Emulsion

Kate Simko’s “Wake Up!” series, forever celebrating the best in unheralded new electronic music, headlines this month’s installment with local artist Nathan Koch, better known as Emulsion. From the time he was a kid, Koch obsessed over the old 8-bit Nintendo system. Almost surprisingly, the years of listening to the cute bleeps and blips of lo-tech NES and Gameboy games gave Koch a taste for the darker side of electronic: straight-up industrial music captured him during his teen years. Clearly not a phase, he grew up to work as the lead Gameboy tester in San Francisco, after which he came to Chicago and picked up a job at local industrial stalwart Invisible Records in 2001.

However, listening to his debut full-length, “Blue Sky Objective” (out in May on local imprint Lens Records), casts no suspicion that Koch spent most of his formative years cranking up the likes of Coil and Skinny Puppy. Still influenced by the 8-bit soundtracks of his youth, but fused with a newfound interest in melody and harmony, Koch has dropped an infectious, yet subtle new instrumental electronica record that you don’t have to be a hardcore techno geek (or gamer) to enjoy. - Brad Knutson