Summary: Komputer release a brand new album, Synthetik. The follow up to 2002’s "Market Led,""Synthetik" will be available on digital format only on August 14 2007. In this two-part podcast, Simon and David discuss the album. Komputer’s sound is rigorously electronic, their subject matter is varied: from Russian cosmonauts to rubbish compactors and mobile phone ringtones – as on new track Headphones and Ringtones, their paean to a time you could listen to songs on the radio, bird song and the wind in the trees, rather than today’s ubiquitous headphones and ringtones. For Synthetik, the band’s third album, the music gradually evolved over a long period of time, tracks were tried out in live sets then discarded or reworked in the studio, maturing into a return to the more traditional electro sound of the first album, The World Of Tomorrow, with the incorporation of a more experimental and contemporary electronica approach. Opening with the futuristic International Space Station, a farewell song to planet Earth, the album looks to the future, takes a slightly nostalgic look at time’s past, nature (with the pounding, relentless Rain) and then, unapologetically tells the listener how it is with the artisan anthem What We Do. Komputer is the project of two London-based synth-meisters: Simon Leonard and David Baker who, described as an electronic evocation of Syd Barrett’s madcap laughter, originally signed to Mute in 1984 as I Start Counting and continued with releases under the moniker Fortran 5 until the release of Komputer’s debut album, The World of Tomorrow (1998), a reaction against Oasis’ glorification of The Beatles, a rewriting of pop music with Kraftwerk as heroes.
