Search - Black Strobe :: Chemical Sweet Girl Ep

Don't tell the kiddies it sounds like Nitzer Ebb...

Irony Value | BAYOU | 02/01/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"...and Front 242, and sadly SPK's Gold and Poison. Not that that would mean anything to this CD's target audience.



This whole "electroclash" thing cracks me up. It's all well and good that artists like Interpol, The Killers, and her uebercutieness Alison Goldfrapp have discovered the wonders of analog synths (or digital analog synth emulators--no, not Emulators, those are samplers)and the sound of early 80's synthpop. What amuses me is that clearly most of (for example)Interpol's fans have never heard of Joy Division, or Gary Numan, or God forbid DAF and could never imagine how cutting edge this ISN'T.



However, that having been said, what a nice surprise treat of an impulse purchase! This is a hell of a lot of fun, and though it's listed as an EP, at over 40 minutes, it's well within the range of what we Geriatric patients in our early 30's used to contentedly call an album; with 2 mixes each of 2 songs, however, it's an EP.



The title track is pretty much straight-up EBM, the vocalist reminds a bit of Bill Leeb of Front Line Assembly circa Caustic Grip; this resemblance is even more pronounced on Innerstrings. Me and Madonna also features a female vocalist who reminds me of Sinan from (execrable) late-period SPK. Abwehr Disco would not have sounded unreasonable as a Depeche Mode instrumental B-side from the mid-eighties, though maybe Nitzer Ebb would be more accurate.



Little references to the eighties abound: New Order-style guitar passages, the fact that one of the mixes is called "No Shuffle," one assumes as a reference to Front 242. This EP would not have sounded unusual in the mid eighties, but as the electro/EBM resources of that period are finite, it's a nice addition to the genre.



How this French retro-EBM act ended up on the Scissor Sisters' label is beyond me, but I suppose Metropolis can't have everything.



Highly recommended."