Although best known as the lead vocalist for FM-84, the San Francisco based vehicle for Scotsman Colin Bennett, Los Angeles domiciled Brightonian Ollie Wride has been working with another Scot Michael Oakley on solo material.
And while ‘Running In The Night’ in 2016 with FM-84 made him more widely known within Synthwave circles, Wride’s ‘The Driver’ explores the synth assisted pop rock of Billy Idol and SIMPLE MINDS with a dynamic production from Michael Oakley, who himself could potentially develop into the next Keith Forsey, a one-time protégé of Da Maestro Giorgio Moroder.
Directed by Brad A Kinnan and filmed in Los Angeles, the visually accompaniment captures Wride as an outsider driving an open-top Buick who is living in the shadows of his past life and performing in seedy clubs.
With guitars by Chris Huggett who also co-wrote ‘The Driver’, the song follows up Wride’s previous popwave solo singles ‘Never Live Without You’ and ‘Overcome’. Also featuring THE NIGHT HOUR, the track shows how a Trans-Atlantic aesthetic can be applied effectively without wholly submitting to the insipid overtures of AOR.
Wride will be back in the UK with FM-84 for a sold out gig at The Garage in London on Saturday 16th February 2019, while Oakley has just released a new single ‘Control’ which will feature on his forthcoming debut album ‘Introspect’ and which was also co-written with Wride ?
‘The Driver’ is released by New Retro Wave and available from the usual digital outlets
With her ‘Mothership’ opus about to land soon, Lake Placid’s I AM SNOW ANGEL has presented a new in-studio performance video of her current single ‘Honeybee’.
The vehicle of songstress and producer Julie Kathryn, her wonderful debut long player ‘Crocodile’ was a quietly subversive statement that crossed modern electronica with some Americana twang and even closed with a wispy drum ‘n’ bass cover of Bruce Springsteen’s ‘I’m On Fire’.
Recorded appropriately enough in a cabin located in the wintery Adirondack Woods which are north of New York, ‘Honeybee’ has been presented in two versions, depicting according to Kathryn: “two iterations of a dark and bittersweet metaphorical world where alienation is omnipresent, and love and salvation are ephemeral (never truly unattainable no matter how much I long for them).”
“In the City Mix” she said, “I overlayed trap beats with glitchy and robotic vocals to help bring the song’s melody to life while also depicting the inevitable merging of technology and nature.”
However, the more sedate and barer Cabin Mix recalls haunting air of Hilary Woods who released her debut solo album ‘Colt’ on Sacred Bones earlier this year; “I employed onamonapia by using sounds that, to me, are reminiscent of the buzzing and gurgling of a honeybee and it’s honeycomb lair, but with a dark edge.”
‘Honeybee’ is the follow-up to the chillingly bittersweet ‘You Were Mine’ and the long awaited parent long player ‘Mothership’ is now slated for 25th January 2019. As well as finishing the I AM SNOW ANGEL album, Kathryn has also undertaken some sound design with her own Dream Pack for Splice as well as engineering and producing ‘No Sound’, the new single by Canadian singer / songwriter Grace Lachance.
But despite the workload, Kathryn simply says: “I’m so grateful that I get to make music all day every day ✨? “
‘Honeybee’ available as a download via the usual digital outlets
The album ‘Mothership’ is released on 25th January 2019
Featuring the delightful vocals of Holly Dodson from Canadian synthpop trio PARALLELS, ‘Edge Of The Universe’ is the new single by FUTURECOP!
The project of Mancunian Manzur Iqbal and his first new material since 2014, ‘Edge Of The Universe’ is a synthetic burst of Manga colour not far off the catchy sweetly flavoured ‘Metropolis’ album which gained PARALLELS some well-deserved momentum internationally. Iqbal says ‘Edge Of The Universe’ was “inspired by a mix of 80s Japanese pop culture, eighties American Teen movies and Retro Space Adventure Japanese-Western cartoons” and probably wouldn’t have sounded out of place on the soundtrack of an Anime remake ‘Pretty In Pink’ or ‘Some Kind Of Wonderful’.
A new album is pencilled in for 2019 to follow-up 2014 ‘Fairy Tales’, although ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK sincerely hopes that the FUTURECOP! declaration of Bruce Hornby as an influence is just an idle threat…
Meanwhile, the tune comes suitably dressed in a soft-focus visual presentation filmed in Osaka, Japan which is directed by Anise Mariko who has previously given her mikineko productions video treatment to the likes of COMPUTER MAGIC and SHOOK.
“Manzur first approached me about a year ago about co-writing some of their tracks. I’ve been a big fan of FUTURECOP! for so long so it was really cool to get to join our worlds. I feel like we both share similar influences, so the lyrical themes came through quite clearly for the instrumentals he sent.” Holly Dodson told ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK, “We worked over email, Manzur sent me demos, I recorded the vocals at my studio here in Toronto then he finished the productions in the UK”.
She continued, “Luckily we had some great synergy happening, when I heard the instrumentals I basically knew what I wanted to write upon first listen and Manzur was totally on board. I felt completely comfortable going dreamy and adventurous with them, a bit spiritual as well… even so far as to the edge of the universe 🙂 “
For PARALLELS, the RADIO WOLF remix of ‘The Last Man’ and the enjoyable ‘Golden’ recorded with Chris Huggett (not the WASP synth designer!) had been their only releases in 2018 so far.
But following a superb debut at Zigfrid Von Underbelly in London at Easter, their live double billing with German songstress NINA has just recently completed its American leg to great success and acclaim.
‘Edge Of The Universe’ is released by New Retro Wave Records as a digital bundle with four additional remixes
Looks like this year witnessed some great releases in the electronic circus, but often the best ones are left to last, and ‘Pseudopop’ may as well be that cherry on the cake of 2018.
Coming from an act that have been climbing the levels of dark synth scene for the last few years, with BLACK NAIL CABARET honing their unique soundscapes, the new album seems to twist things a bit again in the Hungarians’ camp. Having started with a surprisingly punchy version of Rihanna’s ‘Umbrella’, BNC have since established themselves as the destroyer of everything dainty and soft.
Sat on the dark side of electronica’s moon, Emese Illes-Arvai and her husband pushed their last long player, ‘Dichromat’ over the finish line and continuing to feed the dark poison to the fans of the grittier, dirtier side of synth.
‘Dichromat’ was superb, but if that wasn’t enough, Emese and Krisztian went for the throat earlier this annum with a three song EP ‘Bête Noire’. The title song also appears on the new album; a clever move from the twosome, as the punchy single certainly gives it some. Mrs Arvai, says it as it is with the delightful “I think I wanna kill you, but I believe in peace, bitch!”, which pretty much sums up the concept of the track.
Punchiness aside, the album starts off with minimalistic and quite melodious ‘Icarus’, which represents synth poetry at its best. The ‘Icarus’ flies over the tediousness of life with hope, which materialises in the simplistic use of synth and gentle piano.
The different approach continues on ‘Rhythm X’, showing off a more artistic side to the usual schwarzness of BLACK NAIL CABARET, stepping on the toes of GAZELLE TWIN, at times introducing Eastern influences and the more polished EBM than what BNC’s listeners might be used to. The whole thing is far more pop friendly than the band’s legacy so far. Is this the ‘Pseudopop’ they’re going for?
‘La Petite Mort’ steps wearily over the gyrating beats, as if introducing colours into the signature black and white monotony. What brings one down to reality is the machine-operated ‘Trigger-Happy’ with the mundanity of factory work, the choices are clear “homicide” or “suicide”. Continue at your own risk.
‘90s’ and its Elvis in Hawaii-inspired bossa nova sits nowhere near the standard BNC supplies, which comes in as a pleasant surprise, if not a total shock and is either going to turn off the fans of stompy beats, or make the listener measure the pair with a new found respect.
The normality resumes with ‘Verge On The Creepy’. Back to the heavy beats, industrial samples of marching qualities, Emese goes for waxing lyrical alien-pop style. Greatly invigorated, the tempo slows down somewhat onto ‘Technicolour’, representing a gentler approach where Emese paints the picture with water based colours of the more demure type. The vintage synth connotations make themselves visible on ‘Unrequited Love’. A Bjork-esque approach to more concise electronica and a haunting vocal performance hover over the graduating steps into the quintessential sound of BLACK NAIL CABARET on the closing ‘Resonance’.
Having left the best to last, the twosome present the bomb right at the end. Could this just be a very modern approach to love? To pop? To musicality? Having achieved so much over the last few years, with their growing fan base, gnawing sense of urgency to provide an alternative electronica source and alien-like synthpop, BLACK NAIL CABARET go twisting the boundaries and breaking the rules on ‘Pseudopop’.
Yes it’s pop, it’s their own pop; something BNC never did before… or are we coming back 360 degrees to their ‘Umbrella’? Either way, the year-end sounds better than ever!
It’s been a productive year for some of the best acts that emerged from 1981’s ‘Some Bizzare Album’ like SOFT CELL, BLANCMANGE and THE THE.
Also joining in the party are Mansfield’s B-MOVIE with the ‘Repetition’ EP, the quartet’s first new body of work since the ‘Climate Of Fear’ album in 2016. Steve Hovington (vocals + bass), Paul Statham (guitar + additional keyboards), Rick Holliday (keyboards) and Graham Boffey (drums) open the EP with the title song, a haunting new wave number recalling NEW ORDER but which is also classic B-MOVIE. Paul Statham told ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK: “I was thinking of how NEW ORDER in the early days would have approached it with the sequencers and post-punk guitars”
In what could be described as a lyrical follow-up to ‘Remembrance Day’, one of B-MOVIE’s best known songs which has become all the more poignant again with Remembrance 100, Hovington sombrely reflects on how “we make the same mistakes again… it’s so strange, our history repeats itself… over and again… and again”
The ‘Repetition’ video utilises a stark performance by the band cut into archive Second World War footage from the Eastern Front. Continuing the theme of that period, the chilling aesthetics of ‘Stalingrad’ sees B-MOVIE present one of the most electronic pop offerings of their career.
Complete with an infectious synth melody, an eerie mezzo-soprano and using the crucial Second World War battle as a metaphor for a doomed relationship, it is one of their best songs since their 21st Century reformation. Appropriately, the final song on the EP is ‘Something Cold’, a brooding building piece with gothic grandeur, a looming bassline and even some bottleneck guitar!
“’Stalingrad’ has been played live and goes down really well” confirmed Statham, “There is a new cohesive sound with the three new tracks. ‘Somewhere Cold’ also has a real post-punk power to it.”
B-MOVIE are without doubt back in their stride and Statham is very pleased how they are recording some of the best work of their career: “I really enjoyed producing these three tracks although it’s a lot of hard work as we tend to record all over the place, then I have to gather everything together in bits and pieces and collage it into the sound. Steve’s sounding better than ever as is Rick and Graham”
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has been presented in two versions, depicting according to Kathryn: “two iterations of a dark and bittersweet metaphorical world where alienation is omnipresent, and love and salvation are ephemeral (never truly unattainable no matter how much I long for them).”
album which gained 
and the enjoyable 
recorded with Chris Huggett (not the WASP synth designer!) had been their only releases in 2018 so far.
is released by New Retro Wave Records as a digital bundle with four additional remixes
was superb, but if that wasn’t enough, Emese and Krisztian went for the throat earlier this annum with a three song EP 
they’re going for?
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