electropop
Thomas H. Green
Anyone remember the Boobahs? They were the less successful cousins of the Teletubbies, from the same production house. They were puffy, fat, primary-coloured humanoids who bounced endlessly around in bizarre choreographed dance routines. They were psychedelic infantilism incarnate, and very funny.Towards the end of Pet Shop Boys’ set the stage fills with what appears to be a Leigh Bowery-esque reimagining of the Boobahs. As the five spectacular tiers of the Royal Opera House, filled to capacity with dancing fans, revel in the chart-topping Catholic guilt anthem “It’s A Sin”, these strange Read more ...
Joe Muggs
The Eighties revival in dance music started in earnest with the Electroclash subculture, the first records emerging around 1996. That is to say, the Eighties revival has now lasted twice as long as the actual Eighties itself. And if you think that the heyday of electropop – which is what we generally mean by Eighties sounds – really lasted from about 1978 to 1984, we're talking about a very long revival for a very short “decade”.The thing about dance music, though, is that its riffs and schticks seem particularly durable. Because they were aimed at a relatively unchanging physical environment Read more ...
Barney Harsent
The EU referendum isn’t the only thing causing polarised opinion over European issues. The question of what constitutes Balearic Beat looms large over the music community. For some, it’s a fixed point, namely celebrated DJ Alfredo’s record box in the mid-80s. For others it’s built on more shifting sands, a sentiment DJ and author Bill Brewster summarises with trademark élan: “Balearic Beat today is the same as it was in 2011, 1999 and 1984. It’s shit pop records and brilliant EBM records. It’s everything and nothing.”International Feel record label boss and producer Mark Barrott’s take is Read more ...
Joe Muggs
A few beers down, in the middle of a crowd listening to music you love, you tend not to think of the latest news story as your highest priority. But Britain's relationship to Europe weighs heavy on the mind these days, and when the news of the violent attack on Jo Cox started filtering through as we danced under the Catalan sun on Thursday afternoon, it threw the nature of Sónar festival into relief.Unlike a lot of international music events, which can often be little more than monocultural awaydays for Brits and/or Germans seeking hedonism in the sun, Sónar is both proudly reflective of its Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Just over three years ago, I was swooning for this very site over Tegan and Sara’s masterful shift from indie rock to full-bodied, floor-filling, retro-inspired electropop. But as catchy and cathartic as that album, Heartthrob, was, ultimately it only hinted at the ability of the Quin twins to write an all-consuming, gigantic pop song. Their eighth album, Love You to Death, is the one on which the longest build in the history of modern pop finally breaks: that song is called “Boyfriend”, it’s a giddy rush of gender-bending sugar-spun queer-pop, and it deserves to be absolutely massive.As, too Read more ...
Joe Muggs
Canadian singer/producer Jessy Lanza's records – and this one more than ever – can feel like they're mapping an alternative history, one where populist and leftfield electronic music were never separate. Two aspects dominate her sound: her crisp, clear pop vocal, and a palpable love of the sonorities of drum machines. Through every song you can hear echoing a history of electro, from its roots in Suicide, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Giorgio Moroder and Kraftwerk, on the one hand through eighties pop, new wave, Madonna, Prince and Timbaland, and on the other through the underground Detroit techno Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The immediate reaction to Close to the Noise Floor is “Why hasn’t anyone done this before?” This new four-disc set’s subtitle captures its objective in a nutshell: to collect Formative UK Electronica 1975–1984 – excursions in proto-synth pop, DIY techno and ambient exploration. While the stars include Blancmange, John Foxx, Throbbing Gristle and the big cult names Bourbonese Qualk, Legendary Pink Dots and Instant Automatons feature, the less well-knowns Sea of Wires, We be Echo and Muslimgauze are also collected.Close to the Noise Floor sets the moody electropop of Spöön Fazer’s previously Read more ...
Joe Muggs
There's an area in American music that is oddly under-reported given its scale. Somewhere between the garish mania of mainstream dance music, “EDM”, and the cool cachet of more underground sounds is a kind of “festival electronica”: very musical, often subtle and sophisticated, acts detached from nightclubs and often far more visible on the live circuit, where lasers and LED displays create epic backdrops for their sound. Acts like Tycho, Pretty Lights, Ratatat and British export Bonobo have, mostly through hard touring, built highly lucrative careers, and increasingly form a layer within the Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Read the track listing of Belgica and you might assume that this soundtrack is a compilation featuring 15 different artists from a wide variety of musical genres. In fact, it has been written and produced in its entirety by Belgian experimentalists Soulwax, using virtual bands created purely for this project. Soulwax is actually made up of Belgian brothers Stephen and David Dewaele (AKA dance titans 2manydjs) and Stefaan Van Leuven, and their latest offering accompanies a film set in a nightclub in Ghent which, on this evidence, sounds like quite a wild venue with plenty to recommend it.The Read more ...
Joe Muggs
The career of the Gran Canaria-born musician Pablo Díaz-Reixa seems to work in an accelerated time-frame, speeding through decades and eras as he develops his sound. Though he has always worked with digital technology, his early work sounded archaic, its massed carnival percussion and traditional melodies roaming around the Afro-Latin diaspora.Then, on 2008's Pop Negro, he embraced modernism, albeit still with a retro twist, rigorously examining and adopting the high-gloss production and songwriting techniques of the biggest mainstream American and Latino pop acts of the mid-1970s to mid-'90s Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
It would be easy to write off The Jezabels’ third album as style over substance. The gaudy, synth-heavy gloom-pop of Synthia seeks to catch you off guard with its sexualised sighs, sinewy rhythms and liquid melodies. It’s only on repeated listens that its wider themes emerge: gender roles and identity; desire and disgust and, in “Smile”, a devastating put-down of the everyday street-harasser.It begins with “Stand and Deliver” – an immersive, seven-and-a-half-minute synthesised dream sequence during which frontwoman Hayley Mary transforms from wide-eyed ingenue into high priestess of electro- Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Kannon, Sunn O)))’s (pronounced “sun”) first non-collaborative album since 2009’s epic Monoliths and Dimensions, is a doomy triptych that will make long-term fans of the American band very happy indeed. Taking inspiration from the Buddhist Guanyin Bodhisattva “perceiving the cries of the world”, walls of distorted guitars played very, very slowly provide a cosmic and crushingly heavy groove that suggests that Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson are still very much on top of the drone metal game after their recent, more avant-garde collaborations with Ulver and Scott Walker and almost 20 years Read more ...