Event Details
Date: Thursday, August 02, 2012
Start Time: 8:00 PM
Event Type: Special Events, Concerts
Last Updated: July 21, 2012
Views: 10
Chop Suey 10 & Trashed PresentThe Drive TourFeaturing Performances By College Anoraak Electric YouthElectric YouthElectric Youth are named after an album by Debbie Gibson who, along with Tiffany, was the quintessential late-80s US bubblegum teen pop girl. A young couple from Canada, Bronwyn and Austin of Electric Youth are part of the same amorphous community of pop-obsessing bloggers and music-makers as the chillwave and witch house crew, but unlike, say, Teengirl Fantasy, theyre not using pop language and imagery as a front for a more avant-garde exploration of that territory they ARE Debbie Gibson. Seriously, the songs on their MySpace dont just sound like indie approximations of exuberant 80s teen-pop fluff, they could be tracks from that 1989 album.Actually, we said quintessential but we meant totemic. Because for Electric Youth, Gibson is emblematic of all the things they love about the mid-to-late 80s: television commercials, film soundtracks, MTV videos, certain sci-fi TV series such as V, Michael Crichton movies, the Brat Pack, and Madonna/Cyndi Lauper songs when they were quirky New Yorkers whose music was informed by new wave, disco and early electro. Gibson was the first living embodiment of all this stuff, the first to have it in her DNA, to suck it all in then spew it all out. Electric Youth want to capture the moment the mallrat went supernova and became Americas sweetheart.In terms of intent, you could, as we say, easily join the dots between Electric Youth and the electronic reveries of Washed Out, even the mangled memories of oOoOO. But musically they couldnt be further apart. Besides, they have a micro-scene of their own: theyre part of something called the Valerie Collective, which includes a French archivist and nostalgist called David Grellier who produces, remixes and makes records under the name College, and his friends Anoraak and Russ Chimes (a Londoner who has remixed Chromeo and Sam Sparro), plus a couple of other acts, Minitel Rose and the Outrunners, all of whom operate in the west of France. Together, they blog, create lush, catchy synthpop and generally raise the act of homage to epic, fanatical proportions.