Scandroid – Scandroid

Scandroid Scandroid

Album facts

Release: November 11th, 2016
Label: FiXT
Genre: , , ,
Discogs: Link

Prologue: The outing

It's a true fact that I'm not such a big fan of the new Synthwave move­ment. In gen­er­al I'm always open-minded and curi­ous espe­cially with new music­al move­ments, but I also have a per­son­al taste. For this reas­on please don't judge the fol­low­ing sen­tences as a kind of bashing.

You may won­der why I'm not a fan of Synthwave? The first thing is that most of the recent Synthwave albums are fully instru­ment­al or con­tains almost only instru­ment­al songs. Further the cov­er art­works always look very gen­er­ic and after I have see­ing thou­sands of Synthwave art­works it's get­ting ridicu­lous after a while like a cliché. And the last reas­on is that espe­cially young bands and artists try to catch the spir­it of the 80s New Wave genre, but they are over-act­ing the music­al ele­ments that already sound super cheesy and cheap in the 80s.

Act 1: Scepticism, but promising

Also with the 'Scandroid' album I was ini­tially very skep­tic­al. However, I was con­fid­ent with the 'Tears For Fears' cov­er ver­sion 'Shout' as a trail­blazer. Furthermore I remem­ber a chat with the main artist and sing­er Klayton in which he told me that on the album won't be too much instru­ment­al songs. So I decided to give it a try. The first thing I would like to men­tion very pos­it­ively is that 'Scandroid' is an excel­lent excep­tion in the area of Synthwave. He man­ages to com­bine clas­sic­al 80s synth ele­ments with mod­ern Synth Pop without serving a cliche.

Act 2: Departure

The first song that really has thrilled me was 'Salvation Code'. A fast pulsat­ing beat com­bined with a play­ful tune, which inev­it­ably reminds me of the early works of 'Depeche Mode'. An abso­lutely fant­ast­ic trip through the early 80s, but with a mod­ern touch. This is fol­lowed by the track 'Aphelion', which is a mid-tempo song. 'Aphelion' has very strong New Wave influ­ences from the 80s, they are espe­cially in the fore­ground when Klayton's voice reaches the heights in the chor­us. A bril­liant song, I love it.

Act 3: New Life

The album 'Scandroid' is a great homage to the 80s. But what would be a homage without a trib­ute? 'Scandroid' brings new life to the 'Tears For Fears' cov­er ver­sion of 'Shout'. And hon­estly I have to say that this is one of the best cov­er ver­sion of 'Shout' I have ever listen to. 'Scandroid' cre­ate a con­tem­por­ary and fresh clas­sic that is abso­lutely audible.

Act 4: Astonishment

We are soon at the cen­ter of the album and it's won­der­ful to hear how 'Scandroid' links mod­ern­ity to clas­sic­al music ele­ments. So also with the song 'Connection'. I don't know wheth­er it's an old, famil­i­ar or a new, incred­ibly catchy song. But I'm lov­ing new tracks that sound famil­i­ar to me. The song 'Datastream' starts with an epic open­ing. Particularly strik­ing here are the crisp beats and the clear bass. Here, noth­ing is con­cealed with sur­face sounds. And that's a good thing!

'Empty Streets' reaches deep­er into the retro box. But here the song only takes up the vibes of the early 80s Post-Punk era. From instru­ment­a­tion, we remain here and now. At this point I'm really amazed how many songs I like on this album. Especially when you con­sider how skep­tic­al I was opposed to the album first. So also with the fol­low­ing song 'Awakening With You'. It's basic­ally a clas­sic, simple Synth Pop song, but it's just really good.

Act 5: The big final

My ini­tial skep­ti­cism is com­pletely blown away. By far, I had not expec­ted such a strong album. Even less would I have expec­ted that there might be a song on the album that could be on the same level like the clas­sic 'Shout' by 'Tears For Fears'. But I did not expect the extraordin­ary tal­ent of Klayton.

The bom­bast­ic song 'Pro-bots & Robophobes (Feat. Circle Of Dust)' gets a full 5 star rat­ing. This song stands out through the Industrial influ­ence of 'Circle Of Dust'. Everything sounds so beau­ti­fully metal­lic and dystopian.

Epilogue: The Result

I'm very happy about the fact that 'Scandroid' has con­vinced me pos­it­ively on the top­ic of Synthwave. And without the 3 instru­ment­al tracks on the self-titled 'Scandroid' album the over­all score would be fant­ast­ic 3.9 stars.

Don't let the typ­ic­al Synthwave cov­er art­work dazzle you. Here you get a really unique and great album that blurs the bound­ar­ies between clas­sic Synthwave and mod­ern Synth Pop. So it's def­in­itely a strongly recom­mend album.

Track By Track Rating

Scandroid Scandroid
Scandroid – Scandroid
2517
Salvation Code
Aphelion
Shout (Tears For Fears Cover)
Destination Unknown
Connection
Datastream
Empty Streets
Awakening With You
Atom & E.E.V.
Neo-Tokyo
Pro-bots And The Robophobes (Feat. Circle Of Dust)
Eden
Singularity
Eden (Waveshaper Remix)
Recommend
Shout (Tears For Fears Cover)
Pro-bots And The Robophobes (Feat. Circle Of Dust)
Weak
Destination Unknown
Atom & E.E.V.
Singularity
3.5
Outstanding

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2517
Salvation Code
Aphelion
Shout (Tears For Fears Cover)
Destination Unknown
Connection
Datastream
Empty Streets
Awakening With You
Atom & E.E.V.
Neo-Tokyo
Pro-bots And The Robophobes (Feat. Circle Of Dust)
Eden
Singularity
Eden (Waveshaper Remix)
Final Score