THE ROBOT MAN DOES NOT DANCE

Currently playing: The Field, From Here We Go Sublime. A full-length album by a guy whose work I know from the Kompakt label's last two Total compilations. Kompakt is my current one-stop for techno - I like pretty much everything I've heard on the label over the past couple of years. The Total compilations are pretty much an annual event, and #s 6 and 7 have expanded from one disc each to two. As I said in the Voice awhile back, at its most aggressive it's music that makes you feel like you're in your own Michael Mann movie, driving a black Ferrari through rain-slick streets with another dude, both of you wearing sunglasses and not talking or smiling; and at its least aggressive, it's music to listen to while sitting in an all-white room as microscopic robots eat the dust off the furniture. It doesn't make me want to dance, but it makes me feel much cooler than I am, and that's really what I look for in electronic music - I want it to make me feel like an impeccably styled robot-man with liquid nitrogen in my veins. There are some surprisingly human moments in the Field's tracks - titles like "A Paw In My Face" and "The Little Heart Beats So Fast" imply happy interactions with other living creatures, and that's fine. And is it me, or is "Action," from Total 6, built around samples from the Four Tops' "(Reach Out) I'll Be There"? Still, there's enough ultra-smooth man-machine beauty that this might wind up being one of my favorite albums of the year.