TourdeForce – Compendium Vol.1 2009-2013 (Album – Space Race Records)
Genre/Influences: Electro-Pop.
Format: Digital, CD.
Background/Info: Without becoming a leading Electro-Pop formation TourdeForce became a familiar name in the Electro-Pop scene. Several albums have been released over the years. This work brings us back to the years between 2009 and 2013. It’s an opportunity to discover remixes from songs of that period, but also demo tracks, cover versions and previously unreleased stuff.
Content: The main source of inspiration is Electro-Pop music, which has been now mixed with pure Dance-Pop and then moving into catchy, melancholic songs. Foretaste, Syrian, Luca Urbani, Dekad, Porta Vittoria and TourdeForce took care of the remixes while there’s also one song featuring Nova Pulsar. There are also cover versions of Novy Svet and Diorama. Most of the songs are sung in English, but you’ll also notice Italian vocals.
+ + + : This is not just a ‘best of’ from a period in time, but the originality is that it’s much more than simply remixes as most of the band still contributed by vocals. The previously unreleased songs and demo cuts are adding a little bonus to the work. I’m more into the ‘classical’, catchy, Electro-Pop songs like “Dancing Days” and the 2022 mix of “One July Night”. There’s also something to say about the minimal remix of “Masterplan” by Foretaste and the cool remix of “Modern Affair” by Luca Urbani
– – – : I’m not that much into the pure Dance-Pop opener “Falling In The Dark” revealing a too commercial approach. I realize the previously unreleased cuts and demos are less convincing.
Conclusion: I’ve never been totally convinced by the sound of TourdeForce, which according to me is missing an extra catchy touch.
Best songs: “One July Night”, “Dancing Days”.
Rate: 7.
Artist: www.facebook.com/tourdeforce1
Label: www.facebook.com/SpaceRaceRecords
Side-Line reported on the compilation ahead of release in Italian electro pop project TourdeForce revisits past in ‘Compendium vol. 1’. Listen to “Compendium, Vol. 1”:
About TourdeForce
TourdeForce is an electro-wave and synth-pop project from Bergamo, Italy, founded in 2004 by musician Christian Ryder, initially working with vocalist Kyt Walken for selected recordings and live shows. The project’s sound is a hybrid of electro-wave, EBM, punk-tinged pop and experimental electronic textures.
Early material included the self-titled album “TourdeForce” in the mid-2000s on the Bergamo-based label My Owl Music, followed by “We’re Not Underground” and “Colours in Life” at the end of the decade. During the same period, tracks appeared on various compilations and tribute releases.
The project in the meantime had signed to EKP (or EK Product), a label founded in Naples in December 2008. From 2010, EK expanded into two labels: EK Product, dedicated to darker and heavier sounds, and Space Race Records, focusing on synthpop, futurepop and IDM. TourdeForce would from then on be released under Space Race Records.
In the first half of the 2010s, the Bergamo-based act released “Jedem Das Seine” (2014), the first part of the so-called “Anger Trilogy”. The second part of this cycle, “Very Industrial People”, appeared in 2018 on Space Race Records. The same year the band collaborated with the Swedish act We The North for a split Ep, simply titled “Split”.
In 2021, they released the album “Vargtimmar” on Space Race Records, a work combining electro-pop and punk-influenced elements. In January 2022, TourdeForce released a tribute to Death In June: “Six in the Key of Death”. “Compendium, Vol. 1” followed on 17 June 2022, collecting 14 songs made between 2009 and 2013 during the “Colours in Life” era.
The band went on to release the “Hail the Electronic Sun” album in 2024, the single “Elektro Kommando” as a tribute to the former EKP label, and the album “Leaving Nothing Left Behind” in 2026.
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