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Tomas Barfod travels to Salton Sea with debut album

Tomas Barfod travels to Salton Sea with debut album It’s hard to believe that Tomas Barfod‘s new solo album draws from the concept of urban decay, as his record’s press release puts it. Sure, the WhoMadeWho drummer has been travelling the world (and logically hundreds of cities with rundown clubs and places, too) a lot, and the title also shares its name with California’s biggest lake, Salton Sea (whose very salty water means death for modern infrastructure). But it seems we’d need to ask Tomas about the conceptual idea – also since he himself is referring to the movie & soundtrack ‘Blade Runner‘. Which makes some more sense, but let’s talk music instead for now.

Besides ‘Came to Party’ (thanks to its sluggish’n’shaky rhythm and mood changes) sounding like the drunk walk from a party rather than peaktime and ‘Ecstesizing’ feeling more stressed out than drug-relatedly detached, Salton Sea as an album indeed feels like a well-balanced club and synth pop record: ‘Till We Die’ deserves the adjective ‘twee’ in the most positive way possible, ‘Baxter St.’ needs to be played LOUD on a massive club sound system, and ‘November Skies’ has just the right amount of straightforward dancefloor energy.

Together with his fellow guest musicians Jeppe Kjellberg (WhoMadeWho), Swedish vocalist Nina Kinert, and NYC film composer Lydia Ainsworth Tomas Barfod has been working on his solo debut album, although he has been quite active as a solo musician besides his band WhoMadeWho for a long time now.

Friends of Friends Music will be putting out Salton Sea on 21st May as CD and vinyl, expect remixes by Mark E, Shlohmo, Salva, Suzanne Kraft, and more around the release date. Barfod’s new EP Broken Glass has been released today (but you already knew about this, didn’t you?!). Now listen to two album snippets:

Tomas Barfod – Salton Sea:
1. D.S.O.Y
2. Broken Glass feat. Jeppe Kjellberg
3. Came to Party
4. Till We Die feat. Nina Kinert
5. Ecstesizing
6. Don’t Understand feat. Jeppe Kjellberg
7. Baxter St.
8. November Skies feat. Nina Kinert
9. Aether
10. Nighthawke feat. Lydia Ainsworth
11. Python
12. Only Human feat. CHLLNGR**(Digital Only)

Bonus: watch WhoMadeWho’s new Germany mini-tour-documentary thing below.

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Published March 20, 2012.