Pop. 1280 aren’t shy about their love for generic conventions, from the witty and nasty noir of their namesake to Cronenbergian body-horror lyrical material to consistent references to '70s speculative fiction. It is the dystopian landscape where these worlds intersect that makes this Brooklyn group's industrial noise-rock click and hum; it is vital in its grimness.
On their third album, Paradise, Pop. 1280 get closer than ever to the theme that unites these genres—the dehumanization at the core of the technological strides toward a Big, Bold, Bright Future, the rottenness and hollowness of a world which we’ve been told is full of promise but in which all of those promises of economic stability and cultural prosperity are consistently broken. In truth, this is less speculative fiction than the constant reality of our modern lives—less a warning than an observation. "Chromidia," the album’s second single, is a meditation on the constancy of surveillance—"Are you my best friend/ Are you the camera lens?" singer Chris Bug intones, the line growing more sinister upon each repetition.
They also hew closer to the conventions of mid-late '80s dancefloor industrial, more Front by Front than Songs About Fucking. Tracks like "Phantom Freighter" and "In Silico" wouldn’t feel out of place at all on the pre-TVT Wax Trax! roster. This is a deeply rhythmic record, as any exploration of the tension between man and machine must be, drum machines and samplers supplementing Andrew Chugg’s live drumming.
Good genre work requires a certain amount of heavy-handedness in order to be recognizable, and dancefloor industrial has always relied on obvious metaphor, big beats for stompy boots and a sizeable dose of relatively simplistic teen-style angst. Paradise certainly isn’t lacking in these ingredients but it makes up for dynamism what it lacks in subtlety. It is more skeletal and raw in places than their two previous albums, and more lush and thick with synth and guitar in others. This production is ultimately what makes Paradise such a standout; there are plenty of young industrial and noise-rock bands running hard on all cylinders, as Pop. 1280 did on their prior efforts. The extra gears and moving parts in their sound feel like necessary moves to avoid quick and certain burnout.
