Genre/Influences: Electro-pop, body-pop.

Background/Info: Russian electro-pop formation WANT/ed returns with their fourth full length album. The band actually consisting of Yury Aryasov and Sergey Surkov unleashed an album featuring 10 songs plus 2 remixes. Some of the cuts have been already released on previous EP’s.

Content: The band invited numerous guest singers to achieve this work. Tomas Gustafsson (known from Erotic Elk) is not only singing, but also playing guitar on a few cuts. I also have to mention Patrik Hansson (Vanguard) and Miranda Cartel while names like Catrine Christensen, Holger Muller, Evgenly Rodionov and Teemu Salo (Fadeout)       are maybe less familiar names.

Because of the different vocalists this album also sounds pretty diversified. The tracks however moves in between electro-pop and harder body-pop cuts. Some of the female singers cover the work with a breeze of sensuality while the male singers mainly sing on the ‘harder’ cuts. From danceable tracks to melancholic passages, WANT/ed clearly sounds clearly inspired by Depeche Mode.

The bonus remixes have been done by Uncarnate and Erotic Elk.

+ + + : I’m often a skeptical about a band working with multiple singers, but I’ve to admit WANT/ed did a real great selection. The diversity of the work is interesting as you might be seduced by the sensuality of the songs featuring Miranda Cartel and Catrine Christensen at one side and Patrik Hansson (often linked to Mesh) at the other side. The songs are sometimes evoking Depeche Mode, but the most important thing is that they’re well-crafted and revealing all the experience of this Russian duo. Among the harder cuts I’ve to mention the pretty cool “Future Rhythm 2017” with guitar playing by Tomas Gustafsson.

– – – : This is album sounds cool, diversified and enjoyable from start till finish, but I’m just missing a potential hit!

Conclusion: WANT/ed simply confirms great electro-pop is not only and most of the times made in Germany or Sweden, but also in Russia. ScentAir has a nose for national talents and WANT/ed definitely is a band to discover and keep an eye on.

Best songs: “Future Rhythm 2017”, “Fall”, “Nothing To Fear”, “My Pride”.

Rate: (7).

Artist: www.facebook.com/wantedelectronicsounds

Label: www.scent–air.com / www.facebook.com/ScentairRecords

Inferno Sound Diaries

I have been working for over 30 years with Side-line as the main reviewer. My taste is eclectic, uncoventional and I prefer to look for the pearls, even if the bands are completely unknown, thus staying loyal to the Side-Line philosophy of nurturing new talents.

www.side-line.com

(by our Norwegian correspondent Jan Ronald Stange)

The Russian band WANT/ed, with Sergey Surkov (music, sampling, production) and Yury Aryasov (music) from Kaliningrad, just released their fourth album “Unthinkable” this week. As they yet again have increased their guest vocals we had to ask Sergey about this quite international release.

Side-Line: It’s noticeable that you’re expanding the use of different people on vocals, more for each album, and lots of foreigners. Can you tell us about the process of finding all these people and where they come from?

Sergey: As you know, for the first two albums we had a permanent singer, Evgeny Rodionov. After his departure, of course the question arose, “what to do?”

On the horizon was Holger Müller from Germany, he sang a couple of songs. As other songs for the album “Fringe” were created, the idea came to involve other singers in this process. He became a transition period in the sound and approach to music.

And now we’re at the fourth album; “Unthinkable”. We wanted to change something in ourselves, our personal attitude to music and its creation. In 2016, about four compositions were prepared. The question “who will sing?” constantly arose – we wanted something new…
We started with involving Holger Müller again, along with Patrik Hansson and Tomas Gustafsson from Sweden. On the Internet I found a girl named Miranda Cartel from Poland, real name Emmanuella Robak. While she sang, Tomas made an arrangement on the guitar for a song that has become «My Pride». I liked the result, later we made it a single. The real guitar was new to us.
Then Tomas recorded the vocals for the song “Nothing To Fear”, and again I asked him to play something on the guitar. And for this single we made two acoustic versions.

Then I saw an ad on the Internet from the group “SoftWave” from Denmark … They were looking for remixers, I made two remixes for them, later they were published on their CD “Together Alone – the remixes”. After that I suggested to their vocalist Catrine Christensen to contribute on a song. It became “A World Within A World”, and the result really encouraged us!
Her voice was a real discovery for us and I invited her to sing another song, which became “When Nightmares Bleed” – the most dynamic song on this album.

Another new and interesting voice for us this time was Teemu Salo from Finland, who did the vocal on “World Empty of Stars”.
This time Patrik Hansson only sang one song; “Fall”, and Holger sang three songs – excellent vocals!

In this album we also included a new version of the 2014 track “Future Rhythm”, with vocals by Tomas, and we also recorded extra guitar distortion to the chorus.

The guys and girls gave all 100%, and maybe more. As you said Jan Ronald, the whole album turned out around the Baltic Sea. We like that our geography is expanding and the music gives us so many different emotions. It should have been called “BALTIC” – maybe next time!

Preorder the album: http://www.poponaut.de/wanted-unthinkable-p-17015.html

Listen & buy: https://wanted.bandcamp.com/album/unthinkable

Jan Ronald Stange

Sometimes – when I’m not cooking, biking, listening to music or attending concerts, I write stuff for Side-Line.com. Mostly about Norwegian bands, but it’s been some Swedish, English, American, Danish, German and others too… 😉

www.facebook.com/jrstange

(By our Norwegian correspondent Jan Ronald Stange)
The Russian electronic band WANT/ed continues their collaborations across the Baltic Sea when releasing their new digital EP ‘Nothing to fear’. This time with the Swedish musicians Tomas Gustafsson and Fredrik Sigeback from Erotik Elk, resulting in two excellent electronic tracks, but surprisingly also two acoustic versions.

Tracklist:
01 Nothing To Fear [Single Version]
02 Nothing To Fear [Erotic Elk Remix]
03 Start To Leave [Acoustic Version]
04 Nothing To Fear [Acoustic Version]

Buy the album at iTunes , or download the EP here (Russian) or here (English).

Jan Ronald Stange

Sometimes – when I’m not cooking, biking, listening to music or attending concerts, I write stuff for Side-Line.com. Mostly about Norwegian bands, but it’s been some Swedish, English, American, Danish, German and others too… 😉

www.facebook.com/jrstange