Has the Digital Age got you feeling informationally overloaded and socially over-connected? Nostalgic for a more manageable “cathode ray” reality, or the more human algorithms of our analogue days, then Roladex might offer the perfect antidote with their stellar new Medical Records LP, Anthems For the Micro-Age. Employing a host of vintage synthesizers and analogue gear, Tyler Jacobsen and Elyssa Dianne locate their sound in the frozen future of a by-gone era so as to better examine our contemporary, post-everything condition. “Once we said the digital would save us/Now we live a manufactured life” the duo sings in a mechanized harmony on the album’s title and opening track, and the dry register of their delivery, with it’s android sounding almost-sentience, seems to suggest just what such a “life” might entail.
In a creative process that Jacobsen describes as a combination of “experimentation and happy accidents”, and utilizing instruments like the Roland SH101 and Korg MS20, as well as guitar and drum machine, the pair crafts tight, expressive retro-pop that use a nostalgic sonic sense to question just what we thought the future would sound like. Echoes of early techno and synth wave animate the tracks on Anthems For the Micro-Age, and they provide a template around which Jacobsen and Dianne demonstrate their highly developed sense for pop song structures, while discovering their own intriguing aural territory along the way.
All the tracks on Anthems For the Micro-Age were recorded for this Medical Records release, and were mastered at The Cage by the UK’s Martin Bowes, whose work in the band Attrition stands as some of the earliest surfacings of dark wave and industrial music. Limited copies are available on 180-gram vinyl in transparent, electric blue, and they feature a bonus LP insert with lyrics, so grab a copy before they’re gone! You can stream Anthems For the Micro-Age via the Bandcamp embed below, as well as checking out the Roladex video for “Cathode Rays”.
