Electro – Page 21 – 7th Level Music

Sally Shapiro covers Pet Shop Boys’ “Rent” for their newest single.

Today Swedish synthpop duo Sally Shapiro (made up of Sally Shapiro and Johan Agebjörn) announce a new 12″ ‘Rent‘ co-mixed by Johnny Jewel, which is out Sept 20th digitally & Oct 6th physically via Italians Do It Better and have shared the title-track, covering Pet Shop Boys, online now.

On the single, Johan offered “I am a longtime fan of Pet Shop Boys and have been thinking from time to time about covering some PSB song, without any clear idea of how to do it. Suddenly it became apparent that the melancholic and painfully beautiful harmonies of ‘Rent’ would suit our style perfectly, and I started playing a synth line over the chorus.”

Johnny Jewel added “Sally Shapiro’s cover of this Pet Shop Boys classic keeps the original close to the heart. Emphasizing the baroque leanings of the chord progression, they take it further with a 16th note melody careening over icy pads. The result is a Synthwave skyline scraping the upper atmosphere in the never-ending race to survive the first of the month. It’s a twisted tale of the politics of economy in relationships where the currency is love. Sally’s crystalline coo glides over Johan’s elegant Italo production as the bass line anchors the galloping rhythm section. Home is where the heart is…but shelter comes first in this game of love.”

Sally added “We also think the lyrics to Rent are intriguing, how the singer – in our version, a mistress – tries to convince herself that she’s happy, while the melancholy shines through. Pet Shop Boys is also very much childhood nostalgia for me.”

Johan was a member of the Pet Shop Boys Club as a child, and even got a penpal request published in the official fanclub magazine in 1993. Johan said “I received numerous answers! I had a pretty long correspondence with a fan from the UK.”

Listen to “Rent” on Soundcloud here: https://soundcloud.com/sallyshapiro-music/rent-1
Listen via other streaming services here: https://idib.ffm.to/rent
Pre-order 12″ here: https://sallyshapiro.bandcamp.com/album/rent

17 years ago, Sally Shapiro shared their first song online. Blogs & record labels immediately took notice and Italians Do It Better’s introduction to the pair was I’ll Be By Your Side, a shimmering Italo Disco track with ethereal vocals that hypnotised everyone who heard it. Johan’s elegant production was years ahead of what anyone else was doing at the time, & the elusive falsetto of the dreamlike singer was unforgettable.

In 2007, their debut album, Disco Romance, was revered by the press. The album was given a spot in Pitchfork’s Top 50 albums of 2007 & is even ranked as the best italo disco album of all time on rateyourmusic.com. Their sound was a unique take on the romantic club music of the mid 1980’s. At the time you could count the artists exploring this territory on one hand. Johnny Jewel began corresponding with Johan later that year resulting in Johan’s remix of Glass Candy’s “The Chameleon“.

Their debut album saw remixes by other likeminded producers like Lindstrøm, Tensnake, Junior Boys, CFCF, & Juan MacLean. In 2009, My Guilty Pleasure, picks up where Disco Romance left off. They collaborated with Electric Youth (known from the ”Drive” soundtrack) on their third album Somewhere Else in 2013.

Johan is a fixture on European dance floors collaborating with Lindstrøm, Glass Candy, Annie, Wolfram, Hercules & Love Affair, & more. In 2018 he produced the addictive Samantha Fox single “Hot Boy”. Sally is notoriously shy, remaining shrouded in anonymity. To this day she insists on recording her vocals alone in the studio & refuses to perform her songs live. In 2016, the duo went underground & released what was thought to have been their final single. Working in deep seclusion over the last half decade, they released “Sad Cities”, an incredible collection out in 2022 via Italians Do It Better, to critical acclaim. They also appeared on Italians Do It Better’s Madonna cover compilation (with ”Holiday”) and on last year’s After Dark 4.

‘Rent’ will also feature on Sally Shapiro’s new album, which is currently in the works.

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[Thanks to Frankie at Stereo Sanctity.]

Review: Mandy, Indiana – I’ve Seen a Way

Recorded, no joke, in caves, gothic crypts, and shopping malls and next to construction sites and yoga classes, Mandy, Indiana‘s first full-length album, I’ve Seen a Way, expands on their sexy, creepy, synthy sound with a mix of heavier dance beats and stranger field recordings.

“Love Theme (4K VHS)” opens the album with synthwave bliss as you drive Charlie Sheen’s car from The Wraith down a street lit by solar-powered batteries embedded in the ground. It flows into “Drag [Crashed]” and turns the romantic lounge of the previous track into a slightly frightening industrial club floor-filler with Valentine Caulfield singing / shouting about toxic masculinity and the male gaze in French as her bandmates pound you into the ground. “Pinking Shears” is full of thick synth bass from Simon Catling and hip-hop drumming from Alex MacDougall while Caulfield’s vocals move around the room like a panther proclaiming, “This shitty world has exhausted me.” and verbally slapping us awake with lyrics like “…we elect bankers and big bourgeois and rentiers and we are surprised to get fucked.”

Her vocals on “Injury Detail” are only slightly subdued, which provide an interesting balance with the snappy drums and hissing, throbbing synths. “The Driving Rain (18)” layers the synths atop Caulfield’s vocals to make them almost robotic. On “2 Stripe,” she tells the tale of peasants serving a king, a queen, and their daughters while they sleep in cold cellars and nearly starve…until they realize they far outnumber the royals and take the castle and land by force. It’s a cautionary tale for the 1%, who are treacherously close to losing all of it all of the time.

Scott Fair‘s guitar wails and squeals through “Iron Maiden,” a mostly instrumental track with Caulfield sometimes crying out like she’s stuck in the titular device. “It’s not a revolt, it’s a revolution,” Caulfield sings on “Peach Fuzz.” “They take us for idiots,” she proclaims as the track builds into a synth war march.

“Crystal Aura Redux” is aptly named because it sounds like you’re walking through a hall of mirrors with crystals hanging from the ceiling that are light by a disco ball. The album ends with “Sensitivity Training” – a warning for all of us. The instrumentation brings alarm klaxons, protest chants, and marching beats to mind as Caulfield asks, “Do you hear the sound of the the boots clattering on the pavement? They’re coming for us.” She’s warning us of the rise of fascism, or perhaps to flip the script and make it a warning for those same fascists who will one day realize they’re vastly outnumbered.

I’ve Seen a Way (or i’ve seen a way, as it’s often written) is a stunning debut LP, one of the best of the year. It’s a dance record, a protest album, and a synthwave stunner all in one. Their creativity seems to have no bounds, as does their anger and passion for calls to action. Go visit them.

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The Serfs invite us to “Club Deuce” on their new single.

Cincinnati punks The Serfs, Trouble in Mind’s newest signing, announce their third album, Half Eaten By Dogs, out October 27th. It’s their best album yet, putting a decidedly Midwestern spin on the modernist twitch of future-forward bands like Total Control or Cold Beat, as well as the post-industrialist dance floor grime of Skinny Puppy, Dark Day, This Heat, and Factrix. Anyone paying attention can see that Cincinnati is a very real hotbed of musical creativity at the moment, and The Serfs – Dylan McCartney (vocals, percussion, guitar, bass, electronics), Dakota Carlyle (electronics, bass, guitar, vocals) and Andie Luman (vocals, synths) – are undeniably near the center of the city’s neu-underground scene. They are a deliberately nebulous and incidentally industrialist gang of dance-floor hymners – tranced-out troubadours whose sound and musical ideology seems to be a causal manifestation of their immediate environments.

Half Eaten By Dogs is a wide-eyed look through a scope into a heathenish vision, where ice-encrusted synth harmonies command oozing chemical rhythms and drilled-out elemental rock formations. There’s a psychedelic melancholy to it, in both the abstract lyrical sense, with doomed proclamations of natural and supernatural disasters, and the more tangible musical sense. It veers all over the map of tenebrous drum and synthesizers and stygian guitar, at times with a cautious paranoia and at times with tuneful defiance (and in some moments harmonica, saxophone or flute).

Today’s “Club Deuce” is a flat-out sexy floor filler. Its low-end sizzle is designed to make you move, and slither like a lurker at the threshold of the dance floor. “I thought of the idea for this song at first like a movie in my mind,” says Luman. “It was the story of a fated man and a modern day Venus with complete and unrelenting control. The set was a quiet corner in a thunderstruck city with endless commotion in the distance. The whole thing glowing like a neon sign. ‘Club Deuce’ churns unhurried until it billows all around you and you’re caught like a fly in the jaws of a venus fly trap.”

Listen to The Serfs’ “Club Deuce”

The Serfs, emerging like a missile from some surreptitious silo, were formed while McCartney and Carlyle were scraping the bottom of the barrel, tilling the soil for the baron (a.k.a. working the fryers at a pub) and generally wallowing in the puddles of despair. The two decided to express their grim outlook through self-hypnosis by way of drums and synthesizers. After a couple of bungled attempts to play live, Luman joined the band and the classic trio lineup was formed. Like their Ohio predecessors, The Serfs seem askew from the art that surrounds them, and they’re proud of it. Half Eaten By Dogs may be a step further down into the catacombs for the band, but if the principle of correspondence is correct, then they could be on their way to somewhere higher.

Pre-order Half Eaten By Dogs

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[Thanks to Jaycee at Pitch Perfect PR.]

Review: Lindstrøm – Everyone Else Is a Stranger

The New Yorker once dubbed Norwegian DJ and producer Lindstrøm as “the king of space disco.” That’s as good a description for him as any I could dream up, and it’s epitomized in his latest record, Everyone Else Is a Stranger, which is full of neat rhythms, pulsing synths, and a vibration to it that seems to defy gravity.

The first few seconds of “Syreen” alone are designed to fill dance floors with the synthwave beats and inspiring electric piano notes. “Nightswim” is perfect for just such an activity at your lake house or a Las Vegas rooftop pool. It instantly makes you feel cool and sexy, but not so much that you turn into a “trying too hard to be cool” d-bag. He finds that sweet spot of “Let’s have fun and be sexy and cool with each other. No bad vibes here, just love.” The whole record is like that, really.

I can’t help but think Lindstrøm was influenced by Giorgio Moroder (and who isn’t, really?) when I hear the opening synths of “The Rind” – a neat synthwave track that prepares you for dancing, sparring, or shagging with an android (possibly all three). The ending title track is like a ten-minute cool-down meditation after the dance fest that’s been happening for the previous three songs. Lindstrøm has always excelled at evoking dreamy imagery in his music, and the title track is a fine example of that craftsmanship.

I also like the title of Everyone Else Is a Stranger. Except whom? Well, you, of course. You know who you are. You’re whomever is touched and moved by this record in anyway. He made it for you. Don’t refuse the gift.

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Venera projects “Hologram” – their new single from their upcoming album.

Venera, a newly formed experimental electronic outfit featuring James Shaffer (Korn) and Atlanta-based composer/filmmaker, Chris Hunt, release their self-titled, debut album on Oct. 13 via Ipecac Recordings.

Venera enigmatically launched their debut song “Swarm” (https://venera.lnk.to/swarm) late last month. No information, no pre-sale, simply the three-minute single released in tandem with a mysterious screed and a pulsating black-and-white video directed by EFFIXX.

Today, the pair step out from the shadows, revealing who and what Venera is, as well as releasing their first single, and video, for the track “Hologram” (https://venera.lnk.to/hologram). A song that features guest vocals/piano from Rizz of VOWWS.

In a joint statement from Shaffer and Hunt, they explain: “’Hologram’ emerged quickly from our first session together. A nearly unchanging drum machine pattern nested in warbling guitars. We don’t interact much with holograms but they seem to offer an image of an alluring emptiness and light, which resonates well with the universe we are driven to explore.”

Several guests join Hunt and Shaffer on Venera. Drummer Deantoni Parks (Mars Volta, John Cale) plays on “Erosion” and “Disintegration,” HEALTH’s Jacob Duzsik contributes vocals on “Ochre” and Alain Johannes lends his voice to “Triangle.” The album was self-produced.

Album pre-orders (https://venera.lnk.to/venera) are available now, with Venera available digitally, as well as physically on CD, and an assortment of vinyl, including limited-edition red, snowy white and skull gold variants.

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[Thanks to Monica at Speakeasy PR.]

Review: Club Coma (self-titled)

Hailing from Austin, Texas and playing sold-out shows before they even released any music, Club Coma (Geoff Earle – synth, bass, and vocals, Scott Martin – guitar and vocals, and Aaron Perez – drums) play a neat mix of experimental rock, dance rock, and shoegaze on their debut, self-titled album.

Opener “Give Me a Chance” sounds like something Thundercat might cook up, and I’m sure he’ll be jealous that he didn’t create something so funky when he hears it. “The Mirror” has a bit of a dance-punk sound to it, and “New Cruelty” even adds goth-synth touches. “I’m frightened of my TV screen. I’m scared of the things it’ll do to me. I’m scared of the phone in my pocket. I keep checking, and I don’t know how to stop it,” Martin sings on “TV Screen.” Seriously, dude, we’re all with you on this (and the addictive beats of the song only help the imagery).

“I went through that bad shit, and now I’m immune,” they sing on “Immune,” an empowering track that has Perez knocking out a steady beat perfect for your bicycling playlist, Earle getting his groovy synth groove groovin’, and Martin reminding us that we’ve come through a lot in the past few years, and we can, and should, think of ourselves as bad asses from this day forward.

Their cover of The James Gang‘s “Collage” is sharp. They turn it into a synthwave stunner. “It hit me hard like a lightning bolt,” they sing at the start of “Anesthesia,” a song that might be about addiction, or it might be about, finally, getting a rest after all the stuff mentioned in “Immune.” The looping string section in it takes the track up a few notches. It’s a wild touch. “Keep It Together” gets dreamy for the final song, making you feel like the gentleman on the cover, an image of a modern Icarus, falling into the arms of people who seem happy to see him. You’re falling, or perhaps floating, into a calmer state in that club where being in a coma for a little while might do you good.

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[Thanks to Dave at US / THEM Group.]

Skeleten says “Right Here It’s Only Love” on his new single from his debut album.

On his thrilling and immersive debut album, Skeleten (producer / vocalist Russ Fitzgibbon) dares to imagine new ways of being that are not characterised by doom or despair – a challenge in an era defined more by feelings of futility, isolation and precarity. Across eleven tracks of free-flowing, transcendent, and often euphoric electronic music, he plays spiritual guide to a musical journey which is wonderfully in touch with realms beyond our own. Praising the power of comradery and community, dreaming of a future that is joyously boundless, Skeleten’s singular debut LP is, to borrow from one of his own lines, music for dancing “any way your body turns.”

After years of cutting his teeth in Sydney’s tight-knit electronic community, Fitzgibbon forged his own identity and debuted under his solo moniker, Skeleten in 2020. It’s his most personal project to date, the sound of him unfiltered for the first time as both a vocalist and producer. At once intimate and otherworldly, at the core of the project lies a strong sense of uncomplicated openness and a deeply rhythmic, meditative ambience. Strikingly unplaceable, the result is a curious yet alluring amalgam of far-flung influences and emotive atmospheres that invites you to get repeatedly lost in.

In between his debut and the long-awaited release of Under Utopia, Skeleten’s consistent output has seen him accrue rotation and early praise from Triple J, Double J, XLR8R, Stereogum, NME, The Guardian, BBC Radio 6 Music’s Recommends Spotlight Artist, Brooklyn Vegan and receive the official remix treatment from the likes of Logic1000, Moktar and Jennifer Loveless.

Under Utopia sees its release today via 2MR (North America) and Astral People Recordings (ROW) on vinyl and across all digital platforms.

Listen / Purchase / Playlist Under Utopia Here

Watch Under Utopia Official Videos:
“Right Here It’s Only Love”
“Sharing The Fire”
“Territory Day”

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[Thanks to Bailey at Another Side.]

Review: Ross Harper – The Dark Album Remixes Volume 4

The liner notes to Ross Harper‘s The Dark Album Remixes Volume 4 EP describes one of the tracks as “a DJ’s dream come true.” Really, the whole record is that.

Starting with Coast2c‘s (also properly known as Sofia Acosta) remix of “Something New,” the EP opens with thumping bass drum and sizzling electro-cymbals designed to yank people onto the dance floor…and then that thick synth-bass hits and there’s no need to yank people onto the dance floor, they are running to it. Developer‘s remix of “Hard Patience” (the “DJ’s dream”) is pulsating, throbbing, sweaty trance that gives you an instant rush.

Amorphic‘s remix of “Narcissist” is almost a hypnotizing mantra of bass hits, fast cymbals, and pulsating synths. Finally, DJ Emerson‘s remix of “Deep Life” – a fun track that mixes hand percussion with sliced up vocals sounds, goth-industrial bass, and racing video game synths.

All four tracks on this are scalding hot. Don’t miss this if you’re a DJ or just enjoy EDM.

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Metro Riders release “Spasm” ahead of upcoming album due September 29, 2023.

A pungent ooze emanates from the subway. As a sticky drum machine sequence rolls out like thick dark fog, ice cold synth swirls rise from the depths.

Since the debut album Europe By Night, one of the main references associated with Henrik Stelzer and his Metro Riders project has been that of cinema, and particularly the European genre films of the 1980s. With its seedy subject matters manifesting both in visual style and music, the vibe of that era has crystallized over time. Passed down to us from deteriorating video cassettes, it became an invaluable key to decoding our present day reality.

And this is true for his new album Lost in Reality, announced today for a September 29th release via Possible Motive. Stelzer does not hide the fact that he builds heavily on that vibe; referencing it through track titles and utilizing a particular recording setup consisting of a Fostex and a reel to reel in order to achieve and recreate the feeling of those soundtracks — as heard on magnetic tape rather than vinyl.

Hear it yourself on the new single “Spasm,” out today, and pre-order the album here.

The motion picture soundtrack as an arbitrary genre definition becomes, in the hands of Stelzer, a pair of X-ray specs for him to envision a kind of music that deals in grains and contrasts rather than hooks and choruses. And like Roddy Piper in John Carpenter’s 1988 film They Live, he hands those glasses over for us to see the true face of our times.

On Lost In Reality, Metro Riders maps out an emotional geography of the cities at night, wherein the cinematic haze becomes a tool by which we can view the cities with new eyes. Not steering away from the darker alleys nor the harsh realities of modern day politics masquerading as progress. Yet escapism, in the end, seems the only viable option. But not as an endgame, but rather a stepping stone for building a new vocabulary for an utopian language.

Lost In Reality is the second album from Sweden based Metro Riders (real name Henrik Stelzer). Employing outdated software and now obsolete analogue recording equipment, Metro Riders conjures a suspenseful and gloomy, true to the era re-imagining of lost sounds. Metro Riders encompasses a very niche palette, everything from the prophetic visions of John Carpenter,to the warbled world of Troma films, to Italian horror flicks, euro-crime and the cybernetic sewers of The Skaters.

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[Thanks to George at Terrorbird Media.]

Slighter releases “Pulling Me Under” from his upcoming album due July 21, 2023.

Alternative-electronic artist Slighter presents his new album ‘This Futile Engine’, released via Brutal Resonance Records and Confusion Inc. This 13-track record features collaborations with Steven Seibold (Hate Dept) and Craig Joseph Huxtable (Ohm, Landscape Body Machine, Front Line Assembly, Noise Unit), as well as Yvette Winkler (Vaselyne), Morgue VVitch and Deep Dark Water.

Following up the intense, moody and cinematic lead single ‘Have No Fear’ (with traditional A-side and B-side versions), Slighter also presents an enthralling video for the latest single ‘Pulling Me Under’ feat. Craig Joseph Huxtable, with whom he had previously collaborated on earlier singles ‘Give Me’ and ‘Lights Out’, as heard on FOX’s Second Chance in 2016.

Slighter is the solo moniker of Colin C., who has been fine-tuning the future of electronic music since kickstarting his music in Mid City Los Angeles in the early 2000s. Creating from a unique vantage point, he was involved in collaborations for various Metropolis Records releases and Cleopatra Records compilations, in addition to Slighter releases via his own Confusion Inc. imprint.

Mixed and mastered at The Cell Studio, through the sonic experimentation and innovation entailed in recording this album, Slighter continues to provide new fuel for the counterculture..

“This record was a lot of fun to make with my friends. I’m always enjoying collaborating on Slighter albums and, this time, it felt best to leave the majority of the vocal work to some great voices from Craig to Steven and Tara, Yvette, and Anastasia. It has been an experimental but cohesive experience, the classic cinematic vibes I’m known for hitting with faster Techno and killer bass lines across a 10 track narrative,” says Colin C.

“I think I have a pretty unique way of working outside of genres, but my work still gives off this sort of expansive cinematic vibe, which also retaining a darker mood that gets me associated with various dark sub-culture genres. The themes I often explore has me adopting an ‘Electronic Death Music’ umbrella for the music I make – a play on words, with the music I make being the antithesis of popular EDM”.

While very much an independent artist who largely files under the musical radar, Slighter’s music has also found its way on to mainstream shows over the years, with songs and remixes featured on such television shows as Showtime’s ‘House Of Lies’, ‘Elementary’(CBS), ‘Bones’ and ‘Lethal Weapon’ (FOX), ‘Defiance’ and ‘Covert Affairs’ (NBC-Universal).

As of July 21, ‘This Futile Engine’ will be released across fine digital platforms, including Apple Music, Spotify and Bandcamp. Available as a Deluxe Edition limited edition CD and as a digital download, this album includes three exclusive bonus remixes of ‘Cold Black Waters (feat. Morgue VVitch)’, ‘Pulling Me Under’ and ‘Have No Fear’.

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