‘Chasing Colours’ is a huge, euphoric, vocal club tune with echoes of MoS style Pop/Trance but with more of a nod to Indie-Electro and Disco. Overall it’s a pretty quality slice of Balearic ElectroPop. The Plastic Plates reMix, however, is where this really excel. Fresh from their reMix of The Human League’s new single, PP keep the momentum going with the beautiful Disco tinged ElectroPop mix. Upbeat and exciting without ever getting hectic, Plastic Plates have sound a solid groove which works so well and allows for some creative synth flourishes.
♫ All The Lights – Chasing Colours (Plastic Plates reMix)
♫ All The Lights – Chasing Colours (Main Mix)
‘Chasing Colours’ is released 12th August on etcetc.
Moonbootica’s video for their Funkin’ new single ‘Battle No. 1’ is an Old School flashback supreme.
There a bit of everything in there. Wild Style, Breakin’, old Bambaata footage, Rock Steady Crew. It’s uprockin’ and spraycanin’ goodness. The songs pretty tight too, a banger with groove. Could have done without the “whoop”s though.
Hold the press, the man Fabian is in the house with a brand new single and had brought a ton of funk with him.
The magic music man behind LexiconDon’s solo output has, in the past, swung between straight up Dreamwave and Electro-House but with ‘Last Flight’ Fabian has got the groove like never before. Smooth summery vocal Nu-Disco guaranteed to get the party started and keep it going. It’s a huge track, pretty anthemic too, that’ll have you reaching for the starts. The EP is backed with reMixes from French Horn Rebellion, NightWaves, Reset!, Justin Faust, Lancelot, Douze and Robots For Rayguns. Justin Faust and fellow Binary crew NightWaves, particularly, bring it home with real emotional slices of retro synth while French Horn Rebellion’s reMix introduces an Disco Funk flavour. Reset! works his slammin’ Electro-House sound into the tune and for something a bit smoother Lancelot lays down an awesome synthesizer Disco vibe. More a more SynthPop sound, check out Robots With Rayguns version. There’s something for everybody of this EP. If I hadn’t already heard the EP I would defiantly be waiting in anticipation to hear it, so you really should be!
♫ Fabian – Last Flight
‘Last Flight’ is released 22nd August on Binary Entertainment with Fabian’s début album in September. Keep it locked to electronic rumors for a review of the album later in the week.
Out today is the new single from The New Division, the southern Californian four piece who we called ‘the bridge between Minimal Synth and Dreamwave’ last time we wrote about them.
Their new track, ‘Opium’ continues in that tradition. Deep and dark but with more of a LA flavoured groove than many of their contemporaries. I really wouldn’t know where to categorise The New Division, drawing on as much LA Disco in their sound as UK Post Punk and European SynthPop. And that what I love about them, ‘Opium’ even had a slightly 90’s House thing going on in there. It’s like they’ve taken Minimal Synth, got it drunk and taken it to the club and tried to explain Joy Division while dancing to Moroder. Check out ‘Opium’, it’s got a bit of everything.
♫ The New Division – Opium
The ‘Opium’ single is released today on the band’s Bandcamp, it’s taken from their album ‘Shadows’.
German producer of 80’s inspired electronic music Alpha Boy is back with a brand new EP, his third. It’s free too!
The ‘Fresh’ EP is four tracks of his particular mix of melodic synthesizer dance, Nu-Disco and ChipTune. The EP kicks off with ‘Chip Child’ and almost oriental arpeggio workout that leads into ‘Falkor’, a sweeping 80’s theme tune of a song. This is RoboPop heaven, deep machine basses underpin soaring cosmic lead lines in a track that is uplifting electro gold. ‘The Fresh Tape’ is more of a slow jam that is followed with ‘Walking On Light’, the EPs finale. ‘Walking On Light’ sends you off on a high combining retro electronics, Disco strings and a baroque feel in a track both banging and emotional.
Following on from last weeks 80’s synth TV themes, here’s another irreverent Sunday post for you. Don’t get used to it though there isn’t that many electronic music/other stuff crossovers in the world.
Today we are looking at a niche that combines two of my three favourite things. Electronic music, and comedy. I’m going with ElectroCom. You can keep that!
The traditions of Comedy and Music have been intertwined for as long as they have existed, but it’s rare for someone to do something genuinely funny with synth music. And I don’t mean ‘just taking the piss out of the 80’s’, everyone featured here obviously has a great love for the music they are satirising.
So, lets kick things off with Flight Of The Conchords. You know who Flight Of The Conchords are, and if you don’t go and find out. They are very funny and very musically talented. This globe-trotting duo are from New Zealand, where they started their act, then moved to BBC Radio in the UK and ended up on HBO in the US. They pastiche a few styles of music, everything from Gangster Rap to Folk but have been quite spot-on with their ElectroPop tracks. ‘Inner City Pressure’ and ‘Fashion Is Danger’ are note perfect tributes to their subjects. I have also included ‘Robots’, ‘cos it’s funny and quite cute Indie-Electro and The Conchords getting funky with ‘Mutha’uckas’ and ‘Too Many Dicks on the Dance Floor’.
Flight Of The Conchords – Too Many Dicks on the Dance Floor
Flight Of The Conchords – Mutha’uckas
The Mighty Boosh. Very Surreal. Very British with a deep love of Electro. Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding are both accomplished comedians and comedy actors in their own right but together they are pretty unstoppable. You either ‘get’ The Boosh or you don’t. Clearly influenced by Monty Python and The Young Ones, The Mighty Boosh pepper their anarchic show with some of the catchiest songs in comedy. ‘Electro Boy’ (featuring Robots In Disguise as the band) and ‘Future Sailors’ are pure post-ElectroClash nonsense with ‘C Funk’ is, unsurprisingly, The Boosh’s take on P Funk (watch the whole episode if you’re confused).
The Mighty Boosh – Electro Boy
The Mighty Boosh – Future Sailors
The Mighty Boosh – C Funk
Now we come to Gary Le Strange. Gary Le Strange was a New Romantic face warrior created by comedian Waen Shepherd (who can name Cyderdelic, the surreal PlayStation 2 “Third Place” ads and The Inbetweeners amongst his credits) who I first saw live in 2003 when I was running an ElectroPop club and some comedy promoters came in and gave us free tickets in exchanger for being able to flyer our night. Gary Le Strange was a character out of time, his show was split between New Romantic manifesto, ridiculous tales of the 80’s and SynthPop songs. Really good songs too, Wean obviously had great love, and great knowledge for his target. The first two comedy tours and their albums ‘Face Academy’ and ‘Polaroid Suitcase’ were spot-on satires of both the 80’s and electronic music. By the time the third album ‘Beef Scarecrow’ came out both the music and the funny was waning a bit, but this was the time when Gary made the transition to TV. A transition I feel was too late, despite being directed by the awesome Stewart Lee, the video’s didn’t seem to capture the original shows laughs. The songs are still funny…and good, though!
All of SNL staples The Lonely Island’s video are well worth watching, featuring a host of celebrities, but their 80’s teen movie pastiche ‘Boombox’ is particularly apt.
The Lonely Island (Feat. Julian Casablancas Of The Strokes) – Boombox
The Lonely Island – Jizz In My Pants
Big Train was, after Asylum, the breeding ground for some of the UKs best comedy talent, most obviously in the form of Simon Pegg, Mark Heap and Kevin Eldon. This sketch about Keith Emerson’s synth collection always makes me chuckle.
Big Train – Keith Emerson
The Mary Whitehouse Experience was probably the coolest comedy show in the UK in the early 90’s and started the trend of the comedian as rock star. If you know Utah Saints and you know MTV Unplugged and you know the early 90’s this should make you chuckle.
The Mary Whitehouse Experience – Utah Saints Unplugged
OK, running out of idea now, the obvious SynthPop/comedy connection to go for is Pet Shop Boys’ involvement in Absolutely Fabulous. Here’s the video.
Pet Shop Boys – Absolutely Fabulous
Right, more Sunday post crowdsourcing action! I’d be interested to hear of any suggestions you might have for electronic music/comedy crossovers. particularly from Americans. Being English most of my Pop Cultural references are there, is there any classic US TV that mock the synth? Let me know!
Wherever you’re from, I want to know about electronic music comedy sketches worldwide!
Hit me up on Twitter, @electronicrumor, and if I include your suggestion you’ll get a shiny credit!
German producer OhYeah!’s new track, ‘Be Tough,’ is described by himself as “80s flavoured skateboard Italo disco”. Intrigued? I am.
‘Be Tough’ defiantly roughs up the Italo and sends it into overdrive. With a relentless bassline powering the song along, OhYeah! drops layer after layer of samples, vocoding, and thick, thick retro synth sounds. More in-your-face than the Disco track you’d expect from OhYeah! this is the kind of track to drop at peak time and watch the dancefloor explode.
DannielRadall has just released a new EP, comprised entirely of reMixes and rewords of Jef Barbara’ ‘Cocaine Love’
The ‘Cocaine Love’ EP is a journey through twisted ElectroPop, sleazy synth Funk and the dark side of the 80’s. That doesn’t mean that this EP doesn’t have a groove though, check out ‘On Mirror’ which takes the song to a slow jam Disco place where Moog leads and big 80’s chords form a path that leady you to the dark underbelly of DiscoPop. The original DanielRandall reMix of the track is a strange and enticing mixture of reverb soaked Chillwave and an Italo, almost EBM bassline, which seems to counterpoint and accentuate the slight sense of dread in the vocals.
