German synth trio
And One have traditionally had a bit of a hard industrial edge to their completely electronic sound, but on
Bodypop, their first album for the Out of Line label, that hint of aggression is all but absent. In its place,
Bodypop sounds like pure 1982 synth pop: think
Depeche Mode's
A Broken Frame,
Soft Cell's
Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret and
Yaz's Upstairs at Eric's. Sounding like it was recorded entirely on instruments that were state of the art a quarter-century earlier,
Bodypop is absolutely uncanny in its evocation of a long-gone sound, one that's so resolutely out of fashion that it feels paradoxically fresh and forward-looking in a way that synth pop hasn't in decades. Highlights include the near-ambient experimentation of "Traumfrau" (the one song that sounds more like the comparatively more experimental
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark or
Thomas Dolby) and "Love You to the End," a straight-up pop song that sounds uncannily like a lost
Depeche Mode single from the
Construction Time Again era. ~ Stewart Mason