The Defence – I Want to Be Alone

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Drenched in 80’s synths and drums machines comes The Defence from Edinburgh, UK, with a sound that reminds me of the Pet Shop Boys meets The Human League.

Bio from their site:

The Band:

Keith Kerr
Vocals

Drew Cosgrove
Synthesizers

How we met:

In the summer of 1995 Drew placed an advert in the Melody Maker. Keith, who had already been in several bands, responded and our band was born. We sent our first demo to the Human League, asking if we could support them on the tour they were doing at the time. We needed a name and picked “The Defence” — because we wanted a name starting with “The” and “The Accused” sounded too much like an indie guitar band. Although we didn’t get to support the Human League a rep from Harvey Goldsmith was keen on our tunes. In 1997 we asked Heaven 17 if we could support them at their Edinburgh Fringe show. To our delight their manager called us and said we could — only for the whole thing to fall through because the Fringe organisers had already allocated support slots. We had to make do with VIP passes to the show. Ah, the cruel world of show business. It’s a hard life constantly failing to become international pop-stars. Still, spurred on by the success of Electroclash and the thrill we get from producing records we know that world domination is just around the corner.

By the way, their entire album can be downloaded from their website:

http://www.thedefence.com/html/music.html

Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/thedefence

The Defence – I Want to Be Alone

Kelley Polar – Entropy Reigns (in the Celestial City)

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Ok, so I’ve found my favorite album thus far of 2008, its Kelley Polar’s sophomore effort entitled, “I Need You to Hold on While The Sky is Falling“, which is scheduled for release March 3, 2008.

Not only is the album drenched in 80’s nostalgia such as Analog synths, appregiated synth cords, and beautiful DX-7 pad sounds, but true to the 80’s era of albums, this albums begs to be listened to from start to finish.   This is such a breath of fresh air from modern releases that sound more like a collection of singles that are just thrown together for the sake of releasing an album.   Album boarders at times as synthpop, other times gets nearer to an 80’s Prince-esque sound, and yet at other times gets closers to that New Romantic sound of ABC and Thompson Twins.

This track in particular is more inline with classic Human League sound meets Thompson Twins groove.

[audio:http://www.audiodrums.com/audio/KellyPolar_EntropyReigns(intheCelestial.mp3]

[download]

Related Post: A cut from Kelley Pollar’s first album: Ashamed of Myself

NOTE: As always, to download the songs from this site just right click on the link “download” and select “Save Link as…”