expect delay
Every few years I go deep into a synthesizer rabbit hole – not just in terms of listening habits, but in exploring and playing the instruments (although my keyboard skills are laughably rudimentary at best). This time, the cycle was precipitated – literally – by the combination deep freeze and snowstorms that hit us at […]
The only reason that New York’s Miss Grit – aka Margaret Sohn – hasn’t appeared in these pages yet despite listening to her for a few years now is that I wasn’t sure if what she was doing fit within the vaguely specific remit of this blog. It’s got thumping drum beats, squelching synths, fuzzed-out […]
One eight-year hiatus aside, Ladytron have been pretty reliable over the past 25 years for releasing collections of sleek-yet-gritty electronic music that’s elevated by their affection for old school analog tech and two elite frontwomen in Helen Marnie and Mira Aroyo. The band has been busy with a long-overdue reissue series (Light & Magic and […]
Ladytron don’t do throwaways, so their release of a their first official single as a trio with the departure of Reuben Wu when 2023’s Time’s Arrow was released, almost certainly implies more activity in the near future. The smouldering “I Believe In You” may have arrived last week without any sort of comment, but there’s […]
Ghosts of Christmas Past is a seasonal compilation from Belgian label Les Disques du Crepuscule that collected seasonal songs from an assortment of European indie acts such as Aztec Camera and Cabaret Voltaire. It was initially released in 1981, and then subsequently reissued over the years with slightly modified track lists over the years. The […]
In honour of Ladytron’s piecemeal tour in support of last year’s Time’s Arrow finally making it to Toronto tonight, here’s a look at their breakout single from 2001 debut 604 – if by “breakout”, I mea the first sone of theirs I heard and not any kind of actual chart/commercial success. “Playgirl” appeared as the […]
I’ve been around long enough to accept that sometimes acts just disappear quietly, without an announcement or farewell release or tour. That’s probably more the norm than the exception. That said, I hold out hope that the radio silence from Maria Lindén of I Break Horses is just part of her pattern of going incommunicado […]
Ladytron released their latest Time’s Arrow way back in January and have supported in throughout the year in short bursts – a few UK dates in March, a few US dates in May, a few European dates over the Summer, a few more US dates this month – while contending with issues large (founding member […]
Still Corners are celebrating the 10th anniversary of their second album Strange Pleasures today with a remastered reissue. It’s a record that marked their pivot from a band crafting retro, cinematic dreampop into a duo exploring more synthesized territory and marked an unwillingness to stay in one stylistic spot for too long, a trait that […]
I guess there’s just something about Men I Trust’s smooth, synthetic sounds that makes you want to close your eyes, drift away, and then obsessively reverse-engineer their creative process. How else to explain why there’s not one but two pieces online deconstructing their songs down to the synthesizer settings. Not that I’m complaining – I […]
