Ford & Lopatin - Channel Pressure

In a way, Ford & Lopatin’s (formerly Games) ‘Channel Pressure’ is the sum of its parts. It takes the structured pop of Joel Ford’s Tiger City and marries it with Daniel Lopatin’s (Oneohtrix Point Never) Vangelis-esque electronic milieu. Both take influence from the 80s and together they have produced an album of 80s electro pop songs.

But the album goes beyond a faithful recreation of past sounds. Often it feels more machine than man. Midi made sentient, as if the technology they are using has taken over and is making the music itself. It seems to be constructed from drum machine presets and synth riffs you’re sure you’ve heard a million times before in soundtracks to films released more than two decades ago but can’t quite place.

The vocals are disembodied and genderless, perhaps sung from the point of view of some kind of computer or maybe taken from a digitally infiltrated human psyche. There’s a drowsy relationship with technology here. Lines about falling asleep with the TV on paint a picture of comfort in a synthetic glow but there are tinges of sadness where the artificial intelligence struggles to grasp real emotion.

Lopatin’s work has always felt haunted by technology, presumably the ghosts of sounds emanating from the TV shows and video games of his youth. But with Oneohtrix he is in control, plotting a path through the soundscapes. Here the instrumental tracks seem exploratory, like the synthesizers are tentatively testing their functions to find out what noises they can produce.

But these instrumentals only act as interludes to attempts to find the formula for perfect pop. And many tracks on the album come close to cracking it. There’s the smooth R’n’B of ‘Break Inside’, the uplifting chorus of ‘The Voices’ and catchy effusiveness of ‘Surrender’. Most successful is ‘World of Regret’, with its danceable beat and lyrics that border being disposable and meaningful.

Somehow Ford & Lopatin have created a record that is exactly how a collaboration between them should sound, but at the same time it tricks you into believing it is a digital rendering that has never been touched by human hand.