Friday 12 August 2022

Fall Into Me (2022) by Social Union - Music EP Review


Social Union
are a New Zealand duo (Vanilla Martin and Luke Penrose) recently signed to Blackjack Illuminist Records, and Fall Into Me is their debut EP. I couldn't not take a look at this, as the groups music is full of eighties sounding synth which I always love. The press release states their sound 'focuses on dark synth-pop melodies that operates between two different poles'. As always, I'm not one for writing reviews of music, but I noticed the email about this just as I was contemplating what to do for my second smaller blog post of the week.

The EP is made up of four tracks, I believe if the EP is brought on CD then there is a fifth track which I will also cover here. All tracks can be found on Apple Music regardless. It opens with title track Fall Into Me, which I think may be the best track contained here. The synth drums are in full swing, with the vocals having a mournful and almost dreamlike quality to them, the echoey quality reminded me of The Mars Volta on their Noctourniquet album. Around halfway through the three minute track it gets heavier in a lovely synth way. Next up is Choke, another three minute track. This was faster paced, revolving around the lyric "All I wanted was a friend. You had ulterior motive". I liked the distortion effects used on the vocals for this one.

Following on from this is Abscond, again around three minutes and again a good track. Perhaps more downbeat than the ones that came before, this leads up to a great little drum heavy instrumental towards the end. Final track is Our Hands Don't Fit possibly about unrequited love, with lyrics like "I wasn't trying be misleading, babe I think you've been misreading" and the repeated refrain of "I'm sorry, so sorry, I can see your pain, but I am not to blame". The sometimes fifth track is a remix of Fall Into Me titled Fall Into Me (Social Sports Remix). As always with remixes, it wasn't bad, though not a patch on the original.

I love synth music and so I really loved the dark style Social Union brought. Fall Into Me was a wonderful EP that left me wanting more. None of the four tracks were bad in the slightest, and they complimented each other well, for an example of great throwback eighties synth style music check this out.

SCORE:

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