Young synthpop artiste currently touted as Kylie meeting Kate Bush
Hometown: Brighton.
The lineup: Veiga Sanchez (vocals).
The background: What on earth would possess Veiga Sanchez to change her name to Salt Ashes, we have no idea. Maybe Veiga Sanchez is too Eurodisco, too pop, when really she's using a heavier sound to seek a heavier reputation. Actually, early press suggests she might be wanting to have her cake and eat it, too, some describing her as Kylie meets Kate Bush, which would be perfect, wouldn't it? A pop star with immaculate self-governing credentials, equal parts charty and arty. She first emerged back in 2011, Popjustice tell us, with a track called Edge of the Heart that has since been removed from the net - that title, with its shades of Taylor Dayne, may have borne out our theory that there's a Eurodisco pop-ette here struggling not to get out.
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No, what Salt Ashes is after is a more brooding presence, a blacker celebration of electronica. She even covered Depeche Mode's Black Celebration, which marked the consolidation of that band's own descent into "darkness", one that they began three years earlier on Construction Time Again. She has used Depeche's 1986 track as shorthand to telegraph that this will be a moody, even menacing sort of synthpop, with influences and intentions beyond the populist norm. Indeed, new single Somebody has a Moroder-esque pulse and a topline melody, as they call them these days, seemingly borrowed from an early-'90s Madonna album, as well as a catch in her voice, a husky tremulousness, that has vague echoes of ravaged/damaged-era Marianne Faithfull. But it's not quite as edgy and experimental as it thinks it is, with a linear groove that takes little account of any rhythmic developments of the last two decades - think 1986 Depeche, again - while the video, in terms of atmosphere and creative reach, is really just darkly lit Page 3 bought to vague life. "B-side" Little Dove also alludes in its use of slo-mo electronics, even its language, with its reference to being "stripped", to Depeche's mid-'80s output. It's nice - maybe too nice - and probably not noir enough or poppy enough to appease those at either end of the aesthetic spectrum. Nor does it find a happy (that is to say, darkly erotic yet commercially appealing) balance between the two. Another track, If You Let Me Go, melodically recalls Safety Dance by Men Without Hats, which is unfortunate, although handily Ms Ashes, vocally, can do sultry and shrill. The video to Black Celebration, featuring our heroine cavorting with a black gentleman, is inadvertently hilarious. Well, we had a bit of a chuckle at Salt writhing around with said fellow, coquettishly grazing her leg with a hand in a supremely unimaginative and limited display of erotic abandon. Still, the shimmertechno coda is good, and we still think the general premise - Salt Ashes as an S&M Kylie - is sound, albeit far from being a successfully realised one as yet.
The buzz: "An über-promising 22-year-old UK dark synth-pop princess."
The truth: She's not quite NoirKylie, not yet.
Most likely to: Get her sound out of our head.
Least likely to: Tell us when the fever ended.
What to buy: The single Somebody / Little Dove is out now on Night Beach.
File next to: Kylie, Madonna, Goldfrapp, Electribe 101.
Links: http://ift.tt/ngqkEi.
Monday's new band: Shy Nature.
by Paul Lester via Music: Electronic music | theguardian.com
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