The Bodies Obtained Make Dead Plans

The 80's revival continues and for the most part it's all been done to death and redone to death again but every once and a while something comes along that takes a different looks at the 80's and what made it such a bizarre decade and re-tunes it into something new and even more bizarre then it was the first time around. The Bodies Obtained happens to be one of those things that approaches the 80's from a completely different angle than everyone else. Their album, Dead Plans is so far from being new wave influenced that it wouldn't know what Frankie said if it hit it on the head.

What The Bodies Obtained do know is how to write obtuse dark and angular electronic music that sounds like Fad Gadget and the entire 80's Mute Records roster was unleashed upon the world all at the same time. This is twisted pop that resembles the very first experiments in synth pop that went horribly wrong but still sounded so revolutionary that they were mind numbing. Listening to Dead Plans is like listening to an OMD or Human League outtake reel from 1981 with some added sense of melody just to give some flavor.

While all this might sound a bit discomforting and strange, it's supposed to. It's not your usual electro, synth pop fare that's made strictly for packing out a dance floor. No, Dead Plans is like a Radio Shack experimental kit in synthetic pop as put together by a 12 year old. Keyboards clang and strain for attention while horns, drum machines, and cold and calculating vocals stress everything out. It's a perfect fusion of post punk, synth pop, and a pack or mental Terminator's on the loose.

This sort of bizarre experimental electronic music might give some a headache, but for anyone excited by minimal beats, broken synthesizers, digi-punk, or anything kind of atonal Dead Plans will be an amazing experience. The Bodies Obtained have taken the 80's and shattered it with a jack hammer and then pieced it back together with duct tape and Dead Plans is what the resulting reconstruction work sounds like. Atonal and unusual, Dead Plans is an intriguing listen of synth pop gone wrong in all the right ways.