In The Service Of Desire

Automatic “New Beginning”

Automatic have an energy and attitude that reminds me a lot of what was going on in the earliest phases of this site in the early to mid ‘00s – all those skewed electro-punks with pop know-how and a hedonism driven by nihilism and/or pessimism. You can hear traces of the likes of Chicks On Speed, Le Tigre, Erase Errata, The Rogers Sisters, and Enon in “New Beginning,” but the music feels fresh rather than nostalgic. A lot of this comes down to Automatic’s sophistication in deploying their blunt minimalism, particularly in how judiciously they drop in the synthesizer. The groove is carried entirely by the rhythm section so Izzy Gluadini’s synth is used entirely as a punctuating effect, like this heavily distorted WRONG!!!! buzzer that gets slammed to put the listener on edge. This is a nice contrast with Gluadini’s vocal, which is rather cold and detached as she sings about human desire finding a way to overcome obstacles up to and including total societal breakdown.

Buy it from Bandcamp.