Robyn Writes

Notes from the Keybed – March 2015

Post-rock electronica duo Worriedaboutsatan return with Even Temper, their first album in six years. That’s not to say that Thomas Ragsdale and Gavin Miller have been taking it easy in said downtime, having released some truly stunning music from the atmospheric techno of Ghosting Season to their own solo projects and film soundtracks. Regardless of which name they are recording under, my favourite thing about the Leeds duo has always been their seamless mix of cold electronica and heartfelt songwriting, with the lo-fi samples, vocals and guitars adding a layer of ‘realness’ that is so often missing from purely electronic music. Their live approach to writing through jamming is evident in the evolving song structures and extended workouts, with many songs breaking the five minute mark yet never outstaying their welcome. Highlights include the vocal-based ‘MV Joyita’ featuring the voice of Morgan Visconti and the seven and a half minute emotional outpouring of ‘Sleep of the Foolish’. Find someone who claims not to like electronic music and play them this record to undoubtedly change their mind.

On a completely different note comes the new record from Hot Nerds who feature Some Girls’ guitar mangler Nathan Joyner, joined by synth tweaker Alia Jyawook and drummer Thomas O’Connell. With an album called Strategically Placed Bananas, adorned with cover art featuring said article of fruit protecting the modesty of a reclining cartoon mullet man, you know what you’re getting before you even press play! Fortunately the musical content doesn’t disappoint, consisting of discordant synth punk along the lines of the much-missed Test Icicles or label boss Justin Pearson’s electronic grindcore pioneers The Locust. Unapologetically weird and noisy, with many songs lasting just a minute or two it is equally wonderful and bizarre anti-pop. My personal fave on the record is the fantastically-monikered ‘Stuffed Party Animals’, which features scatty clipped drum beats, whiny vocal chants and a classic hoover synth sound.

German party boys Eskimo Callboy return with their third album of generic but enjoyable electronicore mixed with autotuned pop choruses, trappy synth leads and a good dosage of nu-metal! At its best, Crystals comes across like the Linkin Park glory days mixed with the pop hook of Issues (without the majestic vocals of Tyler C). It will no doubt polarise listeners and certainly won’t win the German band any new fans, but it’s good (in)offensive fun that’ll soundtrack a fair few throwdowns and catchy singalongs for those so inclined. The twin vocal attack works well in the classic sing/scream metalcore template and the guitars are suitably tight and chuggy mixed with some danceable beats and glitchy electro noises in the same vein as Palisades and Attack Attack!. Plus ‘2 Fat 2 Furious’ is an absolute banger about not wanting to ‘live without burgers and fries’… ‘nuff said.

On the opposite side of the audio spectrum comes the new record from alt-poppers the Go! Team. Ridiculously jubilant and stuffed with samples, singles ‘What D’You Say?’ and title track ‘The Scene Between’ tread a similar sonic path to The Flaming Lips, with experimental indie pop being the order of the day. Delightful harmonies and guitar strummed major chords take precedence over the six piece’s hip-hop infused earlier material but it is all pleasant stuff and an early contender for your summer soundtrack.

Unless you’ve been living in social isolation away from all radio, online and print media (in which case you probably won’t have the wifi connection to read this, but that’s a moot point) you can’t have missed the announcement of a new Prodigy album to hit stores at the end of this month! Back to regain the dance-rock crossover crown from the likes of Pendulum and Shikari, Liam Howlett and co launched their latest attack on the airwaves with ‘Nasty’, a suitably-titled drum & bass banger with growling synths, belligerent vocals and a typically dark guitar riff. The rest of the pre-release singles from ‘The Day Is My Enemy’ have followed suit with the Sleathford Mods collaboration ‘Ibiza’ ripping apart lad culture and ‘Rhythm Bomb’ delivering an instantly catchy floor-filler alongside the talents of dubstep don Flux Pavilion. Twenty-five years on from the birth of the rave scene, the Prodigy remain at the top of the pile, shitting on those who have attempted to steal their crown in gloriously literal fashion.

Finally, this months’s Keytar Hero award is a collective one going to Shiny Toy Guns, who boast not just one keytarist but two in the form of frontwoman Carah Charnow and synth player Jeremy Dawson. The lucky buggers have been boasting two shiny non-toy Roland AX-synths of late, which is just greedy and they really should donate one to me. Once the envy subsides you’d do well to revisit 2006 electroclash anthem ‘Le Disko’ to see why they justify such lavish playthings.

Review: Pale Angels – Imaginary People

The bastard child of punk, grunge and britpop, Pale Angels hail from the unlikely home of Swansea, Wales via Jersey, USA. A Transatlantic combo of road veterans who between them have spent time in Crimes, The Arteries and The Ergs amongst many others, their experience pays off in an explosive record that sounds far louder than their three-piece line-up would imply. Album number two Imaginary People is released on 6 April via Exeter’s Specialist Subject Records, responsible for absolute bangers from the likes of Caves, Above Them, and Bangers themselves of course! Following on from debut LP Primal Play, frontman Mike Santostefanso’s slacker drawl leads the way through a varied mix of styles from acoustic-led indie jangle to the trademark sounds of nineties Seattle.

The opening salvo hits hard with three hook-laden anthems straight out the gates. ‘Lapin, Lapin’ has a deliciously yearning vocal line over a slowly building crescendo and a guitar riff that could have come straight off ‘In Utero’. This is followed by ‘I’m Nobody’, which cranks up the overdrive to stoner levels, and my personal favourite ‘Wild Vile Flesh’, a speedy thrasher that just sounds downright dirty. The chorus also reminds me somewhat of a Distillers song (in a there’s only so many chords in punk way, not a Gaye/Thicke lawsuit way), which is always a good thing! The trio’s years of songwriting expertise are clearly on show with singalong vocal lines galore, and you just know they’d slay it live. Later on in the record, the guys up the reverb to deliver some surftastic guitar riffs that could easily soundtrack a spy film as quickly as they could level your local dive bar venue.

Imaginary People does have a few unexpected low points though. Midway through the album, ‘Schizophrenic Affair’ sounds worryingly like Oasis in stark contrast to the punk fury unleashed in the first fifteen minutes. More unfortunate still is the ninth track ‘Dreamer’, which meanders through six boring minutes of nothing much. An underdeveloped non-song, I felt like hitting the skip button halfway through but held out until the bitter end to find little more than the death knells of an unrelenting tambourine and a spring reverb-drenched guitar that just won’t give up even after the track’s natural and much-needed end. In fact, while bands always get bonus points in my books for attempting a full-length album instead of the constant slew of EPs, this record could do with losing a fair few minutes of aimless wandering and focus instead on the short sharp hooks, of which there are many! The closing track absolves for the sins of its predecessor with a brilliantly shouty chorus and dissonant guitar riff. Another six-minute number, here the seconds don’t feel wasted as it builds throughout to a gloriously noisy conclusion.

Ultimately you don’t come to grunge expecting reinvention. It is a genre steeped in yellow smiley-face branded history, and to that end Pale Angels deliver the goods. The overall sound of the album is spot-on too, with colossal guitars erupting over disgustingly thick and fuzzy Muff bass. The production is fittingly live and raw, it’s certainly refreshing to hear drums that sound like an actual kit is being played in the same room as the rest of the band – a point missing from many over-engineered and sample reinforced rock records today. With tunes to match, ‘Imaginary People’ is well worth picking up and certainly serves as a far more fitting legacy to a certain Mr Cobain than the latest posthumous documentary doing the rounds. Flannel up and fuzz out, Pale Angels are leading the charge for grunge in 2015.

3.5 out of 5 high fives!

Notes from the Keybed – This Month In Synths [February 2015]

February… a month of romance for some, regret for others, and raging synth riffage for the rest of us!

This month saw the release of a new single from West Midlands four-piece Shatter Effect. We’ve been keeping an eye on these dance-rockers for the past couple of years following ace tracks such as ‘Rebecca’ (check out the incredible video, indie bands – that’s how it’s done!) and ‘Find What You Love’. Their latest single ‘Make Me Hate You’ continues the trend of dark lyrical content, ice cold keyboard textures, and fuzzed up guitar riffs. A more industrial affair than before, with synth arpeggios straight out of the 80’s, matched with tom-heavy drums and the twin vocal attack of Rebecca and Robin Davies. The single is the first offering from the band’s debut album ‘We Are Warriors’, which will undoubtedly be a banger – we can’t wait!

If there is one unfortunate musical trend we’ve noticed lately it’s that keyboard players seem to be disappearing, only to be replaced by a laptop, audio player, or even (sorry soundmen) a phone. There’s a whole article to be written about this, starting with Black Sabbath hiding their keyboardist under the stage, but as live music gets more polished and accurate to the record, it runs the risk of losing character. Who cares if there are six-part vocal harmonies and a string section on your indie trio’s EP? The live experience is supposed to be different, to be raw, and, above all else, ‘live’. So here’s a heartfelt plea to bin the backing, chuck out the click, and go off the track!

Given the above, it is always a joy when a band bucks this unnerving trend, especially in unexpected circumstances like the one we found ourselves in recently. To set the scene, it’s your standard five-band punk rock / indie night at Cheltenham music’s local hangout The Frog & Fiddle, with the usual mix of local and touring bands. Mary Fields were a last minute addition to the bill, coming all the way from the Netherlands, which immediately peaked interest. So when they cracked out not just a keyboard but also an entire organ (how the hell do you transport that overseas?! – answers on a postcard please) it was clear that this wasn’t going to be your average noise-rock spaz-core band… if there is such a thing. With half the group setting up off-stage amongst the audience, they proceeded to launch from a quick line-check into an a capella version of Whitney’s ‘I Will Always Love You’ before shifting straight into full on Rolo Tomassi / Dillinger Escape Plan-style math-outs! Keyboardist Chris Greevink went from surprisingly proficient jazz piano playing to rolling about screaming in the space of a single song, peppered with some creative effects trickery throughout. Their short but sweaty set surely left everyone watching gobsmacked. Definitely a ‘marmite’ band, as with any noise band, but you owe it to your badass self to check them out if they roll that organ up your way in the future. You can also download their mini album ‘Flawless Victory Over Movement’ from Bandcamp, where you’ll find intricate song structures, strong vocals, and impressive musicianship on display amongst the chaos.

From one bizarre occurrence to another, the Internet was well and truly won for me this month by the appearance of a Vine featuring a headband-wearing busker with a seemingly limited vocabulary and some sweet keyboard dancing skills. Stephen Paul Taylor, or to use his nom-de-artiste SPT, is a 40-year old Canadian musician who entertains / terrorises – depending on your point of view – the streets of Berlin with his one-man keyboard band. The Vine in question is his song ‘Everybody Knows Shit’s Fucked’, a synth-pop protest about how everything is, like, totally screwed maaan. Once you get over the initial hilarity of the chorus it’s a genuinely catchy song, with more interesting lyrics than the Vine gives him credit for, and a cracking keyboard hook! If you’re anything like me, you’ll be wondering which 80’s anthem it was lifted from before realising that it’s entirely his own work and that his album ‘People Tonight’ is full of similarly catchy tunes. It won’t win any prizes for production as the overall aesthetic is charmingly DIY, with the sort of cheesy midi drums you might remember from school music classes (you know, those keyboards with the DJ button… hours of fun). It reminds this listener of not just 80’s pop masters like Eurythmics and Human League, but also the oddness of Talking Heads and an inevitable German dose of Kraftwerk. It might not be everyday listening, but if you like your synth pop to come with a side order of silly and a smattering of expletives, or just fancy something you won’t find elsewhere in your music library, then it is worth heading over to his Bandcamp for a listen. Whilst you’re there you might as well chuck him a quid for the ‘shit fuck’ song at least!

To finish, I want to award SPT with this month’s Keytar Hero title, despite not being able to find a picture online of him with one, you just know he has one in his closet… all together now, ‘everybody knows shit! fuck!’

Review: Choke Up – Black Coffee, Bad Habits

Straight out of the musical hotbed that is Boston comes Choke Up, four punk rock dudes who ‘love the Weakerthans and King of the Hill’. With a heady mix of emotional hardcore outbursts and pop punk hooks, Black Coffee, Bad Habits fits nicely into the current alternative musical spectrum. At times sounding like a more grown-up Real Friends, at others like a more melodic Gnarworlves, and occasionally like how you imagine Fugazi would have turned out had they formed in the noughties and swapped politics for pizza.

Lyrically the record pretty much sticks to genre conventions of girls, growing up, and giving up on where you’re from (see Robyn’s excellent article ‘The Seven Basic Pop-Punk Songs’ for more on this) but the vocals are the real trump card here, switching from vicious screams one second to hook-drenched harmonies the next. At times sounding like Vinnie Caruana at his most bitter, before drowning in the guttural depths of a Rites Of Spring-esque tirade, and even bearing resemblance to Gerard Way’s stream of consciousness on early MCR, they soar above the nasal fauxmerican offerings of similar pop-punkers. I defy anyone not to furiously fist-pump their way through the screamo rant that concludes ‘My Oh My’… it’s fucking glorious stuff. It’s just a shame that sometimes the guitars struggle to keep up. They’re perfectly played and full of catchy melodies and driving riffs, but I’d personally like a little more feedback, squall, and general punk rock chaos to match the rawness of the vocals.

The record offers a couple of genuine surprises when the band ease up on the distortion and deliver two stunning acoustic tracks. Both ‘Polka Dots’ and ‘Dry Out’ tick all of the emo singer-songwriter boxes with the former’s stomping percussion and latter’s lilting slide guitars lending an authentically alt-country vibe. With confessional lyrics and a fragile vocal delivery, neither would be out of place on a Bright Eyes record. Despite the change of tact, these songs sit perfectly on the grand scheme of the record instead of feeling like the token acoustic offerings that plague the end of many lesser albums. In fact, when taken as a whole, Black Coffee, Bad Habits is beautifully sequenced, with real thought given to the order of tracks and how they flow into each other. Given that these days too many acts drop EP after EP without ever committing to a full-length record, this 14-tracker feels like a real statement of intent. Impressively strong for a debut album, it rewards repeated listens with an admirable variety of styles and never outstays its welcome.

The only criticism that I can really make of this record is that it can be hard to define exactly what makes Choke Up unique. There are a lot of bands peddling this sound at the moment and, although these guys do it so much better than most, they’re going to have to shout pretty loud to stand out in such a crowded scene. While listening to the record, there have been plenty of occasions when I’ve thought ‘this bit sounds like this band’ and ‘that bit sounds like that other band’. Being fortunate enough to grow up during the glory years of third-wave emo, I’ve maybe been spoilt by such reference points, but for the kids of today Choke Up could well be their Movielife or even their Brand New. This band have real potential for progression and if Black Coffee, Bad Habits is their ‘Your New Favourite Weapon’, I can’t wait for their ‘Deja Entendu’!

4 out of 5 high fives!

Notes From The Keybed – This Month In Synths [January 2015]

So new year new music, something we’re very excited about here at Synth News … especially if it’s of the keyboard-smashing, filter-tweaking, sub-destroying variety, which is exactly what we have in store for you this month!

At the close of last year, we were sent the new single from impossibly young Norwegian synth-pop artist Aurora. ‘Under Stars’ features beautiful stacked vocal harmonies over a sublime electronic backing, and glitchy arpeggios punctuated by thundering drums and soaring strings. Definitely from the more-is-more school of production, the sheer wall of sound is enough to grab your attention! Despite this, it never overwhelms Aurora’s voice, which possesses a calmly affecting tone along the lines of Imogen Heap. Devotees of Ms Heap’s vocal-led electronica will surely lap this up, but the gentle sound palette and abstract lyrics will also appeal to fans of Regina Spektor and Paul Thomas Saunders. Aurora’s previous single ‘Awakening’ has been streamed nearly a million times on Spotify – with new material of this calibre, it won’t be long before she surpasses that impressive total. Certainly one to watch in 2015!

This month’s random ‘synth punk’-tagged Bandcamp find comes from a rowdy bunch of punx with keyboards based in Massachusetts, USA. ‘Cassingle’ by The Pins And Needles is a delicious slice of proto-punk with two synths, a drum kit, and a lot of shouting. Remember when The Horrors were a genuinely alternative band instead of just a glossy shoegaze soundtrack? Well this two-track EP brings back joyous memories of the likes of ‘Jack The Ripper’, had it been recorded in a garage …  straight to tape … with one microphone. It’s messy, offensive on the ears, and made all the better by the fact that two of the band run their own DIY cassette-issuing record label. Wonderful stuff.

Another vital new release is the third EP from the epically named We Shall Meet In The Place Where There Is No Darkness. We’ll get onto their fantastic genre-spanning electronica shortly but firstly, a few words of journalistic integrity … I’ve been good friends with the core protagonists of the band, drummer Ben Cullimore and multi-instrumentalist Michael Wynn, for a few years now, having shared stages a number of times with them across various projects. This led to me contributing some synth parts to their 2012 EP ‘Banzai 711’, following which we did a couple of performances before the reality of having members living in multiple counties (and countries) kicked in. The band now operates as an open collective, with almost as many contributing members as words in their impressively literary moniker! For ‘The Island’ the group have expanded to include new vocalist Flossie T and guitarist Richard Webb, with virtuosic bassist Liam Lee-Hynes completing the personnel alongside the aforementioned Ben and Michael.

Now that’s out of the way and I won’t be subject to a #synthgate witch-hunt, it is fortunate really that the music is utterly brilliant. The sound of this record moves away from the Joy Division goes DFA 1979 of previous work into a New Order of disco-infused new wave, with classic pop songwriting sitting comfortably alongside organic synth textures. Throughout the EP, you can hear the time and effort that has gone into selecting and integrating the electronic sounds –  refreshing in today’s climate, where too many indie bands will call up a generic Logic preset and play some vaguely in-key synthesiser melody in order to satisfy hipster cravings. Instead the synths drift along wistfully in both tuning and timing, giving a much-needed human quality to this usually mechanical genre. Lead single ‘The Boy’ is the standout selection, as gloriously 80’s synths and staccato drum machine fills fight for your attention alongside infectious vocal hooks. The slap bass and disco guitar chops might be a little too funkalicious for some tastes, but in a year where Nile Rodgers’ Chic can be found in the upper echelons of festival line-ups, I wouldn’t bet against this making a comeback! WSM… fit in nicely between this disco revival and modern radio pop’s electronic dominance, supplemented by a refreshingly dark realism recalling the glory days of Depeche Mode. You can download ‘The Island’ now from their Bandcamp.

Amanda Palmer is a keyboard-shredding queen, pounding the hell out of a piano throughout the Dresden Dolls. She’s also an incredible writer, as shown by her book ‘The Art Of Asking’ – anyone involved in music, writing, theatre or any other creative endeavour seriously needs to pick up a copy now. But, best of all, she makes the insanely tasteless Yamaha SHS-10 keytar look cool …

To put things into perspective, this is an instrument that comes with Wham’s ‘Last Christmas’ as a demo song. It has crappy little mini keys that make a child’s fingers look big. And it’s made of bright red plastic, probably with its CE sticker from the 80’s still intact. Yet the fabulous Ms Palmer has been known to crack one of these out with The Grand Theft Orchestra, even making an appearance on her famous Kickstarter campaign video. Just Google Amanda Palmer + keytar and be prepared to have all of your preconceptions shattered. Just goes to show, it’s the player not the instrument that matters and that’s why she is this month’s Keytar Hero (still looks naff on everyone else though).