Francis Bowie - Francis Bowie EP review

Year : 2012
Genre : Synthpop, Intelligent Pop
Label : Independent
Origin : Denmark
Official Site : > - here - <

Francis Bowie is Francis Bowie in Francis Bowie's Francis Bowie EP, and the official name of the trade is pop music of the intelligent kind. The EP represents an odd-, nevertheless pleasing behavior in the sense that it manages to set things more and more right after a relatively trite and ultra-orthodox opening track. From that point on, the lighting and the mood becomes fluorescent and intriguing in a "shady side of the '80s" kind of way, as Francis Bowie takes you on an atmospheric/emotional sonic stroll that indeed is able to resonate with the ethos it is dormantly obliged to resonate with, which is none other than the one represented by world famous name-kin David Bowie. The builds are simultaneously playful, slim, dainty, fragile, while being uncompromisingly dark, though never enough to make a lady frightened - nooooo, no - and there IS the promise of high definition bliss and happiness, but hopelessness is not someone who has no access to the party, either. Read on to know more about this EP.

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Jerrod Harlan - Hello Ontario EP review

Year : 2012
Genre : Synthpop with Atmospheric Shoegaze character
Label : Independent
Origin : United States
Official site : > - here - <

Introductory information is taken from the artist's website :

"Hello Ontario is the music project of Pittsburgh’s Jerrod Harlan. Only 20 years old and Harlan’s already made a name for himself playing top venues throughout the Alleghenies, including Western Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Hello Ontario’s flavor of modern indie/electronic has been compared to the bands Of Montreal and The Postal Service.

Actually, you’ll hear a wide range of influences in Hello Ontario, including Foster The People, Breathe Electric, Tokyo Police Club, Death Cab For Cutie and even the legendary Buddy Holly. Quite a ride, considering Harlan first learned to play guitar when he broke his arm! What is a musician at heart to do, with an arm casted at 90 degrees? He also plays synthesizer, piano, bass, and does vocals. Harlan has a wanderlust for sharing his music far and wide and yet, he has an ace card of a solid musical education. He studied music theory and composition at the highly prestigious performance arts charter school, Lincoln Park Performing Arts. Hello Ontario has played to jam-packed audiences at coffee shops, festivals and charity concerts."

Read on to find out how the music sounds.

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Sounds on Fire - Stereo Solar Systems review

Year : 2012
Genre : Experimental Synthpop
Label : Independent
Origin : Australia
Official site : > - here - <

According to the band's self-definition, Sounds of Fire is so underground that the fire from the Earth's core constructs the mere sounds they produce. This is as good of a perspective as you will ever have if you are looking for a squad ready and able to embed a sonic statement into the very center of your awareness.

Whirling with a thunder from down under, the freshest declaration of this secretive Australian ensemble combines spaced-out - quite literally - visual information with rampant-unalloyed experimental synthpop audio data, coming to your way from highly illegal spatial dimensions in the unprecedented form of the Stereo Solar System Space / Musical experience, from which the only way out is : through. No. Sanity. Remains. Unaffected. Read on to find out more about this rabid synthpop delivery.

It goes without saying that the ideal method to subject yourself to this stimuli by, is to let yourself be affected by the cooperative workings of both the visual information and the audio data. The contribution is not at all reluctant to address its key elements in a hasty and efficient way, of which the myriad of heavily processed computer voices and an intentionally crystal clear palette of mostly evenly spaced synthpop-samples and related compositional strategies are mandatory ingredients. Among the biomechanical voices, one particular female computer is a central character. Her voice is pretty sexy, kind of S.H.O.D.A.N., and remains that even after it turns out that she (?) sports a dick. ¿WTF!!!!!!1one. The character of the music is playfully pseudo-schizophrenic and diffuse, - I'm sane, the voices told me, too - yet, thank God & Co., never to the point that which would harm the anatomy of the sonic flow.

The general shape of things and patterns are freely positioned, casual declarations of an artistic ethos that loves to get surprised and is not afraid to show the facial expression that is coming with it while at that. This monster-length is not particularly after the easily accessible pattern, - synonym : it is brave enough to not give the promise of a shit for it - nor for the environment of sound that seeks to comfort your OH!, so precious anticipations. No. For this release, your instant initial anticipations are not important. People seem to be quite reliable in the sense that they want whatever /whoever does not want THEM, so this behavior from the record's part creates a constant sense of intriguing alienation. It IS a space-mindfuck, after all.

It is pretty safe to say that the release exhibits no particular weaknesses in any of its zones, - there are a plentiful, remember, it is a ride weighing in with 17 minutes - yet its tendency to make the sacred core of 4/4 pummeling deviate from itself rhythmically, is a trait the album looks quite superb with, whenever it decides to submit to this pastime. The primordial character of the release though exhibits that of a decent-, muscular, modernly old-school synthpop statement with a constant, reliable pulse to it, and a key beneficiary trait of it is the fact that it delivers the sonic goods without ever seeking to intimidate the listener.

Shodan : out.

Sounds on Fire - Stereo Solar System Space / Music experience : in.

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Grimes - Visions review

Year : 2012
Genre : Synthpop, Electronic, Post-Internet
Label : Arbutus
Origin : Canada
Rating : 7.2 / 10

Canadian artist Claire Boucher is the - necessary - premiere ingredient of the creative force behind one woman band Grimes. Claire Boucher herself labels her 2012 full length as "post-Internet", as it doubtless is music conceived by a spirit that is deeply affected by its own fascinations and dependencies relating to the cultural and pseudo-social experience called the Internet. On another note, you can't help but notice the superficial sidekick-irony of you gaining information of the "post-Internet" nature of this release via the informational highway itself. All hail to Wikipedia. 

The cover art of the Visions LP is deceitful, making you think that it is the no love lost precursor for relentless death metal orthodoxies, but, the music itself deviates from this suspicion via all the combined charms of pink marshmallow vistas and fractal soap bubbles. The music on this synthpop release reigns in no need for artificial sweeteners, as the audio data on it equates to the very sonic epitome of the substance in question. Read on to find out more about this album.


Visions is music with the calm agenda to soak your awareness into ultra-mellow synthpop, as the backbone of the instrumentalization is exclusively dependent on a multitude of synths and their heavily tamed drum machine routines. The content is successful at drawing its own aspired character, as the audio exhibits a constant-, fluid, ear-caressing drops of sound and slim blanket of sounds quality that never seeks to intimidate, not even when it reaches segments with lot of notes and timbers parked in it. Grimes' music sounds both to be - in a proper way - casual, as one attribute of the delivery seems to be its nature of being composed of enthusiastic audio experiments the creator herself must have been intrigued by. This is all good so fat, and there are not many things to bring it down, either. More on those a little bit later.

The record is brave enough to reveal its facevalue in hasty fashion, that which proves to be the equal of its ultimate value, too. Grimes' lullaby-signing swims-, floats-, twirls in heavy pools of pure-synthetic - TUKK! - pink marshmallow-procession and the related effect parade of a set of favorite tricks, most often keeping a certain degree of sobriety intact to refrain from sugar-overdose radicalism. Yet, Grimes' aforementioned bag of tricks only is as abundant currently as the presets of the synths are, and sometimes she makes creative decisions that are harmful to her music, and not beneficiary, in my opinion. To give you such an example, there are some relatively deluded vocal segments by which Grimes pitch shifts her voice until she probably thinks she sounds supercute, whereas she just sounds like a retarded pokémon after frontal lobotomy, but hey, sporting a retarded pokémon synthpop rockstar under your bed (beside the rabbit with the flying suitcase) is nothing out of the ordinary in this day and age. I have the hunch that the words of the lyrics are not necessarily designed to be decoded immediately, yet, whenever they seek to paint more direct pictures in the mind, their ability to convey the moods of a random artist girl from the intr4n3t, is unquestionable.


Composition-wise, there is a set of elegant, efficient deliveries on the spin, and you, unfortunately, will have a relatively fair share of almost certain sonic annoyance that will make you want the record to STOP. This is not a good thing to endure and feel at all, because, while the contribution exhibits its weakest form in the mid-section, - in my opinion, of course - it gets back to its prime form via the climax. This, though, is only a relatively lopsided release with way too much pink strawberry charm and lost-in-space-grade playfulness of a character to make it possible to write of it in a derogatory fashion without feeling yourself as a dangerless bitter dick afterwards. If you need your fix of music after which you can understand what other styles of the same things really are about, then this is a release worth trying to read a Blade Runner comics to.

Rating : 7.2 / 10

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