Either old school synths are making a huge comeback or I’m just way into them and keep unearthing stuff that uses them.  I’m not entirely sure.  But what I am sure of is that lately my Facebook feed has been bursting with musicians excited about their latest finds of old equipment, looking like little kids at Christmas just thinking about what kind of mischief they’re going to get into with their new toys.

Páll Ivan Frá Eiðum is a visual artist and musician living in Reykjavik and his first album, This Is My Shit, was released earlier this year thanks to a Karolina Fund project and on the label of the artists’ collective Mengi.  You can get a sense of Páll’s artistic style from the cover, a tuba of sorts that also includes a vagina and a penis, which as near as I can tell is quite representative of his body of work.

First time I met you, I made you smile
Second time I met you, I made you laugh
Third time I met you, I made you cry
Fourth time I met you, I made you scream
— “4th Time Blood”

This Is My Shit consists of a diverse set of songs that all generally orbit around the concept of 80s synth music.  There’s the John Grant-like “Tinder On the Toilet,” the heavily auto-tuned “4th Time Blood”, and the eerie vintage horror movie soundtrack of “Halló Vinur”; but let’s not forget the hip hop/R&B blend of “Spaceship” (♠) or the industrial darkness of “Expanding”.  And that’s just on side A!  This thing is diverse, an interesting twist awaiting just on the other side of each blank groove between songs.

HERE it is on Soundcloud if you want to check it out.

(♠) Which includes a brief industrial interlude, because why wouldn’t it?