DAT Politics, Tracto Flirt (CD)

DAT Politics were a weird French "techno" band—in concert, 4 musicians hunched over laptops, and I'd imagine their record making process was similar. While a lot of musicians in the early-00s were expanding the bounds of techno in more austere directions, DAT Politics made weird music that was a lot of fun. They weren't quite as cartoon-like as Blectum from Blechdom, in part because they did not vocalize over their beats and tones, but the San Francisco duo may have been their closest contemporaries. Apart from the strangely trebly mastering job (wouldn't music with dance beats demand a bass-heavy sound?), Tracto Flirt sounds more surprising than it did in 2000, and it's aged nicely.