image by Jon Bennett

Time moves along a mobius strip in the echoing halls of 20JFG’s leaking Victorian haven.  It was back in 2005 that we first posted Antifamily’s Staring at a Point.  When we finally took possession of their debut LP in early 2007 it turned out to be a deadpan dub infused masterpiece and we eagerly awaited the ensuing explosion of interest…which never really came.  Which is sad because it really was one of the best albums of this fractious decade.

And so, earlier this year I went in search of the elusive band and their (likely feral) descendants.  Time moves strangely if you recall.

Petit Mal are in fact a side project of Antifamily thereby slightly skewing the genealogical metaphor…They released their album this year thus showing signs of life in ethereal, erudite synth pop in the UK.  A rain slick collection of strangely tarnished futurism that falls between Glass Candy’s analogue romanticism and some alien reconstruction of Germanic electronic experimentations from the early 70s.

John Foxx haunts the Underpass of the crumbling city streets that Mt. Dimension inhabits with its oft-quoted ‘Escher-like cross characterisation’. Towering synths pierce the oppressive spires that surround, before revealing themselves as spot-lights heralding the approach of Melanie Gilligan’s cold-wave vocal.  Chris & Cosey hover above and allow their missile-sleek, fatalistic synth progeny to play among the laser lines of a forgotten Thamesmead.

Petit Mal – Mt Dimension

As a bonus here’s a live set they did for the excellent Choking on Cufflinks on WFMU in May.

League of Nations were a short lived band from LA who seem to have been active between 1981 – 1984.  The left us with one mini-album, a 7″ and this 12″ containing Fade and Thin Ice.  Both desperate, mesmerising cold-wave classics.  Echoing drum machines and celestial synth washes hover in front of you, menacing and seductive in their programmed perfection.  The lyrics seem only a primer for the ascension of the piercing electronic chimes that herald a glistening soulless future.

League of Nations – Fade (12″ version)

Simple Minds were a short lived yet prolific Glaswegian new-wave band who released their wonderful 4th album(s) Sons and Fascination / Sister Feelings Call in 1981 before disappearing in an ill-suited light aircraft somewhere over the pacific, en route to Chicago.

League of Nations opens with an almost irresistible baseline; only the punctuation of sharp stabs of guitar suggesting something altogether more Suicidal.  Jim Kerr’s repetitious drawl matching the rumbling bass and grounding the airborne synth melody – always attempting to escape the sprawl but forever fading back into it.

Simple Minds – League of Nations