Digital Leather: Keys and Gadgets

It’s become a genre somehow. Or maybe it always was and bands like the Screamers and Suicide knew it before everyone else. Regardless, synth-punk, which is as ridiculous as it sounds, has recently been garnering more and more attention thanks to that ‘80s retro schtick that dullards have begun clamoring about. It’s no ones fault that the bottom feeders of culture have latched on to a decade that gave the States some of its most desolate music. That being said, though, there’s a pop strain that runs throughout the work of Digital Leather that few can deny.

Beginning as a bedroom recording project as a result of eating fistfuls of acid and its brethren, Shawn Foree set out to merge some awful and futuristic dystopian monster movie with pop tropes. And while he set out along this path alone since the first half of the aughties he’s been joined by a cast of underground stalwarts.

For Sorcerer, Foree enlisted former Reatard and Tokyo Electron member Ryan Wong to get behind the drum set – but that’s only the second half of the album. Engineering both the ‘studio’ side’ and the live portion of the disc is recently departed Jay Reatard, who himself worked in similar tones in his group Lost Sounds. There might have been less of a pop vibe surrounding that unit the same confluence of ideas was present.

Regardless of who did what on the album, it’s worth mentioning that based partially on this release from 2008, Foree and Digital Leather have been picked up by Fat Possum, an imprint that seems to be concerted with foraging into more modern rock sounds as of late.

Split into two disparate halves, the first side of this offering sports Foree going it alone with only a single vocal contribution by Devon Disaster. And while her appearance on the mic during “You Will Fall” doesn’t amount to all that much it points to Foree’s attempt to sugar up some of the more difficult and fuzzy portions of his work. Of course, that’s relative seeing as there’s pretty much nothing else other than distortion and winding synthesizers for the duration of the side, but it’s an interesting approach to the genre. “Modulated (Simulated)” even arrives related to some Jay Reatard work during the last year or so of his life.

The second half of the album comprises a set from Goner Fest #2 recorded at the Buccaneer Lounge in Memphis. The audio quality is miraculously the same as on the first half of the disc, but in Foree’s vocals listeners should hear an urgency not related in the proper studio from earlier tracks. We can all just chalk that up to booze, drugs and live performance. But moreover, the fact that Foree comes off as if he’s being pushed forward by the ensemble that he put together on – notably on the choruses of “Dance till Dead” and “Pleasurebot” – might point to the future of his recordings.

Maybe not. But either way, Sorcerer remains a pretty ballsy release even as it’s dominated by keys and gadgets.