Oppenheimer Analysis - Science

Signals

It’s always going to be difficult to escape the musical singularity of Cold War romantic despair with a name like Oppenheimer Analysis, but to their credit the Liverpudlian duo, who were thankfully resurrected from anonymity by Clone’s reissue of their classic “Devil’s Dancers” a few years back, have always had one of the stronger back catalogues of bands from that era. The Minimal Wave fashion of 2009 highlighted that as much as many of these groups had some great tunes in them, like the garage punk craze of the sixties, it was usually limited to a handful. 

This release, originally on a very limited edition CD-R in 2005, and now reissued on Newcastle label Signals combines Andy Oppenheimer’s world-weary vocal sound  (you may not know that he is one of the world’s leading authorities on chemical warfare) with some hook-laden melodies to great effect - “Science” in particular is a 3 minute synthpop piece of beauty that doesn’t stray from their old hallmark sound but has a modern sheen to it. The b-side “Washington” doesn’t quite match it for quality, but for the A-side alone, hunt down this release.

Toby Frith

Buy at Juno