A world so sweet and true

Love or hate, you can't deny the basic sweet-spot appeal of dreamy synth pop. I've spied curmudgeons who breathlessly grasp for pejoratives absently tapping their feet when they think no one's looking. I embraced the candy full-on a while back, and I've never found it hard to equally love "serious" music at the same time.

Which may be why it's cool to hear '70s proggers and other musos getting hip to such simple joys. Case in point — today's tunes, which by way of segue, feature Barbara Gaskin (faire maiden vocalist of yesterday's song) teamed up with Dave Stewart, who played in just about every Canterbury art rock band in shaggier-haired days (not the guy from Eurythmics).

This duo had some '80s hits, but generally played it under the radar. Honestly, they're hit or miss, but these two are surely hits in my mind. And mischievous ones at that, being radically rethought cover versions (check the originals here and here). The chorus of the first one, in particular, does transport me to a different world — accessible only for a few moments, and all the more sublime as a result. Plus, pitch bending!

Dave Stewart & Barbara Gaskin - I'm In A Different World
Dave Stewart & Barbara Gaskin - Roads Girdle The Globe

Unpresidential

I often think Presidents' Day is a holiday cooked up by auto dealers and electronics shops. I'm not sure why Washington's and Lincoln's birthdays are an occasion to go buy stuff on sale, and I also think it's pretty awkward to try linking these anniversaries to some non-specific honoring of US presidents. Regardless, I have the day off, and hopefully, so do you, and let's be happy about that. Meanwhile, here's a tune that's about as far from American pseudo-holidays as I can think of. Let's raise a flagon of mead to these troubadour faeries of olde English woodplaces!

Spirogyra - The Future Won't Be Long

Alien industry

Still kinda digging this tendency toward wordlessness. You may be familiar with Jean Michel Jarre from his flamboyant and atmospheric work, but it's good to know that he had a fair bit of musique concrète in his genes too. Talk about industrial music! This should be playing in a power plant breakroom on Venus.

Jean Michel Jarre - La Cage

Audio peace

Intense workdays call for palate cleansers that don't kid around. I'd take floaty, skyward-looking synth dreams like this almost any day. But today, it's a special helping of audio peace. It also sounds like the soundtrack for curing diseases.

Steve Hauschildt - Already Replaced

Contemplating impossible enormousness

Well, I was right. My current Tangerine Dream immersion has pulled me into the outer reaches. And I have no choice but to take you with me. You'd be surprised how good this stuff sounds when you wake up and stretch in the morning. Something to do with greeting day in all its giant formlessness. And I'm sure it sounds better the further you get out into the solar system.

Tangerine Dream - Mysterious Semblance At The Strand Of Nightmares

World of echo

It doesn't take much to get me into an Arthur Russell state of mind. Sometimes, it's just the winter air chilling my bones that makes me want to float in the warm ocean that is his voice. Add in the invigorating bristles of that cello and you've got pure audio therapy. Let's go swimming!

Arthur Russell - Place I Know/Kid Like You

My signals in your brain

Having recently come across this Television-esque band from Norway, I'm reminded why groups aped this sound so thoroughly throughout the 'aughts. But these sadly unheralded guys got everything right about this aesthetic back in their day — zippy, angular, nice Gary Numan-like synth warbles, and in no hurry to get through it. Somehow, I continue to be a sucker for oh-so-serious voices like this.

The Cut - Atmospheres

Smooth criminal

Been catching up on movies I should've watched in film class. Melville's Le Samourai is justly legendary for smooth n' icy French gangster chicness as personified by Alain Delon. There's nothing more I can really add to that piece of iconography, except to note how much I really do appreciate the minimal amount of speaking not just in the movie, but also in many parts of life. Which may mean that I'm putting myself in the wrong situations. Or that I'm getting crankier with time. But with 4 of 5 songs this week being instrumentals, I think it's that I'd just rather hear music most of the time. Including awesome soundtracks like this one.

François De Roubaix - Le Samourai

Moving and not moving

More instrumental evocativeness. Conrad Schnitzler had his hand in a bunch of krautrock cookie jars, though was never a luminary in his own right. (In a just world, he'd be a tycoon of a pretzel company.)

I love this piece, but it seems mistitled. Far from static, it sounds like anticipatory preparations for some Big Event. Good for tightening ties and setting headbands. Or both, preferably.

Conrad Schnitzler - Ballet Statique

Synthesizers in crisis

If you dig The Cars (debut album, at least) as much I do, today's song will be quite a treat. Aside from looking awesome in their videos, keyboardist Greg Hawkes clearly had some ideas of his own. They seem to involve a kid running from both FBI and KGB agents in a downward spiral of plot twists in my made-up film. They also involve some sweet pitchbending (perk your ears up at 2:32). The fact that some of my own synth adventures seem at home in this soundworld only make me fonder. Thanks to Jason for hipping me to this one.

Greg Hawkes - Block Party

Procession into the beyond

Uh-oh, it seems I've entered into a Tangerine Dream vortex. Which means there's a real chance I may disappear into the depths of space or melt into the floor. Before I meet either of these fates, allow me to give you a solo tune from frontdude Edgar Froese. While it's tempting to embark on a 20-minute epic drift from TD's far-out heyday, I'll go with an anomaly instead — a linear groove with flesh n' drums and some baked guitar action.

As for this album's cover art, gotta say I really don't need to be reminded that it's humans making the music. Talk about a face made for light shows.

Edgar Froese - Icarus

Saturday for Monday

In previous years, a twee-ish piece of curatorial, '60-reconstructing pop might have been all wrong for a post-Super Bowl morning. But since the ritual watching of the game is pretty much all we have left to unify us a nation and with pro football marketers savvy enough to bring the ladies into the jersey-wearing, wing-chomping fold, we find ourselves in a different world. Which is to say, at least some pallid indie rock boys and girls will enjoy the transition from gridiron heroics to these precious 3 minutes.

Pitchfork actually got its head out its ass and hit the nail on that head with these guys. My view on nostalgia for other people's pasts—constructed entirely out of memorabilia consumed out of order and from second-hand sources—is still evolving, but I'm always happy to hear a well-executed tune. And these parts of the '60s are always welcome around here.

Saturday Looks Good To Me - Since You Stole My Heart

Silver age

The thing about being "ahead of your time" is that you never get full credit for your innovations if time never actually catches up to you. So it went with the Silver Apples, who used a fairly limited sound palette to produce some of the coolest, most distinct music of the '60s (also some of the least '60s sounding). There are so many ways the space age could've gone. These guys charted a course we still haven't even embarked on.

Silver Apples - Lovefingers
Silver Apples - Misty Mountain

Lovable loser

I love that ELO have been thoroughly rescued from the dustbin of AOR history, and that Jeff Lynne's insistent fusion of Beatles and bombast seems to have the respect it always deserved. Still, I suspect their '80s output will remain stashed in the attic. Which is a pity. Secret Messages has some killer moments. This is my favorite, with its preposterous rainy day verses (synth sax!) and equally preposterous chorus (TR-808 handclaps!). Totally mismatched and totally worth blasting out loud. I'll stand this one next to "Evil Woman" any day. Dig this one too from the same album.

Electric Light Orchestra - Loser Gone Wild

Give the drummers some

Moving from grainy Euro/African fusions to a more wide-screen form of exotica. Via a pair of drummers doing it all with electronic percussion and sampling. I give a big thumbs-up to my fellow stickmen getting their melody on. Strangely, I love those new agey '80s synth drums more and more. Maybe it's something about the charm of limitation.

Michael Shrieve & David Beal - Mon Amie

Swim across oceans

Remember when it felt metaphorical to talk about a small world? It was a big, big world for so long that people now coming of age will never truly appreciate that dizzying sense of distance, things being so flattened and easily available in the digital version these days [commence old man exhalation]. Imagine then the excitement or confusion for those exposed to these transcontinental tracks by Hector Zazou, Bony Bikaye, and a couple weird German dudes called CY1. Some call this a European answer to My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts. I say that's a fine description. And certainly worth your attention, especially if you appreciate how long it takes to swim across oceans.

Zazou/Bikaye/CY1 - M'Pasi Ya M'Pamba
Zazou/Bikaye/CY1 - Mangungu

Replicant rock

I've been having quite the musical crush on Gary Numan lately. Such a bummer that he got tagged with one-hot-wonderdom, because he produced a really nice string of dystopian/robotic/androgynous, yet quite catchy, music. In fact, I'd say as much as anyone he elaborated on Bowie's Low-era innovations. And with some glammy sass too. He could've been the biggest star in a Blade Runner world.

Songblague has previously given Numan a little of his due, but here's a day all for him. This tune is just right — foreboding and becalmed at once. Like a beautiful flight through the clouds above a nervous and troubled world.

Gary Numan - The Aircrash Bureau

I look for a center of permanent gravity

I just recently stumbled upon the long and varied career of Franco Battiato, and I'm not really sure how much of it I'm going to like. Seems the general trajectory is from proggy/experimental electronic to opera by way of eccentric pop. An album from that middle period is what caught my ear. Maybe it's how the singing seems almost goofily off from the music. Guess that's what happens when one's inner opera singer struggles to bust out of the rock band.

Franco Battiato - Centro Di Gravità Permanente

Rising son

I don't much care for dynastic succession. In monarchies or any kind of business. But it is nice to see a young man inherit a fair bit of his father's talent. The son of Neil Finn clearly knows his way around a pop song. Based on seeing him perform a few weeks back, he also seems to know his way around looping pedals. And going apeshit on drums. And beards. And all that at once. Good genes at work.

Liam Finn - Cold Feet

Analog space suits

Too much vying for my attention here on Earth. May as well take a little mental sojourn into space. The French-speaking part of it, at least. Check that album cover. Can I get that keyboard stand?

Benoit Hutin - Travelling

I looked so pretty

Here's something of a curiosity — a prickly/precious Anglo-indie '80s staple finishing off their career with a foray into rootsy vibes. And damned if those chorus pedal-heavy guitar bends don't make me all squinty and dopey-happy. And then I look up the lyrics and they seem to be about child molesting. Sigh.

Felt - Budgie Jacket

The wind does not hear

It's never too late to recalibrate the brain. Today's song has occupied a minor place in my head for over 20 years, similar to its interlude-like position on the seminal In The Court Of The Crimson King. There it's sandwiched between the proto-metal blast of "21st Century Schizoid Man" and the proto-prog melodrama of "Epitaph".

But now it suddenly steps into its own spotlight — a rainy day spaceout with some classy flute action and a subtle edge that hints at the darkness tucked into the Aquarian age. That non-heavy handed invocation of the demonic is actually one of my favorite things about the Crims.

King Crimson - I Talk To The Wind

In the ether

Reflecting on a tough day of hard economic realities in the working world and appreciating my good fortune (which is dependably undependable). Wherever the dice roll leaves you, it helps to wrap yourself in layers of ethereal sounds for a good while.

Grouper - Alien Observer

Space is only noise

Among experimental musicians, I'm often most drawn to the ones who can take familiar sounds and make them completely alien. Computers are great tools for that purpose, but it's still the re-imagination that does the heavy lifting. I recently got hipped to Nicolas Jaar, whose Space Is Only Noise album has been a staple of my living room ambience for a couple weeks now. Here's a track that takes somber, minimal piano and puts it in a landscape that only vaguely resembles any place on Earth.

Nicolas Jaar - ^tre

On the back of a new belief

Meanwhile...back in America, the kids are dressed up in their best reverb and dancing the dread away, like a perpetual Kevin Bacon motion machine. Of all the bands that rip off Bruce Springsteen, these guys make me like them with an equal degree of shamelessness.

The War On Drugs - Baby Missiles