ARTICLES BY PIERS MARTIN
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 ELECTRIC INDEPENDENCE
Regular readers may have noticed the absence of this column in Vice for most of last year. For those who cared, I can only mumble a sheepish apology and promise to write it more regularly. What amazing new music have you missed out on? Quite a lot, I suspect, very little of which will have eluded the better blogs....
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  ELECTRIC INDEPENDENCE
For the second month in a row we're over in New York, in a manner of speaking, talking to a couple of guys who've made an incredible record that perhaps a few hundred people might think about buying. We're talking about the Galaxy Toobin' Gang, of course! Slightly different story to last month's column where we settled for a quick chat with Andy Butler of little-known disco troupe Hercules & Love Affair. Next thing we know the guy's smeared across every magazine and Sunday supplement like it's already over and we look as if we can't even think ...
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 ELECTRIC INDEPENDENCE
There’s rarely anything positive to say about the Daily Mail or the Mail on Sunday, but it wasn’t the toughest decision in the world to buy a copy of the paper the other weekend when it offered a free copy of Jean Michel Jarre’s Oxygene album on CD. Imagine the number of people ...
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 ELECTRIC INDEPENDENCE
At the end of October last year, Bogdan Raczynski fell from a hotel window in Graz, Austria, and ended up in hospital with two broken heels. Heels-ouch. In Graz to perform at the four-day Elevate festival, the mild-mannered rave heavyweight-who slipped off the scene a few years ago but is emp...
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 ELECTRIC INDEPENDENCE
We aren’t the first to say this, and we surely won’t be the last, but, goodness, that Italians Do It Better label knows what it’s doing. This is the New Jersey/Portland imprint that’s been getting a ridiculous amount of heat online in all the right places—yes, 20jazzfunkgreats, that means you. Where...
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 ELECTRIC INDEPENDENCE
This month’s Electric Independence is dedicated to all the stubborn romantics who spend hours and hours in tiny rooms, slaving over arcane hardware and crunching numbers in a tireless bid to create the music that comes to them in their wildest dreams. For those among you who find total happiness los...
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 ELECTRIC INDEPENDENCE
With a name as good as Passarella Death Squad, it was only a matter of time before this London three-piece got round to releasing an amazing record. Well, folks, that time is now. Having formed in November 2003, it has taken them nearly four years, but their debut 12-inch EP is finally out on the Re...
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 ELECTRIC INDEPENDENCE
Every edition of Electric Independence that appears without a mention of one of Sweden’s leading human beings, Luke Eargoggle, is, some would argue, hardly worth bothering about. As the author, I’m inclined to agree. That’s one reason why the column hasn’t run for a few months. Luke was last in Vice...
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 ELECTRIC INDEPENDENCE
In Zanzibar for a few days during September, I wandered with my sister through the narrow streets of the East African island's ancient capital, Stone Town, one sweltering afternoon. We'd been to the market, where guys nodded off on butcher's blocks slumped next to animal carcasses, and carried on ov...
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 ELECTRIC INDEPENDENCE
It is hard to believe that Norway's Skatebård could ever top the off-kilter brilliance of his debut, Skateboarding was a Crime (in 1989), but somehow he has. Released in 2002 on the Telle label (what happened to them?) to no fanfare whatsoever, that album didn't have much to do with skateboar...
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 ELECTRIC INDEPENDENCE
Although it's not quite been done to death, there's only so much to say about the continuing vogue in dance for rehashing and re-editing cosmic disco and flipped-out space-rock before you start to sound like a bearded bore with an eBay addiction and a signed photo of DJ Harvey in your Gucci wallet. ...
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 ELECTRIC INDEPENDENCE
This issue, Electric Independence picked the brain of our guest critic, Jacob Poznanski. He's ten years old and lives in Stamford, a picturesque town in Lincolnshire, not far from Peterborough. We sent him a CD with the tracks on that we wanted to ask him about, and enclosed with it a sheet of paper...
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 ELECTRIC INDEPENDENCE
Diskokaine has got to be one of the worst names ever for a record label. Not only is disco spelt incorrectly, but the illegal drug cocaine is clearly referenced, and it is also spelt incorrectly. What kind of example are the people behind Diskokaine setting? Don't they realise that many of their you...
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 ELECTRIC INDEPENDENCE
"Vodka for Russians is like a warming water. When it's cold you have to drink a glass of vodka to feel warm-I don't drink vodka to get drunk," says Alexey Orchensky, the 20-year-old Russian genius behind Amen Orchestra, whose breathtaking debut album, 17 Waves, on the Art-Tek label, is an audacious ...
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 ELECTRIC INDEPENDENCE
One Monday morning a few weeks ago I awoke to discover that my flatmate had returned from another three-day rave bender with a handful of people he'd collected at various after-hours parties along the way. They were all in a state of extreme refreshment-gurning, parched-mouth stuttering, overly poli...
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 ELECTRIC INDEPENDENCE
I'll tell you what, sometimes it's hard maintaining a level of professional enthusiasm every month for a load of records that, with the odd exception, basically sound the same. (The exception right now by the way is the insane new Ceephax acid jamboree "Hardcore Wick" / "Acid Varsity Special" single...
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 ELECTRIC INDEPENDENCE
If you love spending money you haven't got on incredibly cool and expensive psychedelic disco records that you'll play maybe four or five times before filing them away, then New York's just-so Whatever We Want deserves to be your new favourite label. Run by a well-connected guy named Carlos, Whateve...
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 ELECTRIC INDEPENDENCE
The top six Electric Independence things of 2005. Break it down...
VITALIC
OK Cowboy
Odd: I played this to death every day up until its April release. Since then I’ve...
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 ELECTRIC INDEPENDENCE
This column is called Electric Independence because by and large it's all about electronic music, most of which is released on small and not-so-small independent labels. If you're into the stuff that's written about here then you probably like to think of yourself as someone who's independent and op...
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 ELECTRIC INDEPENDENCE
One of the coolest things about Francisco's new Music Business album on Nature-well, the coolest thing by miles, actually-is that the CD and vinyl editions turn into a board game, called Music Business, which is loosely based on Monopoly. The object of the game is that you enter the seamy music biz ...
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