Featuring rare tracks of auto-didactic progressive pop music, proto-techno punk, shoot-for-the-stars-land-in-the-gutter chart flops and heralded, underground synth classics, School Daze paints a picture of beautiful failure. Complete with extensive sleeve notes written by King and never before seen imagery, all 24 tracks were remastered by RPM in-house engineer Simon Murphy, many from vinyl copies due to lost master tapes.
The story told on All The Young Droids is one of the dawning opportunity presented by both the emergence to the market of cheaper analog synthesisers and the distribution networks plus indie labels that exploded with the advent of punk music in 1976. While the music that sprouted out all over the globe in the wake…
Category: synth-pop
Art can be a healing experience. That’s certainly the case with Ilichna Morasky, the Chilean-born, Canadian-raised multidisciplinary artist based in Copenhagen. Releasing music under the moniker Strangerfamiliar, Morasky implemented synths, percussion, and her profoundly expressive voice on previous EPs, Fire Under Water (2015) and La Secuencia (2017). Recorded at home over several years and across three different continents, her first full-length album, La Pena, began in Santiago, Chile, as – according to the press notes – “Morasky went in search of connection, some time to regroup and discover a new path forward.”
The haunting first single, “Flower”, sees the titular life form expressing joy at providing beauty and comfort and understands that its death…
The three previous albums that Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark have released since reforming in 2010 have all, to varying degrees, adhered to their early sound. The band were part of the post-punk, post-Kraftwerk, 1979-82 synth-pop boom, alongside the likes of The Human League, Depeche Mode and Gary Numan.
Those three albums, History of Modern, English Electric and The Punishment of Luxury, were all deep dipped in the sonics of that era. This time round, though, OMD’s sound often moves towards their mid-80s output; a less universally loved era.
They sound also like they’re having fun. There’s a looseness and eclecticism, a willingness to wander off the WE-HEART-KRAFTWERK path, perhaps encouraged…
…with 4 bonus Dave Audé extended mixes, unreleased on any physical formats.
An Andy Bell solo album has always felt slightly jarring in the past. When your voice is so inextricably linked with Erasure, one of the biggest synth-pop bands of recent times, it’s hard to readjust to a solo performance. It’s like Neil Tennant singing away with no sign of a grumpy-looking bloke in a baseball cap lurking next to him.
However, the main issue with Bell’s solo ventures so far have been that the songs aren’t as strong as anything Vince Clarke could come up with. To resolve this on Ten Crowns, Bell has linked up with another award wining producer, LA based Dave Aude – whose presence seems to have revitalised the singer.