Despite recurrent misconception, Elektralux have very little to do with kitchen appliances, fridges or washing machines. They do, however, have a great deal to do with awesome electronic pop music. No warranty required.
West-country pop-steppers Elektralux combine
the front-room production dreams of Martin Badder and David Power. The duo, who
met almost twenty years ago, were founding members of rock act Countermine, where
the boys excelled at their live craft (keyboards and drums respectively),
toured internationally and recorded extensively over the course of five years.
When a large independent label failed to release their debut album, through
frustration and hunger for commercial success, the boys graciously
went-it-alone. This time with an open mind, keener ear, thicker skin...and a tidy
recording advance.
So back to normality...
This wasn't all bad. Badder and
Power settled in the quaint urban bohemia of the Georgian city of Bath, their
native home. It was here that the twosome's interaction with a bustling and
amiably nucleated music scene began to positively engorge their creativity.
It was 2005. A good few years
before the resurgent electro-pop ‘chicks with synths' dynasty we are currently
enduring. Inevitable perhaps, in that the generation of musicians that have
come to fruition were brought up on everything from the robotic nudity of
Kraftwerk to the subversive goth-chic of Depeche Mode, but Elektralux
articulated these stylistic authorities, almost alien to the genre's imminent
absolution.
Out of passion, not strategy.
Co-incidence prevails.
It was then, no doubt over a few
ciders, that Badder/Power revealed their electronic instrumental arrangements
to their musical peers. Before-long, Nik Walker, rock vocalist with Small Town Paranoia,
and Erl Grey, master of ceremonies in west-country Hip Hop crew Adopted Monkey, donned
the cans and an expensive condenser mike in Moles Studio in Bath with
producer/engineer Bruno
Ellingham. Man-about-town and guitar guru Damian Simes completed
an aesthetic already spiralling faster than one of those kitchen appliance
manufacturers' spin-driers towards completion.
The resultant sound was neither
rap nor rock. In fact, nothing like it. Their coalesced expertise gave birth to
something sharper.
Elektralux
were suddenly a group as collectively well
knowledged in the rhythm and timbre of urban dance, as it was slick electronic
programming. Not to mention a polished pop narrative and immediacy that makes
Mike Skinner look like a six-year-old choirboy.