Aside from a brief, Millennium-fueled day in the neon sun, electronic music has been the very definition of fringe. It has been the music of basement kids and mad audio scientists, as reliant on a compliment of equipment as garage bands are on raw enthusiasm. It’s not so much a scene as it is a consequence of technology, so it only stands to reason that the term “electronic music”, however general, refers to an approach more than a specific sound.

This philosophy has allowed countless fringe acts to apply the electronic sensibility to any number of genres. The subject of today’s Along The Edges has made a career of digitizing Golden Age Jazz.

Koop is a duo of tinkerers from Sweden made up of Magnus Zingmark and Oscar Simonsson. Together with a rotating lineup of singers, they have made some pretty compelling modern jazz music using a Frankenstein approach. Listeners might be surprised to find out that most of what they’re listening to on a Koop album are sound samples. It really is pretty difficult to distinguish the real instruments from the recorded fragments, which I consider a good thing.

The song that got me hooked on Koop was their (quasi-) hit single “Come To Me”. It was sitting in my inbox one day care of my brother, himself a musician with proclivities for both jazz and chipsets. I have to admit that I have a soft spot for swing and fancy clothes, so the atmosphere of the track was an easy sell. On closer inspection it’s apparent that “Come To Me” is more post-industrial than pre-WWII. It’s backed by the telltale blips of a drum machine and relies on the sultry vocals of electronic maven Yukimi Nagano.

It should be noted that Koop, while relatively obscure in the States, is certified Gold in Sweden. They even picked up a Swedish Grammy in 2003. This opens up what I imagine will be a running them in this column, namely the increasing irrelevance of the American Top 10. It’s been more than a decade since music on the top of the US charts has been considered artistically meaningful, if only because those charts reflect sales and marketing more than outright merit. The Internet has certainly changed the way we consume music, but it has also done a number on how music first reaches its audience. Up until recently I wouldn’t have found a track like “Waltz For Koop” unless I was actively searching for it. I can’t say there’s enough jazz in my diet, let alone Nu-Jazz, that I would have stumbled upon Koop on my own. All it took to bring this outfit into regular rotation for me was a few quick finger movements a few thousand miles from my home PC.

Like so many fringe acts, Koop has no serious aspirations for those top slots in the pop charts. That’s not really the point anyway. As long as there are people there will be a niche demographic that wants to lounge around to songs like “Tonight”, but record companies will always sell more Disney-backed albums in the meantime.