For listening suggestions for the various
warps, see
Warps/Music.
- Alan Parsons Project, I, Robot
- Laurie Anderson, Big Science
- Laurie Anderson, The Ugly One with the Jewels
- Laurie Anderson, United States Live I-IV
- Art of Noise: basically everything, plus The FON Remixes. Paranomia is available in many mixes featuring the voice of [Max Headroom].
- The B-52's, Cosmic Thing:
- The B-52's, Whammy: Songs about teleporters, growing up to be monsters, and of course, Planet Claire
- [Bauhaus] is like a Hemotopian's dream. Prime "Uneasy" listening, also at home in Top.
- Björk: Avant-garde pop, otherworldly enough for PB. Even if her music isn't your thing, just look at those [videos]: "Army Of Me" (so Down), "All Is Full Of Love" (lovemaking industrial robots), "Cocoon" (tendril mummification), and now ["Oceania"]... she could fit into pretty much any of the Warps. A big influence on Amanita's character, of course.
- Frank Black: Plenty of science fiction references, sometimes oblique, in his first two solo albums (and the last two of the original Pixies albums).
- "Calistan": pure Down. "used to be sixteen lanes / used to be Nuevo Spain"
- Blue Man Group, Audio: Downwarp, uptempo. Very urban-primitive.
- Blue Oyster Cult
- Boards of Canada, Music Has The Right To Children: mellow analog synthesizers that could underscore an Upwarp educational programme; the eerie, childlike mystery of Charm.
- David Bowie, Ziggy Stardust:
- Broadcast:
- The Buggles, The Age of Plastic:
- [Wendy Carlos]: Godmother of Moog Music. Did many electronic realizations of classical pieces (Isao Tomita followed later in the same mold), and is best known for her work in Clockwork Orange and TRON . Many other reasons to respect her. Find out yourself.
- Chkrrr. http://www.tschibug.com/ Sorrowful romantic technology.
- [Circuit-Bending]: Creating music through creative short-circuiting. Advanced theory incorporates rheostats, environmental sensors and the body's own electrical resistance.
- Leonard Cohen: Folk minimalism in his older works; musically denser later on. Down-flavored either way. Especially recommend Last Year's Man, Songs of Love and Hate, and The Future.
- Coil:
- Combustible Edison, The Impossible World
- Covenant: European Gothic Industrial Techno. What's not to love? My favorite song so far has been "Leviathan," a song of cycles and descent. -- Echo
- Daft Punk, Discovery
- Dat Politik, "Bubble Queen": Her Majesty's royal anthem!
- Deltron 3030, Deltron 3030:
- Depeche Mode: Generic Synthpop Standards. Varies from functional-constructionalist (the earlier stuff) to trippy-bizarre (the later stuff). Master and Servant and In Your Room shouldn't be ignored.
- DEVO: "Post Post-Modern Man (if just for the title..), Beautiful World (Charming..)" Unashamedly geeky and cheerfully subversive -- very UpCharm.
- I would've classified DEVO as classic Down; their message is "the world is going to hell but that doesn't mean the descent can't be fun. "Freedom of Choice is what you've got; Freedom From Choice is what you want", "Too Much Paranoia", and their cover of NIN's "Head Like A Hole" is just absolutely incredible. --Roque
- DJ Spooky:
- Thomas Dolby, Golden Age of Wireless: lush early-'80s synthpop by an introverted dreamer: aviation, pirate radio and other such romantic stuff. Most copies are the reissued version with "She Blinded Me With Science" - doubtless dear to many hearts here...
- Electric Keet -- Chiptunes Are Love
- ELO, Time: Orchestral Art-Rock, Time was a theme-album of a future too alien for the human accidently transported there -- in short, highly PBX.
- Brian Eno - musician/producer, artist and author. There's a definite Strange bent to some of his early rock albums; his ambient pieces could fit in almost any of the warps.
- Donald Fagen, "I. G. Y.":
- Donald Fagen, Kamakiriad: disjointed story of a futuristic alternate-1950's road-trip in a bubble-domed car
- Larry Fast (AKA [Synergy]) has an overlooked series of albums consisting of pure, unadulterated synthetic music: Electronic Realizations for Rock Orchestra, Sequencer, Cords, Games, Audion are must haves.)
- Forest for the Trees. Noisy, but good lyrics. Enlightenment, surrealism, reality manipulation, nature spirits, distress signals from the future.
- Fuxa:
- Freezepop
- Godspeed You Black Emperor
- Gong, Radio Gnome Invisible:
- Grateful Dead
- Hawkwind: The Xenon Codex; Space Bandits; many others
- Bill Hicks:
- His Name Is Alive: Ethereal lyrics over moody strings.
- Robyn Hitchcock, "Sandra's Having Her Brain Out":
- Jefferson Airplane:
- Jean-Michel Jarre, specifically Oxygene, Equinoxe, Les Chants Magnetiques, Zoolook (w/ Laurie Anderson), Chronologie, Oxygene 7-13 : Organic synthesizer soundscapes mixed with catchy electro-pop tunes, completely lyricless. Earlier works are more otherworldly and dark, but all are highly 'cosmic' sounding.
- Juno Reactor, Bible Of Dreams: Strangewarpean nightmare soundscapes.
- KMFDM, Adios, Full Worm Garden,: [A Secret Never Wanted]
- Komeda: bouncy neo-50's space-pop, very cinematic and evocative
- Koop, Son of Koop:
- Kraftwerk: Unabashed technophilia via "Music, non-stop, technopop." This stuff probably plays all the time in Upwarp.
- Lamb, just about any of their [albums], but especially 'Fear of Fours'. This album in particular has tracks that remind me of just about every Warp.
- Lords of Acid, "Robot Love":
- Lush, Light from a Dead Star
- Man... Or Astroman?:
- Mr. Bungle, California - None Of Them Knew They Were Robots: Spray-on clothes and diamond jaws, Wrinkles smoothed by nanoclaws.. (Very good for Strange as well.)
- Klaus Nomi: near-to-unknown '80s-era new-wave singer, backup to David Bowie - exceedingly freakish visually with an incredible vocal range. Easy to picture as a PBX character. Now the subject of a documentary called [The Nomi Song].
- Ken Nordine, Colors: spoken-word (Nordine called it "word jazz") pieces, each about a different colour, personified. "In the beginning... when Light was deciding who should be in and who should be out of the spectrum... Yellow was in trouble."
- Gary Numan: Dark themed futuristic songs full of Philip K Dick-style paranoia and alienation. Very Downstrange. "We're in the building where they make us grow, and I'm frightened by the liquid engineers."
- Drew Neumann: Specifically for the extremely Downwarpian soundscaping in Aeon Flux. The album [Eye Spy] should be in everyone's collection.
- Orbital: Mixed bag of ambient-trance-vocal stuff, with highlights In Sides "The Box (could well be "The Puzzlebox") and The Altogether "Meltdown" (which is 100% pure downwarp theme).
- [OverClocked Remix] (OCRemix.org) - Game music, remixed. Much fun, much love.
- Portishead: Spooky, cinematic, and atmospheric; good Strangewarp fodder
- Repo Man soundtrack:
- The Residents:
- Rezo Largul: spacetechno, futurethink, happybounce [website]
- Run Lola Run Soundtrack:
- Servotron Robot Alliance: High-energy rock and roll about robots.
- The Shamen: Gridshaman anthems/inspiration
- Soft Machine:
- Soundgarden: "My Wave" from Superunknown is quintessential Down.
- Gwen Stefani - Love, Angel, Music, Baby. Specifically songs such as Bubble Pop Electric (Down/Charmish), Harajuku Girls (I can't really categorise this, but it makes me think of PBX, help? - It's a tribute to the hip shopping in Tokyo, rather consumerist, ne? Corasyn) and Hollaback Girl (The beat feels Down to me). Danger Zone sounds quite trippy-cyborg, too. The whole album is most enjoyable, fun beats and cool synthesiser sounds abound.
- (Haven't heard it myself, but the [Pitchfork] review of the "What Are You Waiting For?" single may be of interest: 'Her roots in happy-fun-time ska have borne Day-Glo fiber-optic time-traveling fruit, blooming in a world where "Video Killed the Radio Star" is the intergalactic anthem, Madonna's pre-Kaballah DNA is readily available in jelly beans and scratch-n-sniff stickers, and blade runners get high licking the sweat from the fur of Pokémon pets. If that's all there is, my friends, then let's keep freaking.' Why, how interesting you should say that, David...)
- |Stereolab|: This is the official Puzzlebox band, as far as XOR and OR are concerned.
- Sun Ra: Free jazz from Saturn!
- The Sushi 4004 compilation: giddily postmodern Japanese dance techno, from the ultra-chic Shibuya district
- The Supreme Beings of Leisure:
- Talking Heads, "Seen and Not Seen":
- Talking Heads, Speaking in Tongues:
- Roger Taylor, Fun in Space, Strange Frontier, "A Dozen Red Roses For My Darling" (Highlander b-side). Roger Taylor's only top-ten hit was "Radio Gaga", when he was drummer for Queen.
- Amon Tobin: Eerie, jazzy, groovy, whimsical, nasty. Fine soundtracks for Strange or Down.
- Isao Tomita: Pure synthesizer arrangements of classical scores like Holst's Planets or Mussorsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. Brilliant UpTop material. (The musicboxes in the curator's office use these exact versions of the Holst songs.)
- Pete Townshend: assorted projects had a science fiction theme, such as "Gridlife" and "Lifehouse", but none never appeared on a full album. "Behind Blue Eyes" is the theme of the villian from Gridlife. Other works later appeared on Psychoderelict, including the wonderful "Early Morning Dreams" which includes such Charming lines as "Enjoy the present while we hope for the future! Slip on the life experience grid today!"
- Vangelis: Pretty much the end-all-be-all of "cosmic-music". Soundtracks to Bladerunner and Carl Sagan's Cosmos are highly noteworthy. (I can recommend Direct but not Voices. -- Corasyn)
- [World Entertainment War]: Brainwash yourself before somebody nasty gets to it. A firm insistance on being who you want to be and not conforming to standards. Inspiration for the Televisionaries. Very Down and gritty.
- [Yat-Kha]: Has to be heard to be believed. Traditionalist in a very non-traditionalist way. The music isn't the only thing worth checking out on the site.
- Frank Zappa, Joe's Garage:
Many of the above artists show up in the various Puzzlebox mixes people have contributed. (Currently offline.)