𝔟𝔫𝔤𝔯𝔷 𝔩𝔱𝔡.002

"𝔣𝔬𝔯 𝔪𝔢, 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔞𝔠𝔱𝔦𝔬𝔫 ℑ𝔖 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔧𝔲𝔦𝔠𝔢”

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Erika - Wandering Mountain (Mike Parker Remix) [2023, Interdimensional Transmissions]

Sounds weird but was talking to a friend recently about how it's genuinely fucked up how hard it is to remember what music we were into two to three years ago. Anyone can name their top 10 records from, like, the 2010s, but how many of us can quickly name our top 5 from 2022? It's a weird uncanny valley. Case in point: this one from 2023 that I loved and played constantly at the time, from a combination of artists and label I hold in the highest possible esteem, and basically forgot about until last weekend when Jay Galligan played it at New Grass, a small festival run by some friends. Shamefully, I even struggled to place some of my highlights from last year — KW's "bloggerj" Irini's "Flashback." Anyway. Good problem to have I guess that we're so inundated with inspired music but almost feels cruel how easily tracks like this flawless psychedelic missile from IT (the Detroit crew behind No Way Back) can get lost to the sands of time if you don't keep your shit together.

Crustacean - Flame (Borderline Insanity Dub Mix) [1997, Jive]

Another highlight (for me, anyway) of New Grass, played on the final night by TLK and 12 x 12 (both, incidentally, core members of the bngrz fam). Basically the crème de la crème of dreamy deep house, never really improved upon in the various waves of popularity that sound has enjoyed since this record came out in 1997. My clearest memory of it is Mike Servito and Carlos Souffront playing it at Old Miami in Detroit, a cruelly hot and shadeless day party (I reviewed it at the time for RA). This one came on in a much-needed moment of wind and light rain which suited its vibe perfectly. At New Grass I learned it can also be one that gets people hooting and hollering. At least at the end of a 70-person party where everyone knows each other.

Tobias Bernstrup - 27 (Laser Mix) [2002, Tonight Records] / Miss Kittin & The Hacker – Frank Sinatra 2001 [2002, Emperor Norton]

One last vignette from New Grass: in the fest's first year (i.e. last year), my randomly assigned roommate Alfie masterminded its unofficial third dance floor, Club Alfie, which is actually just a toilet with a pink light and a mini-rig jamming synth pop when the rest of the action has dwindled down to just one ambient stage (I never made it down, sadly — I fell asleep to, and somehow still remember and greatly enjoyed, a set in that room from Astral Industries founder Ario Farahani). Earlier in the weekend Alfie was in our room building his playlist. Somehow a challenge arose to think of the "cuntiest" synth pop tracks we knew. Jay Galligan was there and put on Miss Kittin & The Hacker "Frank Sinatra.” You really can't out-cunt that one — "to be famous is so niiiice…. suck my dick. lick my ass. in limousines we have sex, me and my famous friends." I mean come on. Best I could do was cue up this kooky little number: a 2002 Italo pastiche by the Swedish artist Tobias Bernstrup, about whom I know nothing. I heard about the track on a Discogs list called Masterpieces of Synth Pop and New Wave, a 280-record list that very much lives up to its name. This is a rare case of a retro throwback improving on / adding to the original sound. The synths are pure "Hey Hey Guy," but the lyrics are much darker and sexier than anything the original Italo groups would have written — less "let's go to the beach," more "please abuse me," a combo of synth mastery and power-subbing rarely heard outside Nine Inch Nails. (OK, to the OG Italo's crew’s credit, they did do "Sexy Teacher." But great as that song is, it's got nothing nearly as spicy as, say, "you can buy me sexy clothes and I will let you do anything." Goddamn.)

Pet Shop Boys - Where The Streets Have No Name (I Can't Take My Eyes Off You) (Extended Mix) [1991, Parlophone]

Somehow, in the hotel room scene described above, I forgot to mention my new favorite synth pop song, a recent discovery for me and one of the many phenomenal needle drops in the latest season of Industry. The show's score has always been good—composed by Nathan Micay, this time around with an assist from Aquarian, both bngrz fam, represent—but this time their music supervisor, a cheery man named Ollie White with a job I envy greatly and, at least on the night I met him, no eyebrows, shelled out serious cash on licensing fees (quietly one of the biggest expenses in movies and TV, at risk of stating the obvious, and a shift that reflects the show's rising prestige / budget). The best of these might be Ultravox's "Vienna," whose refrain, belted out with unsurpassable passion and a sustained vowel worthy of Whitney Houston, perfectly captures the epic vapidness Industry portrays: "it means nothing to meeeeeeee..." But the Pet Shop Boys moment is just pure ecstasy. Whole thing is very Bret Easton Ellis (the show’s first iteration was called Not An Exit, a reference to the final line in American Psycho): soaring synth pop as the soundtrack to people either seriously damaged or dead inside, impossibly swag vintage coup speeding away from a regal manor in the English countryside, the driver and his passenger having just fucked on the hood after an abandoned suicide attempt, dried blood still on the driver's knuckles from someone he savagely beat the night before on the recommendation of his father's ghost (it makes sense in context). As with so much new wave and synth pop, there are a half dozen or so different mixes and remixes and it took a bit of rooting around to get the right one. (Sadly, the dave morales remix does not live up to its grail potential.) This extended mix from their rarities compilation Further Listening is the one. Needless to say the weird dual cover of U2 and Frankie Valli gives it a nice wtf quality, but it's the Pet Shop Boys' usual mix of sizzling arpeggios, god-ray chords and vocals that sound like a man addressing the world from Falkor's furry back that makes it rip. (That key change into Frankie Valli reminds me of another longtime 80s synth pop weapon, Razormaid’s remix of MCL’s ”New York, New York.” If that's your thing — TIP)

KMRU - Kin [2026, Editions Mego]

Joseph Kamaru's new one, Kin, is sort of but not quite the sequel to his best album yet, Peel. Apparently, back in 2021, Kamaru was talking to Peter Rehberg, who ran the Austrian experimental powerhouse that is Editions Mego, about how to follow up Peel, Kamaru's beautiful drone LP they released in 2020. Kamaru started making Kin, then stopped when Rehberg died in 2021—the album is dedicated to Pita, the moniker Rehberg used for his own music. Kin has the immersive sprawl of Peel, but a fuzzier, foamier sound palette, even on the tracks not featuring Christian Fennesz, the digital avant-garde shoegaze laptop-guitar-and-a-shitload-of-pedals god behind what may be Mego's biggest record, Endless Summer. Which makes me wonder—is Kamaru Mego's next Fennesz? That is to say, does he occupy the relatively modest but meaningful position as the new golden child of an essential experimental label? In my Pitchfork review of Natur I said that was his best album, but since then I've rocked Peel way more than any of them, something about the ghostly soul of that one is just unbeatable for me. Halfway through my first listen to Kin, I wondered if this might be better. It's poetic, heartfelt, and definitely music more than sound-art, a border that Kamaru skips across throughout his music (Natur, a collage of field recordings of sub-audible electric frequencies in Nairobi, is firmly on the other side), and more generous than the exquisitely barely-there Peel. Anyway, playing favorites is pointless with someone whose music is this good. Kin is a beautiful record that in the few weeks it's been out has already soundtracked many of my nighttimes and early mornings. (Happening as I write this.)

You can hear all the tracks mentioned in this post in this playlist.