Kraków Loves Adana

In 1990 A.D. the decade that had just elapsed had been disdainfully derided as the decade that style will choose to forget. These self-anointed gurus would decree outrageous garish clothing dated within 6 months and pronounce the ‘New Look’ as the ‘in’ thing’; this ‘Me decade’ was one that privileged the individual over society and was soundtracked by chart-friendly technopop. This was a pop that utilised the emerging electronics that sounded like the future with a postmodern obsession with ‘surface as depth’ that to hyper-critical tastes sounded plastic and trivial yet actually say more about now and then than anyone cared to admit. Until now.

How little they knew. The 80s ©, a repackaged, recycled, retrofitted age available for your consumption anytime, anywhere has proven those experts wrong on all counts. Yesterday’s kitsch is today’s niche. Retrospection and renovation reaps rewards.

On Berlin twosome (Deniz Çiçek & Robert Heitmann) Kraków Loves Adana’s album, ‘Darkest Dreams’ they go back to that future (and forward to that past) and craft a (re)collection of electric dreams, rewired fantasies, dead-end desires and short-circuited fears. Deriving strength and inspiration from the shadier aspects of living (and dying) they convert the negativity into resolve and will. Outrospection is an invaluable trait.

‘Darker darkness’ has shades of Gary Numan’s early forays with Tubeway Army. Vocalist Çiçek exhorts, imparts and imports again and again ‘I wish I was a man’ to a sombre backbeat. However, it's not all its cracked up to be …

‘Paradise on fire’, ‘For a kiss’ and ‘Flowers in the dark’ mine a similar terrain to Boy Harsher and Sextile, gothically ominous synth-lines stab outwards, piercing inwards. The latter evokes Depeche Mode at their cautionary gloomiest. However, it’s not all bleak out there, ‘Don’t ask why’ is a dreampoptimistic detour to the lighter side of existence, all you simply have to do is go with the flow.

Let the darkness in, to let the light out..