In many ways the continued niche interest in the Chiptune ’scene’ is to be expected: there is a certain sub-set of music nerds who will always be drawn to making music using the crunchy blurps from an old Gameboy or Commodore 64.

To these ears though, whilst a lot of the resulting songs are a nostalgic blast of fun, frustrations always arise: the sounds are too confined by their own limitations – all low-bit fuzz and bite, and not enough feel.

Maybe White Blush, in 808 Myst, has found the happy medium: using moderately ‘old’ tech (an 808) to draw influence …

One of the more interesting aspects of the recent explosion of electronic music in the USA is the way that, suddenly, music that was overlooked in the States in previous years is being gobbled up at a prodigious rate.

Be it in the original form or new artists cannibalising old songs for new ideas, suddenly a genre like minimal house is no longer passé – it’s being freshly reproduced, revised and thrust into the future again.

Even non-US producers can capitalise on this. And who would begrudge Elkaset from benefitting from such a fortuitous set of circumstances?

And benefit they should: …

Have you noticed it too?

That, as new music is becoming more the product of lone bedroom producers and become more indicative of an individual’s aesthetic, the songs become less interested in posturing, and more concerned with beauty and warmth?

In fact, Tom Kitty Oliver, the solo project of Andrew Hamlet, concerns itself with very little else: a cornucopia of gentle, deft and choice sounds that are both low-fi and luxe all at once.

Arcadian Divide is a swoon-some , gently buzzing with soft static and the rustle of life’s more menial, quiet moments.

In the past, labels would …

I sometimes wonder if the deeply melodic pop bands that cropped up in the 1980s could ever make it through the white noise of new bands that populate the internet now.

Bands like Pet Shop Boys, Yazoo and Erasure all possessed a horrendously sharp ear for brilliant pop songs, whilst maintaining a careful balance between mass-acceptance and an archly distant art-school aura.

Maybe they could make it now. Maybe they’re not cool/attractive/perky enough.

Maybe they’d write songs for Jessie J instead (which, frankly, would not be the end of the world). Maybe we need hybrid bands like An Blonds, who keep …

Matthew Young runs the excellent Song, By Toad blog, and a similarly-named, similarly excellent record label.

He loves new music, and talking about new music, preferably whilst sharing drinks with you, as I have discovered on many a queasy occasion.

Because of his garrulous and idiosyncratic nature, he gets asked to speak on panels, usually about the “Future of the Music Industry”, which is pretty much the title of every panel at ever music conference, ever.

At The Great Escape, he announced that “Last FM and Pandora are fucking pointless”, and a selection of music/tech people blew …

If we take for granted that the process of making music has revolved almost 180 degrees in the recent years, the next hypothesis to ponder over is: How far can the novelty extend?

Laptops, pirated software and time is all that’s needed – and isn’t it funny how the music produced has similar characteristics?

Yes, of course musical fashions come and go, but is it a coincidence that he bulk of music produced with this technology is juddering, elegant and sunny; a series of carefully pieced-together musical jigsaws?

Or is it that now collaboration between musicians is a choice rather …

Tributes in pop music usually fall into one of two camps: bullshit braggadocio aimed at incarcerated rappers, or mawkish Sting-sampling nonsense in remembrance of slain rappers.

But how often do you hear tributes to mega-brained physicists? And how often are they dubby lo-fi skanks peppered with quotes from the great man – Richard Feynman – himself?

A rhetorical question, of course; as much as I’d prefer the charts to be packed with philosophical physics-based smash hits, The Kids might just keep plumping for new Jessie J drivel.

More the reason to embrace Cherenkov Riddim‘s deliciously fun, upbeat and skewed Feynman Riddem while we …

After the world went slightly bonkers over the Coachella Tupac hologram,  it took a mere matter of hours for spoilsports to point out that, actually the ‘hologram’ was merely the modern implementation of a century-old magic trick called …

ANBAD continues to be borderline obsessed with music that defines itself in pre- or post- genre terminology.

And why not? Pre-Dubstep is as meaningless as post-Dubstep, and yet throws up a whole raft of different approaches to music in the minds of both maker and listener.

Funny how a lexicographic angle can justify, help craft and bloom new music.

I’ve decided to brand J4KL-1‘s music proto-post-Garage-Step. No biggie. Just remember to thank me when all the kids are talking about it.

R4indrops shares many genealogical similarities with its peers: skitering beats, weirded-out vox, the swooshiest of swooshy noises slopping over …

I met a lot of lovely Nordic people at The Great Escape in Brighton last week. Most people from that part of the world tend to be heinously pleasant, helpful and kind. It’s enough to warm the blackest of hearts.

Indeed, one of them went the extra mile and gave me the worst cold known to man, and now ANBAD towers is awash with phlegm, grumpiness and empty Aspirin packets.

Of course, not all of our chipper Nordic chums dispense cold germs so freely: Henri Devereaux‘s subtly thunderous Daydreamin’ has been in my hands for all of 18 hours, …