Blind Faith and Envy to call it a day

We’re guessing most who read this blog may not be super familiar with Blind Faith and Envy but for Softsynth news that the duo are about to call it a day came as a real blow. The band announced on Twitter that they would be releasing one final EP, Fake Smile and a Lullaby and then parting ways, with vocalist Charlene April (pictured) “focusing on digital art and photography” and “(t)he electronic Mastery of Dan Guenther will be carried over to his solo project titled ‘VEIN COLLECTOR’.”

Blind Faith and Envy were a most welcome part of the electronic landscape. They brought the dark but also the melodic in equal parts and the combination was indelible, They deserved a wider following and their first two albums in particular, The Charming Factor and Murder of a Girl were as good as dark-tinged synthpop-bordering on darkwave gets. April’s lovely voice in particular was a real standout (and featured on the wonderful Edge of Dawn song, “Kiss or Kill”), but as a whole, they were sometimes inconsistent but when it clicked it was magic. There are too many great BFAE songs to single out but it you want a sampling listen to “Golden Glass”, “Crowded Room”, “Slightest Wave”, “Orchid”, “I’m in a Haze”, “All My Dark Thoughts”, “How is This for Entertainment”, and “In a Crash”. Not a bad song in that bunch (they also pulled off a nifty cover of Depeche Mode’s “Shout”).

In a typical case of “don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” it just kind of felt like they would always be around and we wish we had been able to sit back and appreciate them as much as they deserved to be. Only now do we realize the extent to which we loved this band and how much they’ll be missed.

With great hope that April doesn’t give up on music entirely and with a promise to catch Vein Collector, we tip our hat to some killer output this duo graced us with, and if you’ll excuse your humble blogger he’s going to pull a bit of a BFAE marathon…

Watch: Never Ever Go Away

Alright 2012, whatcha got for us…?

So, 2011 is now on the way to the compost heap and we sweep the hearth clean in anticipation of what 2012 will bring. Lots of good stuff on the electronic music horizon, fortunately mostly slated for the early part of the year, which is a good thing as we’ll get to enjoy some good new music in advance of the looming apocalypse in the fall (or is it the spring? We get our apocoli confused).

Our list is topped by Assemblage 23′s Bruise (supposed to be out this fall, but we’ll take it whenever Mr. Shear wants to deliver it, so terrific was his last A23 album); and after hearing sensational advance tracks from Bunny Lake their The Sound Of Sehnsucht is also high on our anticipated list. But these two are far from alone. 2012 looks to be replete with potential awesomeness, to whit:

Merry holiday

Quick note of merriness to all our readers. If you celebrate Xmas or Chanukah or Kwanzaa or the solstice or nothing at all we hope you’re having a relaxing, meaningful break from whatever you normally do.

We’ve had periods of inactivity this year but it’s always a pleasure to come back knowing there are passions around this genre of music and the occasional debates either here or on Facebook or chatrooms for ones’ favourite bands have made the continued blogging a total blast. This holiday season we had more folks visit the blog than ever before by a factor of ten (!) so it’s sure nice to know you’re reading.

Thanks for coming by, thanks for checking in from time to time and thanks for keeping alive an important and exciting genre of music that needs its prophets, its emissaries to keep it going, to keep it thriving. Thanks to the synthpop fans for keeping it hopping and for the industrial fans for keeping it intense. We love it all, we love listening to it all and (at the risk of appearing sappy for a moment if you’ll allow), we love you for listening and supporting these terrific, important bands.

Happy holidays especially to those behind our sister sites, those blogs or web sites we check in on every single fricken day to learn what’s going on out there, to learn what’s new and what folks are listening to, and sometimes just to read some really good music journalism – The Electricity Club, E&P, Side-Line and The Pansentient League. It’s a thrill to share the stage with you folks.

Have a good one. Off to celebrate the season with the mini Softsynths and Mrs. Softsynth. See you soon.

Electronic xmas tunes ’11

Every year we troll about for new electronic holiday music. Perhaps it’s in reaction to the ubiquitousness of the xmas music we hear from radio stations, malls, co-workers computers…in the sea of the same holiday fare those in the electronic community sometimes want a little something to listen to, to get our spirit on without having to hear Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas” or even our loved but done to death “Do They Know It’s Christmas”, let alone the older classics.

The 2011 Softsynth playlist

So, as we do every year, we have assembled the individual songs that made up the soundtrack for Softsynth this year. We are generally more about albums than singles but there are individual songs that stand on their own as outstanding. Some of these come from albums we found underwhelming as a whole, some were one-off singles, or standouts from excellent EPs.

We don’t do a singles list because as often as not it’s album tracks that get us all hot and bothered but the song collection that truly moved us, our “top 25 songs” to go with our albums of the year, starts with the following:

The Best Electronic Albums of 2011

This has been something of a peculiar year for electronic music. Some of the most compelling music from the genre has come from unsigned or yet-to-record-an-album bands. Discoveries like Curxes, Vile Electrodes and Nightlife provided some of the most alive, exciting and dynamic electronic music of the year. It was a year where EPs, instead of full albums, which we measure here today, brought us some of the most interesting glimpses of how good electronic music can be from the likes of Softsynth mainstay Miss FD, The Golden Filter, Tenek, or the three aforementioned bands (perhaps the latest example of how differently we now consume music in the digital age). And it was a year when many of the bands that make up the very foundation of this blog and this blogger’s bedrock musical interests, released new albums only to fall flat. In a year when Erasure, Ladytron, VNV Nation, M83, She Wants Revenge, And One and The Human League released new work it felt like assembling this year’s chart would be a pre-ordained affair, and yet it was surprises, resurfaces and new discoveries that provided the real fodder for our best of the year list in 2011. It was a year when Amy Lee of Evanescence, of all people would give us one of our most compelling electronic songs of the year, covering a Muppets song no less. There were curve balls but ultimately, as is the case every year, the best of the best rises to the top…

Three artists we’re digging this week

In the closing weeks of the year we’ve been inundated with exceptional new music. In addition to the terrific Trent Reznor/Attacus Ross soundtrack for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, which was released the day of this blog post (and contains a wonderful new How to Destroy Angels song which makes us yearn even more powerfully for a full length album from that outfit), we’ve seen a bundle of great new stuff which has made up the bulk of the Softsynth playlist these past couple of weeks, to whit:

Kid Kasio the antidote to all the dark

Realized recently that most of the stuff we’re listening to in the lead up to the Holidays (whatever you and yours celebrate) is pitch-black-dark. Our playlist has been chock full of the industrial and the antisocial and sometimes one needs a little respite from the gloom. Then along comes Kid Kasio with the polar opposite – a fun-filled, sun-filled ode to the forgotten 80s. It looks like a classic Duran Duran video and sounds like the common denominator among every popular synth act of that era. It’s pretty fun and really well done and again, a little light amidst a dark, dark December playlist:

Review: Psy’Aviah – Introspection ~ Extrospection

We’ve been along for the ride with Belgium’s Psy’Aviah since the beginning, picking up their debut Creationism on a whim knowing nothing about this emerging duo but quickly becoming an enthusiastic convert. We were blown away by their last album, the awesomely-titled, Eclectric and it quickly became clear this was a band unafraid to experiment, to mess about with their formula, in the name of trying everything that occurred to them to try. It’s made for some hits (in the metaphoric sense, chart hits aren’t necessarily part of their menu) and some misses, but in the end one can’t help but respect their willingness to try pretty much anything in pursuit of an interesting idea.

On their newest album, Introspection ~ Extrospection, we find a lot of hits, a lot of misses, but always that experimental spirit that remains as exciting as ever. 

Prince kicks it out

Your faithful blogger had the chance to catch Prince in concert a couple of days ago, and he delivered a solid, exciting show, as one would expect. But what stood out for this audience member was a section of the show when the tiny purple one put down the guitar, dismissed the band and took to what looked like a baby grand piano, but turned out to be a pretty nifty synthesizer set with some his most interesting samples. He then proceeded to do a nifty electronic medley of some of his most enduring tunes  - “When Doves Cry”, “Sign ‘O The Times”, “Forever in My Life”, “Pop Life” and “Hot Thing”. It was just a series of familiar samples, synths and a very prominent, powerful drum machine and it was pretty magical. It got us to thinking – though known largely as a guitar virtuoso, Prince has been, in his day, and accomplished electronic artist too. During a decade when many of the most resonant electronic songs ever recorded were released upon the world Prince recorded one of the best electronic tunes of the 80s in “When Doves Cry”. He doesn’t go to that well often these days in his recorded material, but he deserves his place in the pantheon of the most influential electronic artists we have known…