Upon the demise of US-based new wave/shoegazer band Antarctica back in 1999, four members – Chris Donohue (vocals/guitar), Steve DePalo (synths/programming), Glenn Maryansky (drums) and James Minor (guitar) – continued to forge a more electronics-dominated direction, resulting in the beginnings of new outfit Ova Looven’s creative core. This new four track EP from Ova Looven on Artikal, Gravity Has Expired, represents their first new recorded material in four years (since 2003’s well-received synth-pop oriented debut album 58:34) and arrives on nothing less than purple transparent 12 inch vinyl, in a limited run of 500 copies.
It’s certainly late eighties Factory Records that opening track “The Killer Six’ most immediately recalls in terms of obvious influences, Donohue’s vocals taking on an unmistakably Bernard Sumner-esque edge, as rippling guitars glide over a streamlined backing of crisp breakbeats and sheeny synth pads in a track that shares close kinship with the sorts of new wave synth pop fashioned by local boys The Presets and Cut Copy. There’s also an undeniable trace present of the sorts of meticulously contorted “widescreen’ breaks explored by former Swansea, now LA, duo Hybrid, in the way that intricate details trail away at the very corners of the mix, representing something of a delight over headphones.
“Ozean Glaze’ shifts the rhythmic undercarriage towards stuttered electro-house in the vein of Tiefschwarz, the increased clarity of Donohue’s vocals lending them a slightly icy Severed Heads-ish quality that sits nicely with the ringing melodic tones and Cabs-meet-Pet Shop Boys bass pulses, before “The Last Song’ pares back the rhythms to lithe tech-house, whilst injecting a slight dose of DFA-esque swagger with its fluid live basslines. Finally, closing track “Fields Of Lucid Trees’ takes this EP out with its most chilled and contemplative moment, the tech-house rhythms shrinking back to mere spidery pinprick pulses, as delayed-out guitar chords straight out of The Cure’s Disintegration interweave their harmonics over the top. While all of the above are certainly well-worn influences being explored by an apparent multitude of different synth-pop/new wave bands at the moment, the four tracks collected on Gravity Has Expired definitely show Ova Looven occupying the quality end of that particular spectrum.
Chris Downton
