Goin’ Old School isn’t a trip down music memory lane, it’s a mugging in the dark alleyway of nostalgia:
First up, one of our favourite bands of all time, Cabaret Voltaire with 1985’s Big Funk
From 1987, first wave of UK House from T-Coy’s Cariño.
Some proto-space Disco, SynthPop Funk, from Fashion’s 1981 hit Move On.
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In the past week the most underrated artist producing today, France’s Monsieur Adi let loose a couple of new (or old in some cases) demos on his SoundCloud account. Adi talent cannot be contained by genre, and it’s amazing to hear him branching out in terms of styles and sounds.
The first track, Paradis, is a brooding dark affair. The darkest we’ve ever had from Adi. Ominous droning synths and menacing whispered vocals lean the track an Industrial quality whist keeping an analog French Electro sound. This use of an Electro pallet with an experimental flavour makes for a track that’s as unsettling as it is fascinating. Of course, Adi’s emotional arrangements just ass to the songs involvement. Joyride was apparently written for Madonna, during Adi’s reMixing Madonna phase, but he presents it here as sung by Javi. It’s an excellent Pop track, and Madge is truly missing out with this one. You can kinda’ tell it was written with her range, and style, in mind and it would have been something new for her whilst obviously referencing classic Madonna. It’s about time the music industry at large paid attention to Adi, he could be knocking out hits for any number if stars right now if they’d let him. Joyride is a sweeping, rich Pop tune with added helpings of Adi’s musical majesty. The demo is from last year, but Adi plans on devolving the track further, we can’t wait.
♫ Monsieur Adi (Feat. Javi) – Joyride (Demo.)
♫ Monsieur Adi – Paradis (Demo.)
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Here’s the new video for Notts Indie-Electro outfit Moscow Youth Cult’s Love>Lore. It;s a track we’ve featured before and we do love it when tracks we like get nice videos.
Hayley Watchorn directs this study of interesting bits travelling that seems strangely fitting.
Moscow Youth Cult’s Happiness Machines is out now.
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Moscow Youth Cult have graced these pages a few times since their inception. The Nottingham based Indie-Electro experimentalists have drawn us into their Sci-Fi world on more than one occasion and now with the forthcoming release of their début long player, Happiness Machines, we get to spend a whole hour amongst their post-Industrial funky soundscapes.
After the buzzing, and strangely emotional, atmospheric intro of Shimmer Star has allowed your mind to wander to distant, fantastical, places, the pounding kick of Love>Lore shakes you right back to reality and drops you firmly in the middle of a swirling cloud of sound roped together with an unusual future funk. As the record continues, with a few tracks you might have heard before, Iris, Phase IV, Survivasm, it feels like a fresh take in Moscow Youth Cult. Together in a full length album you get more of a sense of MYC than you did in the singles an EPs. Amongst the Cabaret Voltaire noise there are some blissfully euphoric songs, with an almost Chillwave tone to them. Actually, this whole record sounds a bit like if Sarah Connor from Terminator was actually Chillwave, and Chillwave was being chased by the Terminator, but then got all badass at the end in a factory, or something. What we are trying to say, is that if you add the reverb washed Dreamlike laments of Chillwave, those beautiful moods, add add them to the relentless march and sonic adventurousness of midlands post-Industrial, you get Moscow Youth Cult (who you occasionally get the feeling have been hanging out with Disco). Does a melting pot like this work? Well, if you listen to tracks like Happiness Machines, the title track, with it’s distant, space age, funk or the factory Pop of Break-In Work-Out the answer is a resounding ‘yes’. And there are time when it feels like it shouldn’t, but it really does. Moscow Youth Cult’s Happiness Machines is definitely worth checking out.
♫ Moscow Youth Cult – Survivasm
♫ Moscow Youth Cult – Love>Lore
♫ Moscow Youth Cult – Phase IV
♫ Moscow Youth Cult – Iris
Happiness Machines is released 30th July.
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American born Dane Shoegazer Keith Canisius, once of Dream-Pop duo Rumskib, made some waves in the music blog world late last year with his ‘This Time It’s Our High’ album. It seems he’s gearing up for something new as he’s delivering this reMix of his track ‘Where Did You Go All These Years?’ by Ronnie Heart, ex-of Neon Indian fame.
Ronnie’ ‘Creaming’ is a brooding affair that is a bit of a contradiction, a contradiction that somehow seems to work. On the one hand it’s reverb washed Chillwave roots shine though. Floating and dreamlike, both the vocals and the layers of synth sounds, ebb and flow in and out of the track. On the other hand there’s this big post-Kraftwerk Industrial machine beat and tough bassline. It probably shouldn’t work together, but Ronnie Heart makes it work and inadvertently creates Power Chillwave. Not bad for a days work.
♫ Keith Canisius – Where Did You Go All These Years? (Ronnie Heart (Ex-Neon Indian) Creamix reMix)
Keith Canisius’ ‘This Time It’s Our High’ is out now.
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Goin’ Old School isn’t a trip down music memory lane, it’s a mugging in the dark alleyway of nostalgia:
Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark kick us off today with 1980’s ‘Messages’, don’t they look young!
One of my favourite tracks from one of my favourite bands. ‘Crackdown ‘ from Cabaret Voltaire in 1983.
Not out favourite Heaven 17 song, but easily their best known is 1982’s ‘Temptation’,
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Swiss producer …as Sampson has dropped a militaristic take on SynthWave in the form of ‘Human Love’.
‘Human Love’ appears to be written from the cyborg’s point of view as it is dominated by machine beats and repetitive synthetic sounds. Almost industrial in it’s approach to it’s hammering, relentless, drums the track takes on a regimented march out of which softer synths and the occasional glimpse of funk cry for attention. And it’s those snatches of soul amongst the factory floor onslaught that make the song what it is. Kinda’ sweet, in a noisy way.
♫ …as Sampson – Human Love (Original Mix)
Check out more from …as Sampson on SoundCloud.
Hello, did someone order a heavyweight slab of ElectroPop with a side order of rapid fire Industrial percussion? Curxes will be over shortly with your order.
Curxes latest offering , ‘Haunted Gold’, is like a big ol’ slab of Post-Punk without all that tedious mucking around with guitars. Kicking off with a true Einstürzende Neubauten style riff on the bass washing machine, the track is dominated by a jump-up beat, if jump-up beats were made by tank drivers, and Roberta’s finest Siouxsie intensity. Industrial, real Industrial, is quite a feat, production wise, but Curxes have pretty much nailed it with ‘Haunted Gold’ and produced an vivid and haunting track that is only sweetened but some awesome little synth riffs and a really nice ‘80’s drop.
♫ Curxes – Haunted Gold
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Goin’ Old School isn’t a trip down music memory lane, it’s a mugging in the dark alleyway of nostalgia:
OK, so I’m not sure why ‘Headhunter’ hasn’t made Goin’ Old School yet, but it’s time to rectify that. Anton Corbijn directed Front 242 , in their game changing track from 1988. Be crushed by that bassline, it’s literally all reverb (the original sound was removed).
Pure ‘80’s Synth Funk here from The System and their 1982 track ‘You Are In My System’. This looked well futuristic at the time. I have a feeling that Sci-Fi complex he’s in is actually an office building at 55 John Street in New Youk in the ‘80’s.
In 1983 Punk Impresario Malcolm McLaren brought Hip Hop to the UK, kicking off UK Hip Hop with ‘Buffalo Gals’. It was most people first experience of sampling, turntablism, graffiti and popping.
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Paris ElectroPop duo Neonbirds hare about to bust onto the scene with their début album and a raw sound.
‘Ignition’s Cold, Oxygen’s Pale’ is released in November and if this first track to see the light, ‘Substitutes’ is anything to go by then we’re in for a treat. The song itself is pretty Poppy, which a particularly catchy and epic chorus, but the sound is far from it. This is post-industrial noise Pop, ElectroPop with an edge. From the EBM bassline to the Justice-esque classical arrangement, this track owes as much to Skinny Puppy as it does to French ElectroPop. The combination of the Poppy and the Raw, along with a certain majestic quality bode well from Neonbirds album.
‘Ignition’s Cold, Oxygen’s Pale’ is out 28th November, until the check out more from Neonbirds on SoundCloud.
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electronic rumors 