Lt. Bad - Electromagnetic

Come
   and
      get
         your
            fix....

Cuz with Lt. Bad, you can have it all... Well, you can have all the retro boombox bass-blasting breakdance glory... This Detroit duo started a synth-pop revivalist project a couple years ago with specific proclivities towards Cybotron-era Juan Atkins and Planet Rock-era Bambaataa. Before Lt. Bad, the pair songwriters and producers behind the project, incognito behind those certain 1983-ish mustaches and neon outfits, had been applying their experimental ideas to pop, post-rock and a bit of indie-funk, by way of some other bands throughout the mid 2000's.

With their debut, it was all about the dance-floor, the blaze of nightclub lights and helicopter-ing on some thing cardboard in the basketball courts... Electromagnetic brings in a brainier bit of thinking-man's techno, scaling back the bombast and dialing up the ambient grooves, the understated cymbal shuffles, the steadier disco friendly tempos, the minor key synth swells chittering and chattering as if to accommodate the 2 a.m. wanderer-and-ponderer who skips out of the club to go home to his lab and start scratching...scratching something new, something fresh, something more intimate.

Or, something more haunted? "Creeping On U," (featuring the theatrical/cool vocals of DUANE) has got a great groove and a bit of a boogie to it, but it's certainly oozing with that often creepy vibe that takes hold of those in the throes of infatuation....



And then, "Walk With U" brings in the cinematic dazzle with those wispy tones and spacey timbres, as the robot voices exude their short-circuiting emotion chips.

Call it neo-techno....Lt. Bad have evolved. Maybe we should give them a higher rank... But Captain Bad sounds too much like a pirate, or a hair metal song...

Until then...
Electromagnetic is out now and streaming online...

Saturday at the Hamtramck Labor Day Festival, you can catch Lt. Bad backing up DUANE, the Brand New Dog, during his set at 8pm. Info