Nouveau Arcade – Dead Hearts
Nouveau Arcade – Dead Hearts
FiXT
Release Date: 20/07/23
Running Time: 61:45
Review by Dark Juan
10/10
Funny how labels colour your judgment of things isn’t it? In a world of garish, brash entertainment, clickbait and lowest common denominator television designed to keep the masses occupied with bread and circuses (and squeezing your last few pennies from you in meaningless “votes”) while there are all manner of corrupt bastards raping the world of its wealth, mineral, financial or otherwise, while there are people dying of starvation and want while ABSOLUTE shitbags crowd the airwaves clamouring for the attention of the masses, or even bigger rapacious cunts hoard the very means to solve world hunger in Cayman Island bank accounts while denying the workers the rights to the wealth they have earned by the sweat of their brows, and fucking child molesting perverts are shielded by the great and good while they busily tell us that they cannot afford to fund anything that might actually, you know, benefit their own fucking citizens, yet they can spare millions to renovate palaces and the like… Dark Juan is a Socialist and most definitely NOT a fucking subject. This apparently makes me a menace to society and an implacable enemy of the right wing, the bigots, the gammons and the old fat fucking bald racist CUNTS that are apparently the British version of Nietzsche’s Übermensch. Here’s a lesson for you all – you aren’t. You’re a bunch of walking heart attack timebombs with blood like liquified sausages and I wouldn’t piss on any of you if you were on fire, you Nazi fuckwits.
Gegen Nazis!
Once again, I remind you that Dark Juan preaches a gospel of love regardless of your colour, creed, religion, nationality, sexual identity, or sexual preference. My bosom warms to you all, and all I ask in return is fairness and decency to all and to myself. I don’t care whether you are Muslim, gay, lesbian, Jewish or what the fuck ever.
Let’s be excellent to each other. That’s an order.
The rant above has a purpose, and it is a three hundred word segue into my review. The Platter of Splatter™ is rapidly whirling round like it’s done a teenth of Billy Whizz in one hit and is playing the latest offering from Seattle, USA-based Synthwave duo Nouveau Arcade and their musical escapism (escapism being the salient word here). They operate in a similar retro-futuristic universe to Gunship – the most 80s sounding rock guitars embellishing music that could be the soundtrack to any old adventure TV show involving some form of advanced vehicle-based vigilantism, normally with a wise-cracking computer or operator somewhere in there. Think Airwolf (they say you can’t hear a picture, but every time I see that helicopter the theme tune goes off in my head) or Knight Rider and you have the idea. It is the 80s idea of the future – Cathode ray tubes with wire-frame maps, blinking LEDs and boffins in basements creating motorbikes that can defy the laws of physics. These are the images that the music of Nouveau Arcade evokes in the head of Dark Juan now he’s finished ranting about racists.
On the first listen to “Dead Hearts”, Dark Juan was instantly struck by the sound of the band – they sound like their contemporaries should be Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran and Tears for Fears. There’s so much New Romantic music as a base to their sound that I am just crying out for Nouveau Arcade to cover ‘Rio’. Needless to say, Dark Juan is grinning from ear to fucking ear because he absolutely fucking adores Synthwave. It’s a Miami strip at night glowing with pink and yellow neon aesthetic, yet if you look in the alleyways between the strip joints, casinos and hotels you can see misshapen, humanoid forms snatching victims from the shadows and dragging them back to drain them of their blood and money, or the hunters, impossibly handsome, beautiful and glamorous – clad impeccably in fine silk dresses that cleave to the hips and are split up to the midriff, superbly coiffed and slinking from gambler to gambler on the big stake tables in the casinos, where heat and alcohol combine to lower the resistance of Dave Smith, the moderately wealthy computer sales guy, bald, paunchy and sweating profusely who is $5000 up on the roulette table. A smile, a coquettish look, a bite of the bottom lip and some soft words about how much they want Dave to buy them a drink and a promise of a night to remember as they casually lean over to show Dave a generous measure of flawless ivory decolletage just to make sure their victim is taking them to his room tonight. But it’s going to be the final night Dave’s going to see, and the passion he was expecting is going to be a different sort when their fangs are buried in his throat and they are drinking in his life as his death nears… it’s pastel suits with rolled up sleeves and white slip-on shoes that match white Ferrari Testarossas, but they are hunters of the primal killers that stalk the alleys and casinos. It’s Santa Carla in 1986, with bonfires on the beach and parties where oiled blokes play the squawky sex horn and teenage vampires roam the boardwalk at night on shitty Yamaha dirt bikes being all smoky andand handsome in an attractively predatory fashion.
If you like being carried away to a world of muscle-bound action heroes battling homicidal robots/ aliens/ drug gangs/ communists/ renegades/ kidnappers of the hero’s favourite second cousin, or smart-ass talking cars solving crimes with the dubious help of a meatsack that’s only there as eye-candy for the girls or things blowing up for the sheer sake of it by music alone, you are going to be fucking delighted to listen to the retro-futurist sounds of Nouveau Arcade. Dark Juan is utterly beguiled by their New Romantic/ Electropop/ Industrial/ Futurepop Synthwave and you will be too. The band themselves describe their music as Modwave. Basically, if you want a short description of their sound – think the harsh electronics of Depeche Mode, the romanticism of Spandau Ballet, and the pop sensibility of Duran Duran and mix it with the guitar sound of solo Billy Idol (well, Steve Steven’s guitar work anyway), the kookiness of They Might Be Giants and the robotic Dance-Pop of Devo and you get a rough idea of what you will be getting. Every song on this album is fucking brilliant, although special note goes to the brilliant cover of Garbage’s ‘Only Happy When It Rains’ and the collaborative track with The Anix, ‘Apart’ which is a haunting thing of beauty which made Dark Juan want to weep (until I remembered I am a rad sex god and the High Priest of the Mighty Church of The Groove and it is Dark Juan’s job to reduce other to tears of frustrated sexual desire). The cover of Twenty-One Pilots’ ‘Jumpsuit’ was a bit ill suited to the 80s electronica, smoke machine and strobe light image of the band though. Still, the production of the album is absolutely fucking flawless and icy pure and Dark Juan is feeling the same kind of thrill that came when I first heard “Dark All Day” by Gunship, and that is inevitably where any comparison will lie when it comes to the music of Nouveau Arcade, although they occupy a less po-faced niche of Synthwave, having a certain joie de vivre and Pop… I want to say ‘cheerfulness’? No. Pop exuberance that Gunship lacks in favour of being that slight bit darker and serious. Nouveau Arcade and Gunship are A Flock Of Seagulls compared to Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. More graphic novel than film noir…
Dark Juan is going to paint the Schwerer Gothikpanzer white and go and cruise the sodium lamplit main street in Sowerby Bridge and pretend the curry houses and pubs are casinos and the kebab joints are seaside bars, and I’ll be playing Nouveau Arcade while I am doing it…
The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System is acutely aware that the protagonist who writes this shit has gone even further off-piste than usual and is desirous of injecting some fucking professionalism into what’s left of this review and therefore has locked Dark Juan in the cellar until he has had time to calm down. This is why he wasn’t allowed to watch Schwarzenegger films as a kid. Nouveau Arcade are awarded 10/10 for a frankly brilliant record that’s good enough for the Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System to arbitrarily ignore its own rule that there is an automatic deduction of a point if the music isn’t Metal. Although the music is not Metal, the album is Metal as fuck!
TRACKLISTING:
01. Static Eyes
02. iHumanz
03. Crazy Like That
04. Summer Is Over
05. Die On Me Now
06. Only Happy When It Rains
07. Jukebox Cake
08. Apart (featuring The Anix and Cordelia)
09. Fluorescent
10. Drawing Pictures (featuring Kiera Verleee)
11. Neon Love Machine
12. Hard Times
13. Jumpsuit (featuring KJ Sawka)
14. Run Boy Run (featuring KJ Sawka)
15. Choose Your Fighter
16. Stronger Now (featuring Signal Void)
LINE-UP:
Kevin Preston
Len Hotrum
LINKS:
Disclaimer: This review is solely the property of Dark Juan and Ever Metal. It is strictly forbidden to copy any part of this review, unless you have the strict permission of both parties. Failure to adhere to this will be treated as plagiarism and will be reported to the relevant authorities.
