I’ve had the pleasure of seeing Giana Factory play live a few times: it was fantastic, intimate and just a good time, something I think that comes across in their music.

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In the vein of their danecefloor classics Idealistic, Zdarlight, Jupiter Room and Pogo, German duo Digitalism’s new single Blitz is a complete rocker.

I adore the band Health and am left fascinated by this glamorously bouncy We Are Water remix by Canadian duo Azari & III, who have taken it to outer house-space. It’s pure 80s late night disco at its finest. Ghost Buster meets Short Circuit, anyone?

Remixer Classixx has produced a playful version of the new Groove Armada track, Paper Romance, replacing the hard four-to-the-floor of the original track with bubbling synths, skittering drums, and delicate, swooning guitars that bring out the passionate vocal takes from SaintSavior and Fenech-Soler. [Listen to the Classixx remix of Groove Armada]

Copenhagen group, The Asteroids Galaxy Tour, will be crossing the Atlantic this March for their first US tour of the year, blasting out their unique fusion of happy soul and kaleidoscopic pop. The tour will kick off at Philadelphia’s Kung Fu Necktie, followed by stops in DC, NYC, San Diego, LA, San Francisco, and band SXSW. We have their song, The Sun Ain’t Shining No More [listen below], available for free download in our Music Download section.

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Om Records are turning the big fifteen and to celebrate they’re going to release the double disc, Om:15 album, featuring exclusive tracks from Radio Slave, Charles Webster, Crazy P, Atjazz, Fish Go Deep, John Beltran and more. The art on the record was done in collaboration with urban street artist, Sam Flores of Upper Playground, and full versions of the design will also be available in a limited high quality 18″x24″ digital print. The album drops on July 21. Check out the single — Orchestrating Maneuvers In The Dark by Radio Slave below.

We invited Greg Gillis, aka Girl Talk, who aside from being the DJ of the moment is also the remix whiz behind tracks from Beck, Tokyo Police Club, and Grizzly Bear, to give us a rundown on the songs he’s wearing out right now for our sister site, My Secret Playlist. He started off by propping Beyonce’s anthemic single, Single Ladies [listen below]. Go figure! ‘This is one of my favorite Beyonce tracks ever. It has so much energy, and the chorus gets dark in a great way. The clapping never stops. The video is a flawless execution of a performance style clip. It’s perfect’. Read the rest of Girl Talk’s Secret Playlist.

More than a decade of built-up expectations are going to be hard to deliver on. Without realising it, the years spent wrecking my eardrums with Their Laws and Out of Space inadvertently resulted in setting Prodigy the massive task of promising me the greatest live performance I would ever see. It had to be the ultimate experience: a band who have delivered the heaviest beats of the last sixteen years fronted by a man who’d give Jonny Rotten a run for his money. On the night, it was good — very good — but not good enough. There was a hint of fatigue: they’ve been destroying arenas with the same tunes for almost two decades, and the whirlwind behind their live shows, Keith Flint, will be 40 next year. After all, sixteen million albums sold and an almost cult following secured them the title of greatest dance act of all time long ago, so now it’s just for fun — something to keep the fans loyal to their king. So, here’s a clip of them way back when they started, at their freshest. The early 90′s acid rave scene barely gets a flicker on television these days, so it’s also a nice piece of memorabilia of a culture forced underground and eventually washed away.

Hmmm, I don’t know if it’s the extra strong coffee I’m gulping down, or that faintest slither of feel good sunshine that’s creeping through the blinds, but this song is making me feel mildly euphoric, and that kinda works right now. Play it loud. Play it through headphones. And imagine you’re decked out in day glo polyester with a dramatic burst of velvet lining. Damn, my feet just can’t stop from dancin’.

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Welcome to the first issue of Lost At E Minor’s new email publication — My Secret Playlist — a weekly peak inside the MP3 collections of some of our favourite musicians, bands, and producers, giving us a rundown on their eight favourite songs or albums right now. For the first issue, we have a wickedly talented and creative producer and DJ. It’s, wait for it, just a little longer, nearly there. Ok, it’s Moby, from some otherworldly universe

John Lee Hooker / I Hated The Day I Was Born
‘If I could sing, I’d love to sing like John Lee Hooker. Him or David Bowie. I don’t have a beautiful singing voice, so I really appreciate the deep and gravelly voice that Hooker possesses. I really like everything about John Lee Hooker’s music. I’m a big fan of old blues anyway, especially music from the pre-war era. It was so much simpler back in the day. You plugged in and you played. Studios are like instruments now. This song is one of my all-time favorites. “I love depressing music”: that was a quote in my high school yearbook’.

Pantera / Great Southern Trendkill
‘Not a week goes by when I don’t listen to a Pantera album. I grew up playing in punk rock crossover bands and I love the complete lack of subtlety about Pantera’s music; the precision of it. Pantera staked this territory early on and just got nastier as they went along. War Nerve has to have the nastiest lyrics ever written. If the Devil wrote lyrics, it would be War Nerve’.

Donna Summer / I Feel Love
‘This is the best electronic club song ever recorded. It breaks my heart to know that I’ll never write anything as good as I Feel Love. I always play it when I DJ, though not the remixes; the original version. I never play remixes. I saw Donna Summer perform once and I went backstage afterwards to say hello, terribly drunk and stumbling about. She was polite and friendly, but she must have been horrified at the sight of this scruffy drunk accosting her after her show. I found out later that she was a tea drinking Christian’.

The Gun Club / Miami
‘I listen to this album constantly. It’s one of those records that I play in my iTunes when riding the subways or walking around Manhattan. One of my great regrets in life is that I didn’t see The Gun Club play back in the day. During the early 1980s, I used to hang out at a bar in Connecticut called Pogos where I’d see so many amazing bands, but I missed these guys. Their first two albums are the best records ever made, in my opinion’.

TV On The Radio / Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes
‘Over the past eight years there has been so much good music coming out of New York. And these guys are the best of them. Their approach to music is so original and unique. Staring at the Sun in particular is really, really distinctive. In terms of New York music, I can’t hear much difference between Manhattan and Brooklyn bands because there are no Manhattan bands! Very few musicians can afford to live in the city these days’.

Suicide / The Second Album
‘This is one of the best and most inspiring albums ever made. It comes with a bizarre passion and emotion, which is interesting as it’s just a duo with a drum machine and organ. I’m a huge Suicide fan and this album is deserving of all the love and attention it gets. I remember buying it as a teenager, working a series of odd job to earn enough money to spend on records. I even worked in a vinyl store once, though it didn’t stock the sort of music I was into and actually morphed into a drug den during my time there’.

Kudu / Death of the Party
‘I first saw Kudu play at a bar in New York, a tiny dance club that always has good music. The singer in this group actually sings on the first song (Ooh Yeah) on my new album. When I stumbled in on this particular night, I was floored! Kudu create mutant dance music, similar to Liquid Liquid. It’s very atmospheric. They would like to have a larger audience, but A&R people don’t know what to do with them’.

X / Los Angeles
‘I’ve always loved X. Their first three albums are amazing. I got to introduce them at the recent SXSW festival, which was one of the greatest moments of my life. I met Lou Reed there too, which was fun. The X show was so good! It brought tears to my eyes. I never got to see them play back in my youth, so this felt like karma was repaying me some, and more. For what, I’m not sure. But it was an unforgettable experience’.

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We have some signed Moby and M83 merchandise — CD, LP, posters, stickers — to give away, along with Jose Gonzalez iPod covers.

To be in with a chance of winning either the signed Moby products or the signed M83 cds, or one of the other CDs or posters we have available, simply be a Lost At E Minor subscriber and leave a message under this post telling us: ‘Why I need to have it? It’s damn simple really …’ (or words to that effect). Contest ends this Friday morning and winners will be announced shortly after.

Prize pack includes:
Signed Last Night (CD, LP, posters, stickers)
Signed M83 – Saturdays = Youth (CD and posters)
Jose Gonzalez – customized iPod covers for 5 different iPod shapes

Clear some wallspace. We have three limited edition posters from a recent Gnarls Barkley show to give away to Lost At E Minor readers. Thanks to our friends over at Cornerstone, one of these funky looking posters could be hanging between your collector’s edition John Lennon print and your Grade Six family portrait. Just leave a note under the post saying why you really want one (well, ‘hell yea!’) and we’ll announce the winners Tuesday morning New York time.

For a garage-tech group to sign to the premier indie label, Domino, something is definitely going on. If you remember Various signing to XL and Burial becoming the new hero of dubstep-indie crossover, then I guess we were waiting for this to happen. If you haven’t yet heard Beeper, the ringtone-inspired ode to the two-way that’s blown up in clubs across the world, then don’t worry. I expect that this track will become 2008′s Re-Rewind by Artful Dodger. So you will be hearing it everywhere from mobile phones to dancefloors. Sinden are already touring the world; think Basement Jaxx and Audio Bully’s but with the most credible indie label in the world behind them.

Listen to Beeper by Sinden and Count of Monte Cristal.

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DFA Records need little introduction to dancefloor devotees, but Hold On, a recent release by lesser known artist Holy Ghost!, may not be on the radar just yet. It will be though: we nominate it for track most likely to receive stereo overplay.

Haunts is one twisted, skewered, pulsating, gyrating disco tune. Seriously. Jacob Safari, aka Bark, Bark, Bark, sure knows how to take a dirgey chord progression and dress it up in layers of disjointed, unsettling noise.