Victrola ‎– Maritime Tatami

It seems wrong to slap genre labels on Victrola, but their music is essentially minimal darkwave. Both songs are in a class of their own, downer overdose synthpop ballads with catatonic monotone vox. Oblique minor-key bass lines provide an anchor while snapping, brittle 606 rhythms propel the tracks along. It seems that many people prefer the A, which is certainly an incredible track, a bizarre virtual reality excursion that sounds as if John Foxx instead of Vangelis had composed the soundtrack for Blade Runner. The synths are shot through with a strain of melancholy usually found only in 8-bit video game soundtracks, but at the same time, there's a shoegazey trance quality to the melodic interplay that strangely gels with the snare-heavy rhythm track. However, for me the B is the real killer here. A post-punk guitar riff repeats hypnotically, as fragile icy synthlines chime emptily above it. The vox only last through the first half, giving way to one of the most bleak and haunting synthscapes ever committed to wax. This track will make you feel like an android dying of hypothermia. It's tragic that Victrola didn't release anything after this, as this EP doesn’t sound like anything else recorded in 83 or anytime after—it’s from a dimension of its own.