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Tag: Synthpop

  • Ultravox Brings Together New Remixes, Minimal Synth B-Sides and More on The Collection Deluxe Edition

    Ultravox The Collection deluxe edition cover

    Back in 1984, Ultravox released The Collection, a best of compilation that brought together 14 singles released over the course of four years. If you’re new to the band, The Collection is a good place to start because it contains the jams of the band’s Midge Ure era, like “Dancing With Tears in My Eyes,” “Reap the Wild Wind” and, of course, “Vienna.” It was my first Ultravox record, pulled from a used bin in a San Fernando Valley record store for $2.99 back in the late 1990s. Last week, a deluxe edition of The Collection was released and, if you’re already a fan, you probably will want this in your collection. 

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  • After Years of Collaboration, Solo Artists Laura Jinn and Tatum Gale Formed New Duo Mercy Land

    Tatum Gale and Laura Jinn of Mercy Land in cover photo for "Kid A" Photos: Mia Teresa @howboutmia Creative Direction: Virginia Walcott @virg________
    Mercy Land “Kid A” cover photo. Photos: Mia Teresa @howboutmia Creative Direction: Virginia Walcott @virg________

    Laura Jinn and Tatum Gale were set on making music as solo artists. The catch, though, was that the music they made together was really good. “It was obvious to our close friends much earlier and we were really rejecting it,” says Gale on a recent video call. 

    For a handful of years, though, the two New Orleans-based musicians would play as solo artists who collaborated with each other. “It was a little bit confusing for the audience,” acknowledges Jinn. The performances, though, helped shape would become their new project, Mercy Land, whose debut EP, Termites, dropped on Halloween. “I think the process of playing together also built a lot of trust between us, in the sense that, together, we were something different and better than we were individually and the music that we had made together was our best music and all that stuff,” says Jinn. “So, it emerged from that process.”

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  • Ultra Sunn Unleashes The Beast in You

    Ultra Sunn The Beast in You album cover

    Last week, Ultra Sunn released The Beast in You. While the Belgian duo’s sophomore album isn’t quite a departure from previous club hits like “Keep Your Eyes Peeled” and “Broken Monsters,” or last year’s debut full-length, US, it shows some welcome growth from the EBM outfit. 

    Heavily influenced by European dance music of the late 1980s and early 1990s, Ultra Sunn excels at songs that bridge the old and the new. It’s no wonder that they’ve been one of the most requested artists I’ve seen while DJing. Most of their songs are around 124 or 125 BPM, which is solidly mid-tempo when you’re DJing a darkwave night, and they fit perfectly in between Front 242 and Nitzer Ebb classics and more recent bangers from Boy Harsher and Sextile. This kind of consistency makes Ultra Sunn songs ideal for club play, but it’s also what makes them less interesting for at home listening. That’s very common amongst artists who work in hyper-specific niches of dance music, but, nonetheless, I can’t help wondering what it would sound like if Ultra Sunn stepped outside of the comfort zone. 

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  • The New Molly Nilsson Album Will Make You Embrace Your Inner Amateur

    Molly Nilsson Amateur album cover

    On her latest album, Amateur, Molly Nilsson considers how a word that is derived from the Latin for “lover” or “admirer” came to mean a lack of experience or professionalism. “I see ‘amateurism’ as a delighted, even foolish, protest,” says Nilsson in a statement on the album’s Bandcamp page. “Protest against everything. Of what’s expected of someone, or expected of someone to desire or strive for. To be elite, to be expert, to be professional, to be a master, to excel and succeed. Where’s the joy in that?”

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  • On Birds of Paradise, SAADI Reflects on Human Nature and Digital Lives

    Press photo of Boshra AlSaadi as SAADI by Laura Moreau
    (Photo: Laura Moreau)

    The urgency in “Cowboy in a Ghost Town” is potent. A galloping beat drives the song and the whip-slap sound of the snare comes in as SAADI sings, “You are a cowboy in a ghost town/You leave a dark legacy.” When I first heard the song, from the L.A.-based singer/multi-instrumentalist’s recently released sophomore album, Birds of Paradise, I thought it was about social media. There are references to shadowbans and people living in an “alternate reality.” 

    “It’s about Gaza, actually,” Boshra AlSaadi says when meet up for a video call.  AlSaadi has written a number of songs about Gaza, but “Cowboy in a Ghost Town,” she says, is her most overt. Listening to it again, I’m struck by the poignancy of it, from the mix of anger and helplessness that’s in AlSaadi’s voice to the protest-like chorus that rises near the song’s end to the clear references to social media. AlSaadi captures not just the horror of watching a genocide unfold on your phone, but the frustration of knowing that you can’t stay silent, even when you’re posting into a void. 

    “Seeing it unfold on your phone is horrific,” she says. “It’s unprecedented also.” 

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  • Alison Goldfrapp Brings Dance Floor Heat on Flux

    Alison Goldfrapp Flux album cover

    If you’ve been paying attention to the singles that Alison Goldfrapp has dropped this year, then you have an idea of what to expect from the singer’s new album, Flux. It’s a pop-minded album that does, at least at times, recall her work with Goldfrapp, the duo that bears her name. Still, “Reverberotic” and “Find Xanadu” aren’t the only jams on this album and, if you’re a fan of those two songs in particular, definitely get Flux in your queue asap. 

    Flux is Goldfrapp’s second solo album. Two years ago, she released The Love Invention, a dreamy disco collection that was one of my favorite albums of 2023. With Flux, the sound is a little more rooted in the singer’s legacy while maintaining a contemporary sound. 

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  • Nuovo Testamento Continues Their Dance Pop Experiments on Trouble

    Nuovo Testamento press photo by Kristopher Kirk
    Nuovo Testamento (Photo: Kristopher Kirk)

    Good things take time and Nuovo Testamento is a band that’s keenly aware of that. About a year after releasing their 2023 full-length, Love Lines, the L.A.-based trio returned to the studio and, just last month, they released the result, a five-song EP called Trouble. In the context of recorded music’s history, two-and-a-half years isn’t much of a gap between releases. Still, singer Chelsey Crowley says, during the in-between time, the band heard, “you guys haven’t put out music in so long.”

    It’s an extension of the art vs. content debate. How often should bands be releasing music? Should you pump out the jams to satiate the platforms or wait until the songs you want to make are ready? Crowley offers a definitive answer. “We prefer to have songs that we like,” she says. “We’ll let them marinate for a second.”

    It’s an attitude that’s reflective of the band’s roots too. While Nuovo Testamento’s music is steeped in late 20th century pop influences, they’re still punk to the core. They tend to tour extensively and are proponents of physical media. “It’s not just about this digital space,” says Crowley. 

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  • Fever Ray Refreshes Classics and More on The Year of the Radical Romantics

    Fever Ray The Year of the Radical Romantics

    The only time I’ve seen Fever Ray live was at Coachella in 2010 and, even then, I only caught part of their set sometime on the first night of the festival after I had already decided that I was over Coachella and the only thing that might ever get me back is The Smiths reunion that I estimated would be announced the day after hell freezes over. All that said, I don’t really have a true concert experience to compare to The Year of the Radical Romantics, the new, live-ish album from Fever Ray, but that’s probably for the best. 

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  • Molly Nilsson’s Un-American Activities Is More Relevant a Year After Its Release

    Molly Nilsson Un-American Activities 2024 album on vinyl

    Last year, Molly Nilsson released Un-American Activities, which you could say is her L.A. album. The Berlin-based synthpop artist made it as part of a residency at Villa Aurora in Pacific Palisades and it’s inspired by a few specific moments where global events and local history come together. Moreover, the album, which is one of my favorites from 2024, really fits the mood in Los Angeles right now. It’s dark and, lyrically, she makes connections between European fascism of the 1930s, the Red Scare in the mid-20th century U.S. and contemporary politics. So, when I was pulling records to play at Bigfoot Lodge on Saturday, I immediately grabbed my copy of Un-American Activities and thought of the song “Jackboots Return.” 

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  • Mareux Forges a New Sound on Nonstop Romance

    Mareux Nonstop Romance album cover

    At DJ gigs, I always say that I don’t know what I’ll play until I play it and that’s absolutely true. I may have my heart set on playing one specific song, but, if it doesn’t sound like it’s going to vibe with the crowd, then I can’t play it. So, while I really don’t know which songs from Nonstop Romance, the latest album from Mareux, will end up in my sets, I am keeping my fingers crossed that it’s the title track. 

    “Nonstop Romance” has quickly become my favorite song on the album and I hope that its yours too. If you went to a club where the DJ played “Join in the Chant” and “Crazy Over You,” then came home and put that vibe into a song and gave it a 2020s spin, it might sound like this. (And, if this sounds like a plausible scenario to you, I’m going to guess you also live in L.A.) The juxtaposition of an EBM stomp and a very cheery synth melody is my idea of dance floor gold and I’ve listened to “Nonstop Romance” at least three times in a row while writing this.

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