The Glitch Mob - Drink The Sea - 2010

I have Avri to thank for this one. See, Avri's into EDM/electronic music a lot more than I am. At one point, the two of us were driving into the city to see a concert - I think it was Juno Reactor, and man was that show a story unto itself - when we got into a discussion about styles of electronic music. Avri found it fascinating that I liked some stuff (I had a particular love of The Chemical Brothers and Future Sound of London) but that whole genres of electronic music (such as happy hardcore) I found pretty boring. So I told him what I'm looking for in electronic music - interesting sounds, a good beat, but most importantly, a melody line that evolved and moved forward.

See, here's my beef with a lot of electronic music. I hear a ton of stuff that is basically "set beat, add in one or two recurring higher pitched effects, let play for eight minutes." So much EDM is just a drum pattern with a few pieces of warbly nonsense over it. I want melody, I want a sense that I'm not just listening to a beat that'll go on for an arbitrary period of time and then stop for no apparent reason. I want a song to be just that, a song.

That was when he recommended I check out The Glitch Mob. They'd been mostly a touring act, playing festivals and west coast shows, and didn't even have an album out, but they had a few songs floating around online and I liked what I heard, and their first album, "Drink The Sea," was just about to drop.

"Drink The Sea" was everything I wanted it to be. It was full of catchy hooks and big beats and, most importantly, songs. The sounds were fantastic and varied, but there was a sense of unified style to it. All in all, it's a great debut. If you're like me and expect more from your electronic music, you could do a lot worse.