Cool Band Alert - Edgar

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Name: Edgar
From: San Francisco, CA
Members: Luis Gutierrez
RIYL: Molchat Doma, Jakuzi, Black Marble, Soviet Soviet, Lust For Youth
The Gist: Dark dance music for ‘80s haunted houses.

Late in Pavor, his first album as Edgar for the shadowy synth label Dark Entries, Luis Gutierrez delivers a cover of Amanda Lear’s “Follow Me.” This is significant: Lear is a legendary French musician who was once married to Salvador Dali, appears on the cover of Roxy Music’s For Your Pleasure, and whose music—a sultry mix of new wave, disco, and Weimar-esque cabaret is synonymous with clandestine late-night revelry. All of those things are true of Pavor as well. Gutierrez works primarily in the milieu of dark-hued synth-pop—which he occasionally spikes with light dashes of cumbia—but all of it is a little sinister, a little sexy, and a little surreal. The title track is a herky-jerk synth track, like Kraftwerk with a little more hip-swivel. “La Tez” is breathless electro, tumbling through the city streets of the 1980s from one party to the next. Gutierrez has a deep, smoky voice, all the better to sell the music’s seductiveness—even on a track like “Lechuga,” with its robotic rhythms and wild, wavy electronics. For Edgar, night time is the right time; Pavor is come-on music for the android disco.

We mentioned them in the RIYL, but if you haven’t heard Jakuzi yet, you can get up to speed on them here. The excellent label felte has been trafficking in this kind of beautifully gloomy music for over a decade now, and the label Night School has also been known to take a spin through the shadows.

Come hang in the chat with artists celebrating their record release this week on Bandcamp.