Digital Leather’s dreary ostinatos echo a time that has come to pass where synth-driven music has grown out of it’s Gary Numan cheesiness and into the futuristic context it was meant to conjure. As the 80s rolled in and Post-Punk, Goth and synth-styled bands like Devo and LA’s legendary The Screamers laid the groundwork by presenting songs that had a pedestrian take on a futuristic theme and painted a world that presently exists. Now that we are truly living in a “Wiggly World” where it is increasingly harder to wiggle to the top and the “Last 4 Digits” of our social security numbers are as important as The Screamers predicted, we have entered an interesting time. In the 90s we had bands like The Piranhas who took the modern/futurist angle and slapped it down to a crumbling future-primitive knuckle-dragging robotic slur with screaming vocals and keyboards pounded to rubble, leaving us back before square one, when the wheel was some brainiac caveman’s dream.
Then enter Tempe Arizona’s Digital Leather. Sean Foree’s one-man crepuscular nightmare of introspection and self-deprecation has more of a new–romantic slant. His deeply dark vocals lay over a stratum of grainy drum machines and a terrain of ill-produced synthesizer to create a mood that is joyously depressing. Their newest LP came out earlier this year on Shattered records and is still available on their site, along with a soon to be released split single with Angry Angles for their tour together at the end of July. You can also download some songs here.
July 20th - Hi Tone Memphis, TN
July 21st - Beat Kitchen Chicago, IL
July 22nd - Basement Show Milwaukee, WI
July 23rd - Mainstage Green Bay, WI
July 24th - Kraftbrau Kalamazoo, MI
July 25th - The Union Athens, OH
July 26th - Cafe Bourbon St. Columbus, OH
July 27th - Bug Jar Rochester, NY
July 29th - Terre T's Cherry Blossom Clinic Jersey City, NJ
