electropop
Joe Muggs
Though he first came to public attention via the Los Angeles-based Brainfeeder psychedelic electronic hip hop collective led by Flying Lotus, 25-year-old producer Lorn comes from “the middle of nowhere in Illinois”, and it's easy to see in his music a less sunny disposition than many of his comrades. Most of the Brainfeeder crew have a loose-limbed funkiness to their sound and an accumulation of sonic detail that speaks of heat and humdity. But while Lorn shares their aesthetic of complex rhythms that slip off the grid, there's something chilly and chilling about his industrial-sounding Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
It has occasionally worked against Hot Chip that their first single – or, at least, the first to make any impact – was “Over and Over”. This 2006 song is such a perfect pop nugget, brutally reducing the appeal of club culture to a snappy yet celebratory couplet, that later work seemed wet in its shadow. Not that you’d know it from the music media adulation that attends the band. Consisting of five smart, geeky-looking blokes from London, they were quickly taken up by that same city’s taste arbiters, their clever electronic pop appealing to those observing the dance floor rather than on it.In Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
A few years ago the ultimate in post-modern bollocks appeared – Guilty Pleasures, a club night built around the notion that tepid crap from yesteryear is brilliant. So let’s go dig Toto, Go West, Andrew Gold, Dr Hook, any old toe jam. Of course, there’s no reason why anyone shouldn’t dance around to anything, and it’s refreshing, now and then, to give the po-faced Punk Year Zero thing a kick-in, but actively celebrating drivel is another matter. "Dreadlock Holiday" is not a guilty pleasure, it’s just shite. Move on.That aside, all music lovers have actual guilty pleasures, records we know are Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Gary Numan (born Gary Webb, 1958) was born in Hammersmith and raised in the western outskirts of London, the son of a bus driver. By the latter half of the Seventies he was fronting punk band Tubeway Army but his fortunes changed dramatically when he added synthesizers to the formula and became, with the album Replicas and songs such as “Down in the Park” and “Are ‘Friends’ Electric?”, one of electro-pop’s great innovators. His coldly catchy music, sci-fi imagery, adenoidal voice and air of robotic isolation was hugely influential. He sealed his repute with the globally successful single “ Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Being pigeonholed as "disco" became the kiss of death for many of the genre's lesser lights, but a select handful were able to transcend its limitations. Chic and the Bee Gees managed it, and so did Donna Summer, disco's so-called "First Lady of Love" whose career stretched over four decades. Having hooked up with Giorgio Moroder to help define the hypnotic, hedonistic message of disco, Summer was subsequently able to embrace pop, rock and gospel music. Her powerful, soulful voice lent conviction wherever her musical explorations led her.Her background and upbringing had left her equipped to Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Kooky ladies are very much of the moment, an ongoing moment, actually - the last couple of years, to be precise - but they seem to be with us to stay which is surely a good thing, especially in the playground. Better them than unreconstructed pole-dancing, as promulgated by the Pussycat Dolls et al. Then there’s Gaga, of course, who’s a lot of both. Now the kook generation, from Ellie Goulding to Paloma Faith, have to decide (once they've steered clear of wannabe-Mariah X Factor tedium) what ratio of gay club 3am hard house stomp to inject into their cod-Kate Bush freakery.Marina Diamandis Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Santigold – Philadelphia singer Santi White - does not neatly fit into any stereotype of the modern female pop star. In fashion photographer Jason Schmidt’s multiple cover images she is both an Amazonian warrior guard and a waistcoat clad masculine business overlord, and on record she adopts many more personas, but none of them are submissive or porno-chic sexual. Instead, Santigold makes stomping proud, shout-pop, chanty anthems that sit midway between early Eighties chart-toppers and utterly modern post-R&B US dance, of the Beyoncé ilk.With a production team that includes DJs such Boyz Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Two things are certain with music coming from the north: there will be some wonderful surprises and some of it will sound like nothing else on earth. It’s even more enticing when the two merge. Making the peculiar accessible is a uniquely Scandinavian knack. There are more than a few examples of that – the creation of new micro-genres – in this round-up of current and new releases, but some straightforward albums are equally striking. First, however, we head for the offbeat end of the spectrum.After my first encounter with Denmark’s Sleep Party People, I remarked they were “a peculiar Read more ...
theartsdesk
The Human League: Dare (Deluxe Edition)Thomas H GreenLast year, when I interviewed The Human League for theartsdesk, singer Susan Sulley said of Leonard Cohen, “He’s got a personality voice. It’s not a voice that’s going to pass the auditions on The X Factor but you wouldn’t mistake him for anyone else on the radio.”You would never mistake The Human League for anyone else either, a unique band born of Sheffield, punk and a love of Kraftwerk. It’s hard to credit that their hugest song, “Don’t You Want Me”, and its massively successful parent album Dare, were put together with little Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Norway’s bouncy electropoppers Casiokids release their new single “Kaskaden” next week. They’ve chosen to premier the video on theartsdesk. Directed by their long-term collaborator Blank Blank, the fantasia takes in Kung Fu films and the Hollywood of the Eighties, mixing them with a Norwegian flavour.The video for “Kaskaden”, a track from their recent Aabenbaringen over aaskammen album, is produced and directed for Casiokids by the Finnish/Colombian/Norwegian collective Blank Blank and choreographed by the Dutch contemporary dancer Marjolein Vogels. The band describe the video as a “ a film- Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Everyone wants their own Madonna. Some want the mischievous, tinny, Eighties, New York club chick; some want the sexadelic, Shep Pettibone-produced art-nudie; some want the gently euphoric Ray of Light trance angel; some want the house-tinted fashionista “Vogue” queen, and so on, and so on – but what does Madonna want?I’d hazard a guess she stopped knowing shortly after her last great single, the ABBA-sampling Stuart Price-produced floor-slayer “Hung Up”. Since then she’s been flailing about more than usual, and misfired into R&B with 2008’s Hard Candy album. Finding new producers is Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The word “grimes” conjures up images of a Dickensian London underworld, or of tough modern urban music, but Grimes is far, far from these reference points. For starters, she’s from Canada. She also makes music that defies easy categorisation. Visions is her third album but it is a lot less niche than her first two, as if she has finally bloomed sonically. In the broadest sense it’s electro-pop but Claire Boucher – Grimes – spices her computer sounds with a swooping multi-tracked vocal style that recalls Kate Bush, Enya and the Cocteau Twins rather than Lily Allen.Some songs, such as “ Read more ...