Reviews | Printed Circuit

Reviews of ‘CHiP-POP’

NORMAN RECORDS: “Printed Circuit!! We’ve missed you here at Norman towers! God bless you and your uplifting posi style chip tunes! It’s been a while since the amazing ‘The Sound Of The Wonderful Technique’ hit my CD player for the first time so it’s a pleasure to see another LP has finally materialised. Combining her love of nerdy sequence based electronica and modern high end studio pop singles (you know… like what Britney Spears makes) has made for some fantastic tracks over the years and with ‘Chip Pop’ you get the feeling that P.C’s style has finally settled, becoming tastefully refined. You’ll be pleased to know that ‘Chip Pop’ crams in the hits. Obvious single choices like ‘Brick It’ and ‘Sexy Trouble’ pay homage to the pioneers of true electronic pop with The Human League and Pet Shop Boys springing to the fore-front of my mind. Then you’ve got the late night dance floor fillers and local favourites in the form of ‘Science StickS’ (probably my fave Circuit tune and easily the most uplifting) and ‘My Butt Hurts’ (check out the online vid if you wanna learn the Bucks Fizz-esque dance routine). We are also treated to Circuit remixes of Oakland’s experimental melodic punkers KIT (remix of ‘Rain’) and leeds douche pop regulars COWTOWN (an improvement on COWTOWN’s homage to powerful footwear ‘Powerblingers’) both of which are dealt with with appropriate affection by Ms. Circuit. Forget this weeks trail of dirgy ambient losers and record store day suck up’s and get yourself a proper good LP. Comes on sexy blue vinyl w/ a free download code. Also worth checking out the Legoland video for ‘Brick It’ and the awesome new website. SO CIRCUIT CREW!”

Reviews of ‘The Sound of the Wonderful Technique’

THE WIRE: “You could think of Printed Circuit as a kind of safari park, a safe place for an endangered species to roam and play, shielded from the evolutionary progress raging unstoppably outside. Clare [sic] Broadley’s amiable, wide-eyed electro-pop project has reached its second album, but as the title of the opening track (“Continue? Y/N”) makes clear, she remains as besotted by 1980s home computing and first generation video games as ever. In Printed Circuit’s brightly coloured, hermetically sealed world, the Commodore 64 still reigns supreme and The Human League will never be toppled from Top Of The Pops. Broadley’s chunky, child friendly basslines are like Giorgio Moroder rebuilt in Lego. It’s such a comfortable, immediately convincing sound world that it’s all too easy to spend Wonderful Technique‘s dinky 30 minute running time smiling at the retro flourishes rather than concentrating on the considerable subtlety with which these seemingly artless songs are put together. But tracks like “Movements” and “Osaka Slalom” are littered with unexpected chord changes and surprising little twists and turns. Printed Circuit’s mannered naivety is only skin deep”.
SANDMAN: “In these days of X-Box 360s and handheld Nintendos and Playstations, the Gamebody, the Commodore 64 and Acorn Electrons are all but forgotten. The simple joys of Tetris have been replaced by games where you wonder around cities smashing up cars, killing innocent folk and slapping prostitutes. These new games are soundtracked by big, tedious American rock, not by trebly blasts of repetitive buzzing squeaks. No wonder society is going down the pan.
Printed Circuit look back to a happy time. A time when simple puzzle solving games were enough to keep us quiet for hours. Even if the bleepy, bloopy music drove our parents insane. The Sound Of The Wonderful Technique is a delight. There are no two ways about it. By the midpoint of each song, you can immediately whistle along. This album is put together like a expertly played game of Tetris. The neatly layered electronic waves of synths and computerised beats slot together with melodies that wouldn’t sound out of place blaring out of a Gameboy. Combined, they create an album that is as joyous, highly melodic and seems to have little concern other than provoking dancing, good cheer, and an urge to play Eighties video games. Probably in that order.”

Reviews of ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Shed’ (split 7″ on Tigerbeat6)

Collective Zine: “Side B provides us with the gem that is Printed Circuit. Claire is truly brilliant in making electronic music, if you’re into the more poppy side of electro I urge you to check her stuff out. Here she gives us “Can’t Get You Out of My Shed” which if you can’t guess is a Kylie cover! Think of bands like Soft Cell, The Human League, Gary Numan and you can definitely see their influence here. If Kylie had been in a Super Mario Brothers game she would have made her songs like this! Eighties Electronic Pop will rise again but it wont be the hipsters like Fischerspooner or The Faint leading the way.”

Reviews of ‘Acrobotics’

BOOMKAT: “After some excellent releases on Irritant and Catmobile, Leeds very own Printed Circuit return on 555 for more loveable home-crafted lo-fi electronic pop! Claire continues her happy marriage between Kraftwerkian old skool stylings, with computer generated stutters and pulses and a childlike awe and innocence. Perfect pop.”

Reviews of ‘I Heart My Jen Sexy’

BOOMKAT: “Hailing from Leeds, Yorkshire the shadowy Printed Circuit adopt a pleasing stance on the whole electropop question, dark with decent melody is best. The title track adroitly blends John Carpenter with G-funk, Store and Transport sounds like Frederik Schikowski after one too many lollies. Chevron is the killer here, akin to an Atari version of prime period Depeche Mode, nagging funk, until chopped vocals a la Scott Herren come in and demand your love and respect in an alien, but strangely endearing dialect. Great stuff, for robots, small children and performers of repetitive tasks everywhere.”

Reviews of ‘The Adventure Game’

FEEDBACKMONITOR: “From the geeky computer reference in the artist ‘s name to the colourful and pixelated cover artwork – not to mention the album title itself – everything about The Adventure Game points towards it being a collection of bouncy electronica that could easily be used as the soundtrack to a playful video game. And despite what they say about not judging books (or CDs) by their cover, bouncy and playful is exactly what you get from the 10 tracks on The Adventure Game. Like her labelmates I Am Robot And Proud and Figurine, Claire Broadley of Printed Circuit specializes in squeezing warm melodies out of her cold machines, and she also has a knack for crafting tunes that are really damn catchy. It ‘s obvious that the classic synth-pop sounds of the 80s are a big influence on Printed Circuit, especially on the addictive mini-epic “Switch It On ” that pairs the guest vocals of Alice Kain of London duo Brikolage with the coolest use of a computerized voice since Console ‘s “14 Zero Zero “. But it ‘s not a completely retro affair, as many of the bleeps and bloops come from the more modern school of melodic and breakbeat infused IDM. Throw in a collaboration with her follow Leeds resident Random Number on the excellent “Binary Jockeys “, and you ‘ve got a set of groove-laden sounds that are warm, bubbly and really, really fun. “
CARELESS TALK COSTS LIVES (PLAN B): “Leeds-based Claire Broadley (Printed Circuit) makes music for dealing with the urban environment. Music made out of all your favourite colours (the strobing clashing palette of Spectrums loading), amped up into a retina-bending neon and mapped into sound by your favourite ever instruments (C64′s, Playstation’s, SNES’s). There’s no reason why high streets can’t be the colour of this album’s Rainbow Islands-esque cover art. There’s no reason why music can’t be allowed to make you happy instead of just pretending to make you sad. Things I doodled while listening to this album: me and a faceless stick girl sitting on the lip of a moon crater and holding hands. “
ELECTROBLEEP: “Only Printed Circuit could make C64 disco a true reality. Printed Circuit has been a major player in the 8-bit revolution, creating music ranging from C64 lullabies to SID shaking dance tunes. The latest album, The Adventure Game, in true electroclash fashion, combines unexplored musical genres with an updated sound. “
FLUX: “Leeds ‘ own Claire Broadley makes zinging, playful electronic music crammed full of sparse, trebly computer beats, warm rave-alarm riffing, pop nous and counterpoint – there ‘s a classical background to her or I ‘ll eat my headphones: syncopated melodies chase and morph across the stereo. Although it presents itself as naive – and has the enthusiasm and glee of naive music – there is a lot going on here. “
IN LOVE WITH THESE TIMES: “…Claire Broadley here goes for a melody-led electronic dance feel, almost daring the listener to get out the glimmer globes and disco lights and shake it like your junior school disco never did. If ‘Colacubic ‘ and ‘Semaphore on the Dancefloor ‘ with their eighties synth-pop vibes are faithful to the arcade game theme template, other tracks explore more subtle delights. ‘I Heart [My] Jen Sexy (Part 2) ‘ and ‘Circuit Non-Stop ‘ are perhaps our pick, skittering around uncontrollably like robot mice in a maze: and the one we looked forward to most, ‘Binary Jockeys ‘ – a collaboration with Leeds ‘ own Random Number – is a slinky construct teeming with electro grooves and immersing you in an arsenal of home computer bleeps, its busy breakbeats offset by in-out fades of wintry keyboard strings…. ‘The Adventure Game ‘ is clearly a labour of love, and we always feel a special affinity for those. “
ROCKET IN THE POCKET: “On ‘The Adventure Game ‘, the latest release by one-woman electro-pop genius Claire Broadley, Nintendos and Ataris have been reinvented as weapons of musical implementation…. Printed Circuit has created the perfect electro-pop album, of which something like the electroclash genre aspires to but is never warm and fuzzy enough to fully realise. ” – ROCKET IN THE POCKET

Reviews of ‘Reprints’ (remix album)

CARELESS TALK COSTS LIVES (PLAN B): “Poloroid Land Camera, toy robot, Fisher Price record player. Some electronics boffin called Printed Circuit gets remixed to merry fuck by the likes of Transistor Six and Random Number. The results are totall skill bedroom electronica to which a closest comparison would probably be an instrumental edit of Hefner ‘s ‘Dead Media ‘, which is fair praise indeed. The fact that the entire thing sounds like it was written on a malfunctioning ZX Spectrum 48k does nothing but make me immediately note Printed Circuit down in the shortlist for album of the year “.
DRAWER B: “Printed Circuit asked a diverse collection of her peers and friends to interpret some previously released and unreleased material and the results are stunning. [...] Remix albums tend to be hit or miss, usually falling on the side of the latter due to the temptation to be self-indulgent, but since Reprints enlists such a diverse crew of talented remixers, it succeeds in sounding edgy and innovative on practically every track. “
GROOVES: “…For the wittily titled remix album Reprints, Broadley has handed tracks from her previous 7 ” and CDR releases over to a variety of artists including Frederik Schikowski, James Figurine, Lesser, Fingernail and more. The resulting reworks run the gamut from neo-synthpop that doesn ‘t stray far from the source material, to skittering laptop glitchery and rumbling noise. In a genre that is often on the verge of collapsing under a ton of seriousness and self-importance, it ‘s truly refreshing to find joyful gems [...] that are both unassuming and unpretentious. “
BOOMKAT: “After the awesome recent seven inch for Irritant, a self funded cdr and releases on Spain’s Elefant Records and Philadelphia’s Tbtmo, Claire Broadly [sic] has approached some fine musicians to remix her work under the Printed Circuit moniker. Frederik Schikowski (Irritant, CCO, Lux Nigra and more!), Lesser (Tigerbeat 6, Matador), CK Dexter Haven (Diskono), James Figurine (Monika), I Am Robot and Proud, Fingernail and more. Right across the board, from Schikowski’s melodious synth washes, probably the most awesome music yet from our Frederik, to James Figurine’s spannered homage to systems music, via doses of healthy glitch, a splash of lumpy noise terror here, a soupcon of no-wave synth pop there. The sevens have become sought after future-pop classics, these remixes will only strengthen what is a sizeable, and growing reputation. Satisfying and surprising. Poptastic even…”