Elsewhere

Oh what a lovely summer. New releases from three of my most favorite electronica artists.

BT is releasing a new album at the end of August entitled This Binary Universe. His MySpace page and blog have a teaser video and hint at some details: a musical and spiritual epic masterpiece accompanied by abstract artistic visuals of some sort. You can pre-order it on Amazon and supposedly also on iTunes, although I don’t see it listed there yet. Some people don’t care for BT because he’s straying too far beyond straight dance music, but that’s why I like him.

Hybrid’s new album, I Choose Noise, will be released in early September (info also culled from their MySpace page). You can download a free track from the new LP off of their website. Like much of their previous work, it is sweepingly cinematic and orchestral; good, but it didn’t blow me away. I expect some new tricks from artists of this caliber — then again, anything of similar quality to the seminal Morning Sci-Fi would be just fine.

The Crystal Method have released a new 45-minute mix; that’s the good news. The bad news is that it was developed exclusively for Nike to promote their new Nike+ iPod shoes, and it can only be obtained via iTunes as a single monolithic track (for ten bucks!). Although TCM is promoting it as their latest release, some of the reviews complain of recycled material, so I ain’t buyin’ it (literally or figuratively). Maybe next year? Until then, the London soundtrack will tide me over.

I’m also hoping that Tiesto releases a new artist album sometime to follow up his much-beloved (by me) Just Be. But for now he seems content to keep releasing DJ sets ala his In Search of Sunrise series. I like DJ mixes, but I don’t buy them; I prefer the creative and thematic qualities of artist albums (although Sasha’s Involver album interestingly blurs the line). A good DJ does not a good artist make, contrary to what some DJ’s might mistakenly think of themselves. (Apparently BT agrees with me on this one.)