Trek With Quintronic – “Landing Plus” – [Dark Entries]

Thurston Hunger   11/1/2014   12-inch, A Library

I’m tempted to photoshop a picture of the Cars’ Candy-O cover
with Aladin Sane’s head. ’cause that’s what this reminded me
of, and yes that’s a good, albeit anachronistic thing. Another
stand-out aspect of this album, how often as a DJ do you get
to say “I prefer their *later* stuff.” (This gathers two albums
and 1981’s “Trek With Quintronic” laser zaps 1980’s “Landed”)
I’m talking glam lasers with plenty of glitter and wooshy synths,
but above all the picture posing perfect preening vocals of
Trek (aka Paul Wilcox). He adds some guitar, but most of the
music comes from Quintronic (no relation to the mighty New
Orleans Quintron, instead it’s David Kane on banks of synth
and drum machines that refuse to rush. Their fastest setting
is “screw you, it can wait” they now work at the DMV or
something, but that slowness pays off giving Trek time to
find his inner Brit, biting off brittle lyrics including
a cover of the Animal’s “”When I Was Young.” I prefer the
originals, with Trek sounding like he’s got more than a few
messed up and Angry Inches to go around like “Cheap for
the Chance” and “Twin Forces.” Listening back to the first
album, it’s not so bad…more of a focus on Trek’s high
jangle, electromangled guitar. But his voice really gets
thinner, whitier and dukier on the second disk, and
Quintronic works in more and more oddball keys too. Was a pretty damn fun listen for me, the guys apparently are still tinkering with music (and maybe architecture for one of them?) to this day, but it must feel nice to revive this slice of their wanton, star-dreaming youth.