picture by Jamie MacMillan
Girls in Synthesis is from London and has been around since 2016.
I really hesitated a lot before starting to write something about the
British trio, since the beginning these guys have had a proper marketing
approach of their music production, they are on all the social media you
can think of,
they have released a number of very limited (and collectable) vinyl
EP's, their music is on all the big streaming platforms, they made a LOT
of videos, all their artwork and visual aspect are extremely
professional... well you see what I mean, they manage very well (too
well some would say maybe) their "career" and don't need a guy like me
to "promote" their releases...
Well that is very true... and then I realized that the point of this
blog was to talk about the bands I find interesting and I find Girls in Synthesis
interesting so... here we go!
GIS (as the hype says) has been created by
John Linger from
Neils Children
and Jim Cubitt from
Big Skies
with a really clear idea of what it should sound and look like. Yes the whole "artistic" aspect (musical and visual) has
been clearly defined in order to create a coherent atmosphere as a
whole. These guys are not amateurs.
As they already have quite a discography mainly made up of EPs and
singles I will focus only on
Pre/Post: A Collection 2016-2018 and
Now Here's An Echo From Your Future.
So this LP released on
Louder Than War
in 2018 and on
Harbinger Sound
in 2019 is actually a compilation of their three previous EPs (Suburban Hell,
We Might Not Make Tomorrow and
Fan The Flames released on
Blank Editions
in 2017 and 2018) and of their very first release, the digital only
The Mound / Disappear.
Fourteen songs in total which appear in chronological order.
I think you got it now... the black and white pictures, the lonely
poses on the Thames banks, the no-smile policy... yes we're talking
post-punk here!
Stomping mid-tempo drums, heavily distorted bass lines, telephone booth
effect vocals... there is some heaviness in the deranged punk rock of
the Londoners, especially in the first tracks. Can't you feel the
cymbals' industrial vibe in Disappear ?
The main "goal" is to keep the atmosphere cold and distant but not in a
cold-wave way: Suburban Hell possesses a smoldering heat of
frustration and violence reminiscent of the dark ale stained bar
counters of a working class oi! band like Last Resort for example...
Yes the main subject is probably the frustration and anger of a
betrayed British class... which class? the one which believed in
progress and social justice probably...
From that point of view Girls in Synthesis is the product of its
time, like
Bad Breeding
and
Cool Jerks
can be in their own genre.
With We Might Not Make Tomorrow the band lets grow the
repetitive and noisy side of industrial music into some kind of
nursery rhyme which "joyful" choir singing underlines the total opposition
with the dramatic meaning of the lyrics.
There is never joy underneath.
It goes even further with Sentient which gets so loud and
noisy that it's not so far removed from the Seattle 90s sound as
it was resurrected by bands like Metz.
But no it goes back immediately to some heavy post-punk with the
beautiful Splinters and Rust, one of my favourite track of
the album, and Tainted, a gem of tensed industrial
end-of-the-world lullaby...
With Fan The Flames the band keeps exploring the musical
field of industrial collapse but with an added touch of melodic
vocals (as in We Might Not Take Tomorrow), which is
confirmed in the surprising You're Doing Fine, a beautiful
piece of mental disturbance with a yet less "classic" post-punk
mark than in the previous tracks.
Of course when you're British and play post-punk
you won't be able to avoid the same gloominess as the 80s bands that
created the genre.
Girls In Synthesis knows this but doesn't try to avoid it.
Yes Internal Politics' bass line refers obviously to
Joy Division and it's so obvious that it sounds more like a
clever way of saying: "Ok somebody is going to say something about
Ian Curtis so let's force the comparison and get over
it"...
But the three Londoners are definitely going forward, firmly
positioned in a modern approach of the sad observation of the
modern condition... the similar condition, but in a probably even
darker time, that was driving Ian's words...
Girls in Synthesis is not your local post-punk band, they play a
very heavy and noisy kind of music which takes us far from the 80s dogma
without rejecting any of its principles. In a time where joy and hope
are not really the most trendy feelings, GIS is another beautiful
track in the soundtrack of modern collapse.
Now Here's An Echo From Your Future was released in summer 2020 on Harbinger Sound and is the first full length of the band.
It actually includes a few songs of the two EPs released late 2019,
Arterial Movements
(which is opening the LP) and
Pressure.
Well Girls in Synthesis is not making an easy kind of music to
talk about. In the previous record there was quite some change between
the first and the last tracks and for good reason, almost two years
passed between them.
This LP makes more sense as a whole for sure which does not mean it's
monotonous at all.
Loud, noisy, brawler, disturbing, insane, disorderly, beautiful and
terrible... that's all these 10 songs are and even more!
Yes this album cannot leave you unmoved, there is so much at stake, so
much that has to be so "densely" expressed!
Is it still post-punk shore that we see in the distance ? Or it's noise
rock island already ?
I am not sure the GIS ship got a clear destination on the log
book but is for sure sailing a raging sea.
From the scratching and screaming instruments confronting the hurricane
to the solid punk rock base of the hold, GIS is holding fast,
bringing the energy higher and higher, step by step, petrifying the
scared to death passengers... it is intense yes but it nevertheless
remains deeply connected to the "depressed" atmosphere of its post-punk
background.
Luckily there are some lulls in the storm, the heavy and unsettling
Human Frailty and
Set Up To Fail which insane saxophone, scratching guitar noises and heady drumbeats
take us into some shallow waters that have been sailed numerous times by
The Ex, giving a new definition to the words unsane and
insane...
To be honest it took me some time to really get into this album, it's
so dense, so thick, so full of abrasive feelings that it takes some time
to fully digest it.
But it's definitely worth it...
Girls in Synthesis are also quite famous for their intense live shows where they sometimes bring the music directly to the middle of the crowd, breaking down once again the borders between band and audience...
Maybe I will see that by myself one day, if concerts ever start again...
I really hope I will!
N,J'Oi!
You can listen to Girls in Synthesis in Rien à Faire #14.
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