Moon Date - Maze (Moon Date Records)

There was a time when electronic music and analog, guitar-based sounds were sworn enemies. Well, perhaps not so much the bands making the music, but generally, the fans were hostile to each other. But slowly, over time, like the Romeo and Juliet of the moment, old-school analog music began to embrace the new digital sounds. Conversely, synth pioneers started to underpin their creations with six-string salvos and the like. Electo-rock was born. I say all of this only because Moon Date is the modern descendant of such a union.

Of course, as is demonstrated effortlessly by this Detroit quintet on the new single, “Maze,” synths and guitars, the weapons of choice of the electro and analog word, respectively, actually make perfect sonic bedfellows. So succinctly do they combine the tow that you start to wonder what all the fuss was about. Here, the synths create washes and wide-screen cinematic soundscapes as the old-school axes then proceed to chop their way through. Alternatively, as the guitars lay down some rhythmic grooves as a musical baseline, the keyboards spin and spiral onwards and upwards in scintillating riffs and exotic musical motifs.

Add some driving beats, propulsive bass lines, a few clever breakdowns and anthemic buildups, and, of course, vocals that perfectly bisect the dance-rock divide, and you have the perfect creative collision of sonic worlds.

If you drew a line from the 70’s Synth-punk of bands like Suicide, through the ’80s Blitz Kid sounds (which fuelled the later New Romantic scene), then keep threading through bands such as No Doubt and Kasabian and more latterly Metric, it quickly becomes obvious that Moon Date sit perfectly at the cutting edge of that sonic line.

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