Suction Records
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Ear Pollution
Eye
Feedback Monitor
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Toronto Star #1
Toronto Star #2

Ear Pollution, USA.
A quiet little revolution took place in Toronto last February. The city was still coated with the muddy remnants of a paralytic snow storm. The Maple Leafs were playing their last few hockey games at Maple Leaf Gardens before the arena closed up for good. The airwaves were inundated with Q103.7's attempt to give away "your very own 1.3 acre island." Phantom of the Opera, which had been playing damn near forever, was entering its final weeks. Everything was in a state of flux, ending and changing. Amidst all of this, there was a beginning.

It wasn't a true beginning. Not a two guys switch on a CRT in their garage kind of beginning. But rather a public affirmation of intent. Suction Records -- Jason Amm and Gregory de Rocher -- were throwing a release party for their first full length CDs. These two, operating under the names of Solvent and Lowfish respectively, were to demonstrate the obsolescence of the corporate behemoth and to champion the cause of the "bedroom composer" -- the solitary individual who has realized the distance between himself (or herself) and an audience can be dissolved with a decent Internet connection.

Bedroom composer. Knob twiddler. These appellations and others have become the labels du jour of those individuals who make up the Intelligent Dance Music community. Electronically based, this grouping has in its commonality a dissatisfaction with the limitations of their beginnings--be it drum 'n' bass or acid jazz or prog rock or house music. They all discovered a source of rhythm and melody in the analog and digital signals of their instruments and found a new course in the exploration of this "robot music."

"Robot music is a term we used to use to describe the flow of a track," says Jason Amm. "We would say 'this is so robot' and it would be a compliment. It's all about drum machine precision timing. This is why electro music is obsessed with robots and ambient music is obsessed with nature. I also think that the word / idea of robot has taken on a nostalgic connotation. Whereas robots may have at one time seemed futuristic and threatening (they will come alive and take over!), time has proven the robot as a silly concept. In 1999, we can use pictures of robots on the sleeve of a record (the D'arcangelo / Solvent 7" for example) and this is universally recognized as expressing something warm and nostalgic."

"Yeah, it's just like that," Gregory de Rocher adds. "It's about mad tight timing, pure non-human sounds controlled by human hands and a bit of kitsch. Robots sum it up for us."

Track 6 on the Lowfish disc, "Sky Rats." It's a location recording of a frosty winter beach with the waves breaking under the circling cries of the gulls. Draped over this is a tiny little melody that breathes melancholy. And then there's the sound of pistons breathing, tiny valves opening and spitting steam, and the rumbling of a mechanical voicebox, the sad ramblings of an obsolete robot who has wandered to the edge of the world to contemplate his end. Rocher and Amm have a talent at breathing organic life into mechanistic constructs. They bend their machines to their human wills, coax real life out of cold circuits and soldiered bytes. "Pineapple Boy" is the first track on the Solvent disc and captures this same feeling as well. The title suggests something created, some scientific evolution grown in a lab with its oversized head and positronic brain cycles. And yet, the song captures this artificial boy at play as he discovers the world around him. This isn't a sterile laboratory environment -- not any more -- and the sound of the pineapple boy has such warmth and tone that you can almost believe that he is a real boy.

A lot of IDM creation is shrouded in mystery; just how those tones and beats are generated are closely guarded secrets. Aficionados carry on conversations laced with acronyms and model numbers used in referencing a sample, melody, a drum beat. Much like the cola wars, there is a lot of discussion of the finer differences between Autechre and Funkstorung and the mystery of their secret formulas. Amidst this chamber of veiled secrecy, the men of Suction come clean with their tools, listing their instrumentation on their record sleeves as if daring their audiences to duplicate their sound or elucidate the exact measure of their music.

But this isn't like a thousand monkeys in a room banging on keyboards, their scientific observers hoping to draw out one melody from the cacophony resounding within that chamber. Even though the Roland s750, the tr808, a Jupiter 6, a Moog Prodigy, and the Korg ms20 are all mainstays of the electronic music scene, the creative element is definitely human, as much as Amm and Rocher would like to hide behind their robot facades. For one thing, there's the techno-pop influence.

"I heard Donna Summer's 'I Feel Love' on 8-track about 150,000 times as a kid in the back of my mother's Chrysler New Yorker," admits de Rocher, "That, and Blondie's 'Heart of Glass' made me a pure robot boy for life." He also confesses to the influence of Skinny Puppy, OMD, "basically all of Art of Noise," Giorgio Moroder, and Autechre. Amm has similar influences as well, though he adds Human League, Soft Cell, Yaz, Fad Gadget, Depeche Mode, the Mute and Some Bizarre labels, Visage, Aphex Twin, '80s melancholy (think John Hughes films and their soundtracks), and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Human influences for robot boys and their digital environments.

And the genesis was from human necessity as well--the driving desire to create, to find expression in a musical realm. "We knew each other in high school in the suburbs of Toronto," relates Amm. "The connection was inevitable considering we were both obsessed with obscure robot music. During that time we talked about music (Skinny Puppy, New Order, early Mute records, etc.) and went to concerts. Greg was also making electronic music all along and we'd talk a bit about that. Later I finally started making music and we hooked up again. After four years of making tracks for each other, we released our first 12" record in 1997 -- a split between Lowfish (Gregory) and Solvent (myself). It took us a while to realize that we were making exactly what we wanted to hear."

De Rocher adds, "I was tired of hearing 'yeah we'll release that soon' from the labels I was talking to and figured to do it ourselves. The whole idea of starting another label almost stopped me at first but there is no one in Canada doing what we do. It's become as much of a necessity as it is a way to not have to answer to anyone."

"The industry only wants to see individuality when it can be easily defined and marketed," Amm explains. "Unfortunately it seems that a lot of record buyers can't distinguish from what they've been told either. For Suction, this has led to us being pigeonholed into categories that we fit into less and less every day. As much as it is flattering to be compared to Autechre, it just doesn't make sense any more if you listen to Suction vs. Autechre in 1999. We would like to see Suction becoming a sound / esthetic in and of itself, similar to what Skam (originally), A-Musik or Interdimensional Transmissions have done. As artists with our own label, we have the opportunity to try to present our unique vision with every move we make, even if it's not always the most easily-marketable way of going about things."

"To me," says de Rocher, "the whole idea of running our own label is to avoid other people from imposing the realities of the industry on us. We're not about selling mad amounts of 'units' or whatever, we're about releasing the music we make and love. Someone else likes it? Cool. They buy it? Cool.

"There really is an electronic music industry now and to me there really wasn't even one two years ago. The 'scene' is so diverse now that it's unmanageable to anyone less than a DJ / trainspotter / geek. There's so many crap records being released. I'm waiting for a backlash, but it hasn't come. Just when I think I get it, I get confused again.. So I don't think about it. I just try and do tracks and release records that I'm not going to be embarrassed about in 3 years. The whole idea of timeless music haunts me. I listen to a Roedelius record made over 20 years ago and it still floors me. If Suction can release one record that some kids in 20 years will dig out of a bin and play and go: 'Shit? When was this done? When? Wow.' My life'll be complete."

Of the two, de Rocher retains more of the "lo-fi electro weirdness" that Amm says characterizes the first Suction release: a split 12". De Rocher's full-length Lowfish record, Fear Not the Snow and Other Lo-Fiing Objects starts with a rattling, sputtering line of sound, a droning hum that percolates into a melody eventually. It all sounds like so much ancient equipment, run off a gas generator in the basement, summoned back to life for one final synergistic effort, one final push to make music. And you can hear their influence on one another, not enough to qualify a "Suction sound," but enough to hear an echo of the melodic mood of "Pineapple Boy" floating through the squelchy darkness of "Martin C. Martin."

"We want to be an electronic music alternative for people who are burned out on post-Autechre everything," states Amm when asked about the future of Suction. "We want to keep it basic," adds de Rocher. "Unique sounds are fine but unique melodies or catchy accessible structures mean more to us." Suction points towards a fruitful future, a "warm and nostalgic" era where the music hasn't become sterilized with mechanistic intensity, a time where the robots have discovered a kernel of humanity buried deep within their chips.

The vehicle to that future is driven by "My Blue Car" (from the Solvent release). Dopplered rhythms streak by as you travel down this road. A thunderstorm barks through a field of static off to the north and the radar in the dashboard hums and twitches as you blow past old gas stations and burned out hulks of ancient Cadillacs. Tootling out the radio is that robot sound, that organic melody stirred up from the belly of this metallic beast which takes you to the future.

"We're each going to release another album in the next year and do a wack of remixes," hints de Rocher. "We're going to really freak some people. We've got a lot of secret shit on the go." One can't help but wait with some anticipation at those words. The lads at Suction have moved far beyond their Toronto stomping grounds since February. Looking at the hints given to the patient, we see labels in Berlin and Manchester (city.centre.offices), New York (Serotonin Records), and Los Angeles (Vinyl Communications) have all successfully vied for a piece of the Suction magic. Alien8 Recordings (in Montreal) got a head start on the others, capitalizing on their relationship with fellow Canadian David Kristian to get a remix from both Solvent and Lowfish for the remix disc, Woodworking. Their stunning little contributions to this remix project of Kristian's Cricklewood album is a branching out of the robot aesthetic, a viral spread of their humanizing influence into the abstract digitally-realized world. "It seems that while nearly everyone's making electronic music go into more complex / abstract realms, we're getting more melodic, simple, and direct," Amm points out.

Melodic. Simple. Direct. Three words they should imprint on the outer edges of their releases. Out of the inorganic realm of electronic music, Jason Amm and Gregory de Rocher have discovered the souls of their robot selves. They have found a warmth within their mad machine-precision timing; they have found an ambient organic nature growing beneath their pistons and patch cables and power boxes. Suction has given real life to the rigid sterility of electronic music.

Mark Teppo

Eye, Canada. October 2002.
Our Friends' Electro

With all the hype, talk, ink and more hype about this electroclash business, where are all the records? Sure, you can hit the big stores and find the specially marked section containing the likes of Fischerspooner, Felix da Housecat, Miss Kittin, perhaps even Peaches and Chicks on Speed. But really, if the recent buzz surrounding all things electro is to be believed, shouldn't there be oodles of artists pouring out of the bins?

Perhaps when the star-driven, fashionable hard sell dulls, other voices and sounds will seep through. In the meantime, whether you dig it or not, there's no doubt that the so-called electroclash explosion has the potential to bring new audiences to electronic music. If carefully adopted blasé attitudes can give way to curiosity and actual appreciation, there's a world of quality electro and techno, both old and new, to be discovered. All we in Toronto have to do, for example, is look in our own backyard.

Jason Amm and Gregory De Rocher have been releasing what they call "purist synthesizer pop" on their Suction label since 1997. As artists Solvent and Lowfish they have carefully crafted influences ranging from Giorgio Moroder and Depeche Mode to Skinny Puppy and Aphex Twin into their own, distinct blend of robot music. Though also contributing to international labels like Germany's Morr Music, Michigan's Ghostly and Adult.'s infamous Ersatz Audio, the two Scarborough lads are generally quiet on the home front. Little wonder, really, when their electronic creations have consistently garnered comparisons to early Ersatz, the Interdimensional Transmission label and Dutch electro in general -- all sounds they'd initially been unaware of.

"It was like, 'This is electro?'" recalls Jason Solvent. "That was like finding new-wave records that I didn't know existed. It sounded like instrumental versions of Fad Gadget and Depeche Mode -- exactly what I'm into. As soon as I realized that this was a big part of what electro had developed into, I started learning about it and realized that there was definitely a kinship with what we were doing."

Though they record separately, both Solvent and Lowfish wear their passion for '80s sounds openly. They travel broad terrain, from pop to ambient, dark to happy happy, joy joy. Call it electro if you must, just don't use the dreaded term.

"We're not trying to be snobby about electroclash," says Gregory Lowfish. "If there's any effort to distance ourselves, it would be to step away from shit like W.I.T. At the same time, we're not really part of it, so we especially don't want to be sucked into that vortex that's gonna backlash soon and smack everybody in the face."

Solvent steps in: "One of the things that people push is that 'It's like punk rock part two. We don't care about what we're doing, we just press play on this little groove box. It's just so we can express ourselves.' That's fine, but the fact is that's getting thrown in with what we're doing -- even more so with people like Adult., who really know how to program their synthesizers. For us, it's not a throwaway process; I can spend up to three weeks or a month making a song, and I don't really like to have someone come in and carelessly throw something together and have it represent what's happening now with this kind of music. That's what's going to sink stuff down."

"We're striving to be timeless," Lowfish adds. "I was doing this five years ago and I want to be doing it in another five. I don't want the music to be crinkled up and thrown away."

There's little to fear there if the boys continue turning out their meticulously structured, subtle, synth gems. Besides, all this fuss about electroclash has been good for them on the press front, with praises coming from sources as diverse as Muzik, Jockey Slut, SPIN and GQ magazines. Chalk one up for the electroclass kids.

And now they're bringing it home, performing live in Toronto for the first time in three years. Maybe now, courtesy of electro exposure, people will even dance.

"We played at Mutek [in Montreal] and then recently in Detroit and Chicago, and people were just dancing like crazy," says a pleased Solvent. "When we used to play and it was that sitting around, chin-scratching thing, I thought that that was just the way it was. But once you have people dancing to your stuff, it's like, 'OK, now I know why I never really liked playing live before.' I love that people have opened up."

Feedback Monitor, Canada.
Gregory DeRocher and Jason Amm - a.k.a. Lowfish and Solvent respectively - are two 26 year old Torontonians who have spent the last couple of years exposing the worldwide experimental techno underground to their self-described "robot music from Canada" via their own Suction label.

As with most of their peers, DeRocher and Amm freely admit to being influenced by Aphex Twin, Autechre and other knob-twiddlers who defined intelligent techno in the early 90s. But equally important in the development of what eventually became the Suction sound was the electronic music of the previous decade.

"We're both pretty guilty of being industrial people," admits DeRocher, "and we came to that by way of New Wave beginnings." He specifically cites Skinny Puppy as an old favourite, while Amm owns up to having a complete set of Soft Cell 12"s and says that they decided to release a track by Italian duo D'Arcangelo because "it sounded to me like an outtake from Dignity Of Labour, the first Human League EP, and that's in my top five all-time favourite records."

When performing live, they generally work as a team, with sets including both Solvent and Lowfish tracks as well as collaborative material that they credit to Teafoil Teakettle. But as Amm explains, these gigs are rare because "our music is about analog synths and distortion pedals and an 808, but bringing all that gear out to a dodgy warehouse is just too unstable."

So why not take the simpler route and use a leaner computer set-up to reproduce the sounds? Not an option for these guys. "I think those live acts that just bring out a laptop and sit bopping in front of it are useless to look at," says Amm. And DeRocher pipes in to note that "if you're gonna bring a laptop, you might as well just bring a CD - and if you're gonna bring a CD, you might as well just stay home.

Greg Clow

Grooves, USA.
Gregory DeRocher and Jason Amm-a.k.a. Lowfish and Solvent, respectively-are two 26-year-old Torontonians who have spent the last couple of years releasing their self-described "robot music from Canada" via their own Suction label. Drawing equal influence from knob-twiddlers like Aphex Twin and Autechre, who defined intelligent techno in the early '90s, and the synthpop and industrial music of the previous decade, the "Suction sound" is a unique combination of crunchy, dirty beats and sweet melodies that has garnered the duo praise and attention from all over the world. This interview was conducted in early December, 1998 as Jason and Greg prepared for the early '99 release of the Lowfish full-length CD, Fear Not the Snow and Other Lo-fiing Objects, a Solvent / D'Archangelo split 7" single, and a Solvent / Lowfish split LP co-released with New York's Seritonin label.

Grooves: So, what's been up?

De Rocher: We've been busy. We've been in the studio making noise, answering email.

Amm: We had plans to release these things a while ago, but it's the first time we've done a batch of releases at once, so it's taken us longer. But I think it's gonna be worthwhile putting out a batch all at once. We just wanted to wait until we had it all ready to go rather than releasing them one at a time.

De Rocher: Canada is a nightmarish place to get vinyl pressed these days, so you have to go outside the country, and the logistics of that are a bit of a pain in the butt.

Amm: We did our record before this in the States, but it was out of the question this time. So we had to totally rethink what we wanted to do for pressing the record.

De Rocher: And driving back and forth to Detroit, explaining to the customs guys that you went to a garage sale and bought 1000 copies of the same record, wasn't really working out too well [laughs].

Grooves: So how did you get into this whole music thing in the first place?

De Rocher: Well, Jason and I have some similar tastes, and some dissimilar tastes. We're both pretty guilty of being dirty industrial people-maybe myself more so than Jason-and we came to that by way of New Wave beginnings. That's where Jason and I see eye to eye. We have divergent paths since then. I come from a Skinny Puppy / Front 242 kind of background, while Jason is more of an authority on all things New Wave.

Amm: Yep. And this guy, I have to say, has been doing tracks since he's been about 5 [laughs]. I used to go over to his house in high school, and he's had a room full of gear as long as I can remember. I'd be listening to Skinny Puppy, and he'd be the guy making Skinny Puppy at home. So it's been going on for a long time.

De Rocher: Yeah, it's fairly pathetic.

Amm: All along, I had a little bit of interest in it, and then I caught up with him in leaps and bounds in the early '90s.

De Rocher: We always had a common interest in making noise and making tracks, but, at the same time, we always had the quality issue in our head, and the stuff I was making back then was just heinous. I have tapes and tapes and tapes of all this stuff, and it's a total embarrassment. I have about 10 or 20 DAT tapes full of stuff from a period for about a year where I actually thought I was Tangerine Dream.

Amm: But at least he's been doing it for years. I think you can tell the difference between people that have been making electronic music for a long time and people that just heard Aphex Twin 2 years ago and started making music the next week.

De Rocher: Anyway, from there we moved on to thinking about actually doing something with some the tracks we recorded. I released an album about 3 or 4 years ago under the name Pest that I shopped around to a bunch of labels, and I got some good feedback. That sort of spawned the idea of starting our own label, mainly out of selfishness, I guess, since we didn't want to be dictated to based on someone else's timeframe.

Amm: And we had a lot of tracks. We had about 4 years of insane, obsessive recording between us and had hours and hours of tracks.

De Rocher: You can farm out material to a whole bunch of different labels, but if you have a set of tracks that sort of have the same vibe, it makes sense to release them on a label that has the same spirit as what's embodied in the tracks. So that's what we did and are doing. Not to say that we won't release things on other labels, but the stuff that's on Suction tends to be the stuff where Jason and I look at each other and go, "Yeah, that's a Suction track."

Amm: It takes about 1 second to make that decision.

De Rocher: And when we get demo tapes, we know right away whether it's, "Yeah, this is good, but it's not Suction," or "Yeah, this is Suction." Like the D'Archangelo track that we're releasing-you hear that and it's obviously a Suction track, no doubt about it.

Grooves: You're working in partnership with Seritonin Records in NYC for a release. What's the story behind that?

De Rocher: Suction 003.4 is a vinyl release compiling what we think are the best tracks from the Solvent CD and the forthcoming Lowfish full-length-three tracks from each-plus two exclusive tracks. Recently, we've shifted our focus to releasing CDs for economic reasons, but lot of people still want our stuff on vinyl, so we struck up a partnership with Seritonin, who are an electro label that have about 12 releases. They're friends of ours, and they have access to a vinyl market that we don't have full access to. So they're pressing the record for us and are doing all the distribution and promo for it. So far, so good.

Grooves: The Solvent / D'Archangelo split single is pretty New Wave, especially the D'Archangelo track.

De Rocher: We fully and freely admit to an element of cheese in some of the stuff we like. Or a lot of it. We're not dissing it; that's the point.

Amm: When I first heard that track, it sounded to me like an outtake from Dignity Of Labour, the first Human League EP, and that's in my top five all-time favorite records. I actually spoke to them about it, and they're not even into that stuff. It wasn't even a consideration for them, so it's just a fluke.

De Rocher: And I think it's pretty divergent from the new stuff they'll be releasing on Rephlex. Not that it's throwaway stuff, but I don't think their heads are really where that last track is right now.

Grooves: It sounds a little like the electro-tinged side of the Rephlex EP they put out a couple of years ago.

De Rocher: The "We listened to Blue Monday 20 times and did a record" stuff? That's a great release.

Amm: That's one of my all-time favorites, too.

De Rocher: That's pretty much why we contacted them. We shortlisted people to get in touch with...

Amm: And they were number one.

Grooves: That sort of leads into the other thing I really wanted to talk about, and that's the Internet and how it's played a role in the label and the contacts you've made.

De Rocher: We're net geeks, and we fully admit to being that. If someone is gonna take the time to email Jason or myself, we have no problem writing back. Our audience base is all over the place. There's not enough IDM fans in Canada, so the Net has been a godsend for us. We do a little email newsletter thing with a whack of people receiving it, and the response seems to be good. A lot of labels seem to keep their head down and work on street credibility, by saying nothing, and that's cool, that's one way to do it. But it's really worked for us to be talking to people.

Amm: It's the way to get your name out there, but it has to be said also that it can only take you so far. Once you get that group of people that are out there looking at the same sites and the same newsletters, that's fine, but you're not going to be making a living off of them. It's a good way to start, but then you have to take a step beyond that.

Grooves: It's very easy when you're on the IDM mailing list to think of it as a really big thing, but it's not.

De Rocher: Yup, it's very true, and Jason and I have endless conversations about this, saying things like "Where are these people? Who's buying our records?" Beyond the obvious answer of Germany...

Grooves: You do well in Germany?

De Rocher: Yeah, I'd have to say it's our main focal point, just because of the nature of what we do. I can see a bunch of people in Germany at a party wigging out to the stuff that we do. But the funny thing is people think that Toronto is a place where there's a scene going on. Like that one weekend where we had Panasonic and the Chain Reaction crew both in town, and I was telling people overseas, and they were like "Wow, what's going on there?!?" And I said, "Well... nothing, it's just a fluke that they're both here at the same time." We've been asked several times if Suction is coming out of the "scene" in Toronto, and we'd like to say that it's the case, but I don't think so.

Grooves: Does the Lowfish album title -- Fear Not the Snow and Other Lo-fiing Objects -- refer to anything?

De Rocher: Jason and I used to pass tapes back and forth, and we used to always put warnings on them like "last track is louder" or whatever. Fear Not The Snow is sort of saying don't dis the tracks because of the hiss and the noise in the background.

Amm: I did not know that.

De Rocher: See, it didn't even work.

Grooves: Would you say that you have a lo-fi aesthetic to what you do?

De Rocher: Yeah, the Lowfish stuff is pretty rooted in improvisation. I don't actually sit down and plan out the arrangement of tracks very much. I build up basic ideas and just go with them. I'm a half-decent engineer, but I like to de-engineer stuff to make it a little more grainy and noisy. I leave all the clean, digital stuff to Jason.

Amm: Hey, don't call it clean! In comparison, maybe...

De Rocher: OK, in comparison. And this is the stuff that's listenable. I have some stuff that I think is cool, but I think Panasonic would be the only other people that would think it's cool.

Grooves: What do you think of the group you've found yourselves lumped into, the North American...

De Rocher: Cartel?

Grooves: Well, the other people on the Altered States compilation, Schematic, Plug Research, Carpet Bomb... Do you think it's fair to be included in that group?

Amm: We have certain things in common with some of them, but a lot of them, we don't have much in common with at all. I think what you were saying before about the lo-fi aesthetic-it's not so much lo-fi, but it's a graininess that a lot of people don't get. People say we sound like Schematic, but I don't think we sound very much like Schematic at all. We specifically go for a certain type of production style with lots of analog sounds and noise and hiss. We make stuff sound muddy and de-engineer things. If we got a demo, and it was really clean and nice, we'd put it aside. It's not right for us.

De Rocher: In terms of being lumped in with all those other labels, I think that we all follow the same DIY aesthetic in that we're all trying to get our stuff heard. But to say that we sound anything like, say, Carpet Bomb - they're friends of ours, but it's laughable to say that anything on Suction sounds like anything on Carpet Bomb. It's good company, don't get me wrong.

Grooves: But the main fanbase for all of these labels tends to crossover.

Amm: I think it would be stupid to try and say that we have nothing in common. As far as a lot of these labels go, I wouldn't say Carpet Bomb, but Schematic, Skam, Chocolate Industries, us-we all have the influence of Aphex Twin and Autechre. To try to deny that would just be stupid.

De Rocher: We can't put too fine a point on that, either, because we all do come from similar backgrounds. We all listened to the same records. Sure, they come from a more hip-hop background, or a more this, or a more that background...

Amm: But we were all going crazy for Aphex Twin in 1991.

De Rocher: It's totally true. But to say that we're in the same genre, I don't know if that's true. In Britain and in Germany, we're marketed as an electro label. If you ask Adam Miller of Le Car if Suction is an electro label, he'd go "I don't think so," but to the average German robot, Suction is an electro label. A big selling point of our stuff in Germany that I see in reviews of our records is that we sound very British [laughs]. I have absolutely no idea what that means, but it's with exclamation marks, so it has to be good.

Grooves: Going off an a totally different tangent, I want to talk abut playing live, 'cause I know you don't like it very much.

De Rocher: Actually, that's Jason. I don't mind doing stuff live; it's just the logistics. Playing live falls into three categories these days: somebody showing up with a whack of records and playing; somebody showing up with a few distortion pedals and a whack of records and playing; and then somebody like Jason and I, who are stupid enough to bring our whole studio out to a dodgy warehouse to play live. Yeah, we're stupid enough to bring all the gear out, so the logistics of doing that lead themselves to some headaches.

Amm: I just think those live acts that bring out a laptop and sit bopping in front of it are useless to look at. And our music doesn't work out of a laptop. Our music is about analog synths and distortion pedals and an 808, so that's the only way I would want to play live, but it's just been way too dodgy doing it so far. Bringing all that gear out is just too unstable.

Grooves: You've only done two live shows so far?

De Rocher: Yeah, and I played with Dave Kristian once. We'd be happy to do it more...

Amm: No. No we wouldn't [laughs].

De Rocher: Y'see, this is one of the problems we have. I understand Jason's problem with it-it can lead to a lot of headaches-but it's worth it. You don't get to see stuff [like] what we do live all the time. Whenever I get bummed out about the idea of playing live, I remember a show a few years ago that had Orbital, Vapourspace, and Aphex Twin, and I was talking to Richard James in the bathroom about the gear he used and stuff. Maybe people weren't as into it back then, but all three of those acts that played were working gear live. Even if you had no clue what was going on, you knew that Richard James was up there doing something. That's what I'm interested in bringing back.

Amm: And I was lucky enough to see Aphex Twin on a couch with a laptop. That was a life-changing moment [laughs]. It was crap to see that. I hated that, and I hated the way that his music sounded. It sounded like it was coming out of a computer, and that's against my aesthetic. It's the easy way to go, and I can see his point-maybe he doesn't care anymore. But to me, that route's not worth it. DeRocher: If you're gonna bring a laptop, you might as well just bring a CD. And if you're gonna bring a CD, you might as well just not go.

Greg Clow

pHinnWeb, Finland. September 2003
Suction Records from Toronto, Canada, is one of pHinnWeb's personal favourite labels at the moment; like Detroit's Ersatz Audio, releasing a continuously unerring line of combination of finely-honed synthpop, electro and IDM, and taking the late 1970s' and early 1980s' most beloved analogue electronic sounds to the new millennium's post-techno generation.

To describe their idiosyncratic sound, on their Website they simply publish a list of keywords mentioned in their reviews over the years, which goes like this: "'70s, 808, '80s, analog, Adult., Aphex Twin, Autechre, basslines, Boards of Canada, Bochum Welt, childlike, Depeche Mode, distortion, drum machines, electro, electropop, Ersatz Audio, Gary Numan, Giorgio Moroder, Human League, IDM, I-f, intricate, melodic, modern, Moog, Morr Music, Mute Records, New Order, nostalgic, OMD, Kraftwerk, Rephlex, Roland, Soft Cell, Skinny Puppy, synthesizers, synthpop, Tangerine Dream, µ-ziq, Vince Clarke, vintage, vocoder, Warp Records, Yazoo".

So, if these ring any bells, then you know Suction Records is just a label for you. pHinnWeb talked with Jason Amm (a.k.a. Solvent) and Gregory de Rocher (a.k.a. Lowfish) who jointly run Suction Records. It's the attack of the Snow Robots...

So what's now happening in the life of Suction Records, any news?

Jason Solvent [JS]: We've been working hard for several months to relaunch the label. I gave up the day job earlier this year as an experiment, to devote myself to the label for a while. We have a very active release schedule planned starting in October 2003. If anybody wants a taste of what's coming out on Suction Records in the near future, we pressed up a limited promotional CD called Snow Robots Volume 3, which is available to buy exclusively on our website: http://www.suctionrecords.com.

Gregory Lowfish [GL]: Our focal point of late has been my new album, 1000 Corrections Per Second. It comes out on October 14, so we've been working hard to promote it and do lots of live shows. With this release we want to make sure that for once everyone that wants a copy can actually get it! So we've also been working hard on sorting distribution all over the place. I'm hoping the release isn't cursed as the first show I was to do to promote it was in New York the night of the big black-out. It was very screwed-up and surreal.

How did Suction Records get started?

JS: We released a split Lowfish/Solvent 12" in 1997. We pressed 300 and we probably gave away half of it. It was really weird, dark and uncompromising. We had some labels that were interested in releasing us as artists, but we wanted to release this crazy 12" and we didn't think anybody else would get it. We had no big plans with the label at the time.

GL: From the get-go we were pretty obstinate about wanting to do it all ourselves. I sent some demos out in 1995 to some of the "Who's Who" of electronic music labels at the time (no, I'm not telling who) and got a good response, but I quickly got a vibe of how long it would take for stuff to come out and felt weird giving over my stuff for someone else to control/market/screw-up. I'd rather do it myself, including the screwing up.

How would you describe your style of music?

JS: We have our own sound. I know every label is supposed to say that, but I really believe that we are one of the rare labels with such a distinct and focused musical vision. We mainly release highly stylized, intricate, melodic analogue synthesizer pop. We've also been known to release the odd distorted, dark EBM-ish track as well. We call the Suction Records sound Robot Music. Sometimes when people review our stuff they say things like, "It's like Aphex Twin providing the beats for Depeche Mode circa '81". I think a comment like that is totally relevant. I know for me, I'm always striving to create synthpop like my early-80s heroes Vince Clarke, Daniel Milller, the Human League, etc., but in the end I've been so irreversibly affected by post-techno stuff in the '90s like Aphex Twin, that my music is always a strange hybrid of both.

GL: My newer stuff is firmly rooted in the electro-world, but I don't really do "real" electro as I've no history in that arena, and at the end of the day I'm an industrial/wave guy at heart obsessed with drum machine-accurate beats and OMD-like lead lines. But I do listen to a lot of the IDM heroes and that obviously has soaked in.

Tell me a bit about your roster of artists. And are there any new signings on Suction?

JS: I'm Solvent and Gregory is Lowfish, and we've always been the two main artists on the label. But we're making a real effort to expand our roster and open up our sound a bit. We'll be releasing a second full-length release by Skanfrom from Germany in 2004. He definitely shares Suction Records' musical and melodic sensibility. We share similar musical backgrounds, coming from new wave and EBM influences and then being totally inspired by post-techno and electro stuff in the '90s. He is also really passionate about raw, obscure minimal electronic pop stuff from the early '80s; stuff that almost nobody's heard of like Vice Versa, Absolute Body Control, Ceramic Hello, Transparent Illusion, and this is the part of his sound that makes him different from Solvent and Lowfish. His music has an uncompromisingly primitive approach. That's what we're looking for in our artists: a sound that is complimentary yet individual.

On that note, we have a new signing from NYC called The Mitgang Audio, who's debut full-length, The View from Your New Home, is coming out on Suction Records in November 2003. It's totally mind-blowing pop that's pretty far removed from anything we've released before. It's like a combination of glossy '80s synth pop stuff like Duran Duran or even Pet Shop Boys, mixed with an authentic Italo disco influence. If I were to read that description, I'd be pretty turned off, to be honest, but it'll all make sense when you hear it -- it's fantastic!

Finally, we'll be releasing full-length albums in 2004 from two new side-projects: Black Turtleneck is a side project of mine, with a vocalist & collaborator from Toronto, named Thomas Sinclair -- it's more like classic vocal synth pop stuff inspired by stuff like early Soft Cell, Human League, etc., but of course, also with a modern, Suction/Solvent touch. The other side project is the Solvent/Lowfish collaboration, Tinfoil Teakettle, which sometime sounds exactly like you would expect, but often sounds like nothing we've done before: the Skinny Puppy influence really comes through when we collaborate.

Are there any role models or influential artists for you?

JS: As a label, we really look at Ersatz Audio as a role model, because we've watched them grow to the level of success they have now, totally on their own terms and with their own unique musical vision. Le Car, along with I-f, were the first artists that made me realise that my true passion is in my new wave roots, and together with them we incorporated these elements into our music in the late 90s, when it was still totally uncool and unheard of. But they did it first, and in a totally different way from us, so it's fantastic and inspirational to see their success.

GL: I really look to Factory Records for inspiration, in terms of the quality of music AND art they had going for such an extended period of time. The artwork I do for all the Suction stuff is pretty intentionally lo-fi and sometimes unpolished/raw in a way that I've totally stolen from Factory (not literally, their stuff was very polished at times -- I'm just so inspired by it). To me it's totally timeless -- which is something at Suction we are totally obsessed with.

And any current acts which would particularly impress you, or you feel are on the same wavelength with you?

JS: On the same wavelength, and not working with Suction Records already? Not really! But I'm very impressed in particular with Perspects.

GL: I listen to a lot of music, but the artists on Suction are doing almost exactly what I think is missing when I listen to other stuff. I have a very narrow vision about what I want to hear!

What kind of equipment you create your own music with? And your favourite musical instruments?

JS: Lots of analog synths and drum machines exclusively for my sounds, then recorded, edited and manipulated in the computer. For sound sources I'm a total analogue purist. My favourite synths at the moment are my Roland System-100 (models 101 & 102) and my MiniKorg 700s.

GL: Like so many people that have been doing it for along time I've owned a foolish amount of gear over the years. But in the last three years I've settled on a fairly stripped down set-up (compared to Jason/Solvent for sure) of gear that I know everything about and can get most of the sounds I need. It's no secret that I use a lot of 808, Jupiter-6, Arp Odyssey and analogue delays. Everything goes into the computer now. I've recently started using software samplers -- as the timing for drums is impressive enough for me to get over being a snob about NOT using software instruments.

What about your live performances, and any interesting anecdotes about them? What have been the best and worst places to play, for example?

GL: Well, like I said, I was supposed to play New York the night of the black-out a few weeks ago. I flew down, checked into my hotel and was just about to leave for soundcheck and FIZZ -- the whole city went out. To see New York without power, without the ability for people to shop, to force people to stop and go "woah, what the hell is going on", was priceless. The police told me not to even bother trying to go down to where the club was so, I was like, "OK", and so Maik, who works for the label with us, just started drinking and that was the end of it. Solvent Vs Lowfish also recently played some dirty outdoor festival where we played in the forest by generator, which kept running out of gas. There were about 100 people there, many of them IN THE TREES, but they were totally into it. I lost about one litre of blood to the mosquitos, but it was worth it...

How is it to make your living with an independent record label these days? Is it possible at all when the music market seems to be concentrating more and more in the hands of big multinationals?

JS: It is difficult and probably impossible for all but a few. Check back with me in about 6 months and I will let you know how my little full-time-label experiment worked!

GL: Well, not to sound cliché, but it really is a labour of love. You have to want to get this music out so bad you are willing to have some bad selling releases or be ripped off or meet some evil people, etc. But you have to make enough money to keep going which we've obviously done for the last 6+ years. Every cent goes back into the label to release more stuff/promote/travel, etc. You can't make any real living -- no one is driving a Mercedes. You have to sacrifice and/or have something else going on.

Do you think it's hard to create original synthpop type of music these days without reverting to do pastiches of what e.g. Kraftwerk, Human League, John Foxx, Visage and so on did during their heyday in the late 70s and early 80s? As a fan of that sound whose interest to electronic music started with those artists I've often been wondering this: how to update that sound, or is it necessary at all to update it?

JS: For me personally, it's impossible not to update it, I always make something that sounds like a cross between new and old. I never understand it when people review a Fisherspooner or an Adult. record and say that it sounds like it could have been recorded in 1981. It really doesn't! Everyone who's making music inspired by those early-80s artists has also been affected by post-techno stuff too.

Anyway, I think the only real goal should be to make great music, whether it sounds totally new and innovative, or like an outtake from a Yazoo record. If somebody could make a track that sounded exactly like a great outtake from a Yazoo record, I would buy it. But to be honest, I still think the quality on some of the early-80s synthpop records is totally unmatched by anything that's been released since. That remains something for me to aspire to.

GL: I seriously don't try to update anything or have anything in mind when I make tracks. I just do what I do and what comes out maybe shows my influences sometimes. If something is totally derivative or I go "wait, I've totally heard that before", then I don't release it.

How's the music scene in Toronto (and Canada) at the moment? For example, any good clubs there?

GL: Toronto is a wicked place to live and provides us with nearly everything we need to do what we want to do. But it's no hotbed of forward-thinking electro, and the clubs are full of mainstream garbage and club techno, etc., like any other city. There are some people doing interesting things, who find outlets on labels around the world. Toronto is a good place to be connected to the world, as it's a major international city and many cool things/people come through -- but nothing is going on that's cool enough to distract us from what we want to do. The funding for the arts where we live is laughable compared to European standards.

What is your own take on "electroclash" craze?

JS: A lot of artists and labels who were doing the synthpop thing before all this electroclash really hate electroclash. At first I was really excited about it, because I think that this kind of music deserves to be mainstream, and the scene could really benefit from having some major backing behind it.

You know, all of the best 80s synth-pop records were recorded and produced at top of the line studios with amazing producers, engineers, etc. This is one of the main reasons, I think, that they still sound so much better than the stuff of today. Listen to the synthesizer programming and production on something even as mainstream as Duran's Rio album -- it is totally out of this world and virtually unattainable in the home studio. Some of those sounds are like high-art to me.

But with electroclash, this is not the focus. The direction quickly degraded into this trash angle, where nobody distinguishes between what was crap about the 80s, and what was great about the 80s. In fact, the crap stuff seems to be the focus now: dumb lyrics, cheap blatant synth sounds, bad clothes, bad jokes... I'm really afraid of how badly it has damaged things for those of us who take this form of music very seriously and understand and respect its true artistic value.

GL: Fashion fades, I'm not worried.

Your own Top Ten for the moment/all-time?

JS:
 
All-time:
1. Yazoo "Upstairs at Eric's"
2. Depeche Mode "Speak and Spell"
3. Soft Cell "Science Fiction Stories"
4. Human League "The Dignity of Labour"
5. Fad Gadget "The Singles"
6. Japan "Tin Drum"
7. New Order "Power, Corruption and Lies"
8. Gary Numan "The Pleasure Principle"
9. Skinny Puppy "Back & Forth Series 1 & 2"
10. Aphex Twin "I Care Because You Do"
 
From this decade (not in order):
- The Future / The Human League "The Golden Hour of the Future"
- Skanfrom "Soothing Sounds for Robots"
- Charles Manier "Bang Bang Lover"
- Perspects "The Third and Final Report"
- V/A "Disco Nouveau"
- Japanese Telecom "Virtual Geisha"
- Adult. "Resuscitation"
- Isan "Clockwork Manegerie"
- GD Luxxe "21st Door"
 
GL:
 
All time top-11
1. Polygon Window (album by Polygon Window)
2. Orchestral Maneuvres in the Dark (original album)
3. The Hurting (album) - Tears for Fears
4. I feel love (track) by Giorgio Moroder
5. Incunabula (album) by Autechre
6. Many things by Front 242
7. Warlock (track) by Skinny Puppy
8. Everything's Gone Green (track) by New Order
9. Your Silent Face (track) by New Order
10. Speak and Spell (album) by Depeche Mode
11. The Chauffeur (track) by Duran Duran

Your own future plans now?

JS: Besides all of the Suction Records releases we have planned, there is a 5-track 12" coming out in October by "Solvent vs Lowfish" on the Dutch label Vynalogica. It's a label run by Rude 66 and The Centre for Electronic Music in Amsterdam. We spent two days in the studio in Amsterdam making crazy sounds and loops with their collection of vintage modular synths like the Arp 2500 and 2600, EMS VCS3, etc. There is also a pair of Solvent remix 12"s coming out on Ghostly International in November, called "Radio Ga Ga" parts 1 & 2. It's a new, extended version of "My Radio" from 'Disco Nouveau', plus some other new tracks, and a bunch of remixes: Lowfish, The Mitgang Audio, Legowelt, Isan, Schneider TM and Perspects.

GL: Lots of playing live in NA and in Europe. Some remixes and starting work on the Tinfoil Teakettle album with Solvent.

Your favourite question they never ask in interviews?

JS: Not so much an interview question, but a FAQ that I'd love to put to rest:

Q: I bought a computer last month and now I make IDM music. Can I send you a demo?

A: Pretty pretty please, don't!

Erkki Rautio

Toronto Star, Canada. January 1, 2000.
Before and After: Pop Music - Bucking Against The Blandness

You'll never get far in the Canadian music business by being different.

Or so conventional wisdom would seem to have it. In a field not renowned for its open embrace of challenge and invention, our domestic, mainstream music industry is -- despite the success stories it so often trumpets -- notable mainly for its adherence to a policy of stultifying, inoffensive blandness.

There's no lack of quality on bar and concert-hall staged and in DJ booths across the country. It's just that the best and brightest seem doomed to cross the icebound Trans-Canada a few times, release a couple of fine records no one ever hears, and retire in frustration to the mourning of a small quiet cult and the complete indifference of everyone else.

Though there are the rare exceptions, such as Carole Pope, co founder of the celebrated and commercially successful Toronto outfit Rough Trade, and emergent electronic auteur Jason Amm, who -- under the pseudonym Solvent and as one of the folks behind the local indie label Suction Records -- is tuning the world's ears into a little tuneful, techno flava.

Pope's status as a rock-chick pioneer is long cemented and, if anything, growing. This past year witnessed the debut of Shaking The Foundations, a play inspired by her words and the music she and Rough Trade co-conspirator Kevan Staples cooked up during their 12 years together.

Pope's ascent is particularly admirable because she emerged during the mid-'70s, long before the world-diminating days of Alanis, Shania and Céline, when there were few Canadian female role models -- beyond, perhaps, '60s folk queen Joni Mitchell -- and not many more contemporaries.

"There was only me and Anne Murray, I think," she says, from her home in Los Angeles.

More impressive still is that Pope made her mark by strutting about in bondage gear and openly toying with the subject of sexual ambiguity, years before leather and androgyny became commonplace on Much Music.

Naturally, Rough Trade was told its r'n'b-rooted raunch would never sell. By the time the group disbanded in 1986, though, it had amassed four gold and two platinum records.

"Once we started, we quickly became a cult band," recalls Pope. "We'd play at Grossman's, and we'd have lineups down the street to see us. But then we'd try to get an agent and they'd say, 'Oh, you can't do your own material.'

"People were just begging for something else. The climate was so rotten, and people were sick of radio."

It's a climate with which Amm can no doubt identify.

Amm spent his high-school years hunting down hard-to-find European "electronica" records and tentatively composing his own tracks on a synthesizer in his bedroom. He later met Gregory De Rocher, a fellow student (now recording as Lowfish), and the two began working on music together.

About three years ago, "with no concept of the business or what it mean," they decided to found Suction Records and release 300 copies of a Solvent / Lowfish seven-inch single.

Since then, the pair have released numerous singles featuring their own work and that of other electronic artists, not to mention a handful of full-length albums (Lowfish has one CD to his credit, Solvent, two -- including the excellent new Solvently We Listen). Orders, and occasionally demos, filter in from around the globe, drawn in by positive press and the Suction Web site (www.suctionrecords.com).

Amm and De Rocher are emblematic of a growing sentiment amongst Canadian artists who've realized that -- through such avenues as the Internet -- they can get their work out to the world at large without the support of the domestic recording industry.

"I don't see us as being on the ground floor in Toronto. I see us as being on the ground floor of the world, basically," says Amm.

"How many records potentially can some weird indie-rock band sell in Toronto? Not too many. You have to look at the big picture."

Ben Rayner

Real Detroit, USA. September, 2003.
Suck On This
It seems like a paradox: borrowing from the past to create innovative futuristic music. Not retro, not revisionist, but actual fresh, quality music with visible roots and influences - and to actually add something to it, to update it and retool it for today's post-techno generation.

Within the loose subgenre of electro, this is exactly what the elite do. Electro today is more an amalgam of different styles and approaches, from Miami bass to new wave to Italian disco to industrial, with the continuity being the use of analog synthesizers or vintage drum machines. Most people who make music are responding to what they adored most when they went through puberty, and this is the music of people who fell in love with synthesized tones - perhaps mesmerized by them - and have turned that obsession into an exact art form.

The worst and tackiest side of this music has been burned in a flash fire by the electroclash crowd. But where do the people go who are looking for quality and substance in their music? Generations after generations cite the music of Robert Johnson or Muddy Waters as inspiration for them wanting to pick up the guitar and start a band. I believe the era of synth music - that begins at the dawn of punk and ends at the twilight of new wave - has had the same effect on many people and is just as raw and pure. "You want to make something real, you want to make a Yaz record," says James Murphy of The DFA as LCD Soundsytem in their anthem "Losing My Edge."

Suction Records is a label based in Toronto, Canada, that's dedicated to the alluring sounds of pure synthesis. While they were originally perceived as IDM, they've grown to be known as perhaps the world's top outlet for pure synth-pop with a distinct electro flare. Different from many electro artists, Suction aren't students of dance music, but of electronic music, generating tunes that last well beyond the dance floor. "We strive to release timeless, evocative, melodic music," says Suction cofounder Jason Amm, who does exactly that when he records as Solvent. "We want to be a quality, consistent label with a focused sound and aesthetic, much like the labels that inspire us - the early days of Mute, the early days of Rephlex, Ersatz Audio, etc."

Quality, integrity and purity are their driving forces, so it's no surprise that they've found a welcome home in Detroit. Both Solvent and Lowfish have pieces on Ersatz Audio, and both made important contributions to Ghostly's Disco Nouveau. In fact, Solvent's contribution is about to see a double remix 12" on Ghostly featuring mixes from Solvent's favorite Detroit synthesist, Perspects, alongside Lowfish, Legowelt and Schneider TM.

Gregory de Rocher, the equally prolific other founder of Suction, records as Lowfish, and has a new album due out as you read this. Titled 1000 Correction Per Second, this is Lowfish's third LP and his strongest to date. Powerful dark electro meets the beauty and craft of synth-pop strings and seductive, moody melodies - yet the result is uniquely modern, kind of like if Power, Corruption & Lies-era New Order made an electro album after hearing some early Autechre. A fine, coldly emotional work for our post- techno generation.

While both Lowfish and Solvent shine as solo artists in the studio, it's when they perform together onstage that their music is most vital. They first performed as Solvent vs. Lowfish the summer of 2002 for Erstaz Audio's Misery Loves Company tour to an enthusiastic packed crowd. When they perform together, they become an incredibly classy and beautiful vocoder, adding voice to their usually instrumental work. They recently came through Windsor for their Snow Robots 3 tour, once again playing to a who's-who crowd. The fluidity had greatly improved and the two counterbalanced each other perfectly. Quite exciting - a force to watch for. Look for their collaboration "Think like Us," currently only on the Snow Robots 3 CD, which is only available on their Web site, www.suctionrecords.com.

Brendan M. Gillen

Toronto Star, Canada. March 2002.
New Wave Gets New Electro Lease

If, as the current fetish for all things "old school" suggests, electronic music's immediate future lies in the excavation of its not-too-distant past, the gentlemen of Toronto's Suction Records are years ahead of their time. Paradoxically speaking.

For six years, ardent "robot music" enthusiasts Jason Amm and Gregory De Rocher -- known in electronic circles, respectively, as Solvent and Lowfish -- have been tapping into their shared love of rough-hewn analogue sounds ranging from '80s New Wave, synth-pop and industrial on up to the early-'90s electro-freakouts of Aphex Twin, Autechre and Ziq, synthesizing their own take on those influences and releasing eerily tuneful records to mounting acclaim overseas under the Suction banner.

Suddenly, though, Amm and De Rocher, both 29, find themselves unceremoniously lumped in with the burgeoning new-wave techno/electro-punk/electroclash retro-movement. This particular afternoon, for instance, they've returned from shooting photos for a piece on Suction in the American electronic-music magazine Urb to discuss their inclusion alongside such "name" artists as Adult, Legowelt and DMX Crew on Disco Nouveau, a new compilation from upstart Detroit label Ghostly Records < an excellent disc whose release gets feted locally Saturday with DJ sets from the Suction lads and fellow future-disco enthusiast BMG (Ectomorph) at Club 56's electro-sleaze weekly, Peroxide. They're in vogue, but at the same time, they're leery of getting caught up in a fleetingly fashionable "retro" trend.

"You can listen to our music and hear an obvious '80s vibe, there's no denying it," concedes Amm. "But the stuff that makes it biggest quickly and is the most successful is taking the cheap shots. If the whole revival is spearheaded by hits like (Tiga's) cover version of `Sunglasses At Night,' it's gonna backlash very fast because that stuff is all very jokey."

Both, however, are pleased that the bedroom-techno generation's rediscovery of melody and the song ("It's a natural thing," opines Amm) might prompt a re-examination of the golden age of synth-pop and New Wave.

"I'm a New Wave guy, and so is Greg," says Amm. "I think that era produced some of the best music ever, but it became kind of a cool, fad thing..."

"That's why now is so exciting," adds De Rocher. "I don't know what's going on, but a lot of the stuff that we find inspirational is kind of brimming to the surface in others. I don't necessarily condone everything on the Fischerspooner album, but I know for a fact that those guys have a lot of the same records I do at home."

Ben Rayner