Life in Glorious Stereo

After roughly 30 listens, I remain mildly perturbed by my reaction to 'Life in Glorious Stereo', the new single by Screaming Maldini. As someone who is largely repulsed by any music that lies within the indie-electro-pop spectrum, I totally expected to be blinded by my own pre-moulded hateful opinions and deep bias while dissecting this EP. However, electrified by tightly arranged vocal harmonies, 'Life in Glorious Stereo' is a slickly produced wedge of electro-pop.

There's pretty much every instrument going thrown into this track. Trumpets, synths, snappy guitars, insane amounts of percussion and perfectly placed handclaps pave the way, resulting in a mix that punches through like a reinforced orchestral breeze block. Impressively though, the producers and songwriters have managed to roll all these instruments together intelligently enough to stop me feeling fatefully nauseous. Very tastefully done.

Rather than leaning on generic harmonic structures, the songwriters take considerable risks, sliding melodies through clinically engineered modulations from the outset. Combining this with adventurous orchestration, the band elevate their material well above the doldrums of standardised indie garbage and create something much more interesting.

I'm a music snob and a big hater in general. But I just couldn't help but like it. A lot.