Goin’ Old School isn’t a trip down music memory lane, it’s a mugging in the dark alleyway of nostalgia:
Nik Kershaw has just brand new single, The Sky’s The Limit, and album EI8HT, so let’s revisit Human Racing from 1984.
The smooth side of Paul Hardcastle with the soulful Electro Boogie of Don’t Waste My Time, featuring Carol Kenyon, from 1986
Ending today’s Goin’ Old School is the Pop Funk of Thompson Twins with 1982’s Lies.
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Dropping yesterday was the second new tune from LA Dreamwave capos LexiconDon’s forthcoming sophomore album. Burn sees the guys take a much more chilled, reflective road than their previous work, creating a sweeping, thoughtful peice. I know, right! LexiconDon…introspective…who knew?
Alex and Fabian cock up a rich mix of hazy synths, plucked strings and reverb washed vocals with Burn. Almost like LexiconDon’s take on Chillwave, the track casts a mood of dreamlike nostalgia and melodic pensiveness. Burn is a like a wall of soft noise, or a crashing wave of synths, that provide an intricate stage for Alex’s distant lament to ebb and low in and out of the tune. So far we’re really diggin’ LexiconDon’s new material. Roll on the album.
♫ LexiconDon – Burn
Burn is out now.
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Irish Indie-Rockers, and part of the upcoming NME Generation Next tour, The Cast Of Cheers have one of the best band names in the world. They also seem to have good taste in reMixers, as they have got London Indie-ElectroPoppers Citizens! to make some beats and bash some keys for their track Human Elevator.
Citizens! take to track to a bass-heavy place, then liberally sprinkle biting melodies over their deep groove. This is a track with a nice combination of classic a SynthPop feel and dancefloor rocking sensibilities. Rough and ready gritty bass presents a rock steady back beat for piercing lead lines and sparsely, but perfectly, used snatches of the original’s vocals to dance around atop. It’s quite a sparse track, but everything in it is used to it’s fullest potential, it’s would also sounds awesome on a club system.
♫ The Cast Of Cheers – Human Elevator (Citizens! reMix)
Human Elevator is taken from The Cast Of Cheers’ album Family, out now.
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London based SynthPop artist Christianoshi’s 21st century Erasure anthem Trust, finally sees release today as his début a single proper. It’s well deserved and a long time coming for this hard working singer who’s been knocking out top tracks for a year or so now. Trust comes loaded with reMixes from Kryn & Krügen and long-time Christianoshi collaborator Trademark.
Trust is the epitome of Christianoshi’s style. Part Erasure, part Marc Almond, part Bronski Beat with a slightly updated production style. It’s classic ElectroPop stuff really, dominated by a pulsating Electro bassline and Christianoshi belting out, full of drama and a massive ‘80’s chorus. Kryn & Krügen bring a ‘90’s tribal dance flavour to the track while Trademark’s slick Pet Shop Boys Disco sound lifts the track right up to the dancefloor. Their Electro Boogie bassline and big synth stabs are hard not to move to and work perfectly with Christianoshi impassioned vocal. the single feels like a manifesto for Christianoshi, this is him telling the world what he’s about, and that seems to be bringing traditional SynthPop kicking and screaming into contemporary music. We eagerly await his next release.
♫ Christianoshi – Trust
♫ Christianoshi – Trust (Trademark reMix)
Christianoshi’s Trust is out now.
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OK, so it’s taken us the weekend to decide whether to write about LA based ElectroPop duo He Met Her. There’s a couple of things about them that is a little annoying. Firstly, they are billed as “A Tumblr-savvy duo” with a “GIF-animated EP”. Which is fine, you can see the ‘Gif Animated’ version of their new EP ‘Crime Novela’, here. Which, despite being mostly HTML5 and Flash, is quite a nice way to present an EP, of that there is no doubt. But doing that, and then making a big deal about it, and how it makes you savy and down with the current buzz social network is toe curlingly cheesy and sounds amazingly contrived. It sounds more focus-group than creative, I’m sure He Met Her could have released their EP like this, without promoting it with bandwagon jumping rhetoric, just fine. The other slightly annoying thing is, He Met Her is a dual vocal outfit, and whilst the female vocals are sweet as hell, the male vocals are a tiny bit irritating. A bit smug sounding, not enough to really detract from your enjoyment of the songs, but enough to bother you in the back of your mind.
That said however, the songs are very good. a relentlessly infectious combination of an LA pool party Disco vibe and early ‘90’s ElectroPop. With a raw production style, and the aforementioned male/female, call and response, vocals He Met Her’s music is pure sing-a-long fun. The Crime Novela EP hold five tracks of unswervingly shiny, sexy, electronic Pop music. The record flows quite effortlessly from the upbeat, on tracks like Take Me Tonight, to powerful anthemic stompers in the form Believe In Me. Packed with 90’s Dance-Pop and R&B references, Crime Novela is a great, if slightly jumbled début. There definitely some magic going on with these two, perhaps it needs time to mature though? Either way we look forward to watching the progress.
♫ He Met Her – Okay
♫ He Met Her – Take Me Tonight
Check out more from He Met Her on SoundCloud.
In the build up to the release of their awesome new single, Hurricane, Chew Lips (feels weird writing it like that) have release yet another shiny reMix of the track. This time stepping up to the reMix plate id London House guru XXXY. Time to get bassy.
XXXY’s reMix is totally Chicago House fun, and strikingly Chew Lips track, particularly Tigs’ vocals fit that perfectly. It’s all deep square wave basses, ‘90’s House piano, there might even be a little accordion in there, and while this hypnotic groove might seem antithetical to Chew Lips’ chaotic liveness, it actually all works so smoothly. We always knew what a classic, powerful voice Tigs’ had, but with a ‘90’s House backing, her voice seems to go into full-on diva mode.
♫ Chew Lips – Hurricane (XXXY reMix)
Chew Lips’ new single Hurricane is released 3rd September.
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She’s been tour support for Depeche Mode, she’s a legend in her homeland of Poland and a legend amongst electronic music fans worldwide. When she last graced these pages it was under her Nikita moniker, but now ElectroPop prodigy Patrycja Hilton is back to being good old Pati Yang for her forthcoming new EP Hold Your Horses.
Hold Your Horses is kind of a nexus of electronic music. Pati takes her 15 years of being involved in electronic music, and all the influences that come with such an illustrious career, and pools them into a genre melting pot. You’ll find everything from SynthPop to Post Punk to Trip-Hop to House to EBM referenced with Hold Your Horses’ four tracks. The opener, Hold Your Horses, the EP’s title track, is a beautiful mix of Icy Scandinavian ElectroPop and that kind of New York electronic Indie, both quirky and majestic, where Pati give an emotional performance over pulsating synths and frantic percussion. It’s followed by Darling, is a rollicking slice of Indie-Electro that’s catchy and raw. It’s a track that soon descends into Electro-Rock territory with a truly anthemic performance. Revolution Baby is the EP’s mid-paced, stomping epic, and it’s here where producer Joe Cross (HURTS producer and the genius from (We Are) Performance and Kiss In Cities) really comes to the fore. Kiss It Better closes the EP by injecting a little Balearic House and Breakbeat into the mix as Pati’s sultry vocals glide over a euphoric, sweeping track. It’s an impressive and energetic EP, and one that should see Pati gaining more worldwide attention.
♫ Pati Yang – Hold Your Horses
♫ Pati Yang – Kiss It Better
Hold Your Horses is released 17th September.
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We thought the days of reMixes of Australian Indie-Electro masters Cut Copy’s now-classic Hearts On Fire were over. We are glad we were wrong. Austin ElectroPop outfit Eleven:Eleven have whipped up a new take on the track that brings to mind some seriously classic SynthPop.
This one’s all about the big beats and vintage Synth melodies. There’s someone of Depeche Mode’s Behind The Wheel in this mix, especially in the haunting lead line. This mixture of nostalgic refrains and big modern synth production make the track quite unique sounding. Moody, with a marching dance beat, this reMixes shines a whole new light on Cut Copy’s original. Being big fans of the tune, it;s great to hear it presented in such a new way.
♫ Cut Copy – Hearts On Fire (Eleven:Eleven ‘The Induction’ Mix)
Hearts On Fire is taken from Cut Copy’s second album In Ghost Colours.
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Still riding high on the success of their current Safe/Pain single, London’s dark ElectroPop trio Strangers have taken some time out from being all bombastic and moody to cover Haddaway’s What Is Love? I don’t think, in my entire life, I have ever heard a band cover a classic track and make it their own as much as Strangers do right here.
It’s bewildering. Any connotation, and pre-conceived ideas, you have of Haddaway’s original, one of the biggest EuroDance hits of the ‘90’s, will completely disappear within seconds of Stranger’s cover starting. It’s like the song was written for them. Stripping the track of it’s staccato EuroPop bassline and Hi-NRG beats, Strangers replace what’s gone with majestic synth chords, brooding military rhythms and atmospheric piano. When they belt out “What is love? Baby, don’t hurt me” as an anthemic lament, you’ll instantly forget the shiny, upbeat, original and totally commit to Strangers moody, emotional vision of the song.
♫ Strangers – What Is Love? (Haddaway Cover)
Safe/Pain by Strangers is out now.
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Hot on the heels of last month’s feature on American SynthWaver Magic Sword, the man stopped by the electronic rumors Inbox with his latest reMix. 4AD’s Purity Ring get the reMix treatment this time as Magic Sword whips up their deep, dubby, shoegazey Indie-ElectroPop into retro synth frenzy.
Magic Sword’s reMix of Obedear does the seemingly impossible. It keeps the moody atmosphere of the track but injects it with some deep Italo sounds. It’s an enveloping blanket of rich synthesizer sounds juxtaposed with a toytown electronic melody. Magic Sword effortlessly blends the otherworldly, ominous, tone of Obedear with his own 80s inspired electronica, the result is unique and immensely listenable.
♫ Purity Ring – Obedear (Magic Sword reMix)
Obedear is taken from Purity Ring’s
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electronic rumors 