More awesome music from Medical Records today, this time in collaboration with the New Orleans-based synth wave label Disko Obscura, as they team up on this Roladex/((PRESSURES)) split 7″. Earlier this year we took a listen to Roladex’s Anthems For the Micro-Age LP, also out now via Medical, and on this new release the analogue synth duo of Tyler Jacobsen and Elyssa Dianne continue to delve into a retro, 80’s pop vibe that seems to be both an embrace of nostalgia, as well as often being a critique of it! Sonically, Roladex conjures up the era with instruments like the Roland SH101 and Korg MS20, as well as the pair’s cool-to-the-touch, almost robotic vocal delivery, but it’s often in the biting satire of their lyrics that the “meat” of this music really lies. On “Glass Statuette” Jacobsen and Dianne reveal, “I’ve found a way to make you last/more permanent in plastic mask”, and even if it involves “polymers to drink”, at least you’ll “never have to think…again”. An extended allegory for our desire to somehow preserve the “past”, all lacquered, and kept pristine in that proverbial “glass menagerie”, well, maybe I’ve gone too far…
((PRESSURES)) rounds out the complimentary pairing on this double A-side with the elegant, synth-pop melancholy of “Voices“. The duo also hails from The Big Easy, with two releases out on Disko Obscura, and one look at their Soundcloud description reveals that, indeed, this pair must make their music on a “museum’s worth of analog synths and drum machines”! “Voices” finds the band continuing to polish their sonic approach with the wistful ache of icy synths, razor-sharp rhythms, and the duo’s harmonized vocoder vocals…
