Why, H, why did it all have to end?

This week, I have been mostly feasting on Moderat.

Moderat is a portmanteau. A what? Exactly. It's a perfect marriage of two Berlin musicians: the cold, hypnotic Modeselektor (described by the duo as "Russian crunk") and techno entrepreneur Apparat.

They last hammered together an EP, Auf Kosten Der Gesundheit back in 2002, when the world was still newly mourning the demise of Steps. Oh H "Ian" Watkins, where are you now? Sob...

...where was I? Oh yes. Anyhoo, a month or two back, Modeselektor and Apparat picked up their rusty nails and hammered together something much more impressive. A whole Moderat album (pictured).

Moderat is all-analogue, recorded where Bowie put Heroes to tape, and it piddles pop sensibilities up against a drizzle of dubstep and a serious slab of sub-atomic bass woofery.

It is melodic and (yeeks) catchy, and brings to mind Apparat's work with Ellen Allien. The album's got a touch of icicle on its edges, though, and the German rapping may well turn you off when you ogle some of the tracks on their MySpace page.

All that Ritornell jazz trumped by a wonky Shitkatapult

This week's award for the jazziest electronica to come out of Austria goes to Ritornell, whose debut album Golden Solitude is out in a few days.

The duo comprise a jazz pianist called Richard and a sound experimentalist named Roman, the latter most famously having drummed with Patrick Wolf. It's a CV that doesn't pump my purist electronica heart.

The album is sparkle full of mellow washes, sparse drumming, and sound structures that refuse to be rushed. I'm less enamoured with the ladles of jazz saxophone that dominate the album toward the beginning, and more impressed with the found-sound metallic echoes of later tracks like Disappearing City.

Ritornell sounds like the kind of music Nightmares On Wax ought to be making, and I guess I'm too much Roman and not enough Richard to thoroughly enjoy the record.

Wonky techno label (and John Peel favourite) Shitkatapult have churned out their 100th release, and it's the best thing since sliced eyeballs.

Strike 100 is a triple-vinyl collection of the best of Shitkatapult, and it's all rather mellow. Which is astonishing, considering the craziness this label has released in the past. A number of artists have written stuff especially for the album, including T Raumschmiere (pictured: photo by Kika Da Silva) in a rumbling minor key mode, and The Orb on remarkable form with some serious big fat chords.

The stand-out for obvious reasons is Apparat's shimmering remix of Johnny Cash's I Heard The Lonesome Whistle Blow. Not the best track, but most def the coolest.

Listen to bits of the whole dang album on the Shitkatapult website - you'll notice one of the tracks is by Felix. I'm pretty sure it's not this Felix.

Telefon Tel Aviv's big hair sound is shrouded in darkness

Edit: This album is mentioned in my top ten electronica albums of 2009. 

I want to describe Telefon Tel Aviv's new album, heralded as something to watch in my 2009 preview, as a collection of "driving pop anthems."

Don't get me wrong: they're not the Pet Shop Boys. They're not singing glorious ditties about naughty sex for a start. But there's something super-electro-pop about Telefon's third album, titled Immolate Yourself.

Spiralling opener The Birds' punches the air with eighties snares, an energetic stadium keyboard line and breathy vocals. Helen Of Troy should have its own big hair video and rolled up jacket sleeves..  Stay Away From Being Maybe steals the bassline from Bill Withers' Lovely Day and fires it into space.  Yet, it's all muzzled and shrouded in dark contemplation.

The deeper you push into the album, the more their sound hits a more familiar skewy electronica beat, with layer upon layer of melodies that ultimately lead nowhere. And that's the flaw with Telefon Tel Aviv. The production sparkles, the new nods to bands like Kraftwerk are a massive improvement, but they're never going to hit you in the face like, for example, Apparat or Wisp.

It's insubstantial... but it's a really pleasing, cotton wool, uplifting, dark and wet insubstantial.

And so to the electronic elephant in the room: the death of one half of Telefon Tel Aviv.  Charlie Cooper (in yellow, above) went missing after an argument with his girlfriend, but beyond that, the details are sketchy. They should stay sketchy in respect to his family and friends.

If this is the end of Telefon Tel Aviv, then Immolate Yourself is the sound of a band reaching their suitably melancholic climax. In the words of one commenter on Telefon's Myspace page, the "group put New Orleans (and the US in general) on the IDM map. Heck of an accomplishment."

IDM, for the uninitiated, is the name for most of the music you read about on this blog. And its historic connection with New Orleans is, well, zilch. It has been a British-led genre, so you could say America doesn't "do" IDM.

Except, it did. And for a while at least, its name was Telefon Tel Aviv.

It was written by Pal Waaktaar you know, and not the good looking one

One of July's most significant electronic releases was Chromeo's Fancy Footwork, their follow-up to 2004's She's In Control.

She's In Control passed me by, like a fart in a strong breeze, but this new album hit me square in the face like a juggernaut full of crap, and the juggernaught itself is made of crap too, just like the whole metaphorical street scene which is made entirely of crap.

If I wanted uber-cool 80s electro funkdaddy disco, I would screw my eyes up like that Japanese guy in Heroes and transport myself to a multi-coloured disco floor full of bad mofos robodancing to the break-down bit of A-Ha's The Sun Always Shines On TV.

Please forget that last paragraph; I never said it.

If faux-retro Prince-wannabe lifeless post-Mika pap is not your bag, then let's move on to look at Night Of The Brain's debut album Wear This World Out.

This leftfield rock album earns its place on an electronica blog because it's the brainchild (geddit?!?!) of Cristian Vogel from Super_Collider (Messagesacomin artwork pictured).

The Theme, puked out as an EP a few months ago, owes a debt to tight post-rock, but much of the rest of Wear This World Out is Pixies-style noisiness with brave side-steps into odd neighbourhoods, such as the disco guitar in Dark Lady.

Vogel's weedy vocals, in strength and drug effect, make this record all-the-more likable.

While I'm doing a bit of catch up, it's worth a skip and a hop back to May's releases and my mobile phone alarm, which is Apparat's Not A Number.

Every morning the drip-drop insistence of that track shoe-horns me into the real world. It's a shame then that Walls, the album it's from, is liable to send you back to the Land Of Nod faster than you can say "quick let's fill this blog with antiquated literature references".

Walls is a hugely listenable album. My ears have even sent me a thank-you card. But it works as backing music for movies, not as a huge artistic statement.

TV and radio producers take note; you need Apparat in your collection. And if you use it in a programme as a result of reading this, make me look really smug and leave a comment.