Freezepop has continued their tradition of creating bland synth pop music but on their new EP, Doppelganger,they show that, once remixed by other artists, their songs can be more than mediocre. It kinda makes me feel bad for Freezepop but hey they’ve somehow become pretty popular with their electro fuzz when it isn’t remixed.
The first track on the EP, the title track, is the one original song; it comes from Freezepop’s previous studio album Imagunary Friends. Placed alongside two remixes by other electronic artists, the album version of “Doppelganger” just seems boring. The same steady synth persists throughout the whole tune and it’salmost too boring to stand.
In songs with repetitive, banal musicality, I would expect the vocals to triumph but in this case they just added to the impression of redundant machines. With the chorus repeating “She looks just like me, shel ooks just like me. Why can’t you seeeee it”, in the vocalists’ soft voices, I’m reminded of sitting through several long winded speeches at my graduation even though each speech had the same thesis. You just sort of want it to end or change and get a little more exciting.
As a character on the TV show Angel once said: “It's the change we're listening for; the note coming after and the one after that. That's what makes it music”. While there could have been many layers of instrumental and vocal sound in “Doppelganger”, it just had the effect of one note held for a long time. It’s the change I was listening for and it’s the change I didn’t hear.
If you’d like, you can give the EP a listen for yourself and judge for yourself. It’s available at http://www.freezepop.net/doppelgangerep