#synth-pop

#synth-pop

I dreamed of curating a tour with my favourite bands that could bring some positivity in our troubled times. I'm thrilled that this is actually happening this summer with the Things Can Only Get Better Tour... Our aim is to bring some joy with the banging pop anthems that we all know and love.

Detroit techno, austere and futuristic, grew out of Black/queer culture, sci-fi escapism, and the repetitive language of automobile factories. San Francisco's techno, on the other hand, fused an outdoor hippie aesthetic with ecstatic, UK-derived beats that had crowds mass-hallucinating UFOs on Ocean Beach at dawn. Both shared a deep funkiness, however—remember when people of all shapes and colors once danced wildly?

R&B in the 21st century has been in a constant state of flux, tugged between safe traditionalism and blurry attempts at progression. For the last decade-plus that "progression" has seen R&B music become more indebted to trap records and the moody atmospherics of alternative bands like Radiohead, Coldplay, or My Bloody Valentine.

1. Soda and beer cans that came with pull tabs:

The vocoder was never supposed to be a revolution in music. Its development began a century ago, when an engineer at Bell Labs was looking for a simpler way to send phone calls across copper telephone lines.

We started from a very silly place,

Metropolis -the tale of an exploited caste of workers breaking free from their oligarchic oppressors by joining together with them to build a new world, as well as an Orpheus-like love story-has famously been in a state of restoration for almost a century, thanks to studio mangling and the ravages of time.

"'Blow My Mind' is the one song on the album about my son," Robyn said in a press statement. "I was in that early stage when I was with him all the time, and something about that closeness opened the song up to me again. Listening back to the original I thought, 'I think it's one of the best songs I ever recorded, and I'm just gonna do it again.'"

It's impossible to quantify the emotional landscape of a song-there's no judgment more subjective-but to my ear, "Ceremony" captures the drama of an unforgettable moment that feels like it's going to change your life forever, one where everything that's been is about to meet the future, and you can feel the unnamable tension of possibility swelling until it's about to burst.

It is billed as Danny L Harle's debut album, which it definitely isn't his actual debut album, Harlecore, came out in 2021, although in at least one sense, Cerulean is markedly different from its predecessor. It's the weighty guestlist, featuring Clairo, Caroline Polachek, PinkPantheress, MNEK and more, a reflection of Harle's ascension into the major leagues of pop production: he's worked with Polachek before, as well as Florence + the Machine and Dua Lipa (who also features on Cerulean), among others.