Gothenburg’s Electronic Summer event is the highlight of the music calendar in Northern Europe. The annual festival, which began in 2012, lines up international acts and local synthpop heroes for two days of dynamic performances and non-stop ecstatic dancing.
This year’s programme was headlined by futurepoppers VNV Nation and dark electro veterans Project Pitchfork, but shows by Marsheaux and Karin Park balanced proceedings with world-class melodic poptronica. Home-grown acts, like Me the Tiger, Presence of Mind and Destin Fragil, drew large and supportive crowds. With a regular rhythm throughout the weekend, DJs from the scene’s most influential clubs emerged from a sea of black-clad Vikings to share mixes before returning to immerse themselves in successive waves of EBM and poptronica. The forecast for Sweden’s second city had been for thundershowers, but the electricity in the air all came from a Tesla coil of expectations that was charged by the crowds gathered at the Brewhouse venue.
Sweden’s electronic music scene has held steady, over the years, against encroachments by EDM, Dubstep and Jungle. The country certainly produces world-famous DJs (Avicci, Andreas Tilliander) and pop producers (Max Martin), but it also nurtures classic synthpop acts and opens its arms to new ones. Visiting artists are welcomed with curiosity, while competing DJs and promoters from across the country are shown hospitality rather than hostility. The only aggro on display is a stylistic offshoot of industrial dance music, and the festival atmosphere is inclusive and celebratory.
Cold War Night Life participated in this year’s festival by conducting pre-event interviews with artists and performing a DJ set that included the world premiere of a new Rational Youth track. We also had writers and photographers on the scene. Our selected festival highlights are set out below, but also look for a review by our friends at The Electricity Club, who travelled to Gothenburg to find out what it is that makes the Swedish scene so special.
Me the Tiger
There was a buzz building about Me the Tiger well before Electronic Summer. In pre-event interviews, several artists cited the Falun-based band as one they wanted to check out for themselves, and it was a promising sign that they share DAF’s management. The soaring sounds blasting through the speaker stacks at the event validated the chatter about the indietronica three-piece: Me the Tiger easily bear comparison to Crystal Castles or The Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
Fronted by the charismatic and confident vocalist, Gabriella Åström, Me the Tiger rock the room with power chords and synth lines kicked out by Tobias Andersson, while drummer Jonas Martinsson hammers out solidly danceable rhythms. Their set opens with “Pocket Sized Edition Ending” and “Ariana,” two energetic tracks lifted from their first, self-titled album. They are followed by “What Promises Are Worth,” the uncompromising first single from their new album, Vitriolic (Repo). It’s been a crowd favourite in their live show for a couple of years, and its slow build into an anthemic stormer gets even the jaded aggrotech warriors in the back to move their feet.
After “Headlines,” Me the Tiger completely smash it with “As We Really Are,” the stand-out track from Vitriolic. With a little push from Herr Sprick, expect this song to crash its way up the indie charts. It’s testimony to Andersson’s exceptional songwriting skills, but Åström’s nitro-fuelled delivery is also one of the highlights of the festival. They return to “All We Had” to close the set, basking in the after-glow and leaving the audience needing more.
Vitriolic is released on RepoRecords on 4 September 2015.
Official Web site: methetiger.com
Karin Park
Newly married and fresh from a honeymoon tour of North America with Norwegian noise merchants Årabrot, Karin Park‘s appearance at Electronic Summer is cause for excitement. It’s her first major show in Sweden since a mini-tour for the release of her fifth studio album, Apocalypse Pop, way back in March, and the crowd has missed her.
The act is named for Karin, but she’s not alone. At the back of the stage, brother David Park, clad in his usual Slayer t-shirt, knocks out rhythms and strikes MIDI triggers. On his right, the most recent addition to the team, Kine Sandbæk Jensen (Pieces of Juno), works the keyboards and provides striking backing vocals. The performance is breezily powerful; taut with a touch of wildness. It feels like someone’s been working to refine the stage show, and in doing so they’ve expanded its possibilities while relieving some of the pressure on the Park siblings – not that they work any less hard, it must be said.
The set begins with “Restless” from Park’s previous album, Highwire Poetry, before reaching back to 2009 for “Ashes.” A cover of “Everything” by Maya Jane Coles, which Park sang on in 2013, is a side-trip into deep house territory; a reminder that Park’s own material often hovers between Beatport playlists and dark poptronica. “Stick to the Lie” from the new album, Apocalypse Pop, is a test of Park’s vocal range, which she passes emphatically.
“New Era” from Highwire Poetry follows, and it’s hard to think of another current performer who invests so much genuine emotion into her songs. “Hard Liquor Man” and “Look What You’ve Done” from Apocalypse Pop raise the pressure – the former seeming to invite references to Vladimir Putin with a slight change to “Hard Little Man,” if we heard it right. “Can’t Stop Now” from Ashes to Gold is escstatic poptronica, and “Thousand Loaded Guns” from Highwire provides a thunderous conclusion.
Karin Park’s performance is primal in all the right places, and as shiny as Brigitte Helm’s robot from Metropolis in others. It bears noting that the new album features writing contributions from Jim Eliot, who co-wrote most of Ellie Goulding’s Halcyon album and has provided songs for Olly Murs, Will Young, Ladyhawke and Kylie Minogue. Other contributors to Apocalypse Pop include Dan Brown, who has worked with Massive Attack, The The and Mark Stewart, and Dave McCracken, who is responsible for much of Ian Brown’s solo output and has recorded with Depeche Mode. The songwriting team behind Park is talented, but standing in front of a thousand Swedes it is her voice that makes hearts pause. It is her face that makes the lenses turn in sync. It is her pain that cuts through the air. And it is her smile that rises with the house lights, as if to say, “We made it.”
Psyche
Psyche arrive at Electronic Summer to mark the thirtieth anniversary of their influential first album, Insomnia Theatre. Tragically, shortly before the festival, news emerged of the death of one of the band’s founders, keyboardist and composer Stephen Huss. Although Huss had been prevented by health issues from performing with the band for many years, he had left a legacy of pioneering dark wave songs, and the shows quickly become a celebration of Psyche’s roots. Singer Darrin Huss and keyboardist Stefan Rabura have reworked a number of early tracks and added additional classics to their sets, which gives their performances an air of both respect and renewal.
The godfathers of dark wave, Psyche were one of Canada’s original synth acts. Inspired by the pantomime and politics of Fad Gadget, as well as the gothic influences of the UK post-punk scene, they sang about the consequences of teenage experimentation (“The Brain Collapses”), made suits from shaving foam and wrote soundtracks for imaginary horror films (“Eating Violins”). By the time they escaped Edmonton and started recording Insomnia Theatre, early keyboardist Dwayne Goettel had departed, leaving the Huss brothers as a duo.
Insomnia Theatre was the first step in a path that took Psyche to Europe, where their darker style was embraced by the alternative music scene. New Rose, a French label, licensed the album and released two more, which showed off the band’s ability to command the dancefloor. “Unveiling the Secret,” “Thundershowers,” “The Saint Became a Lush” and “Eternal” rapidly became electro classics and Psyche’s roots in the European scene grew deeper. More recordings followed, with labels and line-ups changing as business and personal circumstances moved on, and Stephen Huss’ retirement left brother Darrin to carry on the Psyche tradition.
The first of two Psyche shows at Electronic Summer draws on older material, starting with “Unbreakable” from 2001’s “Sanctuary” EP. “The Brain Collapses” rouses the crowd to sing along, a sea of hands reaching out towards Huss and Rabura. A series of other tracks written with Stephen Huss follow, including “The Saint Became a Lush,” “Eternal,” “Angel Lies Sleeping,” “Uncivilized” and “The Outsider.” Darrin Huss’ voice has the strength of a male Shirley Bassey, and he uses it to full effect on a set that ends with “Unveiling the Secret” and “Gods and Monsters.”
A secret show, held at the outdoor stage named after Psyche’s “The Outsider,” follows on the second day of the festival. An enthusiastic crowd, still buoyant from the previous day’s proceedings, cheers on “The Crawler,” “Mr. Eyeball Ooze,” “Krieg” (a track written by the Huss brothers with Dwayne Goettel in the band’s early days), “Thundershowers,” “Taking Chances” and “Insatiable.” The Swedish audience show their appreciation for the Psyche songbook by packing the stage area and singing along to even the lesser-known tracks. It’s all over too quickly, but it’s clear that the DNA of these songs can be traced into many of the other acts performing at the festival.
Official Psyche Web site: psyche-hq.de
Marsheaux
There was a time when Depeche Mode were adopted by left-leaning music journalists for their critical lyrics and Soviet-/Maoist-influenced graphics. That culminated with the release of Construction Time Again and the single, “Everything Counts,” in 1983, but more sensitive semioticians had already registered the symbolism of A Broken Frame the previous year. Brian Griffin’s striking cover photograph for the album showed a peasant working in a field with a sickle; Martyn Atkins’ graphics followed the theme with wheat-sheaf and sickle symbols; and Martin Gore’s lyrics for “The Sun and the Rainfall” seemed to channel the anti-Thatcher mood of UK youth with the repeated line, “Things must change!”
If the music press had high hopes for Depeche Mode’s political direction at the time of A Broken Frame, they were less impressed by their musical turn. Following the departure of Vince Clarke, who had penned most of the songs on their chart-baiting debut, Speak & Spell, the band had struggled to come up with equally commercial material. A couple of singles, “See You” and “The Meaning of Love,” rode the momentum generated by their early hits and hinted at Martin Gore’s emergence as a songwriter, but A Broken Frame was a transitional release, showing the band at its most experimental. With time, the band came to turn their back on the album, dropping even the singles from live shows. Looking back, Dave Gahan called it the band’s “weakest album by far.”
Many fans had a less harsh assessment of A Broken Frame, appreciating its off-beat but clever, purely synthesized, songs. While “Leave in Silence” was a peculiarly doom-laced song for a 12″ single, which couldn’t really be danced to comfortably, it fit with the darker musical atmosphere prevailing in 1982. Other songs, such as the instrumental “Nothing to Fear” or the moody “My Secret Garden,” were magnificent departures from the twee synthpop sounds that had dominated the charts a year earlier. The closing track, “The Sun and the Rainfall,” despite its critical-realist lyrics, was invested with as much optimism as could be wrung from a PPG Wave.
The gap between Depeche Mode’s assessment of the album and their fans’ enthusiasm has only recently been bridged by Marsheaux. The Athens-based band caused some controversy when it released a track-for-track cover of A Broken Frame on the Undo label, earlier this year. Dissenters grumbled about the potential similarity in styles, but Marsheaux’s interpretations turned out to be respectful and thoughtful. While the production of the original songs had disappointed Depeche Mode, they hadn’t revisited them. It was left to Marsheaux to deconstruct and reimagine the tracks, which they did true to the poptronica style developed over their previous four albums.
The genius of the project is revealed most fully in a live setting. Depeche Mode are never going to play “My Secret Garden” for their current audience, but fans who know the songs want to hear them played at high volume. The crowd at Electronic Summer is one of the best informed, so they know all of the tracks and have taken Marsheaux’s versions to heart. The Greeks oblige with performances of “My Secret Garden,” “The Sun and the Rainfall,” “Monument” and “Leave in Silence,” interwoven with Marsheaux originals, “Exit,” “To the End,” “Can You Stop Me?,” “Hanging On,” “Dream of a Disco,” “Breakthrough” and “Inhale.”
At the front of the stage, singers Marianthi Melitsi and Sophia Sarigiannidou manipulate microKORG keyboards and show off their vocals, while men in wolf heads work on the live mix. A video projection runs behind them, but all eyes are on Marianthi and Sophia and all ears are tuned to what Andy McCluskey of OMD called the duo’s “wispy, melancholic charm.” On “The Sun and the Rainfall,” Sophia’s breathy vocals transform the song into something more sophisticated than the original. Things must change, certainly, and sometimes they come out better for it.
Pole position in 2014 was easily taken by a set of recordings that were all made by 1984. Rational Youth’s first album, Cold War Night Life, came out in 1982 and quickly took a place in the synth pantheon next to the classic releases from that time, such as Depeche Mode’s Speak and Spell and John Foxx’s Metamatic. Over the years, it has become a cult favourite outside of Canada, with Swedish and German synthers fanning the embers into occasional flames. This year, the leading European artisan label, Vinyl on Demand, lovingly collated it with live recordings, demos, singles and EPs for one of their ultra-high quality box sets. Stunning sound from heavy-duty 180gm vinyl and amazing design mean that this is a package that only comes around once every thirty years.
Eddie Bengtsson nearly didn’t record “Stadens alla ljus” [EN: “City Lights”] himself. He first offered it to his former band, S.P.O.C.K. It was only after they turned it down that he took the plunge with his legendary project, Sista mannen på jorden [EN: The Last Man on Earth]. That proved to be a good move, as SMPJ fans have come to expect world-class poptronica with themes of space and longing from Sweden’s own Vince Clarke. “Stadens alla ljus” is the story of an astronaut looking down on the Earth and commenting on urban illumination as his air supply runs out. With sweeps that cover the cosmos and sequences set to Warp 4, it’s an evocative song made more poignant by Bengtsson’s emotive vocals. Once you’ve been transported by the chorus, there’s no way back.
One of the highlights of the year was receiving a copy of Hannah Peel’s Fabricstate EP on a Saturday when the Sun was shining. We said:
Machinista’s infectious poptronica travelled well in 2014, reaching London for “An Evening with the Swedish Synth.” Their live show is a razor-sharp combination of up-tempo pop and experimental rock (think Bowie meets Suicide at Nico’s house with lots of Italo records scattered around). Xenoglossy is their first proper album, and it comes filled with the same superb, original poptronica; sometimes pointing at the skies and sometimes in our hearts for signs of life, but always moving feet and hips in tandem. On disc, John Lindqwister’s vocals let rip while Richard Flow runs the machines, and the two Swedish veterans conjur up a sound that is both fresh and electrifying.
Rod MacQuarrie’s collection of machines is impressive by any standards: he owns equipment formerly housed by Bill Zorn of Rational Youth and Phil Collins, and his studio is crammed with Oberheims, Rolands, Logans and ARPs that can be used to recreate the sounds of classic tracks by everyone from Alphaville to ABBA. With the release of Zephyr, the Kalamazoo-based musician showed off his old-school influences, as well as his ability to construct distinctive original material. Covers of New Order’s “Your Silent Face” and ABBA’s “I Am the City” are polished and respectful; but, by moving more in the direction of Gary Numan and John Foxx, we’d argue that the latter is arguably better than the original version. Tracks like “This Time” and “City Streets” are instant classics, while “Bubbleboy” channels alienation and pain to a mid-tempo beat. It’s pure magic.
Karin Park ran a remix competition on Beatport for her 2014 single, “Shine,” but none of the contributions came close to the original. With pained lyrics yielding a glimpse of hope in the chorus, the track sounded best with the attack side of the envelope set high on the keyboards and the beats restrained. Park’s voice is distinctive and sometimes compared to Karin Dreijer Andersson’s, but it’s got a texture of its very own. It provides the emotional overlay that lifts “Shine” to the next level, gliding frictionless over the instrumental track.
It’s perhaps easy for an album given away for free on social media to be overlooked, but the latest instalment of William Orbit’s Strange Cargo series wasn’t exactly a vanity project. The musician and producer, best known in popular music circles for his work with Madonna, Britney and (once, but we doubt ever again) Blur, had the material up his sleeve but just wasn’t looking to cash in on it. He could have charged the market rate for Strange Cargo 5, because it is the type of exemplary poptronica that record companies write him large cheques to use as a platform for their major stars, but he just put it on Soundcloud with the download feature enabled. Pure class – in more ways than one.
We interviewed Parralox just before they appeared in London as support for Polly Scattergood. John von Ahlen’s sophisticated pop sense had consistently impressed us, but we were still blown away by the unveiling of “Crying on the Dancefloor.” With the addition of vocalists Francine and Johanna, Parralox ramped up its capabilities and glammed up its image even further. The accompanying video, in which the band play the role of a talent show jury, revealed them to have a sense of humour, as well as style. Parralox are back on the London stage to warm up for Erasure before the end of the year, and this is certain to be a crowd favourite. We’ve featured a techno mix here by Your Silent Face.
Drawing enough power to keep National Grid engineers on their toes during live performances, Vile Electrodes are the UK’s leading electro duo. Anais Neon has stunning vocal control, while keyboardist Martin Swan just about keeps the machinery under his spell in their synthetic Fantasia. This high-voltage track came in an exclusive package of remixes, embedded in a faux fur envelope, and it’s coiled to spring out of your speakers with fangs bared. 
Colouroïd are the Icelandic/Swedish duo of Jòn and Ella Moe. Besides making excellent lower-case M and W minimal wave music, they also run the FlexiWave label from their Stockholm base (which we hear will be relocating to Berlin soon). Their first album is a masterful slab of vinyl, pressed with grooves cooler than the surface of Neptune. From the run-in groove until the stylish inner-label, each side is an icy, voltage-controlled mindscape. With titles like “Pillow Fort” and “Eye Shadow,” we’d say their songs are playful and dark – fifty shades of black, if you will.
Cold War Night Life became one of the defining electronic albums of the early 1980s, comfortably sitting alongside John Foxx’s Metamatic, Kraftwerk’s Computer World and Fad Gadget’s Under the Flag. Released on an independent Canadian label, its commercial reach was limited, but over the years the record became a cult favourite among the synthescenti. A copy found its way to neutral Sweden and C90 duplicates began to circulate throughout the country’s burgeoning electronic music scene. In this case, home taping didn’t kill music; it built a base of fans for whom Rational Youth issued distant signals on wavelengths tuned to the alternative dancefloor.
The original plan was to transport a six-piece pop combo from Canada for a mini-tour of Sweden and Norway, but logistical considerations trimmed the act down to the essential duo of Howe and original keyboardist Kevin Komoda. Not a problem: fans were more than happy to receive them for a purely electronic show. Armed with a Moog Little Phatty and Roland JX-8P, Komoda was able to recreate classic sounds while confidently adding runs and fills that lifted the atmosphere higher than the International Space Station.
Psyche’s Swedish shows opened with the hard-edged stomp of “The Saint Became a Lush” from 1986’s Unveiling the Secret. There were hints of “Tubular Bells” in the sequencer pattern; but, instead of Max von Sydow in a dog-collar, the fog gave way to singer Darrin Huss, occupying the stage with a vigorous dance routine, and keyboardist Stefan Rabura. What followed was a selection of hits from Psyche’s extensive back-catalogue, covering a range of styles while maintaining the dialectic between the morbid and uplifting. Songs like “15 Minutes”, “Sanctuary” and “The Crawler” easily got the appreciative crowd making noise: in Gothenburg, Huss told the boisterous audience, “I’m singing to the rhythm of your screams!”
Bengtsson has an informal rapport with fans, who push to the front of the stage to sing along to “Sekunder” (EN: “Seconds”), “Allt är klart” (EN: “Everything is Ready”) and other SMPJ classics. Flanked by Christer Hermodsson, he knocks out energetic poptronica gems with an ease that belies their sophistication. For sheer elegance, songs like “Luft” (EN: “Breath”) and “Det där är grönt” (EN: “That is Green”) are without peers in modern electronic music. The crowds in Malmö, Gothenburg and Stockholm know this, and the bartenders at the venues are left in relative peace for the duration of SMPJ’s sets.
MacQuarrie’s show isn’t all robotic longing: audience favourite, “Bubbleboy,” taken from 2003’s Auto:Matic album, explains the fate of a boy “alone in a bubble world,” superimposed over a sonic palette lifted from 1979. The I Satellite originals on display are both quirky and catchy, and after the shows groups of young men press forward to ask questions and seek signatures. Who knew in Södermalm that Kalamazoo was hiding such an interesting act?
Never mind – the crowd at Stockholm’s Nalen venue knows all of the words to the 1980s singles: Claudette, The Face of Dorian Grey and Calling All Destroyers. They sing along contentedly, while Robert Enforsen, the former Elegent Machinery vocalist, handles iPad and keyboard duties and adds harmonies. Marlow’s voice holds up, but the years have clearly weathered the lad from Essex.