ElectroPup's Electropop

TZU

electropup — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 22:44:14 +0000

Here’s a decent electro track from TZU. They’re a hip hop group from Australia, but this track has got a decent synthy feel to it – vocoder, funky bass line. The video is great too – lots of old style computer graphics.

Found it while looking at ‘The 80s are back‘ exhibition pages from the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney. It covers anything 80s, including games, music and fashion. The exhibition runs from 13 December 2009 until late 2010.

BBC6 Radio – The Great Bleep Forward

electropup — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 07:19:33 +0000

BBC6 Radio are broadcasting a series about the history of electronic music, called ‘The Great Bleep Forward‘. It’s on at midnight GMT for half an hour for the next few days. I missed the first one yesterday, but you can listen again via iplayer over the next week. Thanks again to Si and his enhanced ZX81 eyes for the info.

Synth Britannia on BBC4

electropup — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 16:32:56 +0000

BBC4 are showing ‘Synth Britannia‘ on 16th October (9pm). It covers the late 70s onwards – looking forward to it. Thanks to my mate Si and his ZX81 enhanced stereoscopic eyes for that info. Glad someone’s looking at the TV guide, rather than fiddling with Twitter.

The Golden Filter

electropup — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 21:46:46 +0000

After a bit of rummaging I found ‘Solid Gold’ by The Golden Filter, which is great. More airy female vocals and shiny sequences. The tracks I’ve heard are quite minimal, but very catchy. The ones that catch my eye(??) ears straight away are ‘Favourite things’ and ‘Hide me‘.

They’ve also got a couple of free tracks for download on their site too.

Weedy Pigeons – Souvenir

electropup — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 16:56:28 +0000

I just found this cover version of OMD’s Souvenir, by ‘The Weedy Pigeons‘. Not sure how many years have gone past since it was recorded, but apparently it was recorded when they were at high school and they do look a bit young. This song always gets me a bit sad – maybe I pine for the days when I only had to worry about where my next bag of sweets was coming from and nothing else. It just has that feel to it and this version is no exception. The keyboard tune has a few extra notes added, but that gives it a bit of an extra interesting twist. It’s interesting to see that there’s not much difference between the Weedy Pigeon’s vocals and Paul Humphrey’s. Really nice version, guys/girls.

Metronomy gig at Forum

electropup — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 22:45:39 +0000

Just come back from the Metronomy gig at The Forum in London. I’ve got to say that I’m not a big fan of Metronomy… I’d heard enough stuff to be interested & my mates were going, so I thought I’d go for it.

A couple of things to mention..

(1) Final support reminded me of ‘Escape from the planet of the electro apes’
(2) 6th form DJs played ‘Key’ by YMO. Nice one.
(3) Metronomy’s beany glowing t-shirt effects made them look like they were all a 28C cup size on the right.

Anyway, I was expecting beany synths & weedy guitar. I didn’t get it. It was more solid backing track & some decent synths. Not as much synths as I’d go for, but still decent sounds anyway.

Not sure about bands who give you one thing on a CD & another live. Don’t they understand that the reason listeners are interested is the sound you make & not just the song you sing?

Tesla Boy

electropup — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 14:42:43 +0000

Just stumbled across a band called Tesla Boy, who sound very mid 80s synth pop, all sparkly digital synths and polish. I quite like it, though it’s a bit polished and has the biggest 80s snare drums I’ve heard for a while. Sort of reminds me of later ‘Flock of Seagulls’ and ‘The Cars’, but not. Nice budda budda sequence in ‘Neon Love’ and ‘Fire’ and ‘Electric Lady’ are catchy too. Nice vid of 8 bit dancing karate man below as well.

Leila K – Ca Plane Pour Moi

electropup — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 14:22:47 +0000

Here’s an electro track that most people ignored when it came out in the 90s. I thought it was great. Leila K‘s version of the Plastic Bertrand song, Ca Plane Pour Moi. Fantastic octave bass line going top speed. I remember getting the DJ in a club to play it and not even realising he’d played it too fast, until he pointed it out to me afterwards. Here’s the vid. Watch out though, it’s cut pretty fast too and has plenty of strobing in it.

Saudade – Restricted

electropup — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 18:40:17 +0000

Todd Durrant has posted another Saudade video on Youtube. The track is called ‘Restricted’ and I think it’s as catchy as ‘Like You’. If you’ve not come across Saudade before, they remind me of a cross between Devo, Blancmange and Depeche Mode. Definitely leftfield, but catchy too. I keep expecting some dramatic thing to happen in the Saudade videos… like a 100 metre high alien burger van to drop out of the sky, pick up Todd, take him away to their planet and make him flip burgers for eternity for his alien masters… but it never happens. Come on Todd, I’m sure you can stretch the budget to that. Okay, just you flipping burgers then? Or did I miss that video

Omodaka

electropup — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 07:49:44 +0000

The HearJapan site has just released an artist sampler mp3, called ‘Japan Girls Nite’. Out of the 3 tracks, Omodaka‘s ‘Kokirikobushi’ is my favourite. If you like chiptune and you like YMO’s very early stuff you’ll be really into this. For chiptune it sounds very clever to me. I’m sure it’s a cover version too, but I don’t know what the original was called. It’s a free download as well.

And here’s the mad video for it.