Words: Sam Geary
Dark, Northern synthpop comes your way today courtesy of Leeds duo Department M. In advance of their debut album drop, the guys roped in James Kenosha (Rhodes) for imminent single 'Bleak Technique', which which is released as a limited edition 7” vinyl on August 7 via Hide & Seek Records.
After almost two years since we last heard from them, this latest - the second track to be taken from their forthcoming debut album - is a bit of a moody bastard; all inky strands of electronica that's riven with the grimy dust of industrial wastelands. There's synths, of course, but then you get the intake of a breath of math rock drums and the driving rhythm that underpins frontman Owen Brinley’s sparse and insightful songwriting.
Brinley says of the inspiration behind the song: “'Bleak Technique' is steeped in a kind of 21st-century paranoia I'm noticing so many people around me starting to feel. With the onslaught of social media and technology tracking our every move, our lives don't feel particularly private anymore and that can be a difficult feeling to shake. The song is an expression of wanting to immunise yourself from the perceived threats of a post-internet world...'I'm only phantom, I'm only neutral'.”
2015 UK Live Dates
AUGUST
05. Gullivers, Manchester (w/ Post War Glamour Girls)
06. Brudenell Social Club, Leeds (w/ Post War Glamour Girls)
OCTOBER
10. Birthdays, London (Free entry)
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