photo credit Wendy Redfern
Drawing from the iconic post punk can be a tricky thing but done right it feels like an amusement park ride, thrilling and pushing youthful buttons of flight and fight and fancy. The track "City of Angels" by synthwave icons Ladytron and accompanied with a truly evocative Official Short Film, as written and directed by Manuel Nogueira (the red color schemes and long full screen edits have me thinking of Dario Argento), pushes all the right buttons. When it comes to capturing post punk / gothic atmospheres it all comes down to the sonics, the details of sounds and production, the nucleic acid of that period. Do it wrong and it feels copycat, do it right and it feels pure. Art as opposed to an artful artifice.
Ladytron started in the late 90's, they were not only a part of that sound but also defined it in their own way so here there is not one iota of revisionism. Whether they use old synths or new ones the sound here is absolutely exquisite. What I especially admire and appreciate is the precise sensation of gloriously old school vibes. Within their sound you feel the late 70's proto-punk tones of Kraftwerk, of Siouxsie and the Banshees, you also feel the sort 80's horror pop deconstructions and the glacial 90's melancholia of artists like Cocteau Twins all done in the Ladytron way. A rich multi-genre'd blend forming their own post punk noir sounds.
Of the Official Short Film, the band / press notes reveal:
[While the song inverts sensuous imagery into a vision of future collapse of cultural memory, the visual infuses these themes into a beautifully chilling setting. It’s a choreographed musical thriller inspired by cult favorites Roeg and Argento, shot in the brutalist mansion of architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha. The band haunts the set that surrounds lead actress Bianca Comparato, the star of the Netflix science fiction drama 3%, who brings her supernatural acting skills to the forefront as she plays a photographer entranced and drawn in by a mysterious force - the next A24 horror hit waiting to happen! “ Bianca comments, I’m such a fan of Ladytron - I was lucky enough to be in the music video…the whole experience was a dream come true”.]
AND
["City of Angels” is the first single from Ladytron’s upcoming album, Time’s Arrow, returning to their themes/motifs of beauty, disposability and fragility of the culture that surrounds us, and the exhilaration of freeing yourself from those structures. Listeners can expect crystalline melodies enveloped in icy textures and rippling arpeggios, shoegaze, disco, and industrial sounds that combine in their signature electro pop style.]
Ladytron are Helen Marnie, Mira Aroyo, Daniel Hunt and Reuben Wu.
-Robb Donker Curtius
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM - PRESS NOTES:
https://twitter.com/LadytronMusic
https://www.instagram.com/ladytron/
https://www.ladytron.com/
Forming in Liverpool in the late 90s and taking their name from the gloriously blank Roxy Music track, Ladytron’s debut album 604 was released a year ahead of 2002’s Light&Magic with Witching Hour in 2005 - “a quantum leap record” said Pitchfork. The group were lauded as leaders of the new electro pop and electroclash scenes then flourishing, and Light&Magic went on to be influential, for both independent and mainstream electronic pop music which followed.
Next up, 2008’s Velocifero, before 2011’s more serene, dreamy Gravity the Seducer and the cue for a deserved break which lasted years longer than imagined. Along the way they wrote and produced for other artists, including Lush and Christina Aguilera. The group reconvened in 2019 for an album which Q Magazine called “near perfection”, with Mojo insisting that in “Dark times, Ladytron soundtrack them beautifully”. GQ described it as “Formidable machine music, full of urgency and menace.” While NPR posited that “Ladytron seems enraptured at the idea of change, and of new beginnings in the face of a possible fiery end”.
Ladytron, synthwave, indie electronic, indie rock, post punk, goth pop, dream pop, UK, noir,, "City of Angels" (Official Short Film),
No comments:
Post a Comment