BUZZIN 36: Ford & Lopatin

There’ve been some pretty significant duos in the history of music. Lennon and McCartney, Noel and Liam, Pete and Carl… are all people who also haven’t heard of Ford & Lopatin.

It’s okay though, because it is hard work maintaining up to date knowledge on the trends in the electro-duo stratosphere. (Hint: they used to go under the moniker ‘Games’). Sonically, these two sit on the spectrum of their peers between a less sunny MGMT, and a sparser Justice.

Daniel Lopatin (of Oneohtrix Point Never) and Joel Ford (of Tigercity) know how to navigate their way onto a dancefloor or two, and into the unconscious dance-stimulating synapse of listeners, and into the very conscious realm of the music press, as their disco-glittered ripples are spreading across the Atlantic.

There’s no denying that the duo are 80’s throwbacks; drum machines a-plenty, those haircuts, and synths that could be the soundtrack to a videogame. They’re essentially the 21st Century lovechild of Depeche Mode and PacMan, hence the original band name, perhaps. Debut album ‘Channel Pressures’ has some more chilled out moments that don’t conjure up images of frantically attacking a joystick in an arcade. ‘The Voices’ is a tranced-out affair with autotuned vocals that sound dangerously like Owl City, and the 53 second Green Fields seems to have paved the way for the ‘electro-glockenspiel’ genre.

Current single ‘To Much MIDI’ begins as a robotic ballad, the song’s namesake drum machine sounding like a disco-coated New Order, opening into a floorfiller, with elements of Dubstep and even Moby thrown in for good measure.

So that’s Ford & Lopatin, not quite Lennon and McCartney, but considerably better than those two blokes from MGMT. Expect those ripples to make waves.

Words: Lucy Holt

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