Tomorrow Syndicate’s Citizen Input is a compact set of expansive, electronically-infused and psychedelically-charged, synthy and shoegazey kosmische cuts

Science fictions are infiltrating Glasgow. A black monolith appears in Kelvingrove Park. Glasgow University becomes the archaeological site of an unearthed alien craft. Martian war machines stalk Argyle Street, reducing Saturday afternoon revellers to human dust. Monorail Music’s staff are replaced by copies. The city is host to these unrealities spooling out in real time due to the emergence of Tomorrow Syndicate’s Citizen Input mini-album, the follow up to their deservedly well-received full-length debut Future Tense (also on Polytechnic Youth). They appear unwilling to stay tethered to their earthly origins though, instead aiming into the stars with Citizen Input. Glasgow and beyond the infinite then.

This is a compact set of expansive, electronically-infused and psychedelically-charged, synthy and shoegazey kosmische cuts. Somewhere between Neu!, Ride, and Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein’s scores for Stranger Things. Opening number “Precogs” channels PKD through the squelching uplift of instrumental synthology. Past misdeeds are masked within minority reports, as Tomorrow Syndicate prepare for planetary escape. They set velocity to stun and as a mood-setter it is superb. The Space Age pop pulse of “Stranger in Space” is all sixties lost futures and muted Beach Boys on Mars, with spoken word sampling recalling DJ Shadow’s production on UNKLE’s Psyence Fiction. It would sit intriguingly alongside Vanishing Twin’s current output.

There’s a malevolence to the icy-synth beauty of “Contact”. But also the power to dream what is lost and make it substantial once more. Think Jodie Foster in the Solaris-echoing scenes of the Zemeckis picture that the track shares a title with. “Captain, I am Fading” tears a hole in reality and soars through the Kubrickian stargate with a Peter Hook Joy Division bassline. It is somehow the most Glasgow moment on the EP; epic outsider pop that completely owns the moment. The journey shifts into dream-pop-scapes as “Auto-Pilot” takes over before crossing the vanishing line with “Exit Guide”. This is not an exit however. Only a beginning.

Something of Tomorrow Syndicate’s Citizen Input was seeded in 1996 by Glasgow’s Urusei Yatsura. Their DIY-constructed, Sonic Youth power pop was steeped in sci-fi tropes and, brilliant as it was, looked in from the outside, the musical equivalent of the science fiction fan. Tomorrow Syndicate are the real deal, leaping from lucid and lurid pages with their out of this world future pop.

tomorrowsyndicate.bandcamp.com

Stewart Gardiner
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