Altered Zones

My favourite cold wave tunes are the soundtrack for a boss fight against the abstract concepts that manifest themselves in daily grief: alienation, commoditisation, urban loneliness. We recall Josef K's heroic journey through a landscape of crisis and change, processed by a Soviet-style bureaucracy-- and the alluring clash of beauty and decay, exaltation and depression, one finds in such a narrative. You can hear it in the song by NYC Wierd Records-stalwarts Frank (Just) Frank we are dropping in your lap today. Jangly unemployment queue guitars and synthetic dragons glide over the industrial hive, romantic postcards from a gothic Paris that never existed outside this song, captured in a psychic reel that we cherish precisely for that reason. (via 20 Jazz Funk Greats)

MP3: Frank (Just) Frank: "Valerie"

Frank (Just) Frank/Soviet Soviet split 12" is out in October on Italian label Mannequin