Different times can conjure different things to different people and when I think of the 1980’s my mind is cast back to watching The A-Team or Buck Rogers, collecting football stickers, wishing for a BMX, eating Highland Toffee and watching Top of The Pops on a Thursday evening.
One thing I noticed, aside from the ‘cool’ people in the studio dancing without a care in the world, was how more and more acts would have keyboards and computer monitors littering the stage and getting in the way of the dry ice, yes, synthesizers had arrived en masse from the prog rock bands of the 1970’s with a palette so broad that if you could imagine a sound, the chances were, someone could create it with the help of a selection of knobs, buttons and sliders. Music was dead. There was panic in music shops up and down the country, skips were filled with Rickenbackers and Fenders because Yamaha, Moog and Casio were the new makers of music and if you wanted to be taken seriously then you had better trade in your chord charts for a programming course at the local polytechnic.
Bands like Pet Shop Boys, Yazoo, Ultravox, Bronski Beat and Human League were dominating the charts but where these bands gave us the plink-plonk-pling of radio-friendly tunes, others chose a darker route. Bands like Joy Division, Depeche Mode and Talking Heads were exploring where these new sounds could take us and, finally, we arrive at No Side Effects.
The debut album from Thomas Haynes and Adrian Wallington challenges the listener to question what makes us human and where we end up when we’re dead. All heavy stuff but it sits naturally in the synth arena and never feels cheesy or gimmicky. On first listen it can feel a bit over-bearing but stick with it because on the second or third listen the songs take on their own character and it then starts to unravel its secrets. The opening track, ‘Anti-Trust’ is a short taster of things to come, I like these sort of tracks at the start of albums, it hints at what is in store for the listener and, if done correctly, can tease you into what treats are to follow, and what is to follow is a vast, cleverly-planned trip into an electric landscape. At times the songs seem a little light on bass, particularly in the earlier tracks of the album but to suggest a pumping drum and bass line would be in total contradiction to what is on offer, but the earlier songs almost work as an evolution towards track five.
When I was given this cd, special attention was made about track five, a song called ‘In Your Brain Right Now’ which, running at 8 minutes, cleverly uses snippets from a lecture by American author and neuroscientist Sam Harris. The music plays between the audio of the lecture (similar to what the Blue Man Group has done in the past) and encourages the listener to breath and take notice of his/her own existence as a living, breathing thing, at one point the vocals echoes the words of Sam Harris and uses them to create backing vocals to good effect. But this song also acts as something of a shift in mood, the following songs, particularly ‘Outstare the Square’ and ‘Pessimonster’ are strong tracks with an energy that will keep most listeners interested and intrigued in equal measure.
‘Dark Light’ – which appears next on the album – recently received attention from BBC Bristol and featured as part of BBC’s Introducing, and rightly so, there is a Depeche Mode feel throughout leading to a powerful trip into what synth music is capable of with a steady, effects-laden bass line and slow burning production.
Actually, the production is the king here, with this much going on it would be easy to miss or misjudge a certain sound or rhythm, but each sound comes through clearly throughout this album. Record production is a labour of love at the best of times but there is a lot of sounds jostling for space. I’ve heard this album through car speakers and headphones and each method is a different experience.
If you fancy listening to some grown-up electronic music with messages that cover isolation, loss, mental health and all things in between, give these guys a listen, you might just find yourself going back for more.
Pre order Reinventing Failure
Rock is all about the big, the dramatic, the widescreen and sky scraping, at least the music that leaves a lasting impression is anyway. But that doesn’t mean that it is just about turning the volume up and delivering testosterone fuelled bombastic broadsides. Thankfully those days have (largely) long gone. Linqo understands better than most that you can make an impression through clever construction, musical textures, cinematic arrangements and well thought out dynamics. And Nomadic is a five track slice of exactly that.
It is strange how much store people put in language, in the lyrics of a song, they forget that the musical element that lie below the narrative, the rhythmic qualities, its melody, beat, its very personality, are all just as communicative as the mere words. Juliet proves this brilliantly. Even though most of the song is sung in, presumably, the language of Steven’s Congolese birth place it doesn’t really matter as the sheer joy of the song just oozes naturally from it.
On the strength of Astronomical Twilight’s previous album, 
As 
Willy Wu is telling it like it is. One of the great things about rap music is that it looks you in the eye, shoots from the hip and draws first, firing off salvos of reality, truth bullets packet with explosive honesty. I Want it All does pretty much what it says on the tin, it’s an anthem to following your dreams, to doing what is right for yourself and not allowing yourself to fall into line with other peoples expectations.
Hertfordshire alternative rock band 
Marius Lauber AKA Roosevelt’s ambitious and breathtakingly modern follow-up to his self-titled debut is out next month. ‘Young Romance’ sees the German artist breaking free from the dance floor and stepping out into the light, effortlessly bridging that gap and asserting his place in the upper echelons of guitar and synth-pop royalty. Now less reliant on a four-to-the-floor kick drum as a rhythmic backbone, this sophomore record sees him embrace grooves of all shapes and sizes, and his first guest feature with the inimitable vocals of Ernest Green of Washed Out. Fusing chillwave and guitar-pop to sublime effect, the effortlessly breezy ‘Forgive’ combines guileless vocals with lush warm reverb and palpable bass frequencies. “I saw Ernest followed me on Instagram and I was so happy to find out he was a fan. He has always been a massive influence and this track was written around the vocal stems he sent back within days – a real collaborative effort,” says Lauber. It is out today.
Arriving on 5th October 2018 as the eagerly awaited follow-up to their benchmark album, 2016’s ‘Be Strong Troop On’, the dynamic duo of Richard & Robert Harrison make their return and clearly mean business.
Although built around a fairly simple dynamic, that of a soaring and euphoric, plea driven vocal juxtaposed with glitchy industrial electronica, it is such an effective concept I’m surprised that it hasn’t been done so well before. I’m not saying that the whole quiet/loud, on/off, binary music thing is exactly new, but the extremes that Mikkee takes them too is what really makes this work so well.
