Just when I thought I’d seen every scene in the post-punk landscape, Strange Cities appeared on my radar and shattered my aurally jaded heart with Where Stars Collide from their debut album, Moments Stolen.
With the Interpol-esque angular guitar lines cutting through the warmth in the atmosphere that proves post-punk melancholy doesn’t always need to be monochromatic, the San Francisco-hailing visionaries amalgamated a soulful new trajectory of the genre, giving it a definitive place in the contemporary music industry.
As the palpitatingly sweet melodies in the dynamically sepia-tinged production evoke energy and give you kinetic rhythms to move to, the vocals make no bones about relaying the achingly raw lyricism and inciting bitter-sweet desolation in your soul. Versing about cheating death, watching your friends taking their final breath and seeing their faded faces framed in memories was always going to hit hard, but the impact in Where Stars Collide is a collision you’ll never forget.
Imagine if Editors in their An End Has a Start era hired Marin Hannett as a producer and radiated the hues of New Order’s Temptation, and you’ll get an idea of what Strange Cities constructed in Where Stars Collide. Or, you can get acquainted with the band renowned for their live performance, who have recently opened for Sisters of Mercy and Gene Loves Jezebel.
The Moments Stolen LP was officially released on February 2nd; stream the album on Spotify.
With synth lines that will speak to your rhythmic pulses as fluently as the ones that made New Order’s single, Blue Monday, so iconic, the latest single, Long Nails, from the Parisian purveyor of dance-rock, Miron, is strong enough to bring in a new wave of exhilarant gloomy electronica.
The singer-songwriter has become one of the freshest parts of the Parisian touring circuit fabric with his high-energy live shows; his Euro disco hits resonate just as well on the airwaves for the way his authentic vocal lines command your attention while the synthetics lure you into sonically hedonist escapism.
He may not have reinvented the wheel with Long Nails, but he has certainly engraved his signature into it while ensuring the familiarity of his earworm never came at a compromise to his expressive autonomy.
“I wanted to explore a different genre and bring in some fresh elements, while still staying true to my sound. The 80s influence in this track represents a time that has always fascinated me. I wanted to bring that feeling back and share it with my listeners”.
The darkwave synth-pop genre saw a surge of quirky innovation after the release of the debut single, Do you wanna dance, from the Italian self-proclaimed nerdy spiritual data scientist, Yarsha.
Starting with a similar stylistically moody edge as Depeche Mode and New Order, you’re drawn in by the familiarity. Once you are safely nestled into the synth-carved soundscape, that’s when the indulgent obscurities start to manifest in the distorted vocal layers and caustic effects which amass around the 80s synths. By that point, you’re suitably hooked in the paradox of so much personality breathing through an electronica soundscape, which progressively flirts with the more mechanical proclivities of industrial. It’s enough to make Covenant sound lobotomised.
To answer the question proposed by the title, as long as this track is playing, it is a resounding yes for me. We can’t wait to hear what the rest of the upcoming debut album contains.
Do you wanna dance is now available to stream on Spotify.
It is a bitter-sweet time for post-punk with most modern outfits becoming a parody of the pioneers by fixating on assimilating sonic texture over bringing the same substance that made us fall in love with the genre in the first place. Palais Ideal, consisting of John Edwards and Richard van Kruysdijk, who have previously collaborated with members of Wire, Bauhaus, Christian Death, Coil, Legendary Pink Dots and Swans, are the refreshingly existential antithesis.
The Netherlands-hailing duo’s seminal 2021 album, Negative Space, is an existential howl into the void where the façade of common sense, decency, and dignity existed. Every high-octane hook that draws you deeper into this manifesto of an LP resonates as an act of resistance.
With its Kessler-Esque guitars cutting through the caustic overflow of the vintage synths, the harbinger of an opening single, The Overseer, makes a meal out of your rhythmic pulses as the lyrics and vocals affirm that not every sane mind has been cowed into radio silence.
Results is a riotously electric post-punk indie earworm with enough anthemic power to minuscule the production on your dust scattered records paired with an intuitive mix of light and dark aural ephemera, the kind of balance that allowed the Smiths to reign indie supreme. Metaphorically, this maturation of the Sweet and Tender Hooligan has picked up plenty of vitriol since he declared that in the midst of life, we are in death, and rightly so. There is no abyss deep enough to absolve the sins committed through our collective lack of self-awareness.
With a Richey Edwards-style lyrical opener, “self-obsessed is so indulgent, why live in oblivion?”, Reject the Anaesthetic instantly became a paradoxically enlivening highlight. In contradiction to the demands of the title, the even-kilter guitars, melodic basslines and percussion that is tighter than the government’s welfare budget start to deliver the psych-tinged soporific aural medicine to prove just how easy it is to pacify people into suggestibility.
The Voice of Reason is so beautifully just that. Just when you think you have Palais Ideal pegged, the compassion starts to pour, coming from a well of unequivocal understanding for ultimate sucker-punching consolation.
Anything for a Thrill is a frenetic continuation of Reject the Anaesthetic, which strips the glamour right off the back of the libertine. It is gorgeously bold in its unapologeticness when holding people accountable for chasing highs after their dreams have disintegrated around their own self-destruction.
Concluding with the moody industrial post-punk Posthuman cry, Age of Intransigence, Negative Space fades to a final close and leaves you wondering how you are going to contribute to society beyond passivity, ego, insecurity and pedestrianism (on a good day). If Palais Ideal started a cult, I’d be the first in line with goat blood on my hands.
Ahead of the release of his third album, Circle, the German artist and sound engineer, Marcel Schechter, has released the title single. it intriguingly sets the euphonically pensive tone and welcomes new listeners to Schecter’s bold arrangement style that effortlessly resonates as artfully distinctive without needing to veer into the Avant-Garde territory.
With hints of Echo and the Bunnymen and New Order in the melancholic cascading progressions, and the plaintively dynamic vocals atop the mash of dark, fluid aural alchemy, this moody yet intrinsically hopeful single doesn’t fail to hit the evocative spot.
The single also features the revered artists Ben Jud (bass), Jan-Philipp Wiesmann (drums), Thomas Langer (guitar) and Andreas Pohr (lead vocals).
The single, Circle, is now available to stream on SoundCloud.
Villiers are a deliciously dark synth pop/ new wave four piece from the north of England. Forming in 2011, originally as a three piece, they released first single ‘The Dancer’ on Jack to Phono records to rave reviews and airplaya acorss the world from BBC Radios 2’s Janice Long and Jonathan Leigh Rosen’s ‘Lopsided world of L’.
New single ‘Wandering’ encapsulates many of the iconic sounds of which the band have been influenced by such as New Order, Bronksi Beat and Depeche Mode creating a dreamy yet dramatic pop track that’s sure to get those bodies on the indie dancefloor. The track tells a tale of love and angst set against a dark, drug fuelled club scene.
The band are brother Ben and Daniel Earnshaw, Daniel Buckle and Mike Bradford.
Live dates:
May 29th – Darwen Live (Mainstage)
June 17th – Night and Day, Manchester (Supporting Avec Sans)
