Younger generations may not be able to appreciate the novelty of moving the radio dial left and right, catching a second or two of audio and moving on to the next station. As a high school student, I definitely wasn’t listening to dance music, but still, I never could find what I wanted, it seemed like nobody was playing the music I liked to hear. Akufen (a play on the word acouphène) aka Mark LeClair put together a project based primarily on tiny samples of music he had recorded off the radio. The complex layering of samples here are a clever play on the medium where, at least in America, the radio had largely dismissed electronic dance music. In 2009 with the destratification of radio, TV and media, it may not seem like a clarion call so much as an abstract sound collage, but putting it in a larger context it has a certain gravity to it, not unlike Kutiman’s ThruYOU project and his samples of home-made videos.

I posted a list of records that I enjoyed from 2009–mostly electronic dance music– for Redefine Magazine. I think I’ll take up a post in the future to examine some more records from this year, but for now, I hope you’ll skip over to Redefine Magazine and review some of the standouts in techno/house. After reviewing the other lists, I can’t believe I was in the dark about Nurses for so long. Thankfully, the other editors have bulletproof taste.