The Null Device

Binaural Repeats

Remember Anything Box? They shared the lofty heights of the synthpop pantheon with such giants as Boxcar and Seven Red Seven. In other words, they were one of the countless synthpop bands who did not have a Bizarre Love Triangle or an Enjoy The Silence in them, but instead churned out bland major-key songs with drum machines, sequencer lines, uninspiring lyrics and predictable verse-chorus-verse structures. Anyway, if you're a synthpop fanatic, they've released a retrospective compilation in downloadable MP3 format, with PDF artwork. Some of the songs are better than others, though a lot of them have a certan saccharine quality; often the beginnings and endings are better than the songs themselves, and the singer sounds a bit too boy-band. IMHO, it'd be on a par with a CD by a Tennessee synthpop outfit named Otherness which came unbidden in a bootleg CD-R order, and whose only memorable feature was the instrumental closing track comprised entirely of sequencers, drum machines and Gillian Anderson samples. (If anybody wants that CD, btw, make me an offer.)

I had somewhat of a Tanya Headon reaction to 8.mp3, which asserts that there are "too many songs about bitches and ho's, too many songs about pimpin'", but "not enough songs about love". Au contraire, there are too many songs about love, and most of them are unmitigated shite.

There are 4 comments on "Binaural Repeats":

Posted by: cnwb http://cnwb.blogspot.com Mon Mar 31 04:46:21 2003

I always percieved Boxcar to be a New Order rip-off anyway.

Posted by: acb http://dev.null.org Mon Mar 31 05:09:17 2003

Yes, only without the talent, and with the wrong drum machine. (The TR-909 is too post-Summer-Of-Love/acid-house for the genre.)

Posted by: cnwb http://cnwb.blogspot.com Tue Apr 1 01:49:53 2003

Don't you mean 'Sumner of Love'? :)

Posted by: acb http://dev.null.org Tue Apr 1 02:33:42 2003

No; I meant the acid-house explosion of 1988 or so, after which everybody was using the same 4-on-the-floor drum loops on the same Roland TR-909 drum machine, along with 303 acieeed bass lines.

The 909 works well for old-skool house music, but not for synthpop, which works better with a Linn or something else sample-based. Anyway, Boxcar seemed unable to decide which side of the fence they were on.