Nobody wants to put up with the crappy music choices that the networks shove down our throats when we watch sport competition. In order to break free from the tyranny of the rampant commercialism, Brainwashed staff have chosen the BEST recordings to soundtrack your enjoyment of cold sport watching.
9 Albums for Olympic Spectating
Skates, "Lord of the Rinks"
People who can't rap shouldn't and programmers with some degree of ability shouldn't bother enlisting those tired vocalists when they aren't needed. Point in case: Todd Drootin of Books on Tape makes some mildly entertaining, low-end electronic fuzz dependent on bass and drums and then decides that it must be too boring to stand alone.
Greg Davis, "Curling Pond Woods"
There's a level of innocence and melodic clarity present on this disc that makes me wonder why it hasn't received more recognition. Then the determining factor hits me: this is too sweet, almost comical in its lazy strolling. Greg Davis obviously has an ear for gorgeous sounds an the ability to craft elegant stretches of sound, but unfortuneately it seems as if he doesn't have the ability to create a coherent record.
Out Hud, "Street Dad"
When I first saw Out Hud, they were playing to a crowd of Chicago's finest at the Fireside Bowl in the midst of an old-fashioned Midwestern heat wave. Two feelings prevailed that night, as the crowd anxiously awaited the headlining Locust to come on: the first was the "my god, I could not be more sweaty in this sauna of a club appropriately named the fireside" feeling. The second was the "I don't know who this band Out Hud is or why they are playing this show, but I guess it's cool" feeling. This second sentiment was actually voiced by Out Hud bassist (and !!! vocalist) Nic Offer himself in the banter between two songs. All the perspiring punks could have cared less why Out Hud were there; what mattered was that they were in fact there, and for a 40-minute set on a night when movement was excruciating, everyone forgot about the oppressive heat and started to dance and move and shake to this strange band whose music demanded that our bodies dance and move and shake, regardless of whether we wanted to or not.
Meat Beat Manifesto, "Autoimmune"
The tenth studio album by Jack Dangers' main musical outlet takes a maximalist approach, combining apocalyptic dubstep and industrial-strength breakbeats with the assimilative spirit of a beat hacker. In the process, he creates an album true to the MBM legacy: one foot in cyber-age cross-genre multimedia assemblage, and one foot firmly planted in the timeless psychedelic ocean of sound.
SPK, "Information Overload Unit"
While they might not be as lauded as their contemporaries, at least in relative terms, the Graeme Revell fronted SPK was one of the essential contributors to "industrial" music, as well as the various permutations of it that came afterward. This, their debut full-length album, carefully balances the abrasive harshness, but also hints of moody, depressive ambience that would define their future.
Colder, "Heat"
Declaimed in a number of pompous and unhelpful reviews for mostly unintelligible or contradictory reasons, Marc Nguyen Tan's second full-length as Colder is, in reality, a dark and seductive electronic record with virtues to spare. Whether updating the anthemic possibilities of new wave or cross-breeding fake jazz with dub and cold motorik, Heat exudes a cool, sophisticated, and infinitely accessible atmosphere that is entirely unique to it.
Phil Manley, "Life Coach"
This solo debut initially had me pretty baffled, as it is stylistically all over the map and bears little resemblance to Manley's previous work with Trans Am and The Fucking Champs. There is a perfectly logical explanation, however, as Life Coach is intended as a homage to the work of legendary German producer Connie Plank. Of course, the fact that Phil is essentially attempting to pay tribute to the entire krautrock canon on a single album is probably even more baffling still (as well as inherently doomed), but he has the instrumental and engineering prowess to at least make an intermittently impressive show of it.
Sandoz, "Digital Lifeforms"
Digital Lifeforms marks the point where Richard H. Kirk, formerly a dour, paranoid composer, released a happy, intelligent, danceable album. Originally released on Touch in 1993, the disc consists of ten distinct, separate, non-experimental tracks, all upbeat and surprisingly commercial (although without sounding naive, obvious or shit). For those who weren't able to get the original copy twelve years ago, this expanded versi