Category: synth
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various artists – síntesis moderna: an alternative vision of argentinian music 1980-1990
As space for fringe behavior becomes surrounded, the importance of art tends to swell in dense, contained pockets. From the mid-1970s to 1983, Argentina was battling a right-wing dictatorship bent on widening the gap between rich and poor. This is a glitzy soundtrack not to freedom, but to resistance. It involves hypnotic grooves and deadpan […]
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grotto terrazza – kalte köstlichkeiten
A stylised, sharp, mid-century album cover will often precede a dry, synth-pop experience—it’s the go-to aesthetic for the scene. However, Grotto Terrazza has the eccentricity to angle away from formula and towards his own voice. Kalte Köstlichkeiten is tight, engaging, and sincerely bizarre. There are so many words to call it: drum machine punk, chipmunk […]
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various artists – after dark 4
Did you also watch ‘Drive’ aged 12, then brooded and pouted, seeking out toothpicks and scorpion jackets for a month after? Released by the label responsible for Chromatics’ ‘Tick of the Clock’, After Dark 4 revisits that same adolescent posturing with decisive colour. Like The Weeknd’s first mixtape, it conjures an elite, narcotic atmosphere; like […]
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working men’s club – fear fear
Arriving like LCD Soundsystem’s unruly out-of-town cousin, Working Men’s Club take on a sinister tone that is oddly energising. ‘Fear Fear’ was born out of the New York disco scene, gathering a Prodigy-like angle for the electronical direct on its way to the present. If the tracks are unnerving, it is only to uptight antennae […]
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monica rypma – classifieds (1985, reissue)
The finances for ‘Classifieds’ are explained by its front cover, which is plastered with real advertisements. Like similar disco-electronic musicians of the time (think Arthur Russell) there’s an off-kilter structure to Rypma’s beats that could only have been produced by an artist whose vision has yet to be corrupted and obscured. The interludes are suffused […]
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