Enter the Greece-based Korfian, with his new album "Propaganda," an eight-track epic into the realms of electronica, art-pop, a little bit of goth, and plenty of beautiful drama. Fans of Soviet-Era synth or '80s Depeche Mode will have a lot of appreciation for these songs.
The first track on "Propaganda" is "Send-Off," a spoken word, poetic introduction to the album. This is rather heartening to see because off the bat, it seems as though Korfian is treating "Propaganda" as a complete work, much the way that concept albums such as "The Wall" or "Tommy" used to be treated. I like the idea of an overture, as it gives some diversity in mood.
Track #2 is the aptly titled "March Now" with synthetic drum beats that sound, well, like marching rhythms. Here, we get to experience Korfian's voice as an awesome baritone (a little bit like Interpol, but with more range). I'm curious that the lyrics seem to say "half step march now" and the chord progression is largely half-steps, but I'm probably reading too much into it.
Next up is "Nuclear Option." "This is the warzone, this is your warning" opens the song; it's rather ominous and the pulsating rhythm helps to give an audible heartbeat to the track. I'm a big fan of electronic ear-candy and this one has it to boot - lots of interesting clicks and bells that echo in the speakers, add a bass-synth to that and I feel right at home as an electro-pop fan. The ending throws in a pinch of dubstep sounds, which is even better.
Ambient sounds fill the opening of the fourth track "Worth." Opening with vocalized synths and high-pitched plucks, then some vocalizations from our artist. There is an interesting scale going on here. To my American ears, it sounds like they're drawing from their native Greek music, like, I could imagine this melody played on a bouzouki.
Track #5 is "Sabotage," and this one is a killer - all of the songs on "Propaganda" are totally worth your time/money - but this is a great tune with great lyrics. The way the song builds through moods, not to mention the cascading synthetic pads is just exquisite. There's a sexy quality to the down-tempo mood which would make this song an ideal number for something cinematic.
In Efthini, we get some new instrumentation - I don't recognize the instrument (maybe it is a bouzouki), it's a plucked lute of some kind, and it's beautiful. Sadly I don't speak Greek, so the track sounds very exotic to me. Up until now, all of the lyrics have been in English (sung with virtually no accent BTW), but it seems like these guys' native language just imparts a different kind of melodicism, which is very welcome in the mix.
The seventh song is another one in Greek (I'm pretty sure). "Ta Efodia," like "Efthini," is not only linguistically divergent from the other tracks, but also instrumentally (with the introduction of a piano), again, the arrangements on this track are somewhat minimal, but it's more like Korfian just judiciously went through the sounds that sounded exactly the way there were supposed to. The vocals are passionate and very melodic - it makes me want to speak Greek.
The final track is "Divine Plan," starting with some rhythmic spoken lyrics over a square-wave synth bass and club kick pattern. The vocals continue their melodic exploration like many of the other songs. The track builds slowly but the payoff is pretty special, the instrumentation drops to razor-thin fading before they disappear completely, and I'm just thinking "damn, that's clever."
So, hey, Korfian has given us an extremely well-crafted piece of pop. It's smart, catchy, current, yet rooted in proven synthetic goodness. "Propaganda" is available on both Bandcamp, and Spotify. Additionally, you could look at his website here.
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