Two years after their previous Against Strong Thinking mini album, Spanish techno-meets-new wave duo SDH returns with a new, killer EP.
This is the first physical release by the duo composed by Nicholas James and Stanley Fouracres after a few digital singles in 2019 when they also opened for The Murder Capital at Sŵn Festival and played alongside M!R!M, Josiah Konder and The Love Coffin. On the two songs that compose the single, Plastic Estate clearly draw influence from the best UK new wave and pop artists such as Dave Gahan, Paddy McAloon, Roddy Frame and yet there is a sophisticated casualness and an innate freshness in their songwriting that makes them not sounding dated at all. Amazing composition skills for such a young band and a perfect balance between electronic dance elements and acoustic instruments allow them to pay homage to the above-mentioned masters and to be a perfectly contemporary group at once. Although it’s possible to pick out some darker lyrics, the overall feel is up-beat and breezy. It’s a contrast that runs through a lot of their music – like a dichotomy between dark, melancholia and happier, brighter feelings. Whether it’s a happy pop synth riff mixed with sombre lyrics or vice versa, the young Welsh duo is delivering the best 80′s-inspired modern pop craft. Featuring Profit Prison, Veil Of Light, Buzz Kull, Nuovo Testamento, Pleasure Symbols, HøRD, Qual, SDH and Skemer. Digital Album [free download] HøRD is the solo project of Bordeaux-based synthwave producer Sebastien Carl. Started in 2014, Sebastien has proven himself to be able to gather a cult fan-base around his creation in a short time, collaborating with artists as Hante, Winter Severity Index and Black Bug and performing live in most European countries. Debuted by Antoni Maiovvi and Vercetti Technicolor’s Giallo Disco, an EP on SNTS’ Sacred Court and a second full-length on Avant! have followed. Bodies is his third album and it shows eight new passages that take HøRD’s distinguishing features one step further once more. Ethereal synths matching deep analogue beats, veiled vocals speaking of visions, memories, meaning and failing. Synthwave sounds like a soundtrack from the 80′s meet electro and techno mechanical rhythms along a stream of tracks that almost have no name so that the listener can just let them flow and flow with them, taking a journey away from the present time and into an abstract, dream-like modern dimension where the misty and the solid are one. SDH return with the Against Strong Thinking EP, which follows its 2018 self-titled album. Although six songs may be insufficient, their new tracks highlight the strengths of their debut. The beats are deeper, the atmospheres sadder. The band continues to explore the musical language as a poetic form and trying to discover new questions that allow the great categories of thinking to be undone. Against Strong Thinking talks about the importance of facing all that categorical, dogmatic and conclusive thinking. There is a need for dialogue with everything that seems unquestionable. Again, the questions guide all the songs and, again, there is no single answer. Sometimes this doubt is fertile, sometimes it is painful and involves a total and profound loss. The album begins with Suffer, a perfect song to cry in late night clubs, dancing with tears in your eyes. But SDH know how to make a crowd dance too. No Miracles is an instant banger and Your Next Story sounds cruelly sexy. Poem Against Strong Thinking and Four Arms have that melancholic trademark sound with interesting musical progressions that we discovered in their first album and there’s also a good surprise: the inclusion of a re-recorded version of You Pt. 12, the first song released by SDH in 2016, this time with a better production that makes it easily one of their best tracks. The importance of the body, the senses, the dance and the dialectic is present in each theme as a form of struggle of a voice that dialogues with itself against the firmness of its own strong thoughts. |