Review: Starfucker - Reptilians

Artist: Starfucker
Title: Reptilians
Format: Full-length
Year: 2011
Label: Polyvinyl
Genre: Electronic/synth-pop
Rating: 89 / 100

Starfucker (for censorship reasons also regularly spelled STRFKR) is a Portland based electronic band, founded in 2006. Since that year they spit out three albums, of which this Reptilians is their last. Is this synthpop? Yes. Is it lame, cheesy, 80's inspired synthpop? Definitely not. Starfucker is probably one of the best introductions one could have to this genre. Even I, who normally tries to keep a little bit of distance to electronic music, was absolutely amazed by their renewing sound palet, uplifting synth melodies and whisper'ish vocals. In the oh so colourful virtual music landscape Starfucker would probably be found jumping around in a flowery field somewhere between Cut Copy and The Knife.

One of the music's distinguishing characteristics for me are really the vocals. No vocals send in and out vocoder after vocoder, autotuned and then sent through some obscure 60's tape delay, but just soft almost whisphering, subtle vocals, mixed a bit to the background. Making me wonder whether they aren't secretly shoegaze devotees in their spare time, because really, those vocals would perfectly fit on some random dream pop album. They definitely make this whole album a lot more dreamy than one would expect from a Portland based synth-pop band. When thinking about these characteristics: Portland, synth-pop, 2011, one would normally expect some Crystal Castles'ish new rave band, but really no, Starfucker is a whole different story. Starfucker is new rave's tender little sister, focussing more on subtle atmospheric melodies instead of pounding beats and highly overdriven synths.

This is one of the few times I have absolutely no material to compare this album to, because I never heard their older albums, and still haven't got the chance to finally listen them. But this is also on of the few times I absolutely don't need any comparison material/context/historical background to realize this is an amazingly catchy electronic album which could with ease be enjoyed by any dream pop fan. Really, if you enjoyed Papercuts' last album, and have absolutely nothing against the exuberant use of electronic instruments, I am convinced you should give this record a try.

Distribute some purple paint, and spread the love,

Selwin.