Syndrome by Kero x Steph Copeland

Syndrome
Artists: Kero x Steph Copeland
Format: 12” vinyl, digital
Label: Detroit Underground
cat# DU-FRGTWN3 / DU47


Kero & Steph’s landmark collaboration Syndrome now sees a sumptuous release on vinyl and evocative music video, spinning data into densely layered visual treats.

Steph’s coolly ethereal voice and poignant writing drift in harmonies atop the sliced-up, glitched, hard-hitting precision of Kero’s productions. The unforgettable directness of her compositional sense is here, as her long resume of scores and placements would suggest. It finds an urban-technological counterpart in Kero’s frenetic sounds. The DU label boss is in full force straight from the chilling post-pop of the opening titular cut. “Walk in the park” is a production masterwork, punchy organic percussion against grinding bass. “Who am I to complain” is at once arresting and vulnerable with vocals, but still packs an emotional gut-punch in the accompanying instrumental. “Count down from 7” is more stripped down and urgent, melodic hooks propelled by lo-fi rhythmic mechanism’s menace.

For the remixes, Oberman Knocks unleashes utter digital destruction - computer memory banks dropped through a wormhole. That thoroughly deconstructs Mtch into composite textures -- and opens “Walk in the Park” to near-unrecognizable, yet somehow danceable mayhem.

The new physical and motion elements find a visual language for these sonic strata of imagination and digital construction. From designer Christoph Grünberger, known for his tome The Age of Data: Embracing Algorithms in Art & Design, we get the packed outer sleeve and 2D design. These enshroud a calm-looking Steph in a Shibuya Crossing-style trip inside Defasten’s geometries, opposite a catalog of branching visualizations and glyphs.

Defasten, known for his live AV work fusing virtual reality and performance, here explodes faceted 3D cubes, in the cover and further in the music video. These pulsing crystalline hyper-geometries delve into data as expressive medium, shifting and vibrating with the glowing tones and crisp percussive hits of Kero and Steph’s composition. It’s a rare music video that matches the music in intricacy and form - a world that can only exist in virtual space, but that feels as immersively dreamy as the sound score.

“Sugar coated fabric … in braided covers” and “silver linings” were never so tempting.
~Peter Kirn.

STEPH COPELAND:
Steph Copeland has been scoring for film, TV and commercials since 2012 (The Retreat, Vicious Fun, The Oak Room, NBA Canada, The North Face). Prior to her career as an award-winning screen composer, she began as an electronic singer-songwriter on both sides of the border of Windsor and Detroit, collaborating with hip-hop, techno and electronic artists under the pseudonym 'Perilelle'. Copeland dropped the moniker with her 2015 debut LP Public Panic, has since released multiple singles as well her 2019 electro-pop EP Dual. In 2018, Copeland produced and conducted all-female orchestras opening the SOCAN Awards and the TIFF Opening Gala. Copeland’s original songs have seen placements in films and series’ including Netflix’s Tiny Pretty Things, Snowpiercer, L.A.’s Finest, and UnREAL.


KERO:
With over 30 releases on some of electronic music’s most celebrated and innovative labels such as Wild Oats, Semantica, Bpitch, Warp, Ghostly International and Shitkatapult and Touchin' Bass as well as his own critically acclaimed Detroit Underground Records and Kerohand records which he does with legendary detroit producer Kelli Hand (RIP).

デトロイト
アンダーグラウンド
Detroit Underground (est. 1997) is a multidisciplinary arts collective. Functioning primarily as a record label dedicated to electronic based experimental music and video installation.

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