Our favorite electro fetishistas from Spain are at it again. Looks like they're still keen on dressing like nuns and masturbating with crucifixes. Dios Mio!

[Most likely NSFW unless you work in the Adult industry.]

Vigilan. Dirty Princess from Dirty Princess on Vimeo.

After countless attempts by dr™ of trying to convince me to impart some of my vast musical knowledge by contributing to RobotSound™, I've finally decided to discuss one of my favorite dance music genres, New Beat. This was the sound created primarily by Belgian producers from '87 to '89 that forged a link between the EBM and Acid House of the mid-to-late 80s with the Rave/Hardcore Techno scene of the early 90's.

According to dance lore, New Beat was inadvertantly created when a deejay played an EBM 12", Flesh by A Split Second, at 33rpm instead of it's intended speed of 45rpm. Besides their slower tempo, New Beat hits were also characterized by their use of sexually explicit samples, especially those taken from NYC shock performance artist Karen Finley. After a couple years, New Beat morphed into the even shorter-lived Skizzo and Hard Beat sub-genres, which in turn were the precursors of early 90's Rave/Hardcore...

With that cursory introduction, I present:
Vodka Ed's Top 10 Jams of New Beat.

Warning: Some of the videos and/or corresponding audio may not be suitable for the workplace environment ;)

10. A Split Second - Flesh
Since this is the track that supposedly started the whole shebang, it's inclusion on the list is essential.

9. 101 - Move Your Body
One of the MANY projects of Praga Khan and friends. Though there were seemingly lots of different New Beat artists, in reality most output was created by two (or maybe three) groups of producers. This was 101's 2nd hit, after their anthemic Rock To The Beat, though I always thought this was the better track.

8. Moments of Ecstacy - You and Me
Another alias of Praga and crew. Like I said, they used LOTS of different names to make you THINK there was a whole scene.

7. Erotic Dissidents - Move Your Ass And Feel The Beat
This is the full 12" mix from the ultra-productive (one could even say robot-like) Morton-Sherman-Belucci, the New Beat equivalent of Hi-NRG's production whizzes Stock, Aitken & Waterman, who also brought us such classics as Shake Your Hips and Jack To The Air Of The Underwear.

6. Taste Of Sugar - Hmm Hmm
Some cheesy dancing here in another Morton-Sherman-Belucci production. Note the dancers are wearing proto-typical New Beat fashion. Many of these 12"s came with inserts where you too could mail order the clothes.

5. Space Opera - Mandate My Ass
This one gets included for the title alone. Some members of Space Opera included CJ Bolland, David Morley and R & S Records founder Renaat Vandepapeliere.

4. Technotronic Feat. Felly - Pump Up The Jam ("Live")
Easily the biggest and most instantly recognizable hit of the New Beat era. As everyone knows, Felly was just the blue-lipped lip-synching model, whose presence record execs felt would likely sell more records. In actuality, Ya Kid K was the uncredited singer/rapper. Here's the original video for a laugh (dig the fannypack).
I don't want a place to stay
Get your booty on the floor tonight
Make my day

3. Lords of Acid - I Sit On Acid
'88 + 303 = Sit on your face...I wanna sit on your face. Soulwax put out I Sit On Acid 2000, an electro remix a few years back.

2. Major Problem - Acid Queen
New Beat doesn't get much hotter than this. Perfect for your Robot S&M parties (don't ask me, dr™ asked me to include that line). Now I want you to get down on your hands and knees...

1. Miss Nicky Trax - Acid In The House
Don't ask me what pumping iron and women's wrestling have to do with this masterpiece of the genre. As part-time New Beat revivalist V/Vm so succinctly puts it, I Wanna Fuck Miss Nicky Trax.

A new book by David Levy recently came out entitled "Love and Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships" which the good dr™ kindly asked me to write about, despite my not having read it...a premature evaluation, if you will. Well, here's my two cents on the subject based on what little I've thought about it.

Sounds like a great fucking idea. I say, "Bring. It. On!" At least if we're talking from a strictly sexual standpoint. Robot love? Let's discuss the robot sex part first.

What this basically boils down to is refined masterbation; interaction with a "super deluxe vibrator" of sorts. I can't say how it is for most people, but it seems to me, optimally, that people try to simulate real sex in their imagination while they masterbate. Why WOULDN'T you want to use a convincing tool to help elevate the sense of realness? If these robo-whores with machine feelings turned out to be amazing, no one need go sexually unsatisfied ever again, especially if they're customizable.

Truthfully though, wouldn't it be a really long time before these sexual automatons became affordable for personal ownership? I'd imagine long before that there would be robo-brothels, where minimum wage workers enter the cybersex rooms after the johns took care of business to spray down the robo-prostitutes with sanitizer...but who knows? I figure if they can make a robot fuck, they can probably have it clean itself...I'd bet these cybernetic love machines could even be self-lubricating, if desired.

Now as far as the robot "love" thing goes..."Love" is a pretty hard thing to define anyway. But is loving a robot a good idea? *shrugs* I can't see why not if it makes you happy. I guess what it would come down to would be the matter of being able to completely suspend disbelief [think Lars and the Real Girl], albeit on a much deeper level than just doing it temporarily so you can shoot your load. I mean, on the one hand, I can see why it could be immensely appealing to make a robot interact however you wanted it to...but on the other hand, how could you convince yourself it was real if it was completely predictable and never disagreed with you? Where's the love in that?

Fucking robots is a wonderful idea. Loving robots seems like it could fuck with my head slightly less than getting involved with a flesh-and-blood human being, but would still probably mess me up pretty good nonetheless. But then if I were ever to go that route, I'd probably have concurrent relationships with at least three completely different robo-sluts (granted I could afford it), and they'd be cleaning my apartment, chauffeuring me around, fixing me exotic drinks...

Stereo - Somewhere In The Night
Baby's Gang - Challenger
Ganymed - Music Takes Me Higher
Stop - Wake Up
Kano - It's War
Chromatics - In the City
I-F - Secret Desire
Lifelike & Kris Menace - Discopolis

Calvin Klein's new fragrance, in2u, is being aimed at "technosexuals," a term they've actually trademarked (maybe someone in their marketing department is a fan of this guy). Not being a part of this 20-something, thumb-texting generation aka Generation Y or the Millennials [Who comes up with this shit? It sounds like a group of bad guys from the X-Men] who likes to have casual NSA sex, I can't say whether or not I'd buy into it. According to CK execs, these people are over smelling like J-Lo, Britney or Paris, like their stuff to look like iPods, and according to their press materials, “She likes how he blogs, her texts turn him on. It’s intense. For right now.” Do they really think these plugged-in, uber-tech-savvy, hi-def, cynical young adults won't see through this ploy?

Check out the NYT's piece on how the company that made Brooke Shields famous for showing off her pubescent ass in their jeans plans to unleash the scent for click-happy Reagan-babies looking for easy internet hook-ups.

Hello. I like to call myself "Your Robot Friend" but you can call me "My Robot Friend." I am a robot and I make music but first and foremost, I am your friend.

The good folks at Robotsound™ also wanted me to mention that I have a robot cock that is capable of shooting fire, sparks, confetti, streamers and gallons of white plastic flakes. But I don't want to talk about my cock. Really, I don't. I swear. It was only a request from Robotsound™ that I write about my cock. If it were up to me I would avoid talking about my cock altogether and focus on music. Seriously. Although, I must admit, it is a nice cock.

Anyway, as your friend, I wanted to help improve your life by teaching you about a very important fact. Here it is:

Songs in which robots sing and play music are way better than those that involve humans by themselves. In addition, I can easily recall the names of 50 active bands and artists with the word "robot" in their title; 51 if you count Marc Ribot. His last name sounds like "robot" and is most likely supposed to be Marc Robot, but someone messed up the spelling. There are hundreds of albums with the word "robot" in them and thousands of songs that feature robots in their title or subject matter. Again, the reason for this is simply that robots are awesome. I can not stress this enough: Robots = Awesome.

I put together a little mixtape to help illustrate the point.

Since I'm too hot and lazy to post a real update to the site (but hate neglecting it any longer), I will serve up some tasty hot links off tha interweb grill (courtesy of youtube.com).
Egyptian Lover - Make It Hot
Technotronic - Pump Up the Jam - a prime example of what my friend Ed and I call "Frying Pan Dancing." Where's Ya Kid K though?
Major Problem - Acid Queen
Pete Shelley - Telephone Operator