Replicant: Neon dark dreams
Ever since Wave Gotik Treffen 2015 and some of the shows I used to see there, I’m a bit lost to music living somewhere in between post punk, minimal synth and cold wave. Starting out with some particular, incredible bands and browsing similar artists on bandcamp.com, these days my favorite and by far most important way of discovering new music, at some point I stumbled across a band massively remaining on my playlist ever since: Replicant, a threepiece from Chicago, IL. Both band name and bandcamp tag line (“more human than human”) are quite obvious references to Blade Runner, which generally is a good thing. From a (maybe very personal) point of view, the music they do indeed feels close to the story lines and moods in movies such as Blade Runner or New Rose Hotel as well as in early William Gibson novels: Dark, dense, bass driven, electrically charged, cold, “futuristic” in an old-fashioned science fiction novel. Songs that feel and sound very minimal and like a strange yet well-crafted crossover between early gothic rock, 1980s new romantics / synth pop and cyberpunk all turned music. Same goes for the visual appearance of the band and, as far as I can tell from some of the live footage found online, for the on-stage performance as well.
But in the end, maybe the best and most prominent reason for Replicant is rather simple: They surely do know how to write strong songs that just stay in your ears and head once you’ve heard them…. The whole of their discography is available for streaming and even free download at their bandcamp page. Feel encouraged to check these out, I greatly recommend Replicant to anyone even remotely into any of the genres mentioned earlier. Get your black leather jackets, your boots, maybe your sunglasses and get going…