CDNerd.com

This is a happy day for synthpop in the southwest!

The Faint


And


Ladytron


At Tucson’s Rialto, Friday April 24 2009 (With some crocodiles)

Popsy Synthpop Music

Huzzah for a new album!

Röyksopp are releasing Junior into the world. Everything seems deeper and bouncier from the samples I have heard. I am looking forward to grabbing the plastic disc thereof.

Chill out's finest

Popsy Synthpop Music

Yamaha Mitsubishibi Toyota Suzuki Sony Minolta Kawasaki Sanyo Casio Toshiba.

All the brands have survived! Humpe sisters have some amazing songs out there. “Happiness is hard to take” “Don’t spoil my day” Along with the Yamaha song, “Geschrien im Schlaf’s” melody really sticks in my brain.

Popsy Synthpop Music

Since I am new to the whole cellular scam (phone) industry, I was not prepared for how hokey cell phones are. I got a Casio Boulder G’z One. It was expensive and sounded rugged. Throw a few folders of music on it, and nothing happens! It turns out that many phones can not recurse directories. I had to dump my naked songs in the root music directory. Then the phone decided my file names were just too long with all that useless info like title and author.

Just look at what it did to my poor filenames:

How can we be such a powerful nation and limit ourselves so severely on technology? Please move my player’s marker further into the no-cell-phone camp.

Popsy Computers, Pointless, Synthpop Music

Information Society made good on the Apocryphon CD set. Finally I have solid media for those Napster days collections.

Apocryphon’s insets are full of rare photos and tasty blurbs. The track remastering is clean and crisp as you would expect. Personal fave turns out to be “06 – Xmas At Our House” with suffering, torment, and pain. There are so many more tracks for a collection like this such as the Christmas track where “Santa’s comin’” was all twisted and sounds like we need to hide, or the cover of “One”. How about the 3DO tracks? Can we get them?

I followed rumors of a third Think Tank album as well, even saw track lists online! Were these fanciful fabrication only? Lately I want to know where the samples “It’s the information age, brother” and “Do you know that bad girls go to…?” come from.

I went nuts jumping and screaming when watching the 1995 movie “Death Machine” on some late-night cheese-a-thon and heard the samples from Think Tank – Googelplectic.

Why are all the pages I created about Think Tank, Brother Sun-Sister Moon and Hakatak deleted from Wikipedia?? That will teach me to keep information on a public forum.

Anyhow, the third Think Tank Album can be heard on Amazon:

Popsy Synthpop Music

The New Romantic revival is dawning again. Remember when “Alternative” and “New Wave” meant almost the same thing? That was twenty to thirty years ago. The following mentions are rated minor NSFC – Not safe for Christians (profanity and explicit lyrics). Some of the tracks are very listenable.

The industry let the term music be redefined. For two generations it has been forced into a little hole where the only valid instruments were the electric guitar, rock drum set, and one angry singer with no harmonic support. Fortunately this trend is loosing its grip. Melody, Harmony, and Rhythm are returning.

• The Killers – Day and Age just NAILED the 80s romantic. Are we human or are we dancer? The required elements are all there. Even the almost not English-correct things make it awesome. I keep thinking, “Shouldn’t those words be plural?” Favorite Track: Human of course. Lyrical moment: “Will your system be alright?”


• Shiny Toy Guns – We Are Pilots the male and female vocalists taking turns. Very light bouncy synths, background chorus. Simple drum sets. Most enjoyed tracks: Waiting, You Are the One, Don’t Cry Out. Lyrical moment “Why are the robots so sad?”


• The Mary Onettes – Traditional “rock” instrumentation that fools you into thinking that you missed this album from the 80s, but it is brand new. Sweden does Liverpool! Favorite: The Laughter, ironically moody.


• The Postal Service – Death Cab’s side synthpop project. They used lots of quirky sounds and the witty boy/girl responses on Nothing Better are not to be missed. Lyric Moment: “I’ll be the water wings” on the Nintendo-esque Brand New Colony.


• Fischerspooner – Odyssey is not exactly as current as these, but it helped pave the way for them. Tracks: Just Let Go, Everything To Gain, All We Are. Lyric brilliance awarded for “We need a war”.

An honorable mention is M83 – Saturday=Youth. This is more indie, and not as popular as the above groups. If nothing else they get eleven points for the sweet recreation of 80s on the cover:

The brilliant part of this is that these groups fall into the modern “alternative” category and will be pushed down the throats of the teen generation. Thus the groups can restore some intelligence, harmony, and fun into the music. This will balance the angst and noise that has been so prevalent of late.

Popsy Synthpop Music

Yeah, I know it’s Monday. Time for compare and contrast. Go and listen to these two amazing synthpop tracks:

Gwen Stefani – Wonderful Life
and
Black – Wonderful Life

Now go and report your findings.

Popsy Synthpop Music

Audiosurf. nuff. (helps to forget Frequency and Amplitude first.)

Popsy Gaming, Synthpop Music

I am VERY impressed with Gangway, an obscure 80′s group from Denmark. Download samples of their songs. Notice through the recordings how the breaks come, and the styles change. It has those witty lyrical fun things I love most from my music.

The first song, Gangway – Mountain Song describes exactly going to a city like Denver or Durango with uppity dining establishments manned with plastic people. They get eight capillion points for leaving in the “Hang on” phrase where he misses the note completely and then giggles about it.

Next is a real shocker; Gangway – My Girl and Me. This marks the first time I have heard a word-for-word scripture including chapter reference in a mainstream song! So-called Christian groups don’t even do that.

Then comes Gangway – Going Away a life-ruining break up song. Very intelligent lyrics, with almost Taco like vocals. “Death beams” and “the house belongs to you” are clever.

Don’t Trust Me is not as catchy, but it has some nice atmospheric stuff.

Come Back As A Dog is light hearted, along the theme of the “I’ll come back to haunt you” idea. Done in brilliant cheeky style.

Sitting in the Park is decent, the rest of the tracks don’t stick with me much. They are included for completeness. You can afford the 150megs and bandwidth.

Popsy Synthpop Music

Ok, after much listening and considering I have decided to update this review. Issues: There is a cuss word on the cover sticker – lovely for my kids who opened the package. Such a bummer to have them totally enjoy the music but be unable to go to any concerts! 21+ = -4 fans. Sigh.

Track one (Less Talk) starts with a nice in-your-face cussword also. Audition editing time to clean it up again. Sigh.

Track two feels rushed. Syllables don’t fit lyrically. The melodic parts and rhythm are fine. Frontload is such a mixture that it represents the entire CD well. Some really neat vocals, especially the male lead. Someone has been practicing. The rest of the track is rather meh. I hate the word “party” when used in music like this it becomes “potty”.

I really enjoyed Thought Balloon. Why are the dreamy vocal songs like tender lies so many leagues above the others?

Brainpower – some kind of throwback to early eighties girl power groups? Mayhaps. My favorite part is the “very same brainpower I mentioned before” not fitting in timing. Very vell done.

STILL NO INSTRUMENTAL! What is the deal? Afterparty almost met this, but then the rush job lyrics kicked in again at half way (and one S word). In my book you can’t call a group synthpop unless they have nearly one instrumental song per CD. Even put them B-side on a single or something.

Musically Do you like boys? is dreamy and smooth.

The rest of the work just comes across as blah or gay. (This is not a rude accusation by the way). I would rather not think about his “wang” even if it is a pun.

Popsy Synthpop Music