The bassist for
the Faint, Joel Petersen, was asked by a friend to create some music for a video piece. When the video piece came out, the friend didn't end up using any of the tracks Petersen had created, but the idea of making soundtrack music had inspired him, so he got together with producer
Mike Mogis and they created
Broken Spindles. Their self-titled debut record is all instrumental music, electronic beats, retro-synths, and general robot grooves, and there's plenty of that sort of music being produced in 2002, but
Broken Spindles is a cut above. They've layered some pretty-sounding glockenspiel and vibraphone over their computerized bleeps and it can be lovely at times, while other bits of songs are more post-industrial. Though
the Faint have been labeled a retro-new wave band,
Broken Spindles, other than occasionally recalling the movie Tron, has basically a contemporary outlook. The song "A Dinner Party Ambience" sounds like the soundtrack to a dinner party with cyborg waiters and canned metal foods, and "The Love of Foreign Film" has attractive, Asian-sounding bells (maybe a vibraphone) at its chorus. Some of these songs boogie, others kind of rock, and those that do neither are at least interesting to listen to. ~ Adam Bregman