FM Belfast

How to Make Friends

(World Champion)

Record Review by Marcel Feldmar

Okay, you know when you are sitting around and all you want to hear is some gritty kind of synth-pop from Iceland, but you have no idea where to find it? Well, your worries are over. FM Belfast is what you need.

Managing to sound much more American than you’d expect, this band starts kicking it up with a minimal dance floor techno slap in the face that falls, I think, somewhere around The Waitresses and The Knife. They got that old skool nu skool charm, and they are waiting for you to start dancing.

Song # 2, “Underwear,” starts out a little mellower, with a slightly Bjork-touched vocal that moves in and then breaks up, fades out, grooves into some kind of mellow electro vibe. Lyrics like “We are running down the street in our underwear, we are running up the hill, it’s over there..” and this is kind of like the Teenagers, but, I don’t know, nicer. Less snotty.

The beat pushes, grabs you. It’s electronic, but at the same time it’s warm and smooth and wraps you up like a summer discotheque. There’s a Depeche Mode darkness mixing with some LCD Soundsystematic brightness and repetition, and somehow, this band makes it work. It’s like a slowed down Go! Team, if the Go! Team were good.

There’s a tricky simplicity to these songs, and seriously, this is not something I would normally find myself listening to, but there’s a human element to the album that immediately manages to endear it to me. It’s a little serious, a little silly, and it has a definite beat, rhythm, sway, move.

It’s not full on rave party move, though, it’s slow lazy '80s synth pop, it’s like a heatwave dance party, and perhaps that’s why I like it. you don’t have to pump it up, you can just sway and let the beats hold your hips.

Speaking of pumping it up, there’s a version on this album called “Pump”, but unlike the original "Pump Up the Jam," this version is like you are laying on the ground with a Casio keyboard and a box of red wine, probably on a late Sunday afternoon. Nothing to do, slightly hung over, and trying to have fun with a little Technotronic reminiscing.

“Hey, whattya think Pump Up The Jam would sound like if it was like a slow elevator jam?”

“I don’t know, let’s find out…”

Not the best song on the album, but… interesting, and the band swings back into that dance floor sway with “Par Avion,” and it’s not frantic, or frenetic, but it just, well, it just kinda grooves.