A Projection: super serious 80s post punk/new wave…from about five minutes ago

Title: Framework

Label: Tapete

This is only the band’s second album (Exit was released in 2015) and yet I was convinced that this post punk outfit was rooted in the early 80s. Formed in 2013, the group consists of Isak Eriksson (vocals), Amos Pagin (guitar), Mattias Rue’s (bass), Linus Högstadius (synths) and Jesper Lönn (drums).

There is something wholly attractive about how serious the group take themselves. Right from the off the track, the track Hands screams discipline, rather serious faces, efficient movements around the guitar, slightly pouty peering towards keyboards, a message that has to be delivered before the end of the world finally reaches us, slim-fitting suits and thin ties. You know the sort of thing. It’s all rather momentous.

There’s a bit of early Cure guitar in there, some early Midge Ure-era Ultravox arrangements, some rather stiff Mission-type vocalisations, a touch of Killing Joke drama. No doubt, A Projection have taken influences from all of these bands (consciously or not) and many more from that era to boot. The risk is that the subsequent music would sound stale and a farrago of keywords and key movements to form a sad pastiche of the times. Not so. This is earnest stuff. The band is tight – in terms of how they are presented as a unit – while the arrangements present them as integrated, well organised and businesslike. This group is not here for a laugh, they are deadly serious, “We decided that some songs had to be recorded during extreme sleep deprivation,” said ‘the band’. Not a particular member of the band. This was quoted as coming from ‘the band’. Which was slightly spooky because I imagined them all speaking at once. Hence, I decided to write this review in a similar state. Which is why it took me three hours to correct the spelling mistakes.

The mastering is rather harsh during crescendos but I’ve heard worse. In terms of their performance, I wanted to poke fun at them – I really did, I was in that sort of mood – but only ended up being drawn in to their world that combined nostalgia and some nicely constructed songs. Now my voice and very thoughts have joined ‘the band’. I am now a part of A Projection’s collective mind.