Electronic music is all too often misunderstood, not least by music reviewers such as myself. Struggling through the mid 20th century as an avant garde pursuit by the world's most intriguing autistics, by the 1980s the rest of us had finally caught up with the sound which threatened to derail all else. Coughed up by Germans, recycled in Brooklyn and then taken to heart by the politically charged black youth of Chicago and Detroit, techno is maybe the most divisive of electronic music's many splinters. In Europe it became a way of life, topping the charts and becoming the staple of just about every night spot worth its salt, but in the US techno fizzed away as a subculture, something people knew existed but ignored for the most part. Sure, elements ended up being absorbed into other genres (most recently crunk, for instance) but would you ever think of seeing a techno record grazing the billboard top 10? Probably not. In the last couple of years too, even Europe has had its backlash against cycling 16-step boxes and the buzz of the laptop, with the kids who used to be swooning over Mitsubishis and strobe lights realizing that's the shit their parents did - but techno is not a genre we can so easily bury under the carpet. As the mainstream slips away something new always threatens to bubble up from nowhere, and this latest record from San Francisco operatives Bulbs is proof that there's life in the old beast yet.

Rather than attempt another rewire of the Kompakt formula or trudge out an homage to Chain Reaction's glory days, Bulbs, a duo made up of Axolotl man William Sabiston and John Alamraz, take the techno framework and inject it with a lo-fidelity punk rock flavour rarely heard in the genre. Sure those of us with a hefty collection of limited-run cassettes and spraypainted cdrs are all too familiar with the fuzz of an open cable or the sound of a Casio SK1 pumped through some bespoke pedal chain or another, but hearing the same formula taken into Basic Channel territory? Well that's inspired. From the first bars of the album's opening track, the ten minute 'Gold Ropes' with its wobbling 303 squelches offset with an almost regular beat and banshee synthesizer wails, you have the strange sensation that these guys are taking the sounds you know and disintegrating almost beyond recognition. This is the free jazz fan's techno record; Han Bennink versus Wolfgang Voigt or Chris Corsano re-interpreting Vladislav Delay. Label boss Pete Swanson, as part of Yellow Swans has incorporated electronic elements into his band's noisy compositions before, but there's a sense that what Bulbs manage here is out on its own, and has grown somewhat organically. You catch sense of a rhythm before it ducks to make way for a pulsing bassline or the tape recorded hint of that Nurse With Wound bootleg you forgot to convert to MP3. Noise doesn't have to be entirely an exclusive concept, and while listening to 'Light Ships' I can squint and see sweaty Europeans dancing to these tracks, almost.

Before long we reach the real meat of the record, through the possibly Cajmere-referencing 'Green Flash', tripping into the dubbed-out hiccup of 'Swinsons' and launching us into the album's defining title track. Through the haze of the often exclusive noise genre, Sabiston and Alamraz have brought in some fresh inspiration to manipulate and with a clear knowledge of electronic music past they have created a record which while being referential is respectful and never dull. While the ghosts of the so-called 'intelligent dance music' retire to their respective holes, there are some musical minds out there ever primed to utilize any sound available to them, and I have the feeling I've just stumbled across the next two. Something tells me this is only the beginning? 8/10 -- Dakota Block (8 April, 2008)