#synth duo

[nugothrhythms]

"Another Life" by Brownsville, Texas-based darkwave duo Twin Tribes off of their 2024 album Pendulum

[psychodollyuniverse]

Soft Cell

[melaniealeman]

It’s a pop cliché that the ideal band partnership is a between the guy who lives it and the guy who writes about it…In a synth duo, this dynamic is right out front. One partner hides behind a bank of synthesizers and watches as the performer takes the stage. One is voice, celebrity, performance; the other is music. The new wave girl knows what pop dreams are made of. She knows that Debbie Harry was just kidding when she sang, “Dreaming is free.” She knows dreams are something you have to steal. The new wave girl scams on other people’s identities, mixing and matching until she comes up with a style of her own, knowing that nothing belongs to her, that she just gets to wear it until somebody else comes along with faster fingers to snatch it away. She knows pop dreams are a hustle a deception, a “glamour” in the witchcraft sense of the word. She knows how to bluff and how to scam. She sings about counterfeiting, shoplifting, bootlegging, home taping. She’s in on the hustle—you steal it, it’s yours, it’s legal tender. The new wave girl knows all this, which is why she is dangerous. The new wave boy knows how dangerous she is, which is why he stands behind her. The boy and the girl, together in electric dreams.

Love is A Mixtape: Life and Loss, One Song At A Time by Rob Sheffield, 2007

Electric Dreams