We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

Synthetic Villains

by Synthetic Villains

/
  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      £3 GBP  or more

     

  • Synthetic Villains
    Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Limited edition of 50 hand-assembled recycled cardboard digi-pak with individually spray-painted inside cover and hand-numbered mini-Polaroid-style photo.

    Photos are self-portraits ripped off Cecil Beaton's Aldous Huxley portaits. No, it's not a shower curtain, it's a muslin sheet.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Synthetic Villains via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

    Sold Out

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

about

Debut album.

Only 6 tracks, but at just under 40 minutes long, I call it an album, not an EP. I mean, Pharoah Sanders' 'Karma' only has 3 tracks on it. And that's definitely an album.


"Bouncy electro-funk from Synthetic Villains has a nostalgic synth palette and an experimental, slightly off-kilter approach to songwriting"
As featured on Bandcamp's New & Notable homepage

"weeping guitars and gloomy electronics...with strings overlaying the melancholy like curtains swaying as a coffin moves through them."
8/10 Louder than War

"fresh and fun" Derek Walmsley (Wire Magazine)

The original idea for the album was to create an electronic backing for some guitar playing - in a similar vein to Robert Quine (Voidoids) & Jody Harris' (Contortions) album "Escape" - they used an Oberheim DMX drum machine and overdubbed guitar and bass.* Although that was the basic impetus, once the basic beats were laid down, more electronic textures seemed to suggest themselves and it became a (mostly) electronic album and the guitars took a back seat.

The album was influenced by everything from drone music, synth-pop, classic electronic music, and also hip-hop, electro and No Wave music.

The album garnered radio play from Kites & Pylons, Phantom Circuit, I Heart Noise, Sunrise Ocean Bender and more. Tracks from the album featured on the Active Listener Sampler, Speak & Spell Records' Let it Radicalise You, and Front & Follow's Isolation & Rejection Vol.5 (a remix that had featured on a Dark Outside broadcast). Support also came from bloggers Trust the Wizards and Colourhorizon.

* Quine/Harris also used episode titles from the Three Stooges which I thought was a good enough idea to steal for this album too.

credits

released March 31, 2020

WRITTEN, ARRANGED & PLAYED BY RICHARD J TURNER.

RECORDED, MIXED & MASTERED BY SAM PARKINSON AT STONEGATE STUDIOS.

FLOOD OF SOUND RECORDINGS - FOS001-CD

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

Synthetic Villains Lancaster, UK

Instrumental, mostly electronic music.

From the "experimental, slightly off-kilter" (Bandcamp New & Notable) synth-pop of the debut album to the "pulsing Berlin School synths" (Electronic Sound Magazine) of the latest albums, SV albums explore drones, repetitions, textures and riffs.

The 3rd album is over on Werra Foxma's Sub Club.
wfrsubclub.bandcamp.com/album/through-a-crack-of-light
... more

contact / help

Contact Synthetic Villains

Streaming and
Download help

Shipping and returns

Redeem code

Report this album or account

Synthetic Villains recommends:

If you like Synthetic Villains, you may also like: