CHRIS & COSEY
TRUST (PURPLE LP) (CONSPIRACY INTERNATIONAL)
Label:
CONSPIRACY INTERNATIONAL
Back for the first time since 1990, Chris & Cosey's 1989 paradigmatic synthwave major-label 'Trust' is back with a fresh remaster.
C & Cs remastered limited edition vinyl series continues in summer 2023 with the release of Techno Primitiv (1985), Trust (1989) and Pagan Tango (1991) - all available on vinyl for the first time since their original release.
The remastered albums will be available on coloured vinyl, each with a printed inner sleeve of archival photos, via CTI.
Elemental 7, Muzik Fantastique!, and Feral Vapours of The Silver Ether were released earlier this year, and the series has seen many of Chris & Cosey's influential albums available on vinyl for the first time, giving listeners a new opportunity to revisit some of their celebrated catalogue.
Trust, originally released on Play It Again Sam / Nettwerk in 1989, is collection of electro-pop, rinsed through with Chris & Cosey's unique erotic vision - "Seldom have electronics this glaciated and deep-frozen exuded so much warmth" wrote Dele Fadele in NME.
Fruity and screwed electro-pop is the flavour, an erotically charged set of skeletal bangers that sound mad prescient with the benefit of hindsight.
It's not so much that the production is entirely free of 80's synth excess - there are a tonne of midi instruments - but the way the synth drums and Cosey's voice weave around eachother in a stripped, bare fashion, feels like something from another, much later era.
'Illusion' features deadpanned vox against a backdrop of serrated analog leads and proto-techno loops.
"We pray to feel what we could not see," "is this illusion?" Cosey sounds even more sensual on 'Percusex', all gasps set against slowed drums and plasticky FM donks, while 'Rise' features an industrial roll of jagged samples and West Asian melodic flourishes.
The most unexpected moment comes on the resonant title track, a beatless meditation that hangs Tutti's harrowing words on druggy Fourth World pads.
Possibly one of their most underrated albums.