Track Of The Day #1001: Transfigure - No Other Way [EXCLUSIVE]
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Track Of The Day #1001: Transfigure – No Other Way [EXCLUSIVE]

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Track Of The Day #1001: Transfigure – No Other Way [EXCLUSIVE]

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past six months, you’ll be fully aware that our country is pretty much headed for fucked-ville. Here we stand glaring into the abyss of a particularly hard-boiled Brexit, the kind that is no good for dippy soldiers, never mind the economy. Thank the lord for Transfigure. The Newcastle duo of Grace Mire (lead vocals) and Lewis Norvid (production) are one of the most promising North East exports of electronic/dance music and have the shared vision of a unified Europe. As prime distributors of what they call ‘Euro Wave’, the twosome have already impressed our EU brothers and sisters with their Trans-Atlantic synthpop sound, echoing a golden age of British electronic music. Think Saint Etienne, New Order and The Pet Shop Boys dragged kicking and screaming into the alien spaces of 2017.

Transfigure’s genre-bending debut album Translation was released on Dutch dance label Bordello A Parigi just last month and gives an insight into their dystopic yet deeply hopeful world. Using a mix of styles they manage to evoke a feeling of nostalgia, whilst being firmly rooted in the here and now.

‘No Other Way’ is the second single from the album and we are proud to give it a premiere here at God Is In The TV. It’s one of the album’s standout tracks, leading with the bare sound of a Glockenspiel and surging into the unknown, with zipping synthesisers under the guise of late ’80s/early ’90s electro-pop. Mire’s vocals rise and fall with thickly spread layers and coalesce into one huge, euphoric vision of the not-so-distant future.

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3 Comments

  1. “As prime distributors of what they call ‘Euro Wave’, the twosome have already impressed our EU brothers and sisters with their Trans-Atlantic synthpop sound, echoing a golden age of British electronic music.” Not sure how a trans-atlantic synthpop sound echoes “golden age of British electronic music”. Surely a British synthpop sound does that? Surely a trans-atlantic synthpop sound echoes “non-existent golden age of trans-atlantic electronic music”?

    Also mentioning Saint Etienne, the mighty, MIGHTY PSBs and New Order one might anticipate that somewhere in the song there’d be, erm, a song.

    It did leave me with a feeeling of nostalgia however – nostalgia for a previous era when listenable syth pop was being made.

    Reply

    1. Hi Wildeye, thanks for the comment. I appreciate your clear dislike for this track and the following analyses… but what I was trying to say, I guess, was that Transifgure’s sound is reminiscent of one (not being old enough to remember the 80s/early 90s all too well) that I consider to be part of an era of bands i.e. PSBs, SE (who were more prominent in the latter) and even Depeche Mode that gave life to British electronic music as a whole. The use of ‘Trans-Atlantic’ merely fits the context of ‘bridging the Brexit gap’ which I have clearly built the piece around (unless you weren’t getting that loud and clear). I appreciate your view however and after scrolling through your WordPress; in which you slag off just about every form of music and artist around, this is a relitavely constructive comment in comparison.

      Reply

      1. Unfortunately I am plenty old enough to remember 80s pop. And I suppose there is a similarity between this and that. In terms of the theme of the piece I got that there was one but I did not really get any point you were making other than brexit is bad (we agree!) Re-reading your piece I suspect that understanding it fully relies on a knowledge of the lyrics of the song, the work of the band, etc etc… knowledge I do not have. I tend to prefer more direct, unsubtle writing. Off the top of my heads here are some genres I love – psychedelia, proto punk, punk, metal, hardore, doom, pop, new wave, new romantic, romo, doom, indie, alt-rock, folk, country, math, noise, drone, drone-metal, grindcore. But all of those genres the vast majority is shit. I love hardcore, but beyong black flag and bad brains its just inferior and pointless. I do hate boring, obvious and pretentious music MASSIVELY though. And why do you think music criticism should be constructive? [I would assert mine is, especially when slating alt-j]

        Reply

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God is in the TV is an online music and culture fanzine founded in Cardiff by the editor Bill Cummings in 2003. GIITTV Bill has developed the site with the aid of a team of sub-editors and writers from across Britain, covering a wide range of music from unsigned and independent artists to major releases.