The return of Student Selection - a series that never really got started (just one post I think - actually two) but was intended to showcase cool music that my students have turned me onto.
Quite a few classes are based around a prompt - send me a clip of your favorite tune in such-and-such a genre, or sometimes a specific artist (Bowie or Joni). For a recent class on New Wave / Postpunk, a student who is very knowledgeable about the genre nominated this from a Japanese group that shamefully (what with being a postpunk historian and all) I'd never heard of.
Listening it struck me initially as "none-more-New-Wave" - like how could anything be more New Wave than this? The angularity, the synth bit, the strained vocals....
But then, listening more, I discerned an odd resemblance to Led Zeppelin - the beat reminded me of "When the Levee Breaks" (or Billy Squier's Zep-clone "The Stroke"). The vocals get quite soaring and Plant-y. And when the noisy guitarburst comes in, it's excitingly noisy but it's definitely a solo - not so far from something Jimmy Page might let loose.
And what d'ya know? As the knowledgeable student revealed, P-Model is a classic example of the Old Wave / New Wave switcheroo. Before, they had been an unsuccessful prog band and like so many Western counterparts (Police, Cars, etc) they wholesale embraced the New Aesthetic - sonically, sartorially, in terms of record design.
Geometrics heightened by the obi-strip
None-new-wavest of all time, possibly, this back cover:
And not least a significant element of the total make-over is the band name P-Model, which is "we are product" / "we are machines" in its oblique sleekness.
But you can tell these dudes can really really play - they got the chops and in classic crypto-Oldwaver fashion are shoving all that snazz into the strictures of the New Thing.
Listen to the demented clockwork virtuosity of this one
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