Girls In Synthesis

 

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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