Tag Archives: Synthpop

New Music

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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New Music

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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Adventures in L.A., Got It On Vinyl

Heaven 17 Was Right, ‘(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang’

Heaven 17 "(We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang" 45 RPM vinyl single (Photo: Liz Ohanesian)
Heaven 17 “(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang”

The right record will always find you at the right time. Take last Saturday afternoon as an example. I was in Little Tokyo, flipping through 45s at Salt Box and just happened to come across “(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang,” the 1981 single from Heaven 17. Did I have this? Did it matter? Even if I did have a copy, I could use another one because this nearly 45-year-old song is the jam for right now. Or, rather, it should be the jam for right now. 

I didn’t even have to listen to the song for the earworm to bury itself in my brain. “Have you heard it on the news?” it goes,  “About this fascist groove thang.” 

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Interview

“I’m Still a Punk”: Claus Larsen of Leæther Strip on Horror Novels, Cover Songs and Connecting with Fans

Leæther Strip Claus Larsen promotional photo
Claus Larsen of Leæther Strip

Claus Larsen is a man of many projects. There’s Klutæ, for which he released the new album, Godsent, in early May and appeared at Seattle festival Mechanismus later that month. Am Tierpark,  his Italo disco-influenced synthpop duo with John R. Mirland, released the album Shameless last year and the two musicians also have a punk band, Gusten, with a forthcoming album that’s near completion. Then there’s Larsen’s flagship solo project, Leæther Strip, which has been ongoing since 1989. It’s Leæther Strip that brought a capacity crowd to downtown Los Angeles’s Slipper Clutch on the final Saturday night in May. 

While Larsen released his latest Leæther Strip album, Fucking Perfect, in February, L.A.’s industrial heads are here for the classics. Tonight’s set is centered around Leæther Strip’s 1990s catalog and Larsen is pummeling the crowd harsh, EBM beats, his intense vocal delivery and a barrage of samples. Inside the small, upstairs venue, people squeeze as close to the stage as possible. 

“I love doing these shows because you see the faces. They recognize what they were into in the ‘90s and instantly, smiles,” says Larsen earlier in the evening, when we meet right after soundcheck. “They’re the reason I’m still able to do this, because I built up my audience back in the ‘90s and they’re still hanging on and supporting.”

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New Music

Pixel Grip Explores the Dark Side of Club Pop on Percepticide: The Death of Reality

Pixel Grip album cover of Percepticide: The Death of Reality
Pixel Grip’s third album, Percepticide: The Death of Reality is out now.

Chicago-based trio Pixel Grip released their third album, Percepticide: The Death of Reality on June 12. Three years in the making, Percepticide is also the band’s first fully independent release and the end result is a collection of a dozen songs that are rooted in the clubs, but defy expectations of what one might consider club music. It’s as punk as it is pop, as raw as it is slick and as menacing as it is euphoric. 

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Adventures in L.A., Live Music

Satanic Puppeteer Orchestra Live at Exotikon 3

Satanic Puppeteer Orchestra live at The Mayan in downtown Los Angeles for Exotikon 3 (photo: Liz Ohanesian)
Satanic Puppeteer Orchestra live at The Mayan in downtown Los Angeles for Exotikon 3 (Pic: Liz O.)

Our glasses weren’t 3D. We were watching a live performance inside downtown L.A.’s Mayan Theatre and, like the robot on stage told the crowd on Sunday afternoon, that’s already 3D. These were decoder glasses. Some in the audience had blue lenses. Others, like me, had red ones. The color of the lenses determined what you would see on the screen behind Satanic Puppeteer Orchestra, the human-and-robot duo from San Diego who were playing as part of Exotikon.

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Interview

Big Black Delta Makes Music for the Other Side

Press photo of Big Black Delta Jonathan Bates by Josh Giroux
Jonathan Bates is Big Black Delta (credit: Josh Giroux)

“Honestly, nowadays, making an album is not a healthy thing,” says Jonathan Bates. “Spending a year and a half making a collection of music and then putting it out and people literally giving it 30 minutes is not good for the soul.”

Bates, though, released his fifth album as Big Black Delta, Adonai, last February. It’s a fantastic mix of synthpop and rock. Since the album landed in my inbox earlier this year, I’ve spent much more than a half-hour listening to it. 

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New Music

Three Former Members of Chromatics Reunite on New Video Game Soundtrack

Lost Records: Bloom and Rage video game soundtrack cover

Lost Records: Bloom and Rage is a new video game from French developer Don’t Nod. Since I’m not much of a gamer, I can’t tell you anything about that, aside from that it’s narrative-driven and about grown women in 2022 reconnecting with a secret from their 1990s teenage past. What I can tell you about, though, is the soundtrack, which, like the game was released in two parts, the second of which dropped this week. And, really, the reason I’m telling you about the soundtrack is because 3/4 of Chromatics— Ruth Radelet, Nat Walker and Adam Miller— reunited to contribute five songs to the Lost Records soundtrack album. 

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Interview

Flashback to 1980s L.A. with Grey Factor on Live Album, A Peak in the Signal

Jeff Jacquin and Joey Cevetello of Grey Factor (Photo courtesy of the band)
Jeff Jacquin and Joey Cevetello of Grey Factor (Photo courtesy of the band)

When first wave L.A. synth band Grey Factor originally played around town, it was the junction of the 1970s and 1980s, an era when synths were more cumbersome and complicated than they are today and local audiences weren’t totally sold on electronic music. 

Back then, Jeff Jacquin and Joey Cevetello, the core of the group, and their bandmates lugged analog gear into punk clubs. Sometimes, they brought their own soundboard as well. Cevetello carried pieces of paper with charts showing how all the knobs on the synthesizers should be arranged. Their stands were repurposed shelving units. 

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Interview

“You could pop on the internet right this second and find people road-raging”: Mark Lane on New EP, Yelling at Cars

Black and white photo of minimal synth artist Mark Lane
Mark Lane (photo courtesy of the artist)

“You could pop on the internet right this second and find people road-raging,” says Mark Lane. “It’s so ubiquitous, such a part of the culture.”

That unabashed anger so often on display online and in the streets is what Lane is referencing in “Yelling at Cars,” the title track from his latest EP, released last November. “I saw you standing in the street/Yelling at cars,” he sings over a beat that’s a little electro, a little EBM, a clubby sound that still conveys the shock and dismay of his observations.

“It’s really hostile now,” he says. “The record touches on this psychosis of imagined road ownership. These people really believe, the road is mine. You see it over and over.”

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