The pioneers of the decade's revival of synth-based electro weigh up their ten years of artistry against the current landscape.
The narrative of the past decade of electronic music would not be complete without a chapter on LADYTRON — although the Liverpool-born quartet's global fanbase would argue that the band wrote the book on it.
Consistently placing songcraft and innovation over any confining aesthetic, the foursome of Daniel Hunt, Reuben Wu, Helen Marnie and Mira Aroyo fashioned four albums of deliriously buzzing, whip-smart electro-pop that have kept them ahead of the curve, apart from the fads and in a league of their own. "We've never fit into one scene, never adhered to one set of rules and never wanted to create anything that was already accepted or in the mainstream", says Wu now, reflecting on a decade highlighted by principal releases "604" (2001), "Light & Magic" (2002), "Witching Hour" (2005) and "Velocifero" (2008). Those albums, surveyed on the career-spanning "Best of Ladytron: 2000-2010", reflect the quartet's deftly executed (and delightfully subversive) dualities: primordial grooves vs lushly layered synths; sanguine melodies vs shimmering atmospherics; and art-house detachment vs the poignant narratives delivered by dueling sirens Marnie and Aroyo. LADYTRON have created a body of work that reveals a fresh creative arc — and, as time has told, served as a reference point for a current crop of artists such as LADY GAGA, GOLDFRAPP, LA ROUX and CRYSTAL CASTLES.
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