CONTROL VOLTAGE

August 7, 2012 – MTV's Video Music Awards were first broadcast in 1984 — the same year that Cybotron's "Techno City" put a name to the electronic-music movement that had been bubbling up in Detroit since 1981, when Cybotron's "Alleys of Your Mind" and A Number of Names' "Sharevari" came out within weeks of one another.

August 3, 2012 – Recent mainstream coverage and exploitation of so-called "EDM" — like Forbes' list of the top-earning DJs; an accompanying featurette where the writer allegedly proves the ease of DJing; an apparent Smirnoff ad that's making the rounds on Twitter, in which the "DJ" is playing on a deck with no slipmat or cartridge — have me feeling like I'm close to my own Skyler White-style meltdown. (You know: "Shut up! Shut up!

August 1, 2012 – Of all the adjectives used to describe Lana Del Rey, surely "moody" ranks near the top of the list. A quick scan of Google results confirms that suspicion: "Moody" + "Lana Del Rey" returns 3.5 million hits; "dulcet" + "Lana Del Rey," 926,000; "sultry" + "Lana Del Rey," 667,000.

July 27, 2012 – Steve Reich's influence on electronic dance music runs deep. It goes back, at least, to the Orb's 1990 track "Little Fluffy Clouds," which laced a passage from Reich's "Electric Counterpoint" with acidic synths and breakbeats and samples of a Rickie Lee Jones interview to create a chill-out classic.

July 26, 2012 – I've never been big on video games, but a new video for Slackk's "Blue Sleet" (Local Action) is challenging my indifference.

July 25, 2012 – Caribou's Dan Snaith has spent the past year and a half indulging his clubbier tendencies under a new alias, Daphni, and it looks like he's setting up his Jiaolong label as a platform for likeminded musicians to do the same.