After his double release last week, we are delighted to share one of his new pieces of work. He calls this song "a deleted scene" from The Weeknd's "The Birds Part 1". He focuses on the texture of the (very 808s and heartbreak) drum-work that the original gives and adds his own melodic interpretation to create his own missing scene.
No doubt you've noticed a meteoric rise in the number of bands emulating 80s music, especially in the UK, and one of the most common forms of that is the synth-pop that's seen a big revival. Last year on their debut album The Brixton Academy took that sound and crammed in as much stand-out song writing as they could manage within 8 tracks. On top of that they brought genuinely heart-felt lyrics into the mix that vitalised the synthetic texture of the album, elevating Vivid to a borderline classic LP. They rarely re-traced their own steps and kept up the pressure that has made them so talked about both in and outside of Japan. That and the fact that they sing entirely in English.
"Where other contemporary artists fail by mocking and musically "pointing the finger" at the bygone era, effectively distancing themselves further away from authenticity with each song. The Brixton Academy wasted no time by embracing the 80s sound with song-writing that is the pure essence of dance-floor-filling catchy-ness, and lyrics that feel so genuine; it was a small revolution for the copycat sound."
"So Shy" was released for free on iTunes in 2010
The production also stood head and shoulders above their peers, toppling the likes of even Hot Chip and La Roux. The album was recorded at Maldic Studio in Tokyo, co-produced by the band and Totaluseful, but the mastering was done all the way in London by Guy Davie of Electric Mastering. At that studio they have some of the holy grails of vintage audio equipment, dating way back into the 1970s (that's far enough). One piece in particular is a state of the art mastering table with valve compressors from Nigeria that was used to record Paul McCartney's "Wings" and other sonic masterpieces of that era. Aside from being a priceless and historic piece it gives the digital CD mix the natural glow of a vinyl recording, zero distortion and a pseudo three dimensional transparency that you don't see everyday. Most importantly it sounded authentic, because it was.
I initially thought Vivid was created by sequencing stems from a catalogue of pre-recorded sounds, just because the recording sounded so direct, like a series of volume checked wav files burned directly to a CD. It's one of the cleanest mixes you can imagine, which isn't always a great thing, but in this case it fits perfectly with the aesthetic.
As always, they had #9 (Hash-nine) handling the artwork and flyers for the release. They also designed the sleeves for the TBA 12-inch, SPLIT 7-inch (Orland collaboration) and the iconic VJ reels that you see when they play at live venues. That continuity is evident everywhere you see TBA.
TBA live pre-Vivid
Last year they also released L.O.T. It featured 3 new songs, all with significantly improved pronunciation and writing equally as deserving of praise as Vivid, along with a 30 minute live performance that they recorded among friends. Like always they ended it with "Nightclub" (TBA- 2009); excitement boiled over among the crowd during the mesmerizing synth driven switchover, leading to some manic call and response that lasted the full 5 minutes. Many of the songs in that performance featured more full-bodied arrangements than the studio recordings, and you get the feeling that they're people who really love what they do above all else.
On September 28th TBA will release their hotly anticipated follow-up album.
