Composer Uwe Schmidt is one of experimental electronic music's most prolific and prodigious post-techno experimentalists. Schmidt's discography has expanded into the hundreds despite the fact he's only been actively recording for just over a decade. His earliest tracks were dance music-focused primarily hardcore techno, acid, and trance but by the mid-'90s his sound had departed from the monochromaticism of typical dancefloor fare into dense, complex, multi-layered sound constructions not easily reducible to any one genre. Incorporating elements of techno, acid, ambient, jazz, funk, electro,'60 exotica, and psychedelic rock, Schmidt's current work, though highly rhythmic, is hardly classifiable as dance music at all, lying at the intersection of a sort of future-anterior auteurism and tongue-in-cheek experimentalism unique in contemporary electronica. Schmidt helped to formulate the melodic hard trance and techno sounds associated with the Frankfurt scene. In 2000 under the alias Señor Coconut y su Conjunto his cover album El Baile Aleman gained a comparatively wide release. It featured synth-pop covers of Kraftwerk songs.
Sigur Ros
Iceland’s Sigur Rós are the saviors of 21st-century rock rock of the '70s. The group continues to mix the most interesting aspects of U2 , Low, Radiohead and My Bloody Valentine, while not sounding like anyone else on this planet. The average song cascades with moaning, bowed guitars colliding, low-end keyboards while the lovely, alien-registered vocals of singer Jónsi float on top. Dynamics are employed spectacularly, but half of the album is spooky soundtrack music that never really goes anywhere. However, the third, sixth, eighth, and especially fourth tracks--are mind-blowers, spectacularly worth the price of admission. If they just stopped trying to reinvent the wheel all the time, Sigur Rós could really be a band for the ages.
Sing-Sing
This indie pop group formed after former Lush guitarist/vocalist Emma Anderson met vocalist Lisa O'Neill. Two months later, a demo was recorded. Ex-Cocteau Twins Simon Raymonde and Robin Guthrie heard it and eventually released the "Feels Like Summer" single on their label, Bella Union, in October of 1998. Around this time, the duo added drummer Mig (Moose, Moonshake), bassist Shifty, and keyboardist Poppy Gonzalez (Mojave 3). A split single with Linoleum was issued on Fierce Panda in early 1999 and wasn't followed with anything until well into the following year. The group released the "I'll Be" and "Feels Like Summer" (featuring a re-recording) singles on Aerial, their own imprint. In 2001, Anderson and O'Neill struck a temporary licensing deal with Alan McGee's Poptones label; their full-length debut, The Joy of Sing-Sing, was issued that fall.
The Strokes
The Strokes offer a rock & roll antidote to the plague of boy bands, teen divas and petulant rap-rock outfits. Frontman Julian Casablancas drawls like Lou Reed through a busted intercom, guitarists Nick Valensi and Albert Hammond Jr. do Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd proud as their sinewy chords intertwine to great effect. Thanks to The Strokes, rumors of rock & roll's demise appear to have been greatly exaggerated.
Rufus Wainwright
A singer/songwriter who is the son of folk music luminaries Loudon Wainwright III and Kate McGarrigle. Coming out as a homo while still in his teens, Wainwright sought solace in opera throughout his adolescent years. After attending the prestigious Millbrook School in upstate New York, he briefly studied music at Montreal's McGill University, eventually turning away from classical performance towards pop and rock. Becoming a fixture on the Montreal club circuit,Wainwright soon cut a series of demos. The label DreamWorks signed him soon after, resulting in the release of Rufus Wainwright during the spring of 1998. The album landed on several critics' "best of 1998" lists, while Wainwright spent the next few years touring and appearing sporadically on soundtracks (Shrek). His sophomore album, Poses, brought similar acclaim in mid-2001.
The White Stripes
Who knew such a stripped down sound, recorded on a tight budget, could deliver such a powerful rock
& roll record? The White Stripes, a "brother and sister" guitar-and-drum duo from Detroit, here
accomplish the seemingly impossible. Their debut record incorporates the sounds of classic bands
such as Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, and the Kinks, merging them with the subterranean sounds
of early '60s Texas punk. The result is a rock & roll disc crackling with a kind of dysfunctional energy.