Whether or not you think they're insufferable tossers, indie record shop staff fill an important niche in the underground music ecology. Arbiters of discernment, they navigate the swirls and eddies of new music, finding overlooked gems, which they then recommend to their clientéle. Oh yes, and should you have the temerity to go up to them and inquire about the latest major-label alternative hit, they'll let you know what a gormless pillock you are for having such unrefined taste. Thus the concept of a compilation album encompassing the history of electronic music through the selections of record shop staff makes sense; and this is exactly what this double CD is.

Selected by current and former staff at London's hallowed Rough Trade record shops, which have figured prominently in the history of post-punk music, Rough Trade Shops Electronic 01 consists of 41 tracks, from the early 1960s to the present day (though mostly dating from the late 1970s onward). The range is what you'd expect to find; Warp-style IDM and Austrian laptop glitchnoise alongside early industrial and New Romantic, with a bit of early academic experimentalism thrown in. If anything, the selection has a tendency towards the black-clad, self-consciously serious side of the taste spectrum; you will not find any early electro hip-hop, acid house or booty music here; but then again, you'd expect no less from the serious young insect behind the counter.

Disc 1 starts with Brian Eno's "Signals", a very nice piece of textured ambience from 1983, which undoubtedly was an influence on many who followed; this is followed by the Joe Meek produced "I Hear A New World". Recorded in 1960, this would fall into the op-shop-bargain-bin lounge music category, were it not for the bizarre distorted tape delay effect (which sounds like Donald Duck on drugs) and, more subtly, the anxious subtext of the lyrics. A good choice for opening the collection, as the strange new world it refers to may well be in the 39 tracks which follow. Track 5, Throbbing Gristle's 1978 "Hot On The Heels Of Love", with its whip-crack snares, sequenced arpeggios and insectile synth riffs was undoubtedly an influence on the entire industriogothic movement, and it stands as a testament to its legacy that, over two decades later, PVC-clad freaks across Northern Europe and beyond are still churning out imitations.

Track 7 is the BBC Radiophonic Workshop's original Doctor Who theme, in its entirety; this is followed by a recent track titled "Space Invaders Are Smoking Grass", a 1967 Raymond Scott commercial for headache remedy Bufferin and Schneider TM's laptop cover of The Smiths' "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out", with glitchy beats and a vocoded, German-accented vocal. Further on the disc is some Autechre, some New Order (586, and not anything quite as obvious as Blue Monday), Matmos, Aphex Twin, Kraftwerk's "The Robots" and a brief excerpt of John Cage's "Radio Music", among other things. The disc ends with a track by NON (not to be confused with NIN), the experimental ritual noise project of Boyd Rice, an industrial pioneer who was into harsh noise (and the Church of Satan, for that matter) back when Trent Reznor was still getting the shit beaten out of him in kindergarten.

Disc 2 starts in a krautrock vein, with Faust and Can juxtaposed with the more recent sounds of To Rococo Rot and Stereolab, and ends with Elph vs. Coil's "Ended", a processed vocal track. Along the way there's another glitch cover (this time of James Brown's "Superbad"), tracks from The Human League and Depeche Mode, and The Normal's "Warm Leatherette", with a younger Daniel Miller (who founded the Mute label which put this out) declaiming verses about a car crash scene over industrial synth loops; which was probably more avant-garde back in 1978 than it sounds now. Towards the end, Farben (aka Jan Jelinek, of loop-finding-jazz fame) is the closest this compilation comes to house music; with a 4/4 beat and chord fragments, his "At The Golden Circle Stockholm Vol. 1 1965" would not sound amiss on the PA at Revolver. In between, there are appearances from Pan Sonic, Fennesz (with a track which sounds like modem noise), and a number of tracks with analogue drum machines, ring modulated/vocoded vocals, sequencer loops or software-generated burblings; some of which sound clever at first but lose their appeal shortly afterwards.

Electronic 01 has a number of highlights which belong in any collection; however, it is not an objective history of electronic music, but rather a catalogue of some of the recordings picked out the staff of one group of record shops, one with legendary amounts of cred and all that entails. As such it has a bias towards some types of electronic music (one could argue, those which allow the listener to flatter themselves over their sophistication and intelligence for purporting to like it). Nonetheless, this is an interesting historical document, both as a collection of significant recordings, and as an argument that European laptop glitch experimentalism may be today's cultural equivalent of new-wave/industrial in the late 70s/early 80s.

This compilation isn't cheap (A$45), and won't be for everybody; but it may be worth getting for the tracks you don't have, or as an introduction to artists you may have heard about; if you live too far from London to ask a Rough Trade clerk for electronic music recommendations, this may be a suitable alternative.