Synth Pop Quotes

A different time. The era of synth pop and mixtapes, hair gel and new wave. Of Prince and paramilitaries, Madonna and moving statues. Magdalene laundries, the Eighth Amendment, bodies as battlegrounds—pig slit and gaping. Different but the same. Absolution for the guilty but not for us.

According to Buckmaster, the two were very taken at the time with Kraftwerk’s recently released Radio-Activity. This album caught Kraftwerk at a transitional phase of their career, channelling free-form experimentalism towards more tightly controlled, robotic rhythms that are like the sonic equivalent of a Mondrian painting. Radio-Activity is a clear influence on Low, with its mix of pop hooks, unsettling sound effects, retro-modernism; its introspection and emotional flatness. The theremin-sounding synths of “Always Crashing in the Same Car” and the electronic interludes on “A New Career in a New Town” in particular have a RadioActivity feel to them.

Vince saw the potential when he left Depeche Mode: he was like a technology hoover; he realised that with the technology at his fingers he could do everything, without being in a band. The synth duo was the thing. Vince was just like, ‘Whoa!’ I don’t think he liked the band dynamic, just because it’s too much discussion and too many egos – ‘All I need is a good singer and I can do the rest myself.’ And so the synth-pop duo was born – the Eurythmics, Soft Cell, Pet Shop Boys, Yazoo

LOW PRESENTS BOWIE AT THIRTY, IN ALL HIS CONTRADICTIONS: artist, hedonist, introvert, astral traveler, sexual tourist, depressive, con man, charmer, liar. Low, released in January 1977, was a new beginning for Bowie, kicking off what is forever revered as his “Berlin trilogy,” despite the fact that Low was mostly recorded in France. Side 1 consists of seven fragments, some manic synth pop songs, some just chilly atmospherics. Side 2 has four brooding electronic instrumentals. Both sides glisten with ideas: listening to Low, you hear Kraftwerk and Neu, maybe some Ramones, loads of Abba and disco. But Low flows together as an intensely emotional whole, as he moves through some serious psychic wreckage. For the first time since he became a star,