Pop. 1280

“Returning to New York after extensive touring that took them to Europe and back, the band restructured, paring themselves down to the core duo of Ivan Drip and Chris Bug, and new recruit Matthew Hord, who brought new expertise in analog synth hardware unlike anything heard before in Pop.1280.

The result is an album of frenzied intensity and madness that is perfectly illustrated in their first from the new record with “Boom Operator”.”

“It is more skeletal and raw in places than their two previous albums, and more lush and thick with synth and guitar in others. This production is ultimately what makes Paradise such a standout; there are plenty of young industrial and noise-rock bands running hard on all cylinders, as Pop. 1280 did on their prior efforts.”

“Though rhyming can be a key piece in songwriting, the use of it on Paradise restrains it from creating anecdotal journeys into a pierced soul. Instead of immersing listeners into the paranoid and battered mind of the record’s character, rhyming brings attention back to the structure of the piece, reeling away from the darkness that can be so consuming. Where musicians can falter in their stylizing of a noise rock angle by randomly putting their noise in ill-fitting sections, Pop. 1280 use their arsenal very well. It is in the desire for complete immersion that dwarfs Paradise from being more grotesque than modern Marilyn Manson.”