New Look is a shop for cheapskate ladies right? Well, yes, are also a kick-ass synth pop duo of (the visually exciting) Sarah Ruba & Adam Pavao . The part-time model and her producer husband created a fab album of electronic pop goodness.
They’re also pretty good self-editors, hence all the lovely dub space in their songs. “We try not to keep anything superfluous in,” they explain. “We’re always conscious of the negative space in our music and that’s a constant theme.” They’ve cornered the market in less-is-more. Nap on the Bow is the perfect blend of crispness and melodic concision. Has there been a single instance of this stuff getting any daytime radio play, though, let alone charting? Possibly not. And yet this feels like a hit, just as New Look’s London counterparts, AlunaGeorge, are fantasy top 10 heroes of ours. Relax Your Mind is a brilliantly raw, sparse sort of feminised grime.
On Numbers the words are haiku-like in their simplicity but convey just the right amount of fear and yearning: “The telephone is not a toy/ It has power to destroy.” Have you ever noticed that? We have, often. A Light has an itchy, quirky arrangement that is more Björk than Benga. The Ballad has the austere atmosphere of Fade to Grey/Being Boiled. So Real is like Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam doing late-90s/early-00s UKG. Does that make it R&G? While you’re pondering that, Everything is like a showdown between dub creator Scientist and St Etienne. Ruba visits every song like a hologram of passion, and the music is a mirage of immaculacy. And now we’re going to vanish, before we say too much.
Debut single The Ballad now available on iTunes! The Ballad is a mixture of Kraftwerk synth sighs, rippling beats and Ruba pretendingto be Kate Bush. Fantastic!
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