Computer Love Is Back

So it's been over a year and a half since anything was posted over here at Computer Love. Why? Well, both of us (John and Tim) have been crazy busy with college, work, and life in general. John moved out of his house a little over a year ago and has been making excuses as to why he's never online since, and well, we just never really felt as if the blog was worth a lot of our time.

But well, things have changed, I guess. We are both listening to a lot of new music all of the time, so why not write about it? I mean, it's not like we aren't already uploading it to MediaFire, anyway.

For this first post in over a year in a half – in this return to Computer Love – I'd like to blog a few tracks that are not only pretty but also have some meaning to me, personally.

The summer of 2007 was a crazy one for me. The first month was a great month – I had just started fooling around with Propellerhead Reason (Reason 3, so no Thor or RPG-8 or any of the other cool plugs for Reason 4), and I actually wrote quite a few tracks in a remarkably short period of time. Well, after not even having been out of school for a month, I got a phone call one evening – my grandmother had become seriously ill and was in the hospital, and we had to get down from northern Michigan to central Kentucky as soon as we could – we were packing for a funeral (that thankfully, did not happen).

Anyway, we left on July 1st, and we didn't get back until mid-August; for most intents and purposes, I was stuck 8 hours from home all summer, with nothing to do but skateboard and play my DS. I didn't have a laptop at the time, and my computer was in need of some parts, so I didn't get to work on (or really even listen to) music all summer – the only music that I had that I liked was a CD with about 11 tracks that I had written just prior to leaving.

Anyway, times that I had computer and / or internet access were few and far-between, but some very interesting things happened when I did. It was that summer that, through di.fm, I discovered synthpop / futurepop. Also, I was exposed to early, pre-commercial electro house. The interesting bit is that I was introduced to these genres more or less at the same time.

Somehow or the other, I heard Ladytron – Destroy Everything You Touch. I quickly became enamored with the cold, robotic vocals and the apathetic, distant way that they were sang. Looking back, my musical tastes have changed quite a bit (I used to be able to listen to Rotersand and Icon of Coil all day long – not anymore!), but that song in particular had a serious impact on me at the time.

Then, by some beautiful twist of fate, I discovered Tom Neville's electro house remix of Destroy Everything You Touch. It took everything that was great about the original, extended it by a few minutes, and re-shaped it for the dancefloor with buzzing, stuttering synths and a basic but insistent rhythm. I was immediately in love with the track.

[CL001 Ladytron – Destroy Everything You Touch (Tom Neville Remix)]

Fast-forward a few years. Electro house came and went as the 'next big thing', but it is obviously still here to stay for quite awhile. Also, while nobody was paying attention, the whole indie dance / nu-disco / French electro scene came and went as the 'next big thing', and is obviously here to stay, too; this blog was created with the intent of posting the best new indie tracks (and the best old italo-disco tracks, too). Anyway, I was thinking about this whole thing this morning, and I remembered that not too long ago, I stumbled upon a beautiful remix of Ladytron – Predict The Day by the elusive Grey Ghost:

[CL001 Ladytron – Predict The Day (Grey Ghost Remix)]

Grey Ghost goes all out with retro-sounding synth strings and stabs, a nice bubbly bassline, and tastefully-vocoded vocals. This track right here is Ladytron, how they always should have been – pretty, emotional, and – dare I say it? – radio-friendly. If you still use that MySpace thing, go add Grey Ghost – I'm sure he could use the fans. I know I could.

Well, it's good to be back in the music blogging game. Maybe we'll be a little more successful this time around.