What is it with us musicians and our names? I had a friend in Chicago, a talented electronic music producer, who seemed to spend 50% of his time staring at a sheet of paper, pencil in hand, brainstorming his official artist name. He’s still working on it. Then there’s the friend who recently sent me an email in which he indicated “[o]ur name currently is ‘The Absentia Formal.’ The name is hard to remember so we’re still working with options.” I’ll say. Let’s just say that producers of electronic music tend to have a flair for names that are “creative” (a compliment in our book – note that, in contrast, DJs generally seem to strive for a coolness factor with their name – to each his own). I was scanning the Top 500 Electronica Global Rankings this morning while drinking coffee, and jotted down a few memorable artist names:
- NUDE ! (Dreieich, Germany)
- Old Man Motel (Jamsankoski, Finland)
- Boo Boo Dan & the Loopadelics (San Antonio, Texas, USA)
- Spank the Chemical Christians (Dublin, Ireland)
- Cemetery Dance Club (Jakarta, Indonesia)
- Arthur Loves plastic (Silver Springs, Maryland, USA)
- Ice cream attack! (Bali, Indonesia)
- BOTTLESMOKER (Bandung, Indonesia)
- Zeds dead (Toronto, Canada) (there’s also a “zed’s dead” rock band – unfortunate guy, this zed)
- My parasites (Philadelphia, PA, USA)
- The 4th floor (Napoli, Italy)
- SlimGirlFat (London, UK)
- Magic toadstools (Portugal)
- Infected Mushroom (Los Angeles, CA, USA)
- Chemical Trolls (Be’er Sheva, Israel)
- Dragatis inside the mind (Edmonton, Canada)
- Afrolicious (San Francisco, CA, USA)
Finally, Monster Loop stumbled upon a list we drafted many years ago when we were young punks dreaming about someday producing electro music. This was our list of potential names. Feel free to laugh, we are.
