Vince Clarke & Paul Hartnoll’s ‘2Square’ Album – Orbital Rave Meets Erasure Pop

2squarealbumcoverVince Clarke and Paul Hartnoll recently released their first album, 2Square, on VeryRecords.

Clarke and Hartnoll have composed and recorded 8 tracks in the style of ‘Home House’, a new genre they describe as ‘music you can dance to in the privacy of your own living room’.

“Vince approached me and asked if I wanted to work with him on some tracks he had demoed,” explains Hartnoll. “I set about adding and fiddling around and then we both spent a week finishing and mixing the record in my Brighton studio.”

“We’re both Dads,” he adds, “and it was time to hold out the hand of collaboration and help each other up onto the dance floor to dance as only Dads can.”

2Square is an electronic mish-mash of cut-up vocals, infectious house grooves and blippy, distorted synths; a weird union of Orbital Rave and Erasure Pop.

Here’s a video for the first track from the album, Better Have A Drink To Think:

Tracks:

  • Better Have A Drink To Think
  • Zombie Blip
  • The Echoes
  • Do-A-Bong
  • The Shortcut
  • Single Function
  • All Out
  • Underwater

Technical Details:

  • Synths used by Paul included Macbeth M5N, Sunsyn mk2, Arp 2600, Elektron Analog Keys, Korg Arp Odyssey and Moog Sub Phatty.
  • Synths used by Vince included Pro One, Roland System 700, Serge Modular, Dave Smith Mopho, Mini Moog and Wardolf Pulse.

Clarke Hartnoll’s 2Square is available in digital form via iTunes & Amazon.

via reader Shane King, who’s got his own album out on Bandcamp.

10 thoughts on “Vince Clarke & Paul Hartnoll’s ‘2Square’ Album – Orbital Rave Meets Erasure Pop

  1. Enuf happening even to placate my miniscule attention span……looking forward to this gracing the House of Obvious

  2. I have admired and enjoyed both artists immensely over the years. This first track was terribly underwhelming and an absolute sonic mess. Let’s hope this is the anomaly within the album.

  3. This sounds so familiar. Almost like a soundtrack from one of the “Minds Eye” video series. It’s not bad at all, just triggers memories.

  4. Sounds like it took them 10 minutes to produce and master this 4 minute track.
    Maybe my ears are spoiled by other new releases, but I’ll give this one a miss.

  5. I really really wanted to love this record but sadly it just left me underwhelmed. I do highly recommend Hartnoll’s “8:58” album though. That is a very fine body of work there.

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