Last time I got to one of these Bleeding Gold Records singles it was from HEHFU, a really great bedroom pop find by this label who even put it on tri color vinyl! Not to be outdone this single from Sutja Guiterrez is a clear red with black splatter pressing of this equally intricate home recording savant.
This A-Side track "Death is my lover, Love is my wife" feels like an'80s inspired, cold nu-wave flashback. It's got all of the signature sounds from the Psychedelic Furs or OMD, the long distance reverb, guitars used as stunted minimal instruments, the notes crisp and almost synth like. Huge mechanical drums with cathedral echo smothering everything in direct opposition to this plinky, thin guitar sound. A bunch of worlds coming together, Ah-ha and Thomas Dolby. His breathy vocal on the high end of this shrill and piercing instrumentation, cold but with human elements. An acoustic guitar, an impassioned delivery that lies between a shattered manchester JD and the coke furied glee of the danceteria. It's right in the middle, straddling the synth heavy era of weird haircuts and the gloomy, learn to love the rope style. There's a kind of beauty in these old VHS stills, the way the lines of digitization get all confused, it's clearly from that time period but different from the original. I love these bizarre combinations of things, the idea that this perfect homage could still be done as heartfelt and honestly as this. So unselfconscious... but not falling into a glitchy synth sound, but the dark pop from that high school age of lazers and fog machines. This is part of that genius, and that old polaroid on the front only makes me think this guy knows exactly what he's doing.
B-Side's 'Weekend Boy" starts a slick echo chamber outsider pop with soft, crooning vocals, sine wave synths swirling, and a slight breakdown from an out of tune REAL piano? The guitars come back in a crazy flurry of distortion... huge gate effects so it doesn't get out of control. Impeccable use of crazy drum machine sounds... the unusuable weird glitchy conga at the end of a measure, so impossibly specific, but changed into a completely different thing. It's not a fake emulation of the sound anymore. I feel like that's what Sutja is doing with this entire sound and as joyful and dance as this should sound, there a kind of sadness to this whole thing that I'm really into...it's like Soft Moon with a ballad singer. Reverse attack snare, the clicking of an actual rimshot, a low envelope organic piano to piercing bent soundwave, the perfect blend of these nostalgic stand-ins for the actual sound in a pop catchy artifice... it's genius stuff, really I could already listen to an albums worth from Sutja. These two songs are a great entry to knowing you've heard enough, that first song wasn't a fluke or unchacteristic of where this is going.
Listen for yourself and get this one from Bleeding Gold Records, who are literally trying to ensure this self fulfilling prophecy with their no expense spared splatter red vinyl. There's a reason you don't see many of these at this size, but it's always amazing. Well deserved.
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