Cyberpunk mix and commentary

So I recently published a cyberpunk-inspired mix on Mixcloud, called Neon Sleep Empires, and it's being well received - currently 1st on the Industrial charts and 4th on the IDM charts! Pretty happy with that. Anyway, as per usual, here is my commentary on the tracks and why I chose them.

1.Untitled by Gridlock. This track is from Trace, one of my favourite albums by my favourite band. It’s short and simple but sets the futuristic tone for the rest of the mix.

2.Vadus Arcology by Index. The name alone would have put this track in as a contender, and it has a great 90s futuristic feel to it. This is the first track of Index’s underrated 2000 album Ultra Hard Shadow.

3.Stockmarket by Cyclotimia. If you were pressed for time, you could do a cyberpunk mix by just playing this album: Wasteland by Cyclotimia. A really original and amazing work that typifies the motifs. Picking one track from this album was hard, but I really liked the subliminal voices combined with the subtle drones.

4.Parisville by Access to Arasaka. Another album that could stand as a cyberpunk mix on its own, or any of the other albums by this amazing new artist. The name is actually a homeage to a corporation from a cyberpunk pen and paper roleplaying game;  ‘nuff said!

5.Ghost of a working man by Architect. I wanted to start shifting the mix into darker and more sinister territory, and this track seemed to be a good way to do it. This is the first track off Lower Lip Interface, one of many strong albums by this Haujobb side project.

6.Thirteen by Dirk Geiger. I’m a very recent convert to Dirk Geiger, and I really like what I’ve found so far. Most of this album is much lighter IDM territory, but this is a great sinister track that works well in the mix at this stage. The guitars at the end take this up a level even further.

7.Cross fade by Haujobb. Putting together a cyberpunk industrial mix without Haujobb should be a criminal act. This fine work is the opening track off the often-overlooked Matrix release, consisting of remixes of the classic Solutions for a Small Planet plus other bits and pieces. The quality speaks for itself, really.

8.Pull the plug by Totakeke. Totakeke is one of the genuinely best electronic artists active in the world at the moment. This amazing track is from an early album, On the wrong side of the tracks. It fits the theme so well, and contains some really good samples from a really crap movie (The Thirteenth Floor).

9.Anticlinal by Ab Ovo. I had a funny feeling that this album by Ab Ovo would have something for this mix. I skipped past the first few tracks, wondering what I had been thinking, then found this one. Superb! It starts very subtle but builds up a really nice tension as the track progresses.

10.Underlying encryption by Scalar. Well this is my music project so it’s hard for me to talk about. I definitely had cyberpunk motifs in mind when I put it together.

11.Catch the Midnight Girl by Stendeck. This band is up there with Totakeke and This Morn Omina as the top electronic bands in the world at the moment. I love everything he has done. This is one of the best tracks off the truly excellent Scintilla album. It’s a lot faster than anything else on the mix but that was my idea, building up to a tense climax.

12.Observatory by Tinidae. Amazing stuff. This newcomer band on Tympanik Audio is the only post-Gridlock band to come close to the quality of the original masters. Picking one track off their debut Lights album was hard; there are a few others that could have worked very well in this mix (or might work well in the next cyberpunk mix I do… muahaha!).

13.Echo by Haujobb. More tracks from this band? Two tracks from Haujobb (and one from Architect, which is a Haujobb spinoff band) might seem excessive to some, but I feel that if Cyberpunk Industrial had an entry in the dictionary, it would just be a picture of Daniel Myer’s face. Many bands imitate Haujobb, few come remotely close to being this good.