PREMIERE | Trade Secrets Points 'True North'
Submersive synth-pop to set you off in the right direction
Future synth collective Trade Secrets are set to drop their debut full-length album September 7. The title of the album is Before We Vanish. The first single, "True North," premieres today on Popdust.
The creation of F.J. DeSanto, Trade Secrets was originally envisioned as a production/remix team composed of DeSanto and John Glenn Kunkel. Somewhere in there things changed, and the two-man team became a full-fledged band creating dazzling soundscapes. Along with DeSanto and Kunkel, the lineup includes Mike "Ash" Venezia, Charles LaBarbara, Damien Polak, and Peter Riley.
"True North" centers on the interior nuances of emotional uneasiness associated with the sheer scale of the earth, humanity, and vast man-made cities, like being a single drop of water in the ocean.
"It's always fascinating and at least a little dangerous. It's about looking out over a sprawling city and embracing being a tiny speck of dust in a giant world. It doesn't matter who you are and where you are, there is always a desire to know what lies in the shadows of our hearts and souls," explains DeSanto.
"True North" opens with an industrial-flavored-pop-dance groove, escalating to a potent electro-pop melody. New wave and futuristic EDM colors fill the atmosphere with tight, compact textures that expand into dreamy, multi-layered waves of sonic suffusion.
The vocals glide along suppressed tones and vibrant patterns of streaming ambience, creating a kaleidoscopic soundscape of palpable energy pregnant with mysterious sonic symbolism, like being swallowed by the vibrating, hyper-sensual harmonics of the Empyrean. The mood and feel of the music is akin to being drawn up out of the dreaming inversion of one's former existence, a deliciously exquisite sensation of transcendence.
"True North" is wonderfully lush, providing a sense of the complexity of existence, as well as a proximate perception of ineffable imminence. This is music you want to plunge into, letting it engulf you.
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Randy Radic is a Left Coast author and writer. Author of numerous true crime books written under the pen-name of John Lee Brook. Former music contributor at Huff Post.