Ticket to Fame

The duo of experimental pop artist Kate NV and indie vocalist/songwriter Angel Deradoorian come together as Decisive Pink to make art pop with strange angles and melodic approaches from alien worlds. The projects debut album, Ticket to Fame, is a collection of experiments with electronics and giddy art pop, often moving swiftly between moments of danceable, Krautrock-informed tunes and dizzying, beatless weirdness. Album opener "Haffmilch Holiday" is one of Ticket to Fames more accessible moments, with a steady beat holding together an arrangement of multiple airy synths, intersections of floating vocals, and occasional blurts of noisy interruption. Its somewhere between the cold atmospheres of Bowies Berlin Trilogy, Harmonias woozy playfulness, and Yellow Magic Orchestras robotic celebrations. The albums most straightforward moments are similar, with "Ode to Boy" adding dashes of Kate Bush and Laurie Anderson to the mix, "Dopamine" bringing in a MIDI-programmed funk essence, and "Rodeo" imagining an alternate timeline where Kraftwerk came in to help Neu! finish their second record. Songs like these are hardly run-of-the-mill pop, but they feel standardized compared to the albums more abstract experiments. "Potato Tomato" is a goofy bumble of wonky bass and silly voices, while "What Where" is a soft cyclone of arpeggiating marimba, bell sounds panning across the stereo field, and, eventually, a swirl of digitally chopped vocals. Ticket to Fames balancing act between jumbled weirdness, edgy pop, and occasional respites of synthy atmospheres is a fantastic introduction to Decisive Pinks insular and contorted but often magical take on pop. ~ Fred Thomas