Synthetic ID, “Ciphers” (Castle Face Records)
Synthetic ID are a band out of San Francisco, who have been releasing music since 2012, but are new to us. Don’t know how we’ve missed them up ’til now.
“Ciphers” is a brilliant piece of spiky, funky post-punk, in the vein of Gang of Four and 154-era Wire, with a soupçon of Crass. The track features a lurching, hypnotic bassline and angst-inducing guitar stabs; shouted vocals talk of searches and receipt of ciphers with “missing words”, incapable of translation and decoding – messages received but not trusted. The peculiarly modern sensation of interconnectedness increasing isolation on our Big (Brother) Blue Marble – who’s real and what isn’t? Fever dreams of electric sheep.
Synthetic ID’s debut, Impulses, is out April 22 on the consistently bodacious Castle Face Records. Check out the band’s earlier releases on their bandcamp page.
