HTRK have been making their gloomy, sensual brand of music, at the intersection of electronic pop and noise rock, for 22 years. To mark the milestone comes String of Hearts, a collection of covers and remixes featuring an all-star cast of friends and collaborators, from next-gen underground favourites like Coby Sey to fellow old-school experimentalists Liars. This brilliant, genre-agnostic record allows you to trace the breadth of the Melbourne band’s shapeshifting sound, echoes of which can now be found all over underground and commercial music, without leaning too hard on nostalgia.
The record spans HTRK’s early hits right up to their most recent album Rhinestones, a period in which they’ve shifted from a darker, industrial palette to warmer territory. Not that you’d be able to tell here: instrumentals are reshaped by Loraine James’s IDM-style glitches and Zebrablood’s atmospheric breaks, while Jonnine Standish’s disaffected vocals are transformed into desperate alien wails by Liars.
Some tracks are warped beyond recognition, using just a synth or lyric as a jumping-off point. The gruff, brooding Ha is reinvented by sound artist Perila into an ambient composition so sweeping and gorgeous it veers towards the sublime – the only perceptible similarity lingers in the layered rendition of those once-sneering vocals. Siren Song, originally a 49-second interlude, is stretched out by Kali Malone and Sunn O)))’s Stephen O’Malley into a droning six-minute soundscape, where the simple, mumbled lyric is repeated like an absent-minded mantra.
Others lurk more closely to the original tracks, but with exciting adjustments: Sharon Van Etten’s cover of Poison has less smog and more kick; Double Virgo’s take on Rentboy adds percussion, strings and peppy discordance. These are the standout moments, but it’s hard to fault any of the tracks here: all feel imaginative yet faithful to the magic of HTRK.
Also out this month
The mysterious Belgian-Italian duo Sexo y Fantasia remould their low-slung cosmic synth sound into something darker on their brilliant third album Trabajando El Flex (Pinkman). The icy synths, robotic vocals and skulking dub undertones, paired with their signature erotic themes, conjure up an image of some seedy, haunted club. Radioweaver is the latest record from London-based artist the Narrator, also of the collective, label and self-proclaimed “gesamtkunstwerk” Life Is Beautiful. Across the eight tracks, dreamy vocals interlace with instrumentals that are both lovely and uncanny, where celestial synths and strings are occasionally interrupted by glitching samples and unexpected turns. Inspired by theatre, Fellini and dreams, Cinecittàx (Disques de la Spirale), the debut album by Brussels-based artist Che Vuoi is as eccentric as you might expect. In these jittery, lo-fi collages, there are elements of spoken word, post-punk, cabaret and downtempo electronic music, complete with nature samples and toybox percussion.
