Well done, Found Object! The tracks on this album remind me of some of best synth-pop bands I grew up with in the 1980s. Though Tangerine Dream is referenced as an influence, I hear something different – Kraftwerk, Blancmange, a more instrumental Depeche Mode or Soft Cell seem to be popping up as influences as I listen through. Really, a joyful album.
Russian experimental band Disen Gage have collaborated with some of the country’s most notorious experimental musicians. Alexei Borisov, for instance, has been featured on these pages before. MOX and Voronovsky are new names. The music is an impressive mix of early-era Tuxedomoon-influenced music supported by a avant-prog bass, drums and guitar. Experimental enough to be weird, but structured enough to be familiar to the ears.
Today is a travel day, and as I start a small journey from this magnificent city, I’ll let Ultravox serenade you.
A post-punk/ethereal gem has been bestowed upon us by our friends at Lost Tribe Sounds. Arrowounds tie together influences from bands like, “Can, Bark Psychosis, Young Gods, Slowdive, Durutti Column, Seefeel and much of early 4AD,” according to the band bio, but there is an element that makes this band something apart. Noise-rock, post-rock, and a more eerie feeling than their influences betray sets the band apart.
Russian band Okolo Poludnya produce a very good retro-inspired EP influenced by new wave, synthpop and post-punk.
The eyes in this house aren’t very dry at the moment. We lost yet another legend today. This time, it was the shocking, though not unexpected, passing of drummer and composer Yuki Takahashi, who made his fame as drummer and singer of the Yellow Magic Orchestra. He first gained fame with the Sadistic Mika Band, which would evolve into The Sadistics before moving on to making solo albums, then YMO, and collaborations with British artists Bill Nelson and Steve Jansen. He leaves a massive body of work, most of which still needs an assessment outside of Japan.
We at MYNTH wish you and yours a very Merry Gregorian Christmas, and please stay safe with your loved ones. For the eve of the birth of the Lord, we offer a charming secular song done ably by post-punk legends the Cocteau Twins.
I don’t think Steve Kilbey of The Church needs much of an introduction, but it’s been awhile since I’ve heart what he’s been up to. This album shows him playing an acoustic set based on The Church’s second-finest album, and the recordings are of sparse, but warm and stunning quality. It’s nice to hear the songs in a more stripped-down setting.
As today is my 52nd birthday, I thought I would take a walk down memory lane. Today is also the 35th anniversary of New Order’s first major collection album called Substance, which was released on this day in 1987. As it turns out, it was the first compact disc I ever bought, and though I don’t own it anymore, I have my digital copy to remind me of how excited I was (and still am) hearing this album.
If Andrei Tarkovsky had Edward Artemiev as his soundtrack specialist and early Roman Polański had Krzysztof Komeda, then it stands to reason that Macedonian auteur Milcho Manchevski would have his in Igor Vasilev Novogradska. Parts of this new soundtrack are filled with dirge-like qualities befitting this movie, but what truly impressed me were at the end of the album. Chessboard sounds like it would fit somewhere in the Fourth World period of Jon Hassell’s early work, and on the ninth and final track, if you go to about 07:26 into it, you will hear a song so blatantly new wave…