music: limelight

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hunter-complex-limelightrelease date: may 11 2015
format: digital
label: narrominded

info

Limelight is the brand new single from Dutch synth wizard Hunter Complex. It arrives a year and a half after his critically acclaimed second album Heat. Two tracks from Heat have been remixed by Dutch bands Treasure of Grundo and Katadreuffe and are included here as digital b-sides to this brand new track.

The non-album track Limelight was recorded in the wake of the Heat album release. The track feels like a trip through a desolate and remote area. Starting off on the highway, taking exits to inaccessible dirt roads, before getting back on the highway, feeling confused and alienated. Hunter Complex is currently working on his third studio album, which will be – opposed to his first two albums – completely instrumental. It will dive deeper in the world of digital synths, soundtracks and ethereal atmospheres.

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music: heat

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hunter complex - heat frontrelease date: september 6 2013
format: lp / digital
label: narrominded

info

Heat is the new LP from Holland’s Hunter Complex, a record that looks to balance a functional (and very Dutch) ‘utility pop’ with a whole host of disturbing hints and suggestions. It’s a slightly unnerving listen, despite its attractive and powerful sweeps of melody. Recorded between 2010 and 2012, Heat manages – often very successfully – to persuade the listener that they’re tuning into a strange mix of Moroder’s film scores and ‘81-‘82 era Simple Minds. Digital synths, like the Roland D-50 and Yamaha DX7, give everything a suitably ‘period feel’. And the keys on Space are straight off Sons and Fascination, for example. Severed Heads covering China Crisis? Chris and Cosey making symphonic advert music in downtown LA? We can but dream.

But enough comparisons. Despite the LP wearing its sources of inspiration on its sleeve, and despite the fact that our descriptive narratives have (inevitably) to follow suit, it’s a seductive listen. Queasy, paranoid synth washes, rich, gloopy bass tones and weighty electronic stabs of rhythm drive the music on. The record’s got a feel of Stalker about it; cinematic, a taste of future-past served up on a plastic plate. Joep van Lieshout’s vision for communal living maybe, or a future that’s just out of reach, probably because it never escaped being imaginary.

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fotw audio productions review: heat

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hunter complex - heat frontThis is an album that I didn’t get a chance to listen to properly when it first came out from Holland, but it is very interesting, and did get some good coverage in the music press. It has a definite eighties vibes, as Lars Meijer is using digital synths like the DX7 — but it also has some great filmic moments, where you can picture characters breaking out into a chase sequence. The style of the music is probably on par with someone like John Maus, where they are both working with and reinterpreting these sounds for a new century. It also has some of that musical optimism that you would hear in English pop bands like Talk Talk.

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