This is a mostly unknown early '80s record from Japan and has been absent for the past 30 years. When Mariah first got together in the late 1970s, their sound was largely indebted to the popular jazz fusion and synth pop of the time, but Utakata no Hibi seems to open the door to a wonderful dreamland where genres no longer exist. Sung half in Japanese and half in Armenian, the record melds East Asian and Middle Eastern tonalities, folklorish melodies with synthetic futurism, upbeat dance rhythms with meditative ambient textures, wonky New Wave, jazz structures and blissful pop ditties.
Lena Platonos is a Greek musician, pianist and music composer. One of the pioneers in the Greek electronic music scene of the 1980s, she remains active today. She released 3 collaborative albums between 1981-1983 and her debut solo album in 1984. Her work is surreal, abstract, in places futuristic but always full of unpretentious honesty and tenderness. Through complex imagery, telegraphic lyrics, and analog synths accompanied by the Roland TR-808 drum machine, she paints an intergalactic and elusive soundscape capable of transforming punchy and haunting basslines into cryptic messages. Like the untranslated poetry of Platonos it makes sense beyond the usual; beyond it's own time, beyond words.
November Növelet is a side-project of Haus Arafna. The sounding of November Növelet is different from Haus Arafna's with the more feminine outlook of their works, as Ms. Arafna is in control by doing the lead vocals. The unique experiments with analogue sounds appropriate to the other Galakthorrö artists remain in their works. They developed over time and crystallized into an Angst Pop with a tendency to Electro New Wave and so Haus Arafna could carefully deal with the industrial origins of Angst Pop.
Italian new wave duo, formed in 1976 by Maurizio Arcieri and his wife Christina Moser under the name "Chrisma" in Milan. The name was a combination of their initials. The very same year, the couple moved to London to record "U" and "Amore" with the producer Nico Papathanassiou and his brother, the famous Vangelis. By 1980 the name was changed into Krisma and the style shifted to synthpop.
There are cult records, and there are cult records! Rexy‘s 1981 album, Running Out of Time, falls under the later. Born out of London’s fashion-centric Blitz Kids scene, Rexy was singer Rex Nayman and Eurythmics band member Vic Martin. Running Out of Time, which was Rexy’s only album, is the sound of cheap keyboards and drum machines, ramshackle playing and Rex’s heavy cockney accented vocals. The record was barely released in the first place and has since since become a sought-after record championed by outsider-friendly musicians like Ariel Pink, Connan Mockasin and Jef Barbara.
French act Vox Low remain virtually unknown, however, even by the meager standards of niche psychedelia, a state of affairs that releasing 100 vinyl copies of their latest, two-track single probably won’t do a great deal to address. The band have the potential to be huge but, like pandas flown halfway around the world who then refuse to fuck their way off the endangered list, they need to meet us halfway.
If there is a definition for indie pop in the dictionary, there's a good chance there's a picture of The Minders. Yet another branch of the Elephant 6 collective's family tree, the Minders are led by singer/songwriter Martyn Leaper, a British expatriate living in Denver, Colorado. There he befriended Apples in Stereo frontman Robert Schneider, who agreed to release the Minders' debut EP, Come on and Hear!!, on Elephant 6 in the spring of 1996.
