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

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:

Some are “going into the studio this year”. These include Depeche Mode, Mesh, Goldfrapp, Nine Inch Nails and Diorama. Does this mean we’ll see new product from them all this year/ Who knows for sure, but betting is good we’ll see something new from some of them which is a great start.

We are expecting new albums from Dragonette, L’ame Immortelle, VCMG (about which we are not nearly as excited as one would have thought, but we’re open to listening…), Future/Perfect, Shiny Toy Guns, Northern Kind, Ayria (whose Plastic Makes Perfect is long, long-awaited and about which we are crazy-excited), Chew Lips, Polly Scattergood, How to Destroy Angels, Miss FD, The Presets, Ultravox (this could be genius or devastating, can see it go either way…), Little Boots, Marina and the Diamonds, Porcelain Black (we are holding our breath for this one, it could fulfil the wonderful promise of the Porcelain and the Tramps material or go to a truly ugly place indeed…), Tying Tiffany  (her Dark Days, White Nights could go in some many exciting directions – this is what you want in a new release:  baited anticipation to see what they come up with next), Marsheaux, Dubstar (could we also see new Client with their new line up…?), and La Roux are slated to share something new – let see if their douchy comments about electronic music are resultant in an album as shitty as their disparagement of our movement or a surprising return to something great).

What are we missing? What else is due this Year of The End (TM Mayans)? Will 2012 be a year of electronic greatness or just another tick off of the calendar? What are you most looking forward to as we turn our eyes into the brutality of January…?

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.

The library of holiday fare within the electronic community is sparse. This is due in part to the cynicism attached to so much of that community – not a lot of peppy holiday fare coming from the industrial, EBM or darkwave sectors. But there are the occasional dollops, especially from within in the synthpop strain.

We have long celebrated the Venus Hum Christmas EP Switched On Christmas. Utterly, achingly un-ironic in a time when we forget such a thing is possible and delightfully creative musically it’s our go-to selection when we’re trying to get in the holiday mood. In the last couple of years we’ve had readers bring to our attention Book of Love’s bizarre but fun take on “We Three Kings”, Chew Lips’ terrific “When You Wake Up” (which the band referred to as “shitty” in a recent tweet, but they’re dead wrong), and The Golden Filter’s awesome “White Nights”. This year readers shared with us the very neat cover of “I Was Born on Christmas Day” by Flow Machines and Silver Swans’ “Holidays”. Mix in Christmas-themes songs from Erasure, Pet Shop Boys, MGMT, Soviet, and Northern Kind and that’s pretty much it.

The Softsynth holiday playlist has grown to 42 tracks over the three years we’ve been blogging here but when we weed out just the electronic tracks it’s still only about 22 songs. So readers, what have you got for us this year? Anything to add to the playlist? Help us fight off the inherent cynicism and embrace the holiday and share, what’s lurking out there we haven’t heard yet?

Watch: Northern Kind – Tears & Tinsel

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:
- Aiboforcen: Time and Space
- Alpine: Hands
- Amy Lee: Halfway Down the Stairs
- Blancmange: The Western
- Bunny Lake (both): Follow the Sun/Young Lovers – Needs noting, other than the new Assemblage 23 album, based on these two outstanding tracks there is no album we are more looking forward to than the new Bunny Lake…
- Covenant: Beat the Noise
- Curxes: Spires
- Firefox AK: Color the Trees
- The Golden Filter: Mother
- Goldfrapp – Yellow Halo
- Huski: Close to the Edge
- IAMX: Oh Beautiful Town
- John Foxx and the Maths – Catwalk
- Lords of Acid: Little Mighty Rabbit
- Lowe: Breathe In Breathe Out
- M83: Raconte-Moi Histoire
- Maison Vague: Synthpop’s Alive
- Marsheaux: Can You Stop Me
- Mirrors: Hide and Seek
- Miss FD: Moment of Fade
- Nothern Kind: Euphonic
- PAKT: Freiheit
- Queen of Hearts: Black Star
- Vile Electrodes: Play With Fire
- VNV Nation: Nova

It’s not exhaustive of course, but it’s a sampling of the incredible electronic songs that floated through the ether in ’11. There’s not as much crossover as one might think with our albums list but the long form album is such a specific creature that individual songs stand on a very different scale. That’s how we saw it in ’11.

Next, the material we’re most looking forward to in ’12…

Watch: Bunny Lake: Young Lovers

10. Class Actress: Rapprocher – This spot was a hard one to fill between this album, and a certain terrific Belgian band on Alfa Matrix who produced a solid, awesome album of their own and a hard-edged American industrial-influenced band featuring the brainchild of another band represented on this list who put out an album that perhaps more represented what Softsynth was listening to this year, but Rapprocher – the most purely synthpop album on this year’s list proved just too infectious, too addictive, too all-around listenable to ignore.

Perhaps the album that travelled the furthest distance from initial listen, to the Softsynth review to the place it occupies today, we were hard on it initially, giving it a middling-at-best review of the “keep trying and better luck next time” variety. But these songs stayed behind and would not leave. A loving tribute to the golden age of early 80s electronic music it’s that rare album that could have easily been released in 1983 and it wouldn’t have sounded out-of-place. These are perfectly constructed synthpop songs that show a staggering maturity and musicality to this artist. We say again, though less condescendingly, can’t wait to see what she does next (would love to see what she does moving out of mid-tempo a little…our two cents…).

Choice cuts: “Keep You”, “Weekend”, “Need to Know”

9. Aiboforcen: Dédale – Prior to 2011 we only had a passing relationship with this Belgian EBM band, one of those, “yeah, I dig that band…with that song and…that other song I like…” situations. But with the clever and highly addictive Dédale, they’ve reached a true sweet spot. They use guest artists perfectly employing labelmates like Diffuzion (who may just appear elsewhere on this list…), Leaether Strip and Ayria to give the album a sense of diversity and adventure. Aside from a strange misfire with a cover of U2′s “New Year’s Day” which feels forced and overly affected, the balance of this work is one of the best EBM albums we’ve listened to in a really long time (the subgenre needs champions and it could do worse than this awesome collective).

The album combines melodic pop and hard electronics perfectly; sometimes this blend can sound ridiculous but Aiboforcen execute it with spectacular flare. Patrice Synthea is a lovely singer and when she returns to the mike in between guest vocalists and she contrasts particularly well with the harsher tracks. She’s a huge asset.

It’s a great mix of styles and after seven years of waiting for this one the wait proved well worth it.

Choice cuts: “Time & Space”, “Rhythm of Light”, “Shadows”

8. Little Majorette: Rifle Heart – One of the weirder electronic releases of the year it’s one of those that’s stupid-hard to categorize. A sampling: tracks that sound strikingly like children’s songs, songs featuring child choirs, pretty swinging acoustic-guitar-aided ballads, 60′s girl group stylings, torch songs that wouldn’t have sounded out-of-place in the late 20s, songs featuring Spanish guitar and a tango beat, and weird pop songs that are even harder to compartmentalize. It shouldn’t work. It should be miles-too-cutesy-for-its-own-good. But the songwriting is so smart and fun that nearly every song works in its own right and this Swedish-British mash has given us one of the most original electronic albums of the year (or of many years).

Electronic music isn’t always fun. Even synthpop, which should be the very embodiment of “fun” is often so self-serious that one can be moved emotionally, or moved to dance but not as often be moved to smile. There are lots of smiles packed into this inventive, clever album and this listener is dying to hear what they do next.

Choice cuts: “Saving You for Best”, “A Swansea Love Story”, “Overflow”

7. Huski: Strangelove – We were so prepared to hate it. Early indications were that this delicate soft electronic band had become a boring, traditional rawk band. But those early indications were wrong. While there are elements of the trad guitars/bass/drums thing here (and they are not coincidentally the weakest songs on the album), nonetheless, boy can this duo write a perfect pop song. One would be very hard pressed to find a better written, better executed and better sounding pop song with guts than the likes of “Crying on the Telephone” or “Close to the Edge” and Melanie Garside has one of the strongest, most beautiful voices in electronic music. As a whole it’s an insanely strong album with incredible listenability.

Next time let’s see less of a gap between albums; word is they already have another almost ready to go and if this is the kind of thing they’re capable of we want more, more, more…

Choice cuts: “Close to the Edge”, “Crying on the Telephone”, “First Light”.

6. Firefox AK: Color The Trees – This delightful confection had the benefit of middling expectations. Another artist Softsynth has followed and enjoyed since the very beginning, it was also an artist that never rose to the top of attention mountain what with her pleasant synth ditties that rarely challenged though always charmed. Add to that the underwhelming, curiously chosen lead single “Boom Boom Boom” and you find yourself “looking forward to the album”. More or less. But it wasn’t one of the “counting down the days until it comes out” albums (see; #2-5). So imagine the surprise and delight when it turned out Ms. Kellerman had developed into a staggeringly talented songwriter and musician who artfully spun this collection of synth pop songs into gold. The word “delightful” keeps, albeit rather pedantically, raising its head when the album goes for a spin on the Softsynth playlist. It’s fun, flows beautifully and charms utterly, even when the lyrics take a darker turn. The lyrics are smart and clever and the music contains so many hidden moments, and layered surprises one loses count.

Very much the album that saw Firefox AK move straight to the head of the class and the one that ensures her future as among our genre’s most potentially important.

Choice cuts: “Color the Trees”, “My Sister and I”, “Running On My Own”

5. IAMX: Volatile Times – When we initially reviewed this album earlier this year we didn’t know what to make of it. It lacked the passion and energy of their previous albums and used more traditional instruments than we were used to. We liked it but didn’t really have a good bead on it. And yet it’s remained one of our most listened-to releases of the year as we repeatedly go back to that well. It still sounds fresh and compelling, every bit as much so as it did on first listen. The only difference is we get it more now.

While it doesn’t display the timeless brilliance of the last IAMX album, Kingdom of Welcome Addiction, our number one album from this list two years ago, it brings something else to the table. It has a breeziness, a relaxed flow to the sound belied by the sometimes-sadness, sometimes-bitchiness of the lyrics. And it’s on the lyrics that Corner dominates the scene like no other. The bitterness of “Oh Beautiful Town” is shattering and could keep a team of psychotherapists busy for eons (also? anyone who grew up in a shitty place can instantly identify). It’s the best song of a very solid lot that includes a very Prince-like “Music People” and the hard-edged rocker “Cold Red Light”. It’s deep and layered and builds on the already-strong legacy of the IAMX project and really demonstrates that Corner’s options are limitless.

Choice cuts: “Oh Beautiful Town”, “Music People”, “Bernadette”

4. Blancmange: Blanc Burn – In a sea of high-profile reunions the past couple of years Blancmange managed to fly way under the radar, but while the various comebacks failed to live up to their prospective bands’ legacies this one managed to actually build upon it.

With deceptively dark, often depressing lyrics, the rhythms feel comfortingly similar, the Indian sounds and instruments as though we stepped back in time to Blancmange’s early 80s heyday. The power of this duo’s songwriting has not diminished one whit in all the years. “The Western” may be the year’s most clever electronic song with a beat that belies its sad lyric that tells the tale of the protagonist mired in the “mud and the blood and the beer”. In many ways it’s a middle-aged album written by middle-aged musicians with middle-aged problems but that’s part of what works so well. This is something new. It may sound like a band we remember well from 25 years ago, but the stories they tell now are of a whole new time and for all its lyrical embrace of the mundane, it’s anachronistically exciting. The biggest surprise triumph of the year.

Choice cuts: “The Western”, “Drive Me”, “I’m Having a Coffee”

3. System Syn: All Seasons Pass – Just last year System Syn burst onto the Softsynth radar out of nowhere and blasted its way into our top 10 of 2010. It was a perfect darkwave, industrial-tinged, emotional workout and it set a very high bar for Clint Carney to try to meet. Well, meet it he did with an insanely ambitious multi-media project/concept album, and it picks up right where Strangers left off musically. The tale of the doomed woman at the centre of Carney’s story unfolds track by track with mood changes song to song, but a consistently wonderful melodic sense to counter the aggressive beats.

Carney is fast emerging as one of the genre’s most prolific and consistent artists with a crazy listenability throughout all his work. As he spreads himself thinner among God Module, Imperative Reaction and this project he runs the risk of falling into the law of diminished returns but so far he’s still firing on all thrusters bringing his unparalleled artistry to each project, none more so than on this sensational album.

Choice cuts: “Ordinary Life”, “Good Night”, “Absence”

2. Diffuzion: Winter Cities – Even better than their terrific debut Body Code, Winter Cities defies easy description. A little darkwave, a little touch of industrial, some dance, a soupcon of synthpop, it’s a hodgepodge that blends into a perfect Belarussian stew. Xev’s sometimes creepy, sometimes pretty vocals power the album through a near-flawless blend or songs and the sometimes spooky, sometimes catchy sounds are utterly unique and full of surprises.

Sometimes bands in our genre tread well-worn ground, other times they blaze a new trail. Diffuzion are firmly in the latter camp and they do so gorgeously. It’s a challenging listen and often tries your patience but the rewards are considerable. It’s the kind of album that rewards the repeat listen, uncovering many hidden sonic gems, and it stays with you long after you put the headphones down. An utter electronic triumph.

Choice cuts: “Pure Venom”, “Lace of Veins”, “Playing God”

1. Aesthetic Perfection: All Beauty Destroyed – It was a triumph of bringing together two disparate styles of music that fueled the Daniel Graves machine. It’s an album that quickens the pulse on each listen, the one truly, viscerally “exciting” auditory experience we found this year. The one time we felt fully exhilarated listening to an album. It’s ugly and beautiful both; it’s angry and thoughtful, and it’s the best electronic album released in 2011. Daniel Graves has combined the raw energy of AP with the melodic brilliance of his Necessary Response project into AP Mach II, something new, something other.

As its heart Graves has created an album that – all the trappings aside, the screaming, the anger worn on the sleeve – is replete with wonderfully written songs with hooks to spare, delicate keyboard lines crosscutting the piercing shrillness of the vocals (which we also get to hear with greater clarity than on any Aesthetic Perfection album before it revealing a warmer voice than most would ever have realized), and old-fashioned melodic brilliance. Not always an easy album to listen to it is nonetheless tirelessly brilliant.

Choice cuts: “The 11th Hour”, “The Little Death”, “Hit the Streets”

So there you have it, another year come and gone. We thought the year would be all about some of the big names who disappointed, or Assemblage 23 who have moved their album from this fall to next March (maybe), but it’s a whole new bag out there now and the genre is stronger for it. There’s real diversity here. There’s good stuff coming from every corner of the electronic community and it’s genuinely exciting. The picture for 2010 is less clear. Some of our favourites are going into the studio or readying new albums for release so we’ll see what’s in store, but for now, in 2011, we’ve known some real gems.

Watch: Aesthetic Perfection – Inhuman

We were plenty fond of the debut album by The Golden Filter last year but their new EP, the soundtrack to the short film they co-produced, Syndromes may be even better. The seven-song collection is even moodier, even more melodramatic (befitting the film itself) than their previous work and it shows a marked growth in what was already an impressively mature band. They are showing real signs of a long, compelling life and its further evidence that some of the best work released this year has been in a short EP format (Vile Electrodes, Curxes, Nightlife).

Watch: Mother

US electro duo Soft Metals have released a fascinating self-titled debut album that defies easy description. A little synth pop, a little disco, a little contemplative techno-y, and often as delicate as a butterfly’s wings, it’s a lovely album that feels familiar and wholly original at the same time.

Watch: Voices

One of Softsynth’s favourite bands is Goldfrapp, though The Seventh Tree was disappointing and Head First was promising but not quite a typical Goldfrapp triumph. For the first time in a long while they really feel like they have their groove back with a spectacular new song, “Yellow Halo”, one of two new singles from their upcoming best-of album (February). Not only is the song absolutely breathtaking, so too is the video, a seemingly random collection of images captured by an iPhone. Sometimes Goldfrapp videos are too weird for their own good but this one is just simply beautiful (while reminding of the technology that can be available literally at our fingertips. The song is so captivating that it makes us rue the fact that the next album is just a collection and that we have to wait all the longer for a new full-length from them, just as it feels like they’re starting to circle back to their sweet spot…

Watch: Yellow Halo

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. The way we usually review an album is to grab a few songs at a time which we spend some time with until we’ve really come to understand them, then add in a few more at a time so that each song gets its fair due (unless it’s a themed album that demands a more holistic listen). In this case it made for a rather bizarre, almost jarring experience. Our first song dump left us feeling like Psy’Aviah had hit a wall. Songs like “On My Own”, “SOS Overdose” and “Procedure to Mistrust” felt a little flat, a little dull, adding little to the Psy’Aviah legacy. So much so that we didn’t listen to the remainder of the album at all for a while. Sometimes better no review than a critical pan. But knowing Kari Berg had contributed a vocal we figured, let’s at least give “Deep Dark Desire” a quick listen and lo and behold it ended up being a bit of a revelatory moment. Berg, the former co-lead vocalist for Ashbury Heights has been, of late, really breaking out as a performer in her own right. A lovely woman with an even lovelier voice she adds a nice counterbalance to the musical side of this band on a track that celebrates the old school electronic dance song. This is the good shit, thought we, and we went back to the well to see what else Introspection ~ Extrospection had in reserve. Thank goodness we did because there were some real treats hidden in the larder.

This is very much a case of a band recording anything they felt moved to record, thematic consistency be damned. Sometimes this approach can be confusing and disastrous, other times – the latest album by Does it Offend You, Yeah? comes to mind – it shows a remarkable range and adaptability. Such is the case on this album as it turns out. “Virtual Gods” is an aggressive electroclash pounder; “OK” is a gorgeous Enigma-like ballad; “Nouveau Quiche” features hip hop stylings of MC Dééjoohcéé & Thomas C Beerten and what shouldn’t work is the album’s highlight; “Wired Life” is a pulsating dancefloor plodder, there appears to be no rhyme nor reason to the track selection but as a whole, it just works. It’s fun and thoughtful at the same time and the beats are consistently crackling. The care that went into the production side of things is evident and the crisp, clear sound of the thing is delightful.

Psy’Aviah are a more interesting, thoughtful band than even we ever gave them credit for. They display a creativity that could mean a genuinely long life for the band. If they keep it this varied, this compelling, this clever, more’s the better. And in future we’ll make sure to listen to the whole thing in one go…

Watch: OK