A RobotSound favorite since the heady daze of yore has been seminal bleep techno "band" LFO (previously mentioned here or heard in this mix). I won't re-hash LFO's history here - you can Google them to get caught up on that (just make sure you're researching the LFO on WARP Records from the UK, not the utterly forgettable boy band, Lyte Funky Ones). I do, however, want to offer some "forgotten" LFO tracks from their early days (1990) that they performed for John Peel's legenday radio show. Gleaned from "someone else's hard drive" from a cassette recording, these songs were never commercially released (makes you wonder just how many more tunes Mark Bell has kept to himself).

LFO Peel Session 1990

Seeing that we're already in that time period, it's time to honor a small, yet noteworthy subset of early techno, namely Bleep. Centered around the Yorkshire towns of Leeds, Sheffield and Bradford in the UK, it briefly made it's name during '89 - '91, before the ravey piano anthems and hardcore breakbeats took the spotlight. We all know that Robots Love Bleeps (or anything Bleep-related for that matter), so it should surprise no one that this particular electronic dance music sub-genre deserves a post of its own.

Here's not one, but two mixes of Yorkshire Bleeps and Bass courtesy of Sheffield Bleep, an internet radio station broadcasting the very best electronic, dance & experimental music, non-stop, 24/7 - tune into their SHOUTcast stream here. Mix 1 mainly focuses on Bleep put out by Network Records while mix 2 consists of early WARP releases. Tracklistings and places to buy after the jump. Now you'll never accuse me of causing you bleep deprivation.

Network Bleep

Sheffield Bleep

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.

Okay, so I've been going a little crazy lately with record buying. That's one of the problems of living next to what Rolling Stone [not that I ever listen to anything they say] calls, "The Best Music Store In the World," Amoeba Records. Then you have eBay and online record stores. Makes it waaay too easy for me to spend most of my disposable cash on shiny plastic groove-laden discs.

Here is a list of what's made it into the shopping cart recently:
SebastiAn - Ross Ross Ross
Detroit Grand Pubahs - Black Matters
The Consumer - Financial Advisory
Dynarec - Body Sequencer
Huggotron - Glasshouses
LaTour - People Are Still Having Sex
Egyptian Lover - Dance
Dexter vs. Cosmic Force - Noordhollandsche Ghetto Tracks
8bit & The Calculators - Hound Dog
Dsico That No Talent Hack - City Stirs
Jor-El - Space Tracks
Scan X - Wasteland
Automat - Preludes
Cursor Miner - The 4 Guardians
Debasser - KLS
Si Begg - Revolution
Armand Van Helden - Koochy / Phreeknik
Hong Kong Counterfeit - Counterparts
Kansas City Prophets - Grim Dubs Vol. 3
LFO/AFX - 4 Track EP
Life Project - Present Random Chance

Either the person/automaton in charge of Hummer's marketing campaigns is a huge LFO fan [having now used TWO of their tracks for commercials], or Mark Bell really loves rolling in oversize SUVs that get shitty gas mileage. Hummer is obviously going for our demographic [upwardly mobile droids who enjoy bleep-y schizophrenic techno], even if this forward-thinking robot isn't a Hummer fan.

They're also trying to turn robots into car salesmen. Check out their current site with the ad they premiered during the Super Bowl, then get a load of this marketing weirdness. I guess it is possible for robots and monsters to fall in love after all.