Bodypop＜限定盤/Orange & Black Splatter Vinyl＞

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