ErrorSynth: Struck By Lightning

Struck By Lightning reminds me of buying a CD by Cibo Matto or a mathcore band you were a huge fan of and still having just no idea what you were about to listen to. “And When the Skies Opened” leads off with a minute and a half of churning brutal poetry – sounds fished off broken calculators, electronic sirens and devices that aspired to reach sentience so they could scream. It melts down into a puddle of silicon – quite dramatic! – in the lead in to “The Awakening” – an absolutely classic piece of synthwave. This could have been the lost recordings of a late 20th century snake cult or the theme song for a movie about rollerblading. “Daytona” is an overdrive of synths and serotonin.

By this point, if you’re listening straight through you’re probably sporting a fantastic contact high and might not notice the transition between tracks, which flow without pause and make the shortness (all but one are under four minutes) unnoticeable. It’s a solid whole, cut out of a single sheet of transparency, at least up until “Long Gone,” a new wave prom ballad featuring Phillip Nutt and inspired by the passing of David Bowie.

For some reason, there haven’t been many bridges built between old Italo fans and guys like Bruno Zibordi, the creator of the project, who are making pretty much what Stefano Pulga and Stefano Zito would be making if they were young today. Bruno is from Sao Paulo and calls this “electro house,” which doesn’t seem very adequate. It basically takes everything good of the whole synthwave revival of the last five years – vaporwave, electro, all of it – puts it to the torch and fires it into a big lumpy hunk of beautiful music.