Techno Anyone?

Yes indeed Plaid's Double Figure is GREAT!! Just picked it up a few days ago and still listening to it all the time. Dare I say sounds similiar to Kid A, with a little more bass, hahahaha. Very good though worth checking out if you don't already have it.

Here are a couple of good Techno CD's. 1. "Tibetan Trance, Happy China" on PST Music/DBA Phophecy, it is Tibetan dance/trance music. 2. "GOODING, songs from the unrealized film script, FACTORY BLUE". It received super reviews in the "Alternative Press" and "Keyboard Magazine" (per the sticker on the cover:-) and the stock number is SS00020. It is pretty intense (like falling asleep under a railroad track and then remembering your dreams), but I like it a lot. It is labeled as ranging from ambient to industrial rock (what ever that is). I just call it Techno.

autechre for sure but stay away from their latest two very crunchy and go for the early work also check out Artifical intelligence 1 and 2 these are the ten commmandments for electronic

Retail stores and even a lot of online merchants lump this one under "Techno," along with a lot of my favorite stuff...Boards of Canada "Music Has the Right to Children." Techno in the sense of dance music, it ain't--this is moody, introspective analog synth weirdness with lots of obscure samples, tape hiss and dope hip-hop style beats mixed together. Not everyone's cup of tea but a personal favorite. I got into electronic stuff listening to Tangerine Dream, Jarre, Synergy etc. and coming from this direction BOC are quite palatable, maybe not for the "Pump Up the Jam" fans.

I actually take "Happy Cycling," bonus track on the US release of the CD along as demo material for bass tightness, detail and soundstage during the synth loops towards the end. On a good system those synth chords seem to stretch out for miles!

Other recommendations I have are Orbital (every single album is amazing), Two Lone Swordsmen, FSOL, Plaid, and for the dancefloor-oriented check out the recent Everything But the Girl stuff (great remixes abound) and Towa Tei.

The new aphex twin album (Druqks - not sure about spelling) is really outstanding, blurring the borders between adventerous electronica and modern classical music (if such a distinction ever made sense).
Other good stuff, I recently listened to is Megashira, Bugge Wesseltoft (hard to come by in the US) and Trueby Trio (DJ Kicks).