Live Electronic

If electronic music's earned one unfair stereotype over the years, it'd be the one about bedroom beat-makers who'd rather check their email than play anything onstage. The Basics portion of our Live Electronic Essentials obliterates that idea, however, including waves of ambient bliss that'll leave your head stuck in the clouds ("Halcyon and On and On," "Star 6 & 7 8 9"), bits of drum'n'bass ("Big Time Sensuality"), spacey new wave ("Bizarre Love Triangle") and spastic synth-punk ("Thrills"), and a hefty handful of peak-hour anthems ("Go," "Pearls Girl") that'd be the highlight of any headlining set.

Some of the same bill-topping names bring their A-game to our Next Steps as well, right alongside some of today's leading synth-slingers.

When Orbital headlined Lollapalooza over Korn, Tool, and Snoop Dogg in 1997, more than a few frat boys could be seen scratching their goatees in disbelief. That is, until they heard the British duo tear into a hard-techno track like "Satan," a guitar-grinding truce between raver kids and metalheads. (Sure enough, Kirk Hammett of Metallica played on an alternate version the very same year.) Other songs that could get the whole Alternative Nation singing — or at least humming along — include the deviant industrial throb of Nine Inch Nails ("Terrible Lie"), the widescreen hip-hop of DJ Shadow ("Fixed Income"), and the painlessly hip dance-rock of Hot Chip ("Over and Over").

Our Deep Cuts continues down the same crossover path, with a couple detours into the depths of the underground.

Daedelus is just one dude — a pork chops-sporting guy who performs in front of a glowing, self-made machine simply called "the Box." The trick being that it harnesses 256 sounds at a time, allowing one of L.A.'s most consistent beat conductors to turn his sets into a symphony of head-spinning samples. On a completely different tip but no less innovative are the ravenous techno rhythms of Uusitalo (one of Sasu Ripatti's — a.k.a. Luomo, Vladislav Delay — many aliases) and Jeff Mills, the IDM-infused analog excursions of Mouse on Mars, and Cobblestone Jazz.

The idea of throwing devil horns in the air like you just don't care at an electronica "concert" may seem inappropriate at first, but think about it — legendary acts like New Order, Depeche Mode, and Nine Inch Nails would be nothing without the synthetic pulse at the heart of such pioneering tracks as "Everything Counts," "Bizarre Love Triangle," and "Terrible Lie." The same goes for such divergent scenes and subgenres as trip-hop (Portishead), big beat (the Chemical Brothers, Underworld), filtered French house (Daft Punk), splintered blue-eyed soul (Jamie Lidell), glittery electro-pop (Goldfrapp, Junior Boys), and "intelligent dance music" (Aphex Twin, Squarepusher). In other words, none of the above plays like pre-recorded laptop trickery; in fact, much of this music is more alive than anything you'll ever hear from a tried-and-true guitar/bass/drums setup.