By Keith Walsh
Come Follow Me, the new album by Pas Musique, is a kind of tribute to another electronic music artist, Frank Tovey, aka Fad Gadget. Like Tovey, Robert L. Pepper of Pas Musique is visual artist. Come Follow Me intersects with early experimental electronic music, as well as Fad Gadget’s early work, from the period when Tovey met up with Mute Records founder Daniel Miller, who signed Depeche Mode at the beginning of their careerS.
Miller helmed the electronic project The Normal, which had some success with the singles “Warm Leatherette” and the B-side “TV O.D.,” the projects only releases. Come Follow Me is dark, minimalistic and noisy like The Normal, and like that project, leans conceptually into nihilism, with an absence of melody for the most part, making for a challenging listen. Come Follow Me is farther in intent from any of Fad Gadget’s popular singles like “Back To Nature” and “Ricky’s Hand,” and closer to the 1980 single “Insecticide,” with its atonality and darkness.
The opening track, “Intro” is three minutes of mostly noise in a rhythmic pattern. The title track “Come Follow Me” is beats, samples, and synth effects. When there’s melody, it’s only a fluctuation between two or three tones, be it from Pepper’s monotone voice or an wavering synth. “Too Civilized” was the first single, with a complex composition built on subtle changes. “Time Waits For No One” starts off with a funereal organ and a pounding beat, with Pepper’s vocals messaging about repetition, an inherent quality of the underlying musical foundation in a song that could be referencing the plight of Sisyphus.
With “Shout At The Horizon,” things get a little more exciting, with rapidly pulsing synth bass, abstract electronics. Pepper’s intentional use of noticeably synthetic cymbals and other drum sounds, here and elsewhere on the album, is clearly nostalgic. “Words Are Mute,” probably a sly reference to Miller’s label, has only a few sounds – a glitchy kick drum, abstract percussion, and Pepper’s vocals. It’s charming in the way that songs by The Normal were, in 1978. It heats up a little bit halfway through, with jungle electronic percussion and then more synths. It’s the most exciting moment on the album so far.
“Outro” continues the pulsing, high BPM energy and some soaring synths supplementing an atonal dance beat. It’s at this point that the playfulness of the album is more apparent. The last two tracks are instrumental mixes of “Come Follow Me” and “Too Civilized,” incorporating some playful engineering tricks that are fun to hear.
While Come Follow Me is inspired by Fad Gadget, it’s executed in an even more deconstructive manner, with less concern about melody and theme. Pas Musique is closer to the early experimentation with synthesizers of Krautrock than the swerve into popular song formats and radio airplay by Fad Gadget and those who followed in his footsteps. That could be perceived as a savvy move for those who remember the twee pop songs of Miller’s project with Tovey, Silicon Teens, an early commercial synthpop effort which hasn’t aged all that well.
I’ll be more impressed to find out if Come Follow Me was recorded on vintage gear, which would be a more daunting task than if it were created using the conveniences of a modern DAW and virtual synths. That would also be a more daring conceptual move.
Robert L. Pepper and Pas Musique are located in Brooklyn, New York and released on Alrealon Musique.
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