A small sign says "Here be songs"

One of my favourite musicians right now is Professor Kliq, a little-known but fantastic electronic musician from Chicago area as of now. I found his stuff through Audiosurf: It’s a fantastic indie video game, that’s like a cross between tetris, guitar hero, and a racing game. And you can use any song from your computer that you want to play it!

But about Professor Kliq, his stuff is sort of one of those within-it’s-own-genre areas. It’s extremely hard to describe, but the nice thing is that I don’t have to! Why? Because he releases his stuff all for free, (though donations are great for him). Here‘s his latest offering, “The Scientific Method, Volume II: Experiments in Sound & Perspective”,  which is probably one of my favourite albums I have. Check it out. Seriously, even if you don’t like electronica, it’s nothing like the techno and such you’ve heard before. Oh, and his blog is totally in my blogroll over there in the sidebar, under the name “My Advice”

Actually, now that I think of it,  TSMV2EiSP (suck it, long album name!) is one of my few “favourite albums of all time” that isn’t a live album. Hmm, if I had to break it down, well, let’s see. (Keep in mind, that this is just favourite albums. Some of my absolute favourite bands aren’t on here, just because I don’t have any full albums by them or because only certain of their songs are my favourite. Oh, and Click album links for a song from each.

Great Big Sea – Courage & Patience & Grit – Great Big Sea’s second live album, it catches them perfectly. Their energetic, often upbeat, sometimes wry and ironic Maritime  Celtic-Rock is fantastic, the kind of thing that almost anyone should love!

Daft Punk – Alive 2007 – Daft Punk’s most recent album, also a live one. I love their first live album, Alive 1997, but this one is rediculously fantastic. Insane mashups, re-cuts and re-mixes of their three studio albums into one huge, completely interwoven meal of delicious, delicious house/funk/electronica that’s good for all ages! This is also the electronica album that really pushed me into electronic music. Before getting it on a whim, I had some stuff from The New Deal, Xerxes, Will Star,  and Alpha Conspiracy, but Daft Punk really pushed me out into this huge area of music I’d never seen before.

Justice - † (Cross) - The next electronica album after Alive 2007 that really pushed my musical interests out. I found this through Pandora in my Daft Punk Pandora Radio Station, ended up downloading the album to see how good it was, and it was SO GOOD that I went to Best Buy and bought it literally immediatley after listening through it once. Seriously, it’s a fantastic record. That’s a Soulwax remix of one of their songs, Phantom Pt. II, playing in the Audiosurf Youtube link up near the top of this post.

Spirit of the West – Open Heart Symphony – Performing live with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, SotW’s Celtic-influenced accoustic rock is a suprisingly fantastic counterpoint to a symphony. Sadly, I couldn’t find any songs from the album itself on youtube, but there’s some seriously fantastic stuff there. Maybe I’ll post a song or two and change the link here later…

Soulwax - Nite Versions Live at Fabric and 120 Other Places – The live CD that comes with Soulwax/2 Many Dj’s/Radio Soulwax’s (It’s complicated) new tour documentary, “Part of the Weekend Never Dies”. They do a fantastic job of recreating their stuff live, reinventing it really, not to mention the songs by Justice, Tiga, Daft Punk, and a few others thrown in  for good measure! They remixed the Justice song in the Audiosurf youtube link up near the top of this post too!

Loreena McKennitt - Nights from the Alhambra – Loreena McKennitt has some of the most beautiful songs anywhere. A energized set of Medieval/Early music, with Middle Eastern and Celtic influences, her stuff is fantastic. Amazing music for evoking emotions of yearning, love, and wanderlust.

Professor Kliq - The Scientific Method, Volume II: Experiments in Sound & Perspective – As I said above, just a fantastic album. Along with Cross and The New Deal on this list as being studio instead of live albums.

The New Deal – The New Deal – Just an overall great album. The first album I ever had that was truly an electronic one, with the music and musical philosophy conventions that many have (like transitioning between songs to create one big continuous stream of music), though I didn’t notice these except in retrospect after discovering a bunch of other artists and reading up on music philosophy a bit.

There’s probably a few more I’m missing, but these at least are all fantastic albums! Yeah.