Roundup, May #4
From synthwave informed eurodance to retro-tinged synthpop power ballads, we roundup our favourite releases of the week. Listen below:
Follow our Roundup Selections playlist on Spotify to stay updated on what we have on repeat.
MUNA – Home By Now
American synthpop trio MUNA are kind of like HAIM with synthesisers, if you will. They write punchy, narratively inclined songs that could pass for country-folk, but instead back these with buzzing arpeggiated synths and 808’s. Home By Now is a triumphant, melancholic and nostalgia soaked power ballad in the tradition of Springsteen americana that focuses on the tribulations of travel and journeying the open road. Its sparkling, throbbing and effervescent synths shimmer across the track, adding the same sort of blue-eyed soul (if not more) than any strummed guitar.
Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs – The Sleeper
TEED’s new album is shaping up to be a return to the retro synthwave pop of his early years, and new single The Sleeper seems to affirm this. It’s the sort of love ballad that creeps up on you, slowly wrapping itself around you and tugging at your heartstrings before you’ve fully made sense of it. Full of glassy-eyed sentiments and languid piano chords, The Sleeper is an 80’s fashioned slow-burner set to a lethargic beat and a hair-metal guitar solo played by way of a synthesiser.
DJ Seinfeld – Lost Island
The new single from DJ Seinfeld has made an appearance during his recent live shows, and now receives an official release. It’s an interesting direction for Armand Jakobsson, who trades his usual cry-on-the-dancefloor lo-fi house for laser sharp synthwave and retro Eurodance. With a throbbing analogue bassline and dreamy, sci-fi washes, Lost Island is a trip to some distant, sub-tropical galaxy on a chrome-plated spacecraft. Equal parts vapourwave, synthwave, and rave, the track signals toward something new for DJ Seinfeld and an aesthetic that suits him surprisingly well.
DAPHNI – Cherry
Caribou’s DAPHNI alias is arguably more exciting than Caribou himself. Not to discredit Dan Snaith’s work, but with DAPHNI he’s given himself the space to explore his weird side. And it’s a side that’s surprisingly pertinent with him; his only goal with DAPHNI seems to be to create something that goes off, and go off DAPHNI does in spades. Cherry, DAPHNI’s first single in three years, is a loopy, acidic trip into techno leaning territory. Saccharine FM synth chimes ring out to create a spiralling, amorphous motif that wobbles across a sea of scratchy beats and a thudding four-on-the-floor. Everything is ever so slightly off-beat so that Cherry remains tilted as it chugs along. There’s a cut to silence just beyond the halfway point, a moment of reprieve before Cherry resumes its twisted, bizarre descent into candy coloured madness.
TDJ – Sway (The Places She Goes)
Sway is an old-school eurodance rager from Canada’s TDJ, an exercise in full blown Y2K rave nostalgia. Recalling the shiny, buoyant rave hooks of Alice DJ, Sway ebbs and flows with a slight melancholic edge that courses through its otherwise euphoric DNA. It’s a sort of paint by numbers 90s/2000s dance hit, but in the current age of dancefloor nostalgia its familiarity works to its benefit and makes TDJ an act worth watching.
