While rapidly developing technology has allowed electronic music to sound less and less mechanical over the last two decades, the patently artificial sounds that Kraftwerk introduced on albums like Trans-Europe Express and The Man-Machine are as popular now as ever. The seeds the German group planted have flowered in many forms over the years–including hip-hop (via Afrika Bambaataa’s electro-funk), synth pop, and Detroit techno. But recently a new crop of artists in the U.S. and Europe has put a new spin on the old sounds that’s part kitsch appreciation and part heartfelt homage.
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The new electro has been a staple of the European scene for half a decade, and now with the ascendance of Detroit’s Ersatz Audio label–home to icy beat-driven acts like Adult. and Perspects–and the more recent entry of Los Angeles indie Emperor Norton, which has English electronic new wavers Ladytron and will soon bring the U.S. The First Album by the French duo Miss Kittin & the Hacker–it seems that it might soon explode here too. Le Tigre, Kathleen Hanna’s post-Bikini Kill electronic punk band, and the German trio Chicks on Speed, with their extra-plastic deconstructions of new wave, have already introduced aspects of the style to the indie-rock audience. And according to Jimmy Johnson, owner of Forced Exposure, a key distributor of electronic music in the U.S., sales of this sort of stuff have quadrupled in the last year.
Kittenz is miles away from the house sounds Stallings made his name with. At 15, living in Park Forest, the self-taught keyboardist collaborated with fellow future legend DJ Pierre on the underground club hit “Phantasy Girl,” but though he continued to experiment with music at home, his parents discouraged further professional involvement. “They were supportive, but they preferred that I go to college to become something that I wasn’t,” says Stallings with a belly laugh. He went to Alabama State University to study communications, but within a year and a half he’d flunked out and returned to Chicago, where he enrolled at Columbia College. His attitude hadn’t changed much. “I took Pool 101 there; all I did was shoot pool.”
Felix da Housecat spins Friday, February 1, at Crobar.
