We’re getting accustomed to listen to great music from Sweden, from indie-pop to post punk, from synthpop to electronica, this time is the turn of the brilliant analogue synth sounds.
Night Sticks, as they intriguing define themself, is a ‘completely obscure synthesizer duo from Sweden’.
If you’ll have a look to the band’s Facebook or Souncloud pages, you won’t find any infos about them, neither names, nor pictures, just four tracks dated 3/4 years ago, the ones of the single included and they were part of a couple of tape compilations years ago.
Their 2-track debut ‘Afraid To Cry/Omma’ 7″single has just been released by the excellent French label Waving Hands Records founded by Laurène Exposito (Eye, Micro Cheval and Prisma).
‘Afraid To Cry’ is like something out from the 80’s pioneeristic post punk / synthwave /minimal synth cassette scene that it could fit well into the catalogue of labels like Anna Logue and Mannequin, it opens and closes with a female/male conversation in the Swedish language, driven by a circular wave of synth sequences alongside a whispered voice repeating the refrain ‘so I afraid to cry’, alternated with ‘so I afraid to try/die’ variations, it’s a mesmerizing and hypnotic fragile track that brings warmth and deepness to a usually cold genre, while remaining melodic and sophisticated, at the end it leaves me bizarrely with a pleasant minimal far melody of Visage’s ‘Fade To Grey’.
The flip instead is a not less attractive, slighty EBM flavoured, danceable number which channels D.A.F.’s electro period with Alan Vega-like minimal punkabilly vocals.
It’s refreshing, in an era overwhelmed by a superficial media overexposure and standardisation, that there are still independent pockets of resistance, I’d like to see and listen to more obscure and mysterious exciting acts driven by such DIY ethos, until then let’s enjoy this little wonders.
Keep up with Night Sticks :
Writte by Fabrizio Lusso
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