Entertainment
Album Review: Attack of the Titans: Hyperbubble Takes Synthpop to the Next Level
Ellen Zacarias
Album Title: Attack of the Titans (Original Soundtrack)
Artist: Hyperbubble
Genre: Synthpop, electropop
Label: Pure Pop for Now People
Original Release Date: July 31, 2014
For those of you who haven’t yet had the pleasure of experiencing Hyperbubble’s work, Hyperbubble is a duo from San Antonio, Texas whose work consists of both visual and performing arts, including synthpop and electropop music. Synthpop is a music genre in which the synthesizer is the main (dominant) instrument.
The golden duo that forms Hyperbubble is Jeff and Jess DeCuir. Hyperbubble is known not only in the United States, but also around the world, including the United Kingdom, where synthpop arose as a distinct genre of its own during the post-punk movement during the late 1970s to mid-1980s.
Attack of the Titans is Hyperbubble’s sixth album. The cover of the album screams retro. At first glance, the cover could almost pass as a re-release of a record from the 1970s, something my dad might have picked up in a music store as a teen.
The cover claims, “Guaranteed 100% electronic. No strings attached,” which is clever because all the instruments used in this album are electronic, including speech synthesizers and noise machines. Hyperbubble takes the concept of synthpop (using a synthesizer as the dominant instrument) to the next level (using a synthesizer as the only instrument). I wouldn’t know how to dance to Attack of the Titans in a dance club, but I’d listen to find out what someone creative and talented can do with various synthesizers.
Within the tracks of the CD, Hyperbubble proves true to the cover’s retro sci-fi feel: the whirring of spaceships from a 1950s black-and-white science fiction flick, the synthetic beats that would have populated a primitive video game, and the chorus of metallic robot voices.
Visualize: the vision of the future from the folks in the 1950s through 70s. Robots made of humans dressed in aluminum foil. Huge, cheesy space saucers that make The Thing (1982) quite proud.
Overall, this is a playful album that utilizes retro sound effects as well as the synthpop movement in general. The feel I’m getting from it is fun, nostalgic and futuristic at the same time, possibly because of the album’s nod to older science fiction movies.
My Thoughts on Four Songs in the Album:
“Sky Smasher” features the eerie sequence that screams “Spaaace! Aliens! Robots!”
“Pure Panic” evokes the suspense scenes introducing the entry of a very large, water-dwelling dinosaur.
“Bring Me the Hose Brigade” is a clever piece because it evokes the sound of a neighborhood band with a drummer with beats so quick in succession to each other that it’s almost inhuman. There is even the sound of a whistle.
My favorite track in this album is “Lazer Breath”, which sounds like an old-school arcade game. It makes me miss playing Pacman on my dad’s old computer.
Find out more about Hyperbubble:
