Cut Copy "In Ghost Colours"

Artist: Cut Copy
Album: In Ghost Colours
Label: Modular
Release date: 22 March 2008
Genre: Electronic
Style: Electro Pop/Synth Pop
RIYL: New Order, Junior Boys, Simian Mobile Disco

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Tracklisting:
01. Feel The Love
02. Out There On The Ice
03. Lights And Music
04. We Fight For Diamonds
05. Unforgettable Season
06. Midnight Runner
07. So Haunted
08. Voices In Quartz
09. Hearts On Fire
10. Far Away
11. Silver Thoughts
12. Strangers In The Wind
13. Visions
14. Nobody Lost, Nobody Found
15. Eternity One Night Only
Total running time: 50' 30"

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[Cut Copy - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player]

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[Cut Copy - Lights And Music - Video Clip]

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[Cut Copy - Future - Live]

"Cut Copy are set to return in 2008 with the shimmering timelessness of In Ghost Colours. Haunted with machines of the past and sounds of the future, In Ghost Colours inhabits the kind of space in time where trends are irrelevant and music is about feeling rather than following and 1969 is just as relevant as 2020.

In Ghost Colours traverses genres effortlessly, from already-anthem Hearts On Fire's epic sax-house to the noisy blissout of So Haunted. For Cut Copy the record was an exercise in drawing parallels between favourites old and new and trying to find a meeting point in between - from the vocodered robo-pop of French house to prog's soaring harmonies to the texture of shoegaze, In Ghost Colours lands at some sort of trans-galaxial intersection between these disparate planets.

This idea was something that appealed to Tim Goldsworthy, DFA's inhouse producer, programming guru, synth mogul and eventually muse for In Ghost Colours. Goldsworthy was enlisted to get nerdy on the project after a series of conversations with the band, who were admitted DFA fans, and when frontman Dan Whitford found he had found an equal to his obsession with ELO's Time record. When it was revealed that Goldsworthy had dropped out of school to follow My Bloody Valentine around England in the 80s and could pinpoint every pedal that was used for every sound on Loveless the contract was signed in blood. And so the band travelled to New York in early 2007 to spend 6 weeks tracking In Ghost Colours at DFA's Plantain Studio in the West Village, geeking out on DFA's collection of vintage analogue equipment and on an endless hunt for decent coffee.

The songs that Cut Copy had collected in the period since Bright Like Neon Love arrived in New York as promising bones of a more assured, song-based follow up. Upon encountering Goldsworthy's approach to recording, which Dan revealed involved a lot of experimentation. A lot of the time it was a matter of listening to where a track was at, then going over and picking up a random piece of gear, or messing around with pedals and filter, and seeing what you could get from it. Whether it ended up in the finished track or not, it was all a part of the process, and it was a fun and experimental one. This approach meant some sounds you hear on the record are entirely unique and impossible to replicate. From the epic trance breakdown in Far Away, to the sawtooth synth bass on Out There On The Ice, to when an old radio receiver was plugged direct into the analogue desk for Voices In Quartz, these sharp, succinct pop arrows to the heart are benefited from an array of special sonic sparkles.

The progression from Bright Like Neon Love to In Ghost Colours is brazenly apparent from opening track Feel The Love, an acoustic guitar led stomp of a space rock tune, instantly unforgettable and with recognizable Cut Copy glow. Where Bright Like Neon Love was charmingly vague and hazy, In Ghost Colours is directly to the point and efficient in it's songcraft, with vocals much more apparent and Whitford's imprint all over every track. The record is sewn together with passages of woozy dreamscapes between the straight up jams." [Modular]

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The Magnetic Fields "69 Love Songs"

Artist: The Magnetic Fields
Album: 69 Love Songs [3 CDs]
Label: Merge
Release date: 7 September 1999
Genre: Rock
Style: Indie Rock/Folk Rock/Synth Pop

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Tracklisting:

69 Love Songs Vol. 1
01. Absolutely Cuckoo
02. I Don't Believe In The Sun
03. All My Little Words
04. A Chicken With Its Head Cut Off
05. Reno Dakota
06. I Don't Want To Get Over You
07. Come Back From San Francisco
08. The Luckiest Guy On The Lower East Side
09. Let's Pretend We're Bunny Rabbits
10. The Cactus Where Your Heart Should Be
11. I Think I Need A New Heart
12. The Book Of Love
13. Fido, Your Leash Is Too Long
14. How Fucking Romantic
15. The One You Really Love
16. Punk Love
17. Parades Go By
18. Boa Constrictor
19. A Pretty Girl Is Like...
20. My Sentimental Melody
21. Nothing Matters When We're Dancing
22. Sweet-Lovin' Man
23. The Things We Did And Didn't Do

69 Love Songs Vol. 2
01. Roses
02. Love Is Like Jazz
03. When My Boy Walks Down The Street
04. Time Enough For Rocking When We're Old
05. Very Funny
06. Grand Canyon
07. No One Will Ever Love You
08. If You Don't Cry
09. You're My Only Home
10. (Crazy For You But) Not That Crazy
11. My Only Friend
12. Promises Of Eternity
13. World Love
14. Washington, D.C.
15. Long-Forgotten Fairytale
16. Kiss Me Like You Mean It
17. Papa Was A Rodeo
18. Epitaph For My Heart
19. Asleep And Dreaming
20. The Sun Goes Down And The World Goes Dancing
21. The Way You Say Good-Night
22. Abigail, Belle Of Kilronan
23. I Shatter

69 Love Songs Vol. 3
01. Underwear
02. It's A Crime
03. Busby Berkeley Dreams
04. I'm Sorry I Love You
05. Acoustic Guitar
06. The Death Of Ferdinand De Saussure
07. Love In The Shadows
08. Bitter Tears
09. Wi' Nae Wee Bairn Ye'll Me Beget
10. Yeah! Oh, Yeah!
11. Experimental Music Love
12. Meaningless
13. Love Is Like A Bottle Of Gin
14. Queen Of The Savages
15. Blue You
16. I Can't Touch You Anymore
17. Two Kinds Of People
18. How To Say Goodbye
19. The Night You Can't Remember
20. For We Are The King Of The Boudoir
21. Strange Eyes
22. Xylophone Track
23. Zebra

Total running time: 172' 04"

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[The Magnetic Fields - With Whom To Dance - Video Clip]

"There's only one question that really needs to be asked of 69 Love Songs: is it a brilliant masterpiece or merely very, very good? The title alone is enough to send music geeks the world over into a foamy-mouthed, epileptic frenzy. 69 songs equals 3 CDs equals nearly three solid hours of new Magnetic Fields material-- think of it! That's more than some notable bands released in their entire existence. Add that to the fact that the Magnetic Fields actually followed through with their concept without turning it into the indie-pop equivalent of Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music.
You see, I have this theory that music critics are suckers for novelty, and there isn't much in this world that's more novel than 69 Love Songs. It borders on being a prop in a Mark Leyner story-- it's hyperreal and excessive, yet perfectly plausible when you consider how weird reality is. Because of this, the album never feels like a ponderous, pretentious artistic statement (unlike most multi-CD releases). Stephin Merritt and company sound like they approached this ridiculously ambitious project with the most casual of airs, idly plucking melody after divine melody out of the air like low-hanging fruit from a tree. It's how pop music should sound, really: so natural and feather-light that you never notice the amount of effort that went into it.

Therein lies the paradox of 69 Love Songs-- it's such a basic style of music that it's easy to dismiss it as "just pop music." Of course, that's what it is, so should it really deserve such high praise? Should it rank among the best albums of the 1990s? Or is it too bizarre to be considered culturally important? I mean, Abbey Road is a pretty weird album, too. Then again, Abbey Road isn't three hours long.

Regardless, Stephin Merritt has proven himself as an exceptional songwriter, making quantum leaps in quality as well as quantity on 69 Love Songs. This incarnation of the band doesn't feature much of the densely layered, burbling electro-pop that they're best known for; in its stead are sparser, more acoustic songs that sound as if they're being played on actual instruments by a group of actual musicians (as opposed to Merritt himself playing mad scientist with effects racks and overdubs). It may initially seem like this stylistic decision came due to budget restrictions-- if you're recording that many songs, you can't blow too much money on any one track. But it's probably more likely that Merritt finally realized the limits of tinny synths and drum machines.

On the Fields' previous outing, Get Lost, you can hear Merritt beginning to lean toward simpler, more elegant arrangements; 69 Love Songs could easily be seen as a continuation of that trend. Merritt also ensures that the listener will never get bored with any one sound, trading off vocal duties with four other singers and deploying a mind-boggling array of instruments: ukulele, banjo, accordion, cello, mandolin, piano, flute, guitars of all shapes and sizes, a dumpster full of percussion toys, and the usual setup of synths and effects. Among other things.

And the songs themselves? Well, I could write a thesis dissecting each and every song on this album, but that would take months. As a prism refracts light into a spectrum of colors, 69 Love Songs not only refracts love into a spectrum of emotions, but also refracts the love song itself into a spectrum of musical forms. There's a duet between a dysfunctional Sonny and Cher ("Yeah! Oh Yeah!"), a country-gospel tune confusing religious and secular love ("Kiss Me Like You Mean It"), and an amusingly light-hearted tale of a soldier's drunken tryst ("The Night You Can't Remember").

There's giddy lust ("Let's Pretend We're Bunny Rabbits"), romantic longing ("Come Back from San Francisco"), sleazy leering ("Underwear"), and resignation and despair ("No One Will Ever Love You"). There are genre exercises such as faux-beatnik jazz ("Love is Like Jazz"), Paul Simon-ish world music ("World Love"), Gilbert and Sullivan-style mincing harpsichord ("For We are the King of the Boudoir"), Merritt's cartoony, day-glo interpretation of punk rock ("Punk Love"), Scottish folk ("Wi' Nae Wee Bairn Ye'll Me Beget"), and a brief Philip Glass tribute ("Experimental Music Love"). There are also plenty of archetypal Magnetic Fields songs, with those trademark deadpan drama-queen vocals, casually depressive lyrics, and clever rhymes. But Merritt also shows he can pen some surprisingly sincere, moving ballads ("Busby Berkeley Dreams," "The Book of Love"), too.

So, back to the original debate. You know that old saying about the whole being more than the sum of its parts? The sum of the parts of 69 Love Songs adds up exactly to its whole. No more, no less. Each song contains its own small epiphany, but they never quite add up to the one big sweeping epiphany that you'd hope for. That's because it's impossible to reconcile the concept of 69 Love Songs with its execution; it's simply too big. That might sound like a cop-out, but this is truly an album you can get lost in. The individual songs will inevitably distract you from a big-picture interpretation of the album. Of course, the Magnetic Fields don't concern themselves with such matters; they promised us 69 love songs, and that's what they delivered. That it's actually worth the exorbitant $35 price tag is a bonus." [source]

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Erlend Øye "Unrest"

Artist: Erlend Øye
Album: Unrest
Label: Source/Astralwerks
Release date: 10 February 2003
Genre: Electronic
Style: Electro Pop/Synth Pop

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Tracklisting:
01. Ghost Trains [Produced by Morgan Geist]
02. Sheltered Life [Produced by Soviet]
03. Sudden Rush [Produced by Kompis]
04. Prego Amore [Produced by Jollymusic]
05. Every Party Has A Winner And A Loser [Produced by Prefuse 73]
06. The Athlete [Produce by Minizza]
07. Symptom Of Disease [Produced by Mr. Velcro Fastener]
08. The Talk [Produced by Bjørn Torske]
09. A While Ago And Recently [Produced by Kilogram]
10. Like Gold [Produced by Schneider TM]
Total running time: 45' 15"

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[Erlend Øye - Sudden Rush - Video Clip]

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[Erlend Øye - Every Party Has A Winner And A Loser - Live Acoustic @ Santiago de Chile]

"When you think of a diva, probably the last person that comes to mind is Erlend Øye. In terms of physical dimensions, the featherweight, Poindexter-glasses Øye looks more like a guy that would help you out with your calculus than the kind of person who would get people on the floor. Work experience? Øye made his name with the Norwegian duo Kings of Convenience, an outfit bookish enough to title an album Quiet Is the New Loud without gagging over their own preciousness. They're not exactly Fischerspooner where image is concerned.

And yet, the Kings have already tipped their hand about their secret predilection for the electronic world, having released the remix album Vs. last year with work from the likes of Røkysopp and Four Tet. Now, Øye's decided to take the complete binary plunge-- he'll Garfunkel no more! Collaborating with a slew of laptop jockeys from around the world on each artist's home turf, Øye's strung together an LP that's all about the disco.

For an album where each track is under new management from the one before it, Unrest remains remarkably consistent in tone and quality. It helps that all of Øye's collaborators, no matter the pedigree, leave the avant-garde leanings at home for fairly straightforward electro-pop atmospheres wrapped rather conventionally around what I assume were pre-prepared verse/chorus/verse Øye originals. Here, frontiersmen like Prefuse 73 and Schneider TM prove themselves equally capable of applying their arsenal to a more direct sound (Schneider TM, in particular, have some previous experience from their 2002 album Zoomer) as they are to working in abstract territories.

However, the more immediately appealing songs are by artists already hip-deep in Italo-disco or house. Morgan Geist kicks off the proceedings with an understated, moody synth bonanza on "Ghost Trains," then is narrowly outdone by the livelier hydraulic-hiss percussion and swoop-strings of his fellow Americans in electro band Soviet, who are not afraid to make "Sheltered Life" bounce beneath Øye's croon. But like most things these days, Sweden takes the opening trio of tunes, representative Kompis shellacking "Sudden Rush" with a subtle lite-rock sheen and a perfect head-bob bassline.

Compared to these easy-swallow tablets, the more heady work of the marquee acts take a bit more time to sink in. Prefuse 73's "Every Party" throws Øye onto a set of Scott Herren's trademark Nordictrack-glide beats to make the song stand out from the tighter house beats of its neighbors, but also never reaches the peaks of the more trad-club jams. Schneider TM, on the other hand, brings the affair to a new level without sacrificing the song format, irregular drums and sudden clumps of notes still coming together to appropriately swoon under the "my baby" romantic choruses of "Like Gold".

But let's not commit the sin of forgetting young Mr. Øye just because it's annoying to keep inserting that "Ø" symbol-- he's playing conductor through all this jazz, and he does it skillfully. Whereas his decidedly non-dramatic voice might sound like a limitation in this kind of setting on paper, his cool delivery is run through with just enough melody to be more hummable (see: "The Talk") than the ironic detachment that sometimes brings down this genre. Quietly assured, he recalls no one so much as the Notwist's Markus Acher, another fish-out-of-water finding a new home amongst the whirring machines.

Thus, despite sagging a bit in the middle, Unrest skillfully skirts the myriad ways this kind of variety project could go wrong. The main failing I'd peg is a disappointing tendency to be overly retro-based, all too focused on Stevie Wonder keyboards and the days of asymmetric hair. With indie rock and dance music showing indications that they might be merging onto the same highway somewhere in the near future, it's time to tone down the recycling and start applying the innovations of IDM to this ungodly, and possibly thrilling, hybrid. While only Schneider TM seems fully up to that promise on Unrest, it still stands by Enon and The Postal Service as another important signpost on the way to new pixilated horizons. Forward things push let's!" [source]

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Schneider TM & KPT.Michi.Gan "Binokular"

Artist: Schneider TM & KPT.Michi.Gan
Album: Binokular [EP]
Label: City Slang
Release date: 2000
Genre: Electronic
Style: Electro/Glitch/Synth Pop

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Tracklisting:
01. Chotto Matte
02. Testton 2
03. Onnanoko
04. Ray Nox
05. Dynamike
06. The Light 3000
Total running time: 24' 16"

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[Schneider TM & KPT.Michi.Gan - The Light 3000 - Video Clip]

"This six-song EP finds Germany's Schneider TM teaming with his sometime live collaborator KPT.Michi.Gan to make an album of warm, glitchy electronic pop. In terms of sound, this EP is very closely aligned with German artists like Mouse on Mars, Schlamapeitzer, and others recording for the A-Musik and Sonig labels. The focus here is on shaping organic synthesizer sounds and clicking machine static into a pop structure, and to that end, it succeeds. Layer upon layer of sonic minutiae make instrumental tracks like "Chotto Matte" and "Testton 2" more compelling with each listen, but the real finds here are the two songs with vocals. "Onnanoko" has a catchy new wave melody on top of a thick bed of sampled guitars and nervous drum programming. Even more impressive is "The Light 3000," which actually is a digital update of the Smiths classic "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out." Featuring a bright, shimmering electronic backdrop and heavily processed vocals that give the already downcast song an even more downhearted feel, "The Light 3000" is the rare cover song that holds its own against the original. Binokular is a solid EP without a weak track." [source]

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