bobby Konders (as Freedom Authority) were among the other American producers to catch the bleep bug, with the former’s 1990 release “Unleash The Groove” even featuring a “Love in Sheffield” remix. Meanwhile, down in Miami, Ralph Falcon and Oscar Gaetan (a.k.a. Murk/Funky Green Dogs/Intruder/Liberty City) were clearly paying attention. The duo included Nightmares on Wax’s “Dextrous” on their brilliant 1998 mix CD The House Music Movement and you can hear echoes of bleep’s spacious, sweet-and-sour ambience in songs like Liberty City’s “Some Lovin’.”In 1991, Warp released debut albums by both LFO (Frequencies) and Nightmares on Wax (A World of Science), but by 1992 bleep was definitively on the wane, as the release of Warp’s seminal Artificial Intelligence compilation saw the label move towards the kind of brainy techno that would be later known as IDM. By this point, Nightmares on Wax had also moved on, edging towards the downbeat hip-hop for which they are known today. But bleep was by no means dead. LFO would release two more albums, 1996’s Advance (including the brilliant “Tied Up”) and 2003’s Sheath (home to “Freak”), and the group’s Mark Bell would go on to work as a producer with everyone from Björk to Depeche Mode before his death in 2014.In the UK, the influence of bleep could be heard in contemporary musical genres such as rave (e.g., Altern 8’s “Infiltrate 202”) and jungle (as on A Guy Called Gerald’s “28 Gun Bad Boy”), later filtering through to UK garage (Dem 2’s “Destiny”), dubstep (Benga & Coki’s “Night”), bassline (T2’s “Heartbroken”), grime (D Double E’s “Streetfighter Riddim” or Maniac, Maxsta, and Boothroyd’s “No Retreat”), and even footwork (DJ Taye x DJ Manny’s “The Matrixx”).In many cases, the influence of bleep was more subliminal than direct, as Neil Landstrumm explained in a 2014 Resident Advisor history of bleep. “Every few years [bleep] seems to pop up,” he said. “Think of grime, sub-low, dubstep, garage, speed-garage, the new techno styles, new house… the ghosts of bleep are still in there, whether consciously or not. I doubt, for example, More Fire Crew had ever heard of bass and bleep, or many of the first wave of dubstep artists, but its there.”Elsewhere, the influence of bleep has been more overt and none more so than in the work of Neil Landstrumm himself, who has released a number of records that consciously reference bleep’s Northern sound, including his 2017 EP A Death, A Mexican And A Mormon, from which “The Tomorrow People” is taken. Doncaster’s Mella D is another producer who has taken the influence of bleep into the modern world, notably with “Movement,” from his 2017 Warehouse Music 001 EP, a song that proves the enduring appeal of bleeps, bass, and thundering beats.

Whats This Playlist All About? Named after "Woman," the lead single from Cat Powers new album Wanderer (her first in six years), this mix shows a little of Chan Marshalls indie rock roots as well as her respect for GOAT singer-songwriters and the women who have consistently challenged the music industrys status quo.What You Get: A selection of classic odes dedicated to the power and struggles of women, alongside modern-day classics devoted to the baddest bitches around (see: Trina and Rihanna). The Woman Playlist aptly starts with her own "Woman," the smoky duet with Lana Del Rey, before kicking into "The Other Woman," the sad mistress tale perfected by Nina Simone. Its then sprinkled with tragic indie anthems (Husker Dus "Diane"), poignant folk secrets (Joni Mitchells "Little Green"), and, of course, John Lennons own "Woman."Biggest Surprise: On the surface, 2Pacs "Keep Ya Head Up" may seems a strange addition, but the rap icons 1993 hit single is a powerful critique of misogyny and the incredible strength of women through it all.What Does This Playlist Say About Women? This is no fluffy statement about girl power. Many of these songs are heartbreaking and tragic as they show the many complexities of being a woman—through all of her trauma, toughness, sadness, and open-heartedness.

If Reflections - Mojave Desert proves anything, it’s that Floating Points 2017 is essentially an ongoing conversation between two different musical beasts who may share DNA and musical influences, but who end up in very different places.Floating Points 1 is Sam Shepherd, the electronic-music producer and DJ responsible for early Floating Points classics like Nuits Sonores and Sparkling Controversy and who is still capable of going back to back-to-back with Caribou/Daphni and Four Tet on marathon DJ excursions.Floating Points 2 is a group of musicians that Shepherd put together to promote his excellent 2015 album Elaenia. It is this group that made Reflections - Mojave Desert, an album that has its origins in recordings made last year when Floating Points traveled to the Mojave Desert to rehearse in between U.S. tours. Struck by the desert’s unique ambience, the band recorded a soundtrack that would reflect their arid, alien surroundings and also accompany a short film made with director Anna Diaz Ortuño.Reflections, then, is very much a band record, based around the two lengthy central tracks on Silurian Blue and Kelso Dunes. The former is a sparse, atmospheric guitar and synth number that brings to mind emotionally charged, classically expansive Pink Floyd numbers like “The Great Gig in the Sky” or the soft-focus, sun-blushed ecstasy of Slowdive’s “Souvlaki Space Station”; the latter is 13 minutes of nervous guitar propulsion that rides the kind of militant Krautrock beat that NEU! or CAN made their own. Both, however, are burned through with a scorching ambience that suggests the desert-noir stylings of Calexico or John Phillips’ soundtrack for The Man Who Fell to Earth.Around these central poles lie three songs that set the album’s atmosphere. Opener “Mojave Desert” is pure ambience, a soundscape that combines the noise of the wind and the rustling of bushes with woozy synth chords, like Brian Eno hooking up with Ennio Morricone on the soundtrack to an apocalyptic Western. Album closer “Lucerne Valley,” meanwhile, is three and a half minutes of beat-free melodic noodling that gently guides the listener back to real life after their dreamy desert excursion.For all that it is a band record, Reflections isn’t entirely without electronics. The brilliant “Kites” sees Shepherd take a synth loop for a walk; as a swinging super-directional microphone captures the valley’s natural reverb, the loop gradually increases in speed, ending up as a wonderfully simple, atmospheric piece of electronics that recalls early Tangerine Dream.Reflections - Mojave Desert should not be confused for a formal follow up to Elaenia, an album that topped many end-of-year lists in 2015. It’s more jammy, less sculpted, more concerned with atmospherics and ambience than melodies, and you can feel the warm desert grit up your nostrils throughout. But as an example of what Floating Points the band can do with the bit between their teeth and an environment to inspire them, this album is hugely worthwhile.

From the warped breakbeats of drum n bass to the frenetic 808 attack of footwork, the last two decades of electronic music history have been marked by a fetishization of the drums, as technological advances have allowed producers to go ever deeper into rhythmic design.Black Origami, the remarkable second album from Gary, Indiana, producer Jlin is one of the most important recent developments in the history of electronic percussion, a brilliantly overblown yet mind-glowingly complex album of rhythmic possibility.Jlin emerged from the world of footwork in the early 2010s with the track “Erotic Heat,” which appeared on volume two of the iconic Bangs & Works compilation series on UK dance label Planet Mu. But if that track was an outlier in the footwork world of dance battles and frenetic DJ cuts, her 2015 debut album Dark Energy would see Jlin gravitate further into her own darkly elegant orbit, incorporating operatic arias (on “Black Ballet”) and Chinese erhu violin (on “Unknown Tongues”).Black Origami sees Jlin blow open the definition of what footwork can be. You can still feel the influence of footwork producers like DJ Rashad on a track like “1%” (featuring Holly Herndon), with its skittering hi-hats and coal-black synth lines, but elsewhere Jlin widens her global percussive net to take in everything from tabla drums (notably used in electronic music by London producer Talvin Singh) on “Kyanite” to the djembe on “Nyakinyua Rise,” all of which battles against Jlin’s drum-machine finesse in a global-percussion street fight. Jlin also takes on sounds that are closer to home: “Challenge (To Be Continued)” is a brilliant rhythmic tussle between US marching band and footwork hi-hats, while “Hatshepsut” throws a Joey Beltram hoover sound into the mix.Black Origami is also notable for its eye-opening array of collaborations, which veer several steps into the left field of electronic music. “Holy Child” sees Jlin work with minimalist composer William Basinski, the haunting “Calcination” features the gothic vocals of Fawkes, while the hip hop-ish “Never Created, Never Destroyed” includes vocal work from Cape Town rapper Dope Saint Jude that Jlin chops and splits to her own devices.Black Origami bears the influence of each of these collaborators and yet it sounds like none of them. It’s a footwork album but only in the very widest sense of what footwork can be. As such, Black Origami resembles—in spirit more than in sound—the work of 90s electronic-music producers like Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, Photek, and Remarc, who took the chopped up breakbeats of drum n bass and pushed them to ridiculous new levels of subatomic complexity, creating something quite revolutionary in its pointillist intensity. Black Origami is a worthy successor to these names, a jaw-dropping work of percussive complexity that marks out Jlin as a singularly brilliant talent.Click here to follow this playlist on Spotify.

In June of 2017, Phoenix released Ti Amo, their sixth studio album and one that, once again, yielded comparisons to MOR kings like Hall and Oates, Steely Dan, and 10cc.There’s nothing wrong with that, of course. But buried way back in the history of Phoenix lies a very different band, one that’s more Kenny “Dope” Gonzalez than Kenny Loggins. The Phoenix of old were steeped in the influence of electronic music and the French Touch: They made disco-inflected house music for fashionable Parisian label Source, remixed Air, commissioned club-slaying dance-floor hits from the fashionable remixers of the day, and worked with Cassius’ Philippe Zdar and Daft Punk’s Thomas Bangalter on their debut album.It’s fairly well known that Phoenix guitarist Laurent Brancowitz played alongside Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter in their pre-Daft Punk band, Darlin’. But Phoenix’s disco dalliance started in earnest in 1997 when, after the success of their self-released single, “Party Time” b/w “City Lights,” the band signed to Source, then one of the most fashionable labels in France thanks to its brilliant 1995 compilation Source Lab, which featured early recordings from the likes of Air, Motorbass, and DJ Cam. (Source Lab 2, released in 1996, would be similarly epochal, featuring Daft Punk’s “Musique” alongside music from Dimitri From Paris and Alex Gopher.)Phoenix’ first track for Source would be “Heatwave,” initially released on the 1998 Source Rocks compilation (alongside Sébastien Tellier’s “Fantino”) then unleashed as a single in its own right the following year. “Heatwave” was a pristine disco classic: four minutes of nebulous chord changes and chicken-scratch guitar that shone like the sun coming up on the Seine after a long night out. It also fit perfectly with the sound of the French Touch, which was then bringing Gallic grace to global dance floors—so much so, in fact, that “Heatwave” was later appropriated by Italian act DB Boulevard as the basis for their global dance hit of 2002, “Point of View.” On Source, Phoenix’ labelmates included Air, who shared their home town of Versailles. Phoenix ended up backing Air on several of their early television appearances and, in 1998, remixed Air’s classic “Kelly Watch The Stars,” adding a Gallic nu-disco strut to the original song’s orchestral sophistication.The year 2000 was a pivotal moment for Phoenix. It represented the peak of their electronic powers, thanks to two singles—”Too Young” and “If I Ever Feel Better”—whose remixes would set global dance floors aflame. “Too Young” was remixed by Zoot Woman (an early band of super-producer/DJ Stuart Price) and Le Knight Club, a duo formed by Daft Punk’s Guy-Manuel and producer Éric Chédeville. The former takes the song’s melody and structure on an electro-pop excursion, while the latter breaks down “Too Young” into a series of sky-scraping loops and tensions that were typical of Le Knight Club’s filter-friendly approach.“If I Ever Feel Better” proved even more impactful, thanks to remixes from New Jersey producer (and later Daft Punk collaborator) Todd Edwards and The Buffalo Bunch, a duo made up of Guy-Manuel’s brother, Paul de Homem-Christo and Romain Séo. The Buffalo Bunch would prove to be one of the lesser-known heroes of the French Touch, becoming the only act to record for both Thomas Bangalter’s Scratché label and Guy-Manuel’s Crydamoure. However, their remix of “If I Ever Feel Better”—retitled “If I Ever Feel Better (Ill Go To The Disco) [Said The Buffalo Bunch]”—would cement their legacy; it appeared on numerous house compilations and will be used to fire up flagging dance floors until time immemorial. It is a brilliant piece of remix work, taking a tiny, seemingly innocuous part of the original song’s vocal—“I can try, I can try, I can try”—and looping it into an irresistible earworm, which they combine with a wiggly bassline, disco-ish strings, and a thumping house beat.Phoenix’s debut album, United, would follow soon after and, if it didn’t necessarily continue the disco sound of “Heatwave,” it would display fairly serious French Touch credentials, with Thomas Bangalter contributing Yamaha CS-60 synthesizer to the gorgeously wan “Embuscade” and Pedro “Busy P” Winter––then manager of Daft Punk, later founder of Ed Banger Records—playing Rapman synthesizer on Part Two of the frankly deranged hoedown “Funky Squaredance.” More importantly, United would see Phoenix work for the first time with Philippe Zdar, a pillar of the French Touch who lent his exquisite production sheen to seven of the album’s 10 songs.Phoenix’s history with electronic music didn’t end with United, of course. The band would continue to work with Zdar, including on their 2009 breakthrough album Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, while their releases would often come with electronic remixes attached. But the band’s latter success in the global rock market seemed to move them away from their French Touch origins, while the French Touch itself drifted out of fashion.Knowing Phoenix’s roots, however, can help us understand how they landed on their sound and how on earth they made such a fashionable success of their slick AOR revisionism. And if they would consider bringing “Heatwave” back to their setlists, then it would make some ageing house-music heads very grateful indeed.