New Wave Syria is a Slovenian duo comprised of Rok and Ursa (no last names were provided). Their overall sound is somewhat electro-pop, which is contrary to most of my aural associations of former Eastern Bloc musical styles. Usually I think of artists that would populate the Miasmah label or rock an experimental electronica set, but not the likes of LCD Soundsystem. With that comparison in mind, do remember that they are a bit more distorted than average in the presentation of their sometimes shoegazey pop.

Sadly, they don’t stand out from their contemporaries as Lali Puna so deftly does.

Hello, Yes opens with “In Motion”, a track that, ironically, never travels very far - they stick to a safe, repetitive melody and rhythm. Synths overlap and layer until they wash each other out; individual voices in the crowd just become part of the unified din. Their struggles continue about a minute into “Random Logic”, as the drums become riddled with the machine gun fire of high frequency reverb that reminds me of a Doonesbury strip bemoaning the overuse of reverb. The reverb migraine is later, mercifully, subdued by another wave of bent circuits screaming over the top. All is not lost, though.

I really dig the cymbal programming on “Let it Out”, as various layers of synthetic cymbals crash and build support for the vocals. Ursa’s voice is attractive, but is constantly muffled by excessive distortion. This would be cool in select spots or tracks, but not throughout the album. Perhaps even the addition of a clean vocal overdub here and there would improve the listener’s experience. Instead, they became quickly satisfied with one style of sound for the vocals and rode it all the way through.

I guess I just feel they could have relied more on the raw power of Ursa’s vocals to carry the songs without masking them in dirty digital fuzz. To give you an idea of her vocal stylings, think of a marriage of Kazu Makino of Blonde Redhead and Julie Christmas of Made Out of Babies/Battle of Mice.

This record is a mildly interesting mix that warrants a listen when you want an instrumental base that leans towards electronica, but ends up sounding much more like pop-rock and dance in the end. Hopefully, they'll move on to something a little more polished and well thought out.

-Gabriel Bogart